Watch: Agnes Mann Choose India Over the UK for Her Children's Education

4:07 It just made sense for us to to do that that way so one reason was the education that we wanted to move second reason was that I was working full-time managing the house doing all the chores you know there is no help in England or there is but it costs a lot of money so if you do have it it's maybe once a week you know for a couple of hours someone comes and just cleans the house in the bath room or whatever so then I had to cook clean do the shopping go to the gym do all my socializing all within very short week where we all have just 24 hours and we have to sleep eight a bit so you know it was just really really tiring and for very many years we've been doing that my husband been running business as well so it's just been really hectic and sort of you know rush and a lot on our shoulders Rat Race you know the typical UK life so kids are still young you know they still have the age where they want to travel with us they want to spend time with us we thought now is probably going to be the best time if we do want to move a country to do it now not later when the

5:10 Kids are my daughter's age because for example for her it's already very very challenging to adjust the life here because she's left a lot of friendship behind so having said that you know my voice have adapted very well so I think they are at the better age to have moved and that was the reasons the one reason reason was education second reason was life work balance and the third reason was just to spend more time as a family and relax for a little while that's great so sounds like I think it's a kids education the work life balance you know these are the primary and having some time with the family right yes so for how long have you been thinking about this and what was the plan or planning that you have done to prepare for this move I mean I think we can come back to the kids especially with someone you know your daughter who is in 15 years you know that's a big struggle so we can come back to that but before jumping on that like for how long have your family been planning about this

6:10 Move and any details that you can share about the plan itself so it's been probably about a half a year or so that we were thinking of moving to India in particular but it's been about a year since we thought I think we want to change that lifestyle that we are having we're working too hard it's really challenging and the kids are young what do we do in order to improve our life quality and I think Co has massively impacted the way we thought because within the covid time I was working from home my husband was at home a lot because of the lack of work and

6:47 Having that time with the children being able to just completely be together as a family all the time has really made us realize that this is something that we love doing and then jumping back into the hustle and Bassel of working managing everything was something that we were like oh my God this is too hectic we need to do something about it so yeah the actual plan was from about a half year beforehand where we have to think about which schools we going to put them to so this was the first thing that we actually looked into was which was which schools we going to go to and also we were actually going to move to Goa so Goa was the place we wanted to go because I have been to Goa before and my IDE ideal Indian dream living the Indian dream was on the beach every evening strolling around you know living somewhere not too far away walking distance ideally and yet I ended up in Madia Pradesh which is completely was so better than the swimming

7:49 Pools however I think just life throws things at you and you have to you know when life Ro do lemonades you got to make Le no lemons you got to make lemon out yes so we just happened to meet a person who lives in indor a friend of a friend who happened to be at the same party as we were and he just encouraged us to say you know I live in indor indor is a great city is a cleanest city of India it's a great schools I can help you settle down because you haven't got anyone that can help you anyway we can kind of help you to get your foot on the ground kind of thing so before we can obviously we did do a little bit of research about India about indoor itself and we thought okay why not we can give it a go and see how it goes so this is the reason why we actually in door not in Goa yeah and so from the time that we knew already that we're going to be IND door and sort of roughly what the schools are here we applied for the

8:50 Schools online and I think because our children are from you know from England it was easier for us to get into the school and we've done all the application process so that was sort of said well beforehand we came to India but nothing else was organized so initially when we came we stayed up with our friend and for a while until we've managed to find ourselves accommodation once we had the accommodation in place this is when we moved there so yeah from the time that we knew it was about a six months for us to execute so then we also have to put our house on rent we also had to close up you know I had to quit my job and tell my boss that I'm leaving you know a lot of things were not easy also the hardest thing was that we've had two dogs which we had to re home so we had to find them really good homes that we knew that they would be well looked after just as well as we can look after them but for kids this was heartbreaking a goodbye so yeah it took about good

9:50 Three months from the time that we started actioning so six months from the time we started planning then about three months of execution and up until the time that we were leaving the country it was still kind of Tiding up the house because we knew there will be challeng moving in Lally the next week so we had to hand over the keys so it is very challenging actually to move a country it's challenging to move a house never mind the country with especially yeah that's a key thing and yeah so no thanks for sharing that so how was the life in indor so it's been in about an year and initial struggles maybe you know life how you are able to adjust it to that what was your expectation before the move and the reality anything that you can share on that so is it's been a roller coaster of emotions really first of all living living in the UK the life there and the standards there are completely different to what you have in here in indor this is still I think it's tier two City or

