One of the strange side effects of living as an expat is the choices you have to make about connecting with other people. On the one hand, living abroad is so vastly enriched by establishing friendships with local people. On the other hand, it is incredibly important to stay connected with your family and lifelong friends. Although now with COVID almost everyone, local or not, has been pushed into the realm of long-distance relationships. So how do you maintain and enjoy all of those connections?
After all, there is only so much catching up or commiserating you can do. And that’s when you need creative ways to have fun and do life together virtually. And that IS a challenge sometimes! But learning how to do that has also been one of the greatest gifts we’ve gotten out of this season of life.
Here’s 10 ways we’ve found to “do life” with loved ones we can’t see in person, whether around the globe or next door.
1. Celebrate Life Events Together
One of the biggest impacts of COVID for us was the loss of a long-awaited chance to celebrate Pauline’s best friends’ wedding. But Zoom brought that event live to our living room. It wasn’t the in-person celebration we’d all envisioned when the engagement was announced. But it was touching and beautiful and somehow felt very intimate all the same. Pauline wore her bridesmaid dress and “attended” the wedding with her mom and sister through zoom (as they watched the live stream together). And after the ceremony Pauline took pictures with the bride and groom and toasted to their union!
2. Share Holidays & Birthdays
The wedding is the most extreme example of a life event that we’ve shared online. But Pauline has been celebrating holidays and birthdays with her family via video calls for years. Whenever she goes home, she tries to buy and leave boxes of Christmas and birthday gifts for everyone. And her family always sneaks presents into my luggage for her. Four months later come Christmas day they all gather around the computer and open each other’s gifts. Of course, Pauline doesn’t usually manage to get everyone’s Christmas and birthday gifts covered while she’s home. But that’s what online shopping is for! Just the other day Pauline was singing happy birthday to her nephew over Skype before he ripped into the gifts she’d sent him in the mail.
3. Have a Movie Night!
Our first socially-distant movie night was a bit of a hybrid. Pauline and I try to host a documentary night at our place a few times a month, and the range of topics varies greatly. We were all set to watch “Game Changers,” which is about elite athletes that choose a plant-based whole foods diet. Our friends Joe and Carolyn, who now live in Japan, are vegan, so we messaged them and they coordinated times so they could watch “with” us. Then we had a video call and a group discussion. It worked really well, and launched us into socially-distant movie nights!
We’ve tried everything from the Teleparty app for Netflix users to sync movie-watching to counting down from 3 to “hit play” on YouTube documentaries to try and come as close as possible to synchronized streaming. We even tried to point a laptop at a Roku TV to attempt a “livestream” featuring Baby Yoda. (That didn’t work because the dialogue got filtered out as background noise.) But looking up and seeing your friends react to the big plot twist is almost as good as hearing them gasp as they sit on the sofa. And it’s a great pairing with:
4. Eat together: Brownies & Popcorn
Sharing food together is a little thing that makes the big distances really shrink. The first time we did this was for a birthday celebration. Our friends suggested that instead of just getting together to play games we also all make the same simple dessert beforehand. Sharing that birthday dessert together as we sang happy birthday added so much to the celebration!
For those who are really not excited about cooking, you can always make it simple. Set a night and a snack and share it together! It can be as simple as microwaving popcorn or whipping up a box of brownies, which is also a great way to feel like everyone is in the same living room.
Or make it EVEN simpler and just agree in advance to buy a favorite snack food you can all find in your local stores (Cheetos, anyone?!) or maybe have everyone order pizza delivered and have a virtual “pizza party”!
5. Cook a Meal Together!
Then again if you want to level up, try cooking a whole meal together! We have two very good vegan friends were once again the inspiration for this one. Since Josh is also exploring a strict plant-based diet, that makes recipe sharing a no-brainer. But then we had the idea to actually try cooking some new recipes together!
This activity does take a bit of planning, as not all ingredients are available in all time zones. Fortunately, globalization and a strong ongoing interest in spice imports makes it possible to shop for things like Korean gochujang in Toulouse or Taipei.
