Uncomfortable Conversations | Wandering Soup

My fear when blogging or talking about our life is that I may make it seem "too nice" or rather easier than it is. I wrote a blog (unpublished) that made me question some things about our day-to-day living and it fortunately led to a great conversation between Amber and I, a check in if you will.

The blog was about our day-to-day "Expat" life that we've been living since June and how parts aren't great--it's had it's ups, downs, ins and outs. All life-learning lessons in their own way. We've also moved into a pattern of sorts helped by the easy pace of life here. And we are happy but...And there is always a but isn't there?

It ain't all sunshine and daffodils.

Lets start with the obvious. We are 11 hours ahead of east coast USA, soon to be 12 with the time change, and most of our customers are in that part of the world. Both of our businesses are growing fortunately, but it does mean late nights for us as we attempt to connect with our clients/customers on their time. This leads to a lot of alarms going off in the mornings that we look at and roll over.

We are homeschooling the boy, and we've had to adjust to his learning style vs our expectations of what he should be doing and how he should be learning. This is one of the good lessons and I will go into detail with it in the future once it's sprouted more leaves. Right now we are budding.

What I will say is it doesn't help that we, the adults, can't stay on a schedule. Late hours and quiet air-conditioned mornings has made getting up a little hard for us. We've all gotten a little lazy while at the same time a tad bit demanding. We can easily "make rent" and cover the bills, and Siem Reap is a small town in that we can get anywhere in 5 to 10 mins via Tuk Tuk. Add to that, almost all restaurants deliver, even single cups of coffee. And honestly it's sorta sad the number of times we've had a cup of coffee delivered. I do love a good latte and Amber dreams of an Americano.

And family. Our parents are aging, which is why we chose this time to fly before it is too late to do so. My mother in particular is riding solo in Atlanta but still relying on me to smooth the bumps out of her roads. Amber's parents are doing good and have more family around them but health issues are present as life is happening. We are both sort of expecting to fly back home due to some crisis or other, sooner than later.

As a result of this conversation, we have planned "uncomfortable conversations" weekly to touch on items that we may have kept to ourselves to keep the peace or just to keep the day going. We are buckling down and committing to getting up and getting started to ensure we do what we came here to do. Live. Love. Travel. Grow.

All in all not bad, and things will change as we test new theories, new countries, and learn each other in new environments.

Kat

#WanderingSoup #UncomfortableConversations #SiemReap #Cambodia #LivinginCambodia