10:50 Tier three even so this a small City yet it has a lot of people it's not as welld developed as it is London which is where we lived before the availability of the ingredients is also not the same as what we have in England because people don't eat certain things that they eat in England so yeah these were the kind of the struggles to begin with that like you know adjusting to the weather it's very very hot in here although this was something we were looking forward to come to the hot climate but living in indor is still not too bad there are there are cities in India which are much hotter than that but it still gets up to 40 Dees like today it's like 38 degrees or something so so yeah the weather the food as well in Doris food is very very spicy so I still cook a lot of meals myself and I prepare the foods for the children because otherwise they just can't handle the heat at school they do eat food provided by the school but

11:51 They do make sure that it's not as hot as you know others might would have cooked so yeah that was part second thing was like to find the accommodation we have moved twice already our flats

12:02 And the one that we are currently in is sort of the one that we think we will stay for a while or at least until we're here U because there were just Oddities that didn't work for us very well also what we struggled with was maybe just like you know everyday things shopping like there is applications here where you can just put things in a basket and it gets delivered like in 15 minutes literally from the time that you play in order so this is very convenient but you don't have the ingredients that you may want to have you know in the shop or that you may want to expect to have it in England so as to the expectations I didn't actually have any expectations other than you know relaxing for a year so this is what I'm doing I'm still doing my YouTube channel and I'm going to the gym I have my routine I've met a few friends so this was my kind of thing that I wanted to do I did expect to have a lot of time where we spend with the children we travel around so these were our expectations which have been met great maybe things

13:03 That we were surprised is with a maybe mentality of people like people think differently here and we have to kind of adapt to things like people getting late to appointments or say someone says they're going to come and fix the bike next day and they don't turn up and they don't even call you that they don't come and if you call them they may answer in the afternoon to say that oh I just couldn't make it and that that's the excuse so the you know the serious or the laidback lifestyle here is something that we're not used to because people in England are very rigid with time you know if you say you're going to be there at 2:00 you better turn up at 2 o'clock because people will otherwise not make those arrangements with you again or they would just find somebody else to do the job for you you know so yeah this was the initial things but now things are much easier we have sorted few documents that we needed to sort kids are in their routine they only just started holidays yesterday actually so in a couple of weeks my daughter finishes school because she's in a seniors thatly she's much older she will be finishing two years two weeks time as

14:05 Well then we're going to pack up our bags and just travel probably somewhere around up north because it's much cooler there cool no thanks for sharing that maybe kind of switching the gears a little bit I think this is something that you have touched earlier about kids adjustment right especially your daughter so I think this is something that's on the top of the mind for a lot of people especially your daughter who was born in UK I'm assuming and then you know who grew up and spent you know 15 years there especially it might have been a little bit of a struggle you know just adjusting and so on so anything that you can share how it has been any insights or tips that you can give to any family who might have a similar situation on the things that worked out better or you know anything that you can share on that end yeah sure so yes as you've mentioned and it is especially challenging for my daughter because she was 14 when we moved and it probably would have been

15:07 Different to different types of people like you know you go introverts extroverts and you know you have people from different beliefs and values and everything so not everyone would be and also people are going to different cities so if you have the exact same child that is exact same introvert that my daughter is and you come from London to indoor I can give you some tips but obviously it may not apply to every single parent and every single child so Angelie has massively struggled and the first thing that she struggled with the most is making friends and I think the main reason for it is the language barrier now Anie speaks English and she speaks fluently polish she speaks French and she learns probably about seven other languages on Jingo and she does very well she's sort of one of those people that just easily absorbs languages so you know Hindi is not one of the languages that she speaks and although she's learning it on Jingo it's not something that she can do overnight

16:08 Especially the lingo that people use you know on a daily basis this did get developed after being in the country for a little longer than just a year so I think the main thing that that she struggles with is the language barrier and despite children being able to speak English they choose to switch the conversation to Hindi eventually or they throw some

16:31 Hindi jokes so I think she struggled to integrate with them because of that reason and the friend factor is a very very huge factor for teenagers like they need a connection with the like-minded children with the children of the same age group and if they haven't got that this is really big enough reason for them not to want to be in an environment so as much as I'm not saying she's hating here but she asks every other day or every other week when are we going back to England like how soon are we going to go and yes we have had that plan to come here for a year or maybe two and then return back to England we don't know yet whether that's going to you know materialize because it will all depend on the like status of our state here so if my husband manages because he's got some investing portfolio but if he manages to find a business like stable business that he can carry on doing and is successful with the next year yeah then I don't know what we're