Everyone follows the steps on the recipe together, and there is a lot of chatting along the way. There is a magic to making food together in separate kitchens. You don’t have to feel uncomfortable making a mess in someone else’s space. And since you aren’t serving the results to someone else, the pressure to make someone else good food is nonexistent. The pleasure of eating something delicious is still very sharable. Finally, plating something and eating the same dish really does feel like you are all sitting around the table sharing a meal and good times.
Of course, you don’t always have to try a brand-new dish. Pick a dish you usually make with your mom when you’re home together. Or take turns with your friends, teaching each other how to make your favorite meals!
6. Play games together!
For us, playing games together is both a great way to stay connected to family and to make new friends. Finding a way to play with others online was a natural development. However, most people think of online games as something that involves a console or fast gaming computer. Or at least multiplayer games that you can play only if all of your friends have the same game installed on their phone or computer. It used to be when I thought about gaming online, I thought of first person shooters or RTS games and headsets.
How about stick figures and laughter? We discovered that it’s possible to play great group games online, and not a single space marine has to die onscreen. We’ll do a whole post on this in the future, but seriously if you miss playing games with your friends or family, this is NOT something you have to wait until after lockdown or after your visiting home again to enjoy. From board games and card games, to Pictionary and party games, there is a game out there online for almost every kind of game player there is!
7. Online Escape Rooms
If you’ve read our blog before you may know that we LOVE escape rooms! Unfortunately they aren’t exactly COVID safe. At least not the traditional physical rooms we all know and love. But… online escape rooms are a thing!! And while its not he same, they are really fun too! Like “real” escape rooms, there’s a big variety in the type of escape rooms you can enjoy online. So online escape rooms is another thing we’ll wait to cover in depth in a future post! Come back soon if you want to give this a try with your friends, no matter where they are! 🙂
8. Get Fit Together
It doesn’t take an expensive Peloton membership to work out with friends. But it does involve finding a fitness group that can help you stay fit, and stay accountable! We have both done workout videos, but there is nothing like having a scheduled class that you can’t be late for to keep you working through your exercises. Especially if you would rather cheat than push to get the maximum out of that last HIIT interval. This works best if someone has a premium Zoom account, and there are members of the group that can lead workouts, but there are a lot of great resources for you push each other to stay fit even if you feel like you live in a box.
9. Do Arts and Crafts Together!
There is no limit to the crafty things that you can do together, but this one also takes a bit of preparation ahead of time. If you are really organized, you can mail kits to each other so that you really can work on the same projects at the same time. A friend of Pauline’s did that for her, her sister and mom and she was so touched! Pauline also has plans this weekend to do a drawing class on zoom with a friend (the instructor gives the zoom class in Chinese so it will also be a language immersion lesson for her :P).
10. Host a Small Group
What are your interests? Do you know anyone who shares those? And could you enjoy connecting about that online? Okay, so your interest is scuba diving. Yeah … that’s not as fun to do online (we feel your pain! :P). But surely there’s something you enjoy that can be shared online. We’ve already covered food, movies, cooking, exercise, games, arts and crafts. But that really just scratches the surface of things you can connect over. Here’s some other ideas:
- Book club: Ask some friends to read a book with you and then meet online to discuss it. You can read one chapter or week or one book a week – whatever works for you!
- Podcast club: Same idea! Set up a weekly meeting time and take turns listening to each other’s favorite podcasts. Or pick one series to listen to together each week.
- Language exchange: Do you have friends whose first language is different then your own? Why not help each other improve and grow in your language skills! Whether you’re just learning how to say hello or fine-tuning advanced skills – it’s all good!
- Faith groups: Many of our friends in Taiwan are part of church small groups that have gone virtual due to COVID restrictions. And ever since lockdown started Josh and I have been doing Bible language exchanges with a friend – which consists of reading a small section of the Bible out loud in Chinese, English and Spanish.
- Creative writing group: Josh loves creative writing and always means to spend more time on his writing projects then he does. But having someone you meet with regularly to share ideas and writings with can really help.
What other ways have you found to connect remotely with friends and family this year? We’d love to hear your ideas 🙂