Post #1

This year living abroad has been… quite something. Even though I’ve desired to share it with you, I’ve had difficulty bringing myself to write anything about it. Between my incredibly busy master’s program, applying for jobs, shopping at least twice a week without a car, planning trips around Europe, building up my running mileage again after a long period of inconsistency, and figuring out how to love my wife in this new season living alone together for the first time, it’s been easy to place things like this blog on the back burner. Also throw in my tendency to allow my self-critical nature to affect my creative motivation, and it’s seemed like a scary wall to scale; all my busyness has just given me an excuse to ignore it.

But now I find myself stranded inside most hours of the day, with a lot more time on my hands. Sure, I still have online schoolwork and am going on runs and spending more time with Jacqueline, but I’m experiencing a much greater temptation to go online and watch Youtube videos and surf social media and read article after article repeating generally the same information about the importance of social distancing and the various models for how the dreaded coronavirus could spread. It gets tiresome after a while. And I find in myself a deep desire to do something, to occupy myself with something more meaningful. So I’ll finally take up my pen (heh I mean keyboard) and write a little bit about moving to Galway.

I can’t say it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I remember moving to China. Three days in I told my mom that I wanted to go home, and the rest of the year I experienced huge mood swings and periods of great loneliness and downness. That was really hard. In contrast I’m in a much more stable place right now. I have a wonderful wife who brings me comfort in the hard times, challenges me to be a better man, and brings me joy every single day. I have a deepening relationship with God that has brought me encouragement and hope since I have moved to Galway. I’ve enjoyed developing friendships with several of my classmates, and I’m learning some really cool information about human biology as it pertains to medical devices and getting to study engineering in a way that excites me much more than school ever did before. We’ve also found an amazing church community where we’ve started to make some really great friends.

I think another reason it’s been more and more challenging for me to write a blog post about our year in Galway is because the year is going by fast—so much has happened and I haven’t known where to begin. In light of that, I’ll just begin recounting some different stories from our experience so far this year. For the first story, I’ll share how we found our home.

Finding our little home

I personally love security. I cherish the feeling of advancing into a new situation with some handle on how it’s all going to play out. When we decided to move across the world to Galway, Ireland, however, one truth quickly became clear: we were going to have a difficult time finding a place to live before moving. Galway’s housing market is quite competitive due to the economic climate and large student population, and in order to find a deal that’s not also a dump, we would definitely want to examine the place in person before agreeing to anything. This left us with little choice but to email as many landlords as possible with our expected arrival date, book an Airbnb for the first two weeks of our stay, and hope and pray for the best. We received one email inviting us to attend an upcoming viewing the day we departed, but our follow-up emails requesting specific details received no immediate response.

On Thursday, July 25th, 2019, Jacqueline and I arrived in Galway with a number of suitcases, two backpacks, and an electric cello. We stepped off the train, virtually hailed an extra large taxi, and found ourselves, an hour later, sitting in a tiny room at our Airbnb, our luggage barely squeezed around the bed, with only a plan and no guarantees.

The first couple days were filled with silence from prospective landlords. We spent hours sitting in our little room, sending out emails and feeling our hearts skip a beat every time an email notification popped up on one of our phones, only to open up an ad from Amazon urging us to consider a new toiletry bag, or something like that. We quickly began to find ourselves worrying not just that we wouldn’t find a place to live, but that we would have to settle for living in a large house with roommates where privacy—something we strongly desired having never lived on our own before—would be lacking. Although I attempted to encourage Jacqueline that God had some place for us to live, my own trust was waning. Had God closed every door besides Galway, only to leave us hanging out to dry?

We reached out to a lot of rental postings online. When your back seems up against the wall like ours did at the time, you often try to increase your emotional and practical control of the situation before ending up realizing that whatever happens is utterly outside of your control. We could set the goal of applying to any number of rentals, but nothing required any of those landlords to reply. The outcome was totally out of our hands. So we started to pray together, more than we ever had before, asking God to give us a private place to live with a good landlord. But still, silence. Even though there was yet plenty of time to find housing, the silence pressed in on us until, one day, we had to stop. We had to put down our computers, close all our internet browsers crammed with different rental posting tabs, take a breath, and put our situation in God’s hands for a single afternoon.

So we left our Airbnb late that morning, to enjoy the day together in our beautiful new town, focusing our minds on something other than the looming hopelessness. We planned to go to the market for a couple of fresh-made donuts and a walk by the dock, but first we stopped off at an outdoor store to check out the raincoats, because even after just a few days in Galway, we’d realized the importance of owning a good raincoat. Walking through the store, my phone buzzed. An email from Amazon, I presumed. As Jacqueline strolled over to look at the shoes, I took out my phone to glance at the screen: an email from a landlord inviting us to tour his property! Thrilled, I ran over to Jacqueline to share the good news. But before she could respond, my phone started to buzz, this time with an unknown Irish number displaying on the screen. I picked it up.

It was another landlord, asking us whether we would like to attend a viewing the next day at an apartment in Salthill. Still somewhat dumb with surprise, I shook myself out of the brief stupor, quickly thanked him, and assured him that we would be there. I hung up to discover that Jacqueline had also received a call from a different landlord, inviting us to a viewing later that same day.

The next few days were filled with rental viewings. None of them were perfect. They all had their distinct advantages and disadvantages—don’t even get me started on the topic of mold. The house in Salthill was clearly the best option, spacious with an extra room and a stone’s throw from Galway Bay and the beautiful Salthill ocean-side promenade. But we didn’t end up getting it. That door, along with all the other doors that had opened up to us that early afternoon in the outdoor apparel shop, closed one by one. Nonetheless, within one week, we had signed a lease for a little house nestled in a larger house’s backyard, the very property in fact we had received an email about the day we had departed for Galway. Despite all our worrying, it turned out God had the best place picked out for us right from the start.

Funnily enough, even though we were concerned about the size and location, our little home has ended up being perfect for us in almost every way, with just enough discomfort to grow us and keep us on our toes. For one, it ended up being by far the most cost-effective option, important to a young couple both pursuing master’s degrees and living on student loans and limited savings. Our neighborhood is just off of Quirke Rd. (no kidding), a comfortable 20 minute walk from the school, and close to a bus stop we like to use on particularly stormy days. It’s also a 20 minute walk in the opposite direction from our new church which meets at an elementary school out in Knocknacarra. There’s a running track situated literally just outside our neighborhood, and our location at the top of a hill gives us great daily exercise whenever we’re returning from school and a great view of the surrounding area when the clouds permit. We also have a really thoughtful landlord, and wonderful neighbors now living in the house directly in front of us. They’re from China, and soon after moving in invited us over for a hotpot dinner—we later shared a Thanksgiving dinner together, their first ever (perhaps that’s a blog post for another time), in Ireland of all places! And even though it’s been difficult having such a small place to live, managing with a mini fridge and severely limited storage space, it’s been a blessing to have such an intimate place to shelter from the storms outside, where Jacqueline and I are experiencing the challenges and rewards of living alone together for the first time.

As spiritually, emotionally, and physically challenging as this year has been for both of us in different ways, I’m incredibly grateful for our little home, and for how God led us here.