Facts

Amanda is a mum of two children and she is from Jakarta in Indonesia.

Although Amanda moved countries only once so far and has been living in Stavanger for over nine years now, I still count her to the expat community.

Back in Indonesia, she was working in marketing and is currently polishing up her Norwegian to find a job in the marketing/logistics field in Stavanger.

About us

Amanda is one of the mums in the expat community, which I know for the longest time.

When my family and I moved to Stavanger, my younger son had a rough time in preschool as he did not know the language nor the people and he was in a completely new environment overall. It was Amanda’s son, who finally made my son more comfortable and less miserable in the mornings.

When my son wanted to have a play date with his new friend after four months of living in Stavanger, I was really happy!! Only, it was not easy for me to approach his mummy, who always seemed to be rather busy. Keep in mind, I was new too, I did not know her and I had no idea how play dates looked like in this new world of mine!

I remember how surprised I was, when we finally agreed on a play date in our house and Amanda just let her three-year old son go home alone with us! For my son that would have been out of question!

That afternoon, my son was more than happy and since then, we got to know Amanda and her family more and more.

Amanda’s first home

Amanda spent the first part of her life in Indonesia in Jakarta and being the only girl among three brothers did not make her turn out as the most girlish girl.

Whilst her brothers all went to New Zealand for studies, Amanda was the only child in the family who stayed back in Jakarta for university, where she studied marketing. She did not mind too much though and enjoyed her time at university, whilst spending a lot of her free time in nature going hiking, diving or camping.

In 2007, just after finishing her bachelor thesis and even before receiving her degree, she started to work for a construction company for a gas project in Jakarta.

Only one year later, the company sent her off on a contract to Papua for a project there. As Papua is the most eastern island of Indonesia, over 3000km away from Jakarta and furthermore, rather remote, her family was not too happy about her going there, simply because it is not common in Amanda’s family to work so far away from home!

Amanda found her way around her family though and started her new job far, far away! She was coming back home every six months and only the journey in itself used to be an adventure! Besides a commercial plane, she had to take a propeller plane and before that, she had to take a boat. Yes, rather remote.

For the small propeller plane, not only her luggage had to be weighted, but also Amanda herself, so that the plane would definitely only carry as much as it was able to! She describes one flight in that propeller plane back to Papua as a “real experience”, when one of the propellers stopped working in the middle of nowhere…!!

After about one year, Amanda had enough of experiences in and with Papua, so she took the opportunity of a job interview with another company in Jakarta whilst being there on a business trip. 

She was lucky enough to get the job and started to work back in Jakarta soon after her interview. In 2009, she met an expat from Germany, who was working for the same company as herself. They got to know each other better and ended up in a relationship.

Two years later, Amanda’s boyfriend was about to be sent on a new assignment to Norway, so she made the life changing decision to leave everything behind her and go to Norway together with him!!

As already others in her family wedded foreigners before her and moved away with them, this time her family did accept her plans rather quickly.

Amanda’s second home

At that point, Amanda was not even aware, where Norway was, as from the Indonesian point of view, Norway was rather an unimportant country.

Before the big move, Amanda and her boyfriend wanted to get married. Amanda had been to Germany before, to meet her future husband’s family, and somehow, she liked the idea of getting married in Germany as she thought it would be more intimate. To be allowed to get married in Germany though, Amanda had to pass a German exam in Jakarta first! What a coincidence that she had taken a German course before even meeting her future husband!

In the end, they got married in Germany in July 2011 and moved to Norway straight after their wedding!

To say, that it was a culture shock for Amanda to come to Norway, would be an understatement…it all went very fast and was a rather crazy time in her life!

In her mind, Stavanger was a big city with lovely old and pretty buildings. There surely were a lot of places and things to discover with shops and restaurants full of life and she imagined that it would be beautifully white in the winter!

Although Amanda’s husband warned her to lower her expectations (he had been on a business trip to Stavanger before), it was still a huge challenge for Amanda, when she discovered that Stavanger was everything else than she had imagined it would be!

Already the weather itself was very challenging for Amanda in the beginning! Coming from a hot and humid country, the rainy, rarely sunny and often dark city of Stavanger was tough for her!

Also, the size of the city and the quietness worried her…she was brought up in a big adventurous city! What would she do in a sleepy city like Stavanger??

Amanda told me, that most people in Indonesia have maids and therefore she was not used to cooking or cleaning. She was neither used to taking the bus when she wanted to go somewhere, but here, her Indonesian driving license was not valid, so she had no other choice!

In her old life, she was used to eat out a lot and go to the cinema every week! She has had a good life in Jakarta and now she was feeling as if her life had fallen upside down!

Her whole new life in Norway was a learning process!! She was trying to get used to the weather and she was not really enjoying taking the bus. Her husband was teaching her how to cook and she was desperate to find some friends, who would understand her sorrows.