17:32 Going to do because as much as she really wants to go back to Poland to England I don't know whether we will having said that we already got something established here so I don't know time will show I don't want to say that we will definitely go back next year but this is something that is on the cards and something that my daughter is looking forward to so for her the I can't really advise how to make the situation better because we are in a pickle right now like we're she is not necessarily wanting to live here for a long time you know for me my life is has improved for my husband it has improved my boys have found themselves comfortable they've established routine they're happy and they even say they don't want to go back to England but if that one family member doesn't adjust and can't adapt then what do you do yeah you know is is it's something that probably at the moment is our biggest struggle if I'm to beest completely no thanks for being honest and sharing I

18:32 Mean I know a lot of families who have like a teenager kids that's one of the biggest concern now thanks for sharing that so I I think if you're okay like you know what curriculum does your kids go to like is it IB or cbsc just curious on that so my daughter is doing CI so Cambridge standards because obviously she's at the H4 she in England would have been s sitting her GC and here you call them boarding B exams so she will be doing those next year at the end of the this current school year and my boys are doing just a regular cbsa okay great I know I think education is one of the main reason you mentioned right so that's why I just want to confirm in terms of you you realized or you feel that the education is better after the one year yes so yes sorry I

19:33 Might not have understood entirely your question so yeah we do feel that you know they they are in the best private schools here around indor and I don't want to mention the name just because of the safety of my children for sure they're also learning Sports so they have extra curriculum activities at school arjent is doing swimming in JPL football although arjent did play football as well but now he's gone through the stage where he's no longer meeting the age requirements so he's grown out of the baby league but Jay is doing football and he's doing phenomenal and also they do have guitar and piano lessons Jay plays piano the youngest one and a plays guitar and they're doing phenomenally well they really are loving it and the teacher comes here three four times in a week and he gives them private lessons now this is something that having being able to do that in

20:29 We would have easily PID 20 pounds per lesson here is cost of three to four pounds per lesson so you can see the comparison of cost like I could not afford to give them as many lessons in England of music to what I can do it here yeah sure so is there anything that you miss you know from UK or Poland living here in India family friends that's probably want to mention my dogs I I don't really miss the lifestyle that I used to have but I do like you know there were it's like every country would have you know what is good in one country wouldn't be good in the other and the other way around right so I can't really say that I'm much much more happier here to what I was there because there were other perks there that I don't get here but the quality of life has definitely improved so as of now I would say my life is better here than to what it used to be in the UK like in the UK here the main thing that are really love is that amount of time

21:30 That I get that I can do what I would love doing rather than do a job which you know it was CA job not terribly badly paid job it was good position you know with a nice work environment and everything but having said that it was a PID job that I had to go to every day that I had no choice of choosing when I want to work because it had to be done so here I've got a lot of freedom and also having a maid who does cooking made that that's cleaning and like all the house chores is a massive thing that just took a lot of responsibilities of my shoulders yeah is there anything that we haven't covered or any advice that you wanted to share with the families who are thinking about moving back to India I don't know it really does depend on personal circumstances you know do you have work lined up or if you don't do you have substantial amount of savings to be sitting without work for a

22:31 While you know do you have your documents pan card adart card something you're going to need here you know do you have plans of which city you going to why you going to this particular cities and if you have children what schools do you want to put your children into so yeah some planning definitely has to be made ahead of time probably with sorry my I'm GNA have to hold my phone because my game just died so some planning will have to need be do be done up up front some research but I don't know I felt like it's going to be what's going to be and if we are set to go things have worked out for us to go which means the universe wanted us to come here yeah and things have just worked out quite well so other than you know the situation that we have with our daughter everything else is fine yep that's great no yeah thank you very much Agnes for sharing your journey and I know the reasons behind it and the

23:32 Life in India so far and for some of the honest conversation with your daughter so really appreciate you taking the time and sharing your story with us

23:40 Today no problem anytime thank you so much thanks a lot thank you all for joining us on this insightful journey of Dy return if you enjoyed this episode and want to explore more stories and expert advice make sure to subscribe and hit the notification Bell don't forget to leave a comment below with your thoughts and experiences by the way check out the links in the description below for our Facebook group and social media for updates and engaging discussions as well as connecting with fellow the wrers thank you once again and until next time may your D journey be filled with joy growth and endless possibilities