To understand a little more about me and our family, you need to know about where we live. We live on a remote British overseas territory called The Falkland Islands. It’s situated at the bottom of the South Atlantic, approximately 500km from South America with a population of around 3000 people. Tiny basically! To put things into perspective for you, there is no McDonalds here, in fact no branded stores of any kind. Check out where we are here. The Falkland Islands are probably most famous for the war between Britain and Argentina in 1982, Britain won in case you were in any doubt. Whilst it seems like the matter was settled a long time ago the scars remain and our sovereignty is constantly questioned to this day. We are fiercely determined to show the world our unique culture and that we wish to remain a British country forever.
Day to day life
Ours lives are much the same as anyone’s I suppose. We work, we come home, we go out on the weekends, we visit friends, perhaps see a penguin or two. You know, the usual. Oh yes, that’s right. We have penguins, and seals and whales and a whole heap of other amazing wildlife. It’s quite the tourist destination. The nearest beaches are just a few minutes away and whilst it never really gets to swimming temperatures it is a gorgeous place to sit. You can get quite the tan here! Please do slap on the sun cream though. Bit of a hole in the ozone layer above us. At the moment I’m on maternity leave so our days are filled with various baby sessions including baby swimming, and singing when we can make it.
We try to go out at least once a day even if it’s just to pop to the shop to get some milk. Often we’ll pop into see friends, especially all the new friends we’ve made who have children of a similar age. I’m proud to say that instead of losing friends since becoming a mum I have gained so many more. On the rare, stunning days we go for a walk. Sometimes it’s into town to sit on the green with an ice lolly, sometimes it’s a walk around gypsy cove in the carrier. As winter draws in I wonder how much we’ll be getting out and about, but we’ll try.
The pros and the cons
There are many amazing things about living here but there can also be some negatives to, here’s a handy list (in my opinion):
Pros:
- Amazing wildlife
- Safe place to live and bring up children
- Close community
- Nothing is far away (hospital is a 2 minute drive, perfect when in labour!)
- Stunning scenery
- Plenty of places to ride a motorbike (this is what my partner would say!)
Cons:
- The UK is an 18hr flight away and I’m terrified of flying!
- Majority of products are imported = expensive
- Expensive internet, I’m talking £180 for 30gb
- Close community, whilst amazing for support often comes with a whole bunch of awful rumours
- Expensive to leave the islands
Whilst it can be expensive to live here it can also be cheaper in lots of ways. There is no shopping centre to spend your money in (although online shopping is much better now if you can afford the internet!), there are many things you can do that don’t involve any cost at all and the fact that is a safe, breathtaking and friendly place to live far outweighs the negatives.
Childhood
My childhood was filled with days playing on the farm out at Teal Inlet, getting dirty, running with the dogs, feeding the chickens and climbing the the odd tree hanging around. Being big on wildlife as a kid living in the Falklands was possibly the greatest place to grow up. I felt safe and was able to walk to friends houses and shops without fear. I’m excited to watch Arya grow up in the same place as me. I hope that she will be much braver than me however.
Small Island Parent
This parenting thing is new to me, but I’ll share how I’m finding being a parent on a small island…so far! With Stanley being so small it’s great that nothing is far away. Knowing that if Arya has a meltdown in the shop it won’t take me long to get home, even though I worried about it constantly in the early days. Some days Arya has screamed from leaving the shop to getting home, it only takes 5 minutes at most but they’ve been the longest 5 minutes of my life so I can’t imagine having to do that traveling down a motorway and not being able to even stop to check on her or reassure her. Another positive is that there are lots of people that I can go and visit each day. We do love a visit and it’s good for Arya to see other people instead of staring at my face all day, poor girl. Luckily I’ve made lots of friends with people that live on my street so we can just pop out in the carrier almost any time of the day. If we’re not visiting friends or going for a walk our super health visitor has set up various play group sessions which we try and catch (always seem to miss story time as it’s right at nap time! darn!) and there are now baby and toddler swim sessions twice a week. I also have some ideas of my own that I would like to set up. The trouble is with me I have a million idea and not enough time to put them all into practice. This is exactly why I forget to eat!
I realise this is an incredibly short insight into life in the Falklands, but I’ll share more as time goes by.
Under a sleeping baby 