...I'll be in Canada.
This post has taken me so long to write mainly because it's been such a long time in planning. But it's here now.
So to start it all off, is to start at the very beginning.
A couple of years ago, when I got back from Thailand, I made a decision to try and travel. I wanted to do as much stuff as I could before I became a grown up. In my mind, a grown up is someone who owns property and has to take responsibility and care for others. In my mind these are my cute, fat adopted babies. And I never want to regret anything. So while I'm still growing up and only have to care for myself, I have decided to use the time wisely.
So I applied for a year abroad. After lots of paperwork, lots of money and lots of stress, I got accepted for a work and holiday visa in Canada.
Things were looking great until it wasn't. Several dramatic episodes and all my savings vanished. I already have a problem with saving money; in short I cannot. So there were times I was down, there were times when I was convinced myself this was fate and there were times when I was ready to just stop dreaming about this year abroad.
Somehow the universe conspired to help me. And here I am, (almost) ready to leave in a month's time.
It's taken a very long time, hours and hours of research, a lot of will power but on the 8th of July, I'll be flying out of Cape Town International Airport and arriving weirdly the next day in Vancouver.
I'm still kinda processing it all. Not the trip but that in a few weeks I'll be in a new place with no family, no friends and no job. After six years at the same company this is something that keeps me up at night. I have a very important place in a company, something that I worked immensely hard to achieve and it's evident from my coworkers that I was doing a good job. I'm not scared about starting in a junior role or working hard but not having a place, trying to make work besties and struggling to make a living means my anxiety is sky high.
I can count some of the best people in the world as my friends and soon I'll only be contacting them via Facebook and sporadic Whatsapp. No coffee clubs, no cocktail evenings, no gays to make me feel pretty, no girls to laugh with.
And I won't have my family nearby. My family drive me crazy. We're all loud and crazy and there are times when I love not seeing them but the thought of them not being a car ride away, makes me want to cry in the middle of shopping centres when I'm trying to buy trip essentials.
But at the same time, I'll be abroad. I'll find out exactly what type of person I really am when the odds are against me. I'll find out if I really as independent as I always claim to be and I'll make some memories. Even if they're the times I cry in the middle of Vancouver because I haven't made any friends or whether it's slogging it out at two jobs just so I don't get deported. This is one experience I cannot wait to have.
Stay tuned for the ride.
Ex-Oh! Ex-Oh!
