New Beginnings

If you grew up in an upper middle class family in The Netherlands, chances are you grew up going to Austria or some other European skiing area every year. Over the years you've perfected your skills and can easily go down a difficult slope. For me skiing was something I did when I was seven years old and ever since dreamt about going again but not being able to because, let's face it, skiing is a luxurious and expensive sport. So when my dad and my stepmom decided to take me and my boyfriend on a ski trip, before our big move to Australia, I was pleasantly surprised. And even though it had been over a decade ago since the last time we went skiing, I had the (silly) idea that I could naturally just ski without much practice. Of course you see where I'm going with this: I had great difficulty on the first day of our skiing trip. I was over-ambitious and decided to go with my father (who is quite a good skier by the way) to the top of the mountain and ski down off of it. Both my stepmother and I got stuck on slopes that were just too difficult and had to be picked up by a ski-mobile (which was kind of cool though). After a couple more days of falling and sliding my dad and I decided to go to the very top of the mountain and we actually managed to make it down on the last day. It took us about two hours and it was a little too hard for me but I managed and was really happy I did.

Yes, I doodled this on a frozen car window.

Now we've arrived in Australia and the skiing trip feels like it was a month ago even though it has only been about a week since we got back from Austria. We emptied out the house and put everything on the street for garbage pick-up. Packed and re-packed our cases and eventually made it through 20 hours of sitting in an airplane to get here. I'm quite jet-lagged which makes me concerned about my memory because the other day I read that being jet-lagged can cause permanent long term memory loss. But I guess that's ok since I'll just make up for it by drinking two espressos a day.

Now I'm spending quality time with my little friend Hamish who just loves to be scratched on his belly. We finally finished watching Silver Linings Playbook which we've been meaning to watch for a while. Although I felt a little guilty watching it because I promised my dad we'd watch it during our ski trip, which didn't happen. Sorry dad... It was a good movie though it's definitely worth the watch even though it starts out a bit chaotic and unclear.

Since it has been less than two days here I can't comment on a lot more but I'll keep you updated.

xx
Saskia

Flux

This may or may not come as a surprise but getting a visa is a lot of work and a lot of money. Not because you don't fit the criteria or because you did shady things in the past but because there are a lot of fricking forms you need to fill in. And by forms I mean 26 page mountains you need to climb. One of the questions in my visa application asks me to write down all the countries I've been to in the last ten years! Ten years! This may not be such a task for some people but for someone who loves to travel and when ten years is half of the life you've lived it's a LOT to write down. They even wanted the specific dates of when I visited each country. I don't know about you but when I like a certain country I return to it more than once so I had to make a list:

• Iceland - because well I have family there and I used to go there every year when I could still afford it
• Germany – I've been to Germany many times because I have friends there who I met in Japan
• Japan – As you know I went here as an exchange student in High School.
• Australia – Because, you know...
• Belgium - Just because it's right there!
• England
• Northern Ireland
• France
• Croatia
• Austria
• Switzerland
• Spain
• Denmark
• Jamaica – It has been a long time since I went to Jamaica and it has probably been more than ten years ago.
• Italy - Also think this was more than ten years ago. 
• Czech Republic

 They wanted to know all the names and birth-dates of my family even my stepfamily, at least two statutory declarations of Australian citizens who know us and can verify our relationship, multiple pass photo's of both of us with our name written in the back, a written statement of how we met and with proof of our relationship, a certified copy of my birth certificate and my passport, – don't even get me started on what 'certified' means – a certified copy of my partner's birth certificate and passport and then another copy of his birth certificate for his 20 page form.

It was highly confusing and stressful!

We decided to start and IndieGoGo funding project to try and cover some of our moving costs. We have had a few backers so far so I'd like to remind everyone how awesome the stuff is that we have left. We have a lot of things we can't take with us that I would love to give away to our helpers: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/fund-our-love So please help us out even if it's just a little bit it really means a lot to us.

After all this I had decided to be excited about Australia: I could probably start studying again. My boyfriend would have more chance to find job and I could go diving in one the most beautiful diving spots on earth. I looked around and even found a diving club I would like to join and a University that had some studies I was interested in. I talked positively about Australia because it made me feel better about the decision and I hoped it would make my boyfriend happier about it too. But the more positive I was the more negative he became. He didn't want to go back he wanted to stay and then he got a job offer from the interview he had a few days earlier. I wasn't happy, I wasn't unhappy. I was confused. I thought the universe wanted us to move to Australia but now it was giving us all these mixed signals. My boyfriend was very happy. He got what he wanted. We could stay. Yet all I could think about was that now I had to find a job too and I wouldn't be able to go to university until my boyfriend had a steady job. I did want to stay but suddenly staying meant that I couldn't study, or dive. My boyfriend would go from contract to contract hoping he could stay here for at least five years so he could get citizenship and not worry about being deported. Five years. I don't want to wait five years before I can start my life. It would've been nice if everything had worked out but it didn't and now we seemed to be stuck on this ledge of insecurity and uncertainty. If I looked more than a few weeks ahead my mind would go blank on where we would be or what we'd be doing. Nothing seemed certain. And then they called again a few days later saying they weren't sure whether they could actually afford him, they were going to have a meeting about it and they would know by 12^th November 2013. When they didn't call we called and found out his recruiter was on holiday. He wouldn't be back until the 24^th. So the 24^th came and we called again, he said they hadn't made a decision yet and that he would call the next week. I wonder if people ever consider whether their actions mean making life-changing decisions for other people. It feels like being stuck in an endless state of flux.

