Moving to another country can be incredibly exciting. Everything new can be quite intoxicating. You feel fully alive, almost like a child again. An adventurer or perhaps an explorer (although we are far from a Robinson Crusoe in today’s convenient jet age).
However, an international move can also be challenging, difficult and quite frustrating. The unfamiliar language and culture that seemed so attractive and exotic from the outside, can also be a big barrier, especially professionally.
All of us who have immigrated to this country, likely felt a bit lost in the tangled Spanish bureaucracy, not to forget their complicated grammar… I think of the Norwegian trade unionist I interviewed once, who could navigate the Norwegian bureaucracy blindfolded – something he discovered didn’t help him one bit here in Spain.
Or the former head librarian who went from speaking fluent Norwegian and English to having to learn basic Spanish expressions like a first grader.
Some skills must be learned all over again – like when my husband and I, aged 65 and 49, had to go back to Spanish driving school with a bunch of 18-year-olds.
Nor is all professional knowledge equally transferable, especially across national borders and cultural barriers.
I recently interviewed a man who experienced exactly this. He had come to Costa del Sol from Los Angeles with extensive experience in communications and administration for professional American sports teams. Understandably, he was quite confident about his instant success in Spain. But the landing was not entirely soft and far from as easy as he had expected.
Fortunately, he did not give up and today he is the international communications manager for a professional Spanish sports team.
I, for one, could easily relate to his story. Like him, I came from North America. I had years of experience in the film industry, I’d had a film in Cannes and been nominated for the Canadian Academy Awards. But that meant nothing when we got to our small Andalusian village where we didn’t know a soul.
What good did half a dozen languages do me when none were Spanish? And what help was my master’s degrees in a neighbourhood where some of the very oldest residents could hardly read or write?
To the locals, we were just another couple of new foreign faces.
It was as if our past had been wiped clean.
Settling in another country forces us out of our comfort zone. It can be humbling but also very liberating.
Like the LA sports administrator, I had no idea what I would end up doing when I got here – that I would co-found a local environmental NGO just months after we arrived with our five suitcases, that a year later, I would be standing in front of a class of out-of-control Spanish 3-5-year-olds that I one way or another was to teach English to, that I would write a book and get it published in Spain, that we would grow our organic vegetables right down in the valley or that I would end up working in my native language as an editor – in Spain.
Who knows what tomorrow will bring? My motto is the tried and tested Carpe Diem. I am open to what may come and excited to embrace the next chapter of our Andalusian journey.
