Feels Like When I Started Mike’s Blog – moving to a new country
I’m getting the feeling of a new blog, a new life, a new opportunity. Kind of a weird 11 year old re-living of starting the blog. It is so exciting to move to a new country and discover all the new things. Some weird thing is my Youtube homepage is full of videos saying “why you should NOT move to Thailand” – is it trying to tell me something? Lol.
I’m writing this on my dining room table as my kids eat their Cheerios beside me. Will be heading to school orientation in about an hour and trying to get all these ideas and thoughts of out my head.
For now – my life – as a parent – as a father – is to make sure my children are ok. Maggie will be going to school for the first time (she is only 2 and a half!). Some of the schools in Thailand wouldn’t let her start until she was 3 – so we are happy we found one that will take her in. So Miles and Maggie will be going to full time school now.
Our landlord helped us find a driver to pick them up from our home each morning and take them back after school each day. That was a big reliever.
I am also realizing how much my kids speak in Chinese. Like almost no English now. I guess that was because they just spent a month in Northern China with 100% Chinese environment and family.
The teachers at the school said it is OK they don’t speak much English now – they are still young enough to pick up English just from being in the school and speaking English with the other kids. What I am really excited about is the kids will learn Thai too – as well as maintain their Chinese and build up their English.
This goes back to one thing I was trying to do when staying in China – to have them learn Chinese and English when they grew up – and now we even throw in a third language of Thai as a bonus. This is something I would have loved to have been able to do growing up – and I am certain will be a massive advantage in the next generation.
So as a parent, I can only do my best. To try to give them the environment to learn and grow to be great human beings. And everything else is second now. The sacrifices I believe a parent needs to make are great. It gets me teary eyed to think of the sacrifices my parents had to make for me and my sister – and I need to pay that forward to my next generation of kin.
Some have said I had kids too early, some say they don’t want to have kids. But from my perspective, there isn’t much more satisfying and rewarding than having kids. Maybe technology will advance so we can live forever, or live until we are 200 years old – but still – our kids are the only way we can really live on.
That, and these blogs, videos, books, and podcasts that I am putting out there – I hope these can help people for generations to come as well. Always makes me wonder what will happen to this content as time goes by. Will blogs and podcasts from now be used decades from now – or will it be replaced by a new kind of content?
For me – I really hope the content I am creating now will help people for decades, and generations to come. And I hope my kids will spend a day or so watching these video blogs. Hope it won’t be those annoying family times where the kids are forced to watch videos they don’t want to see.
Anyway, first day in Thailand – as a family (minus the wife) and we are heading to school shortly. Try to take it one step at a time.