Luckily for her, it turned out that Stavanger has a really nice and big Indonesian community, where she became a part of very quickly.

As she was technically still employed by her company in Indonesia (she had taken a one-year leave) and her husband was now working for their Norwegian branch, Amanda tried her luck and also applied for a job with them in Stavanger. Unfortunately, they had preferred locals at that time, who of course would speak Norwegian… 

Amanda started to take part in a Norwegian course and began to meet up with people from Indonesia more often. In the beginning, the contact with people of her own culture was very important for Amanda, as they seemed to have gone through the same challenges that she was going through at that time.

Obviously, her husband made sure, that she discovered the positive sides of Stavanger and Norway, so that she would hopefully learn to like her new home a bit more. They explored a lot of the south of Norway back then!

An additional challenge to everything else was, that Amanda got pregnant soon after arriving in Norway. In the beginning she was a bit anxious to give birth in the country she did not know and with no family around either! But she tried to relax and take everything easy and it all turned out to be fine in the end. Amanda gave birth to her first child in 2012.

When Amanda got her Norwegian driving license in the beginning of 2013, she started to feel more comfortable and relaxed in her new hometown. At least, she was not relying on buses anymore and could now see her friends whenever she wanted!

As Amanda and her husband came to Norway as Expats for three to five years, she was excited to get to know other countries as well after that assignment. She liked to travel and had already been to Europe before marrying her husband. She wanted to see more of the world and was hoping for Houston or Paris next, as her husband’s company was sending people there a lot!

Having a daughter already, Amanda was still dreaming of a boy. She was lucky, as in 2014 she gave birth to her second baby, and yes, it was a boy!!

It was lovely to take care of her two beautiful children, but at some point, Amanda got a little bit frustrated with her situation, as she was very used to working and earning her own money! Of course, she had her husband’s support but she could not warm to the idea, to never earn money herself anymore!

She started to apply for jobs, but in a city as Stavanger, you better have a background in oil and gas or you should be speaking Norwegian to find a decent job…after a while, with no positive feedback in her job hunt, something had to change and so Amanda enrolled for a Master in Business Administration at the University of Stavanger in 2017! The reason, why Amanda had been so busy when I first met her!!

Having classes at university and studying at home in between taking care of her family and their household must have been rather challenging! It was a tough time for Amanda as well as for her family, but after some ups and downs and nearly giving up at some point, she finally graduated in 2019!!

As it often happens to Expats, that somehow they stay longer in a certain country than they were planning to initially, after about seven years in Stavanger, Amanda finally gave up on waiting to move somewhere else, because that uncertainty started to drive her mad!! She now fully committed to a life in Stavanger and stopped seeing herself as an expat.

If the possibility would appear though, she would definitely be happy to move! Also others have said it before, that after a certain amount of years, Stavanger becomes a little bit narrow…

Since the oil industry had a rather big shake, it got even harder to find a job around Stavanger, because of course a lot of Norwegians are on a job hunt now too.

That is, why Amanda restarted to take Norwegian classes after a few setbacks in the job hunt. Before, she only tried to learn the language for one semester and did not put her full heart onto learning it, but this time she wants to learn it for real! As the days go by, she is getting better and better and hopefully getting more fluent in Norwegian will soon help her to find the desired job!

Amanda has also just finished her “språkpraksis” in one of the Norwegian nurseries, where she had to actually use her learned Norwegian and luckily she now also got the opportunity to work for them from time to time as a replacement for absent teachers!

Conclusion

Amanda never intended to marry a foreigner and leave her country. If it would not have been for her husband, she would still be working and living in Indonesia. In North Sumatra, where her parents were originally from, people are very family oriented and the family gets involved in your life a lot. Family sticks together a lot.

Now, she does not feel, that she belongs to Indonesia anymore, although Indonesia is always in her heart! She feels at home in Norway by now and is happy here. Maybe that also has to do with the fact, that she only goes to see her family every second year as traveling to Indonesia especially with children is quite challenging.

Although she misses her family and friends as well as her culture, she is thankful for the Indonesian community in Stavanger, through which she feels much happier than in the beginning!

After I got to know Amanda better, I started to think, that people from Indonesia must be the friendliest people in the world! I have honestly never met someone like her before!

Amanda seems to be the sweetest mum to her children, but also the most helpful and caring friend. No matter what small or big crisis her friends in the expat community will have, she will always try to figure it out, take someone else`s kids home with her, to give a friend a break or just give you a hand to get things done.

She is the most selfless person I have seen for a long time, who does not only take care of her friends but also tries to reach out to people in the community.

Every now and then, I wonder how Amanda became the person she is and every now and then I tell her, that I really want to be a little bit like her😊