But even job offers have an expiry date, especially when your visa has one too. We still haven't received an answer to this day and we're going to accept that we never will. We have finally sent off our visa application, we canceled our house, sold our car and we're getting ready to move on the 10th of January.

A few nights ago I had a very interesting and scary dream. I had grown old and so had my boyfriend. Regardless of our age we went rock climbing. In the beginning there was a pretty clear cut path and although it was steep and difficult it wasn't that bad. There were two lines of rope on each side showing us where to go. But after a while it got more and more difficult so much so that we started tying ourselves to the rock. Then after a while the ropes stopped and there were only islands of rock sticking out that we needed to jump to, and you couldn't look down because we were above the clouds. That's when I woke up.

Decisions

My boyfriend was happy at his new workplace. The people working there were very different from him and he was still quite awkward but he was good at the job and there were a couple of people that really appreciated his work. The perks were nice, he had a pretty good pay and they even invited him on the company trip to Spain. I was excited and started planning ahead. We both got a gym memberships that we use at least twice a week – on a bad week. I wasn't worried about finances much and we went on a few weekend mini breaks just because we could. Things were going pretty well. The only downside was that he had only gotten a three month contract and we were nervous about the extension but that was something to worry about later. We were pretty relieved when after about a month and a half the manager said to my boyfriend that he thought he was doing a wonderful job and would definitely extend his contract for either another three months or even a year. This took all our worries away since his visa was dependent on his job and if he lost his job at any point he would be required to immediately leave the country.

Just when my boyfriend was settling into his job I got told that the café I was working at had to close down because the swimming pool that was next door decided they wanted a different company running the space next to them - the café was technically owned by the swimming pool even though they outsourced they still had the final call on who runs the space. I didn't mind that much because the pay was low – technically my pay was the same as a Barista but the café opened later and closed sooner so my overall pay went down. And I still couldn't stand my colleague. So when my contract ended I had prepared myself and had been applying for jobs. I managed to get a job as a management trainee at a fast food joint which was supposed to start right when my contract at the café ended. So when I didn't hear anything on the day I was supposed to start my new job I started wondering if I had just dreamt it all. I checked my emails and but there were no new messages. After a while I decided not to seem too pushy or needy and sent him an email asking about my start date details. When I didn't get any response for two days I decided to call on the second day. The restaurant owner who hired me said that he was just about to call me to schedule my contract signing. So a few days later I signed my contract but he didn't want me to actually start until the week after that. I was pretty confused about why he would say one thing and do another but I didn't want to sound whiny or desperate so I didn't ask. Then later it turned out he was about to have a baby so he was pretty stressed out.

My time between jobs had been right around when my boyfriend's family was here to visit him so I spent quite some time with them and got to know them a lot better. A Thursday in October was when I started working at my new job for the first time. It didn't go off to a great start to be honest. Nobody had told me what to do or what was expected of me as the first few steps when starting the job. I came and waited in line in order to get to speak to someone about what to do. She told me to have a seat and wait because it was busy – you know because there were about three people in line. Later it turned out that two girls just hadn't shown up for work so they were grossly understaffed. Nobody knew I was starting that day and nobody really cared. The girl who was supposedly showing me the ropes was using all her effort to work both kitchens and the drive-thru and as a result didn't have any time to really explain anything and I was expected to be able to suddenly just do everything right when I couldn't even tell the difference between the five types of frozen pieces of chicken. After a few hours the store manager arrived and she taught me how to make hamburgers and cheeseburgers. That's when I realised that all the people that had arrived one by one were about 16 years old and goofing around while working. I know it sounds cheesy – haha get it? Cheesy... but I couldn't connect to any of my colleagues and I absolutely hated this work. I knew I had to be able to work everywhere in order to become a manager but I just hated myself for what I was doing. It was like working in a factory being surrounded by kids and losing brain cells after completing every burger. I respect people who are able to make themselves work at a fast food joint because I just couldn't.

That's when it happened. The unthinkable. Something we weren't prepared for. My boyfriend lost his job that Friday. His manager said that he just didn't fit in. They were willing to give him a recommendation on his technical skills but he just wasn't right for this company. We were devastated. After all the build up and promises and the hopes we had it just broke down completely. We didn't know what to do. To us it seemed as though all hope had been lost. When we came here after my trip through Australia we knew things weren't going to be easy but we never imagined it to be this hard. I decided to quit my job. Maybe it was a mistake but I don't regret it.

As our back-up plan to gain us some time we went to Belfast for a weekend which is in the UK and therefore in