Moving Home Success Stories?

MyLifeOverseas
Posts: 9
Joined: Mon Nov 26, 2018 11:06 am

Re: Moving Home Success Stories?

Post by MyLifeOverseas »

Returned to Canada to care for my aging sick 85 year old mum in Sept 2019, rather than have her go into a care facility I wanted her to be comfortable in her own home with her beloved cat and then in March 2020 the world changed with this pandemic.

Upon seeing what was happening in China in late January 2020 especially, I assumed this was going to have dramatic lasting impacts on living overseas, travel, freedoms, our schools, student life, and travel shutdowns worldwide. We saw the writing on the wall and decided that was it, after more than 25 years overseas we packed it in and made the decision our int'l lives were done. My mum then passed away and we took time to figure out what was next for us.

Not wanting to go back overseas to schools shutdown and online learning AND not feeling ready to retire, we knew we had the energy to try something new and that we didn't want to work in the Ontario school system. We had done well with saving and investing over 25 years so decided to go a new route, but still using all our skills and knowledge. We bought a tutoring franchise, opened in Sept/21 and it has been an incredible experience. In fact we have broken the records for a new location. We work hard, it has been a steep learning curve but we equate it to being at a new int'l school, as we learn new systems, policies and procedures, get to know our new city, hire staff, learn new curriculum and assessments, how to market etc. We have adjusted far more easily than we thought after living in some pretty difficult countries. I have to say life is easy here in Ottawa. We don't feel the reverse culture shock but maybe that's because life where we are is still very much in covid restriction mode. We approach this as another new location, only this is our home country, but in a city that is new to us. We lucked out buying a home in a super friendly area and have been amazed to find 5 neighbours who have lived and worked overseas for either the foreign service, int'l companies, banks, or overseas schools and we all have stories to share and a common understanding. We assumed we would be out of the norm, that people wouldn't get us, but NOPE we fit right in.

Do we miss our adventurous lives overseas and all the travel we once did? Not right now with this pandemic still raging. We feel lucky we have done so much incredible travel and when things improve we look forward to exploring our own country. I feel really sad for all those who just retired if they waited for their travel adventures to begin in their retirement and now faced with the current state of affairs, restrictions, closures, shutdowns,cancelled flights, testing, and general unknowns.

Life is what you make it and we feel our moving home is MAJOR success story. In fact we feel it has been a dream.
inspired
Posts: 15
Joined: Sat Dec 27, 2014 8:02 am

Re: Moving Home Success Stories?

Post by inspired »

I have a friend that left a third tier school in China and is extremely unhappy with his choice to move back to the USA. He is really upset about how Covid is being dealt with and the quality of his child's education not being up to snuff.
Post Reply