To another continent, in fact!
Most of our friends and family aren’t too surprised that we are moving (after all, we’ve been talking about leaving the country since 2015) but by where we are moving.
Where are we moving?
Oslo, Norway
When it came down to logistics, finances and job opportunities, Norway made the most sense for us at this point in time as a one-income family. Oddly enough, I will be able to “return to work” (i.e. make a go of freelancing) sooner there than anywhere else thanks to subsidized barnehages, Norwegian preschools. I am SO excited to hopefully find little E a spot starting mid-year, so he can learn the language and enjoy friluftsliv with his future friends 🙂
Norway was on our top 5 countries list but because of the language barrier, I did not think it was where we’d go first. As luck would have it, many companies in the tech industry–Eric is a software engineer–actually use English as their working language in the Oslo area. And one of those companies made Eric an excellent offer in July. It was our final push to get our house on the market and set things in motion to leave!
We will be staying in a company-sponsored apartment in downtown Oslo for a month or two whilst searching for a more permanent rental in Bærum, closer to Eric’s place of work.
How & when are we moving?
This is a bit of an awkwardly belated announcement like baby K’s pregnancy/birth announcement, but we’re leaving in 5 days! I haven’t been able to share earlier due to the situation with Eric’s former American employer.
Eric’s parents are coming with us for the way over and making a little vacation out of our move. They’ll be here later this week and then we are taking an overnight flight on Sunday from MSP to Rekjavik, and another flight from Iceland to Oslo.
We chose not to take our furniture with us (most of it being secondhand/family heirloom pieces anyways) and shipped a couple dozen boxes of our possessions (mostly kitchen stuff, clothes and toys) before leaving the red house in September. Our boxes are currently being stored at a port in New York, waiting their turn on a ship overseas.
And everyone wants to know: yes, we are taking Nelly! She is traveling with a professional pet moving company. Her flight is leaving out of Chicago a couple days after ours and transiting through Amsterdam on the way there. Our downtown apartment is pet-friendly so she’ll be joining us again soon, after spending the past 6 weeks or so with a wonderful family from Rover and our favorite pet hotel 🙂
Why are we moving?
That is truly a question that deserves its own post (or several), but briefly:
- I grew up traveling with my parents, both of whom have spent significant time abroad in their lives, and I’ve always dreamed of living abroad
- I fell in love with the idea of raising kids in Scandinavia after watching The Finland Phenomenon as a junior in high school
- After spending a few weeks in Italy around my dad’s wedding in 2012, I almost applied to colleges abroad but ultimately selected somewhere closer to home due to the cost
- Eric and I both almost studied abroad in college but opted not to so that we could graduate early
- After discovering/joining the blogging world in 2015, I realized that there were so many different ways to live than the path I thought I had to follow, and that our values might align better with those of another country
- We’ve dreamed and talked seriously about moving abroad since mid-2015
- The pandemic made us realize that (1) the US really does not provide any social support to parents and (2) moving abroad might not always be an option given current events–so we needed to seize the day when things opened back up and go for it!
Announcing our departure five days before leaving might make our move seem very spur-of-the-moment, but really it’s anything but.
Eric and I are not impulsive people. In fact, we are the kind to plan WAY ahead, patiently wait for the right opportunity to make changes (even if it takes years), and talk endlessly about the pros and cons of a decision before making it. So I feel a bit like Bilbo from The Lord of the Rings movies now when Frodo says,
He’s gone, hasn’t he? He talked for so long about leaving. I didn’t think he’d really do it.
For several years I wondered if we’d ever really leave, too. We always wanted to, of course. But in the moment, when we felt the urge to get out of the US, I felt like we were trying to run away from our problems–and deep down I knew we’d just end up bringing them with us. Like the fact that we hated living in California; or felt generally stuck during the pandemic; or had problems in friendships or family relationships.
Now, we’re not running away from our problems. I went to therapy, we’ve healed the important relationships in our lives, I got over my rebellious COVID phase, Eric has put in hard work and moved up in his career, I accomplished some blogging and writing to-do’s, we started a family and I even got my “redeeming” positive birth experience.
Now we’re really ready to go because we are not escaping from our lives, but moving towards new adventures and positive challenges.
Ok, I’m almost at a thousand words (!) which is wayyy too long and means it’s time to stop writing.
Ciao to all my American readers–I’ll write you next from Scandinavia!
xx Claire