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I have been living in Warsaw with my family for 15 months and I feel like it’s time to write down how we are all doing.

It’s been a roller coaster of emotions, any emotions you can think of.

Something really good happened in the last few weeks.

My kids have just celebrated their birthdays (10, 8, 5 yo) and organizing their birthday parties has been a huge effort, especially emotionally speaking. They all go to Polish schools and they are surrounded by Polish kids, in their classrooms there are nearly any foreigners.

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During their first year at school they had not been invited to any birthday party (apart from my 5 yo boy) and for us parents that was a bit worrying; this fact for us meant that our kids were not well accepted, were not integrated, were not seen as one of them. Probably the main reason behind it, was simply that our kids didn’t speak Polish and were finding really difficult to communicate with other kids. 

So we decided to organize birthday parties for our children and invite their classmates and to our great surprise the guests came and they all had fun. What’s more important is that now our kids have broken the ice, there are no more barriers, they play and talk to their classmates (in Polish) with no fears. It is as if a wall has been knocked down and everybody is much happier.

It’s been stressful for me organizing their parties, fearing all the time that maybe nobody would show up but everything has gone well and I couldn’t be happier to see my kids happy.

Being an expat can be stressful but can also be really rewarding!