I will start by the very beginning.
2 years ago, I met someone. I was 31 and out of a tough relationship and tough break up. I was happy to feel well enough to get back in the dating game. This man told me during our very first conversation that he had been working abroad before and even though he had been working and living in Belgium for a few years, he planned to move abroad again. He simply didn’t know when…
I must say I was very enthusiast when we had that discussion. I love going places, traveling and living somewhere else. I have been living abroad from my home country for some time now so it really wasn’t an issue. Plus, I thought it would be fun to date someone with the same love for travel.
“His dream job?” you ask. Well, it is in New Zealand.
We had been dating for 1 month and a half when he got his first interview for his dream job. “His dream job?” you ask. Well, it is in New Zealand. Yep. 19 000 km away from Belgium. Literally the furthest he could go on Planet Earth. So we sat down and had the talk. I felt like we hadn’t meet for long enough to claim any thing. So we agreed he’d go and see where that would take us.
While he was away, I changed jobs. Found something that I liked better. When we met, I was a graphic designer. I had been for 5 years and advertisement was taking a toll on my mental health. So I became a QA analyst for an app development agency. I loved it. Life was great. Long distance relationship was hard but it was going smoothly.
When he got there, it was love at first sight. So much nature. So much wildlife. Plus his job was great and amazing. They were so much more caring than in Belgium. It was basically paradise. So very quickly he asked me to come there and have some holidays with him so we could visit the country. He wanted me to see for myself how great it was. So I went. We had some amazing time. It was so peaceful…
He finally came back to Belgium and quickly decided that we had to move there. I couldn’t disagree, but I had that idea that it would be fun and easy and that we’d just have to pack everything and go.
The thing is, and it is quite important in my story, he doesn’t get to decide when he wants to go. With his job, he was to wait to be called, and he almost never knows how long his contract/visa will be. So when we agreed we both wanted to move, our first step was to wait for the right time, and right length of contract. As much as we wanted it, we wouldn’t have gone with a 3-month contract for example, because there is no insurance to be able to stay longer after the end of the contract.
That being said, as you can imagine, a waiting game started. He came home on September 2018 and he got called again in August 2019, but for 3 months only.
I had that idea that it would be fun and easy and that we’d just have to pack everything and go.
It was hard to see him leave again, but this time he had that goal to do everything he could to get a long-term contract.
By the beginning of October, they had offer him 6 more months. So we had the talk again. By the end of October, we decided that it was the right time for us to say good bye to Belgium and move to New Zealand.
We agreed that:
- I would be on his work VISA
- we would send by boat our motorcycles
- He would come back for Christmas to take care of as many things before moving back there.
- I would join him as soon as I could.
This was the very beginning of a great new adventure!
2020: The year I changed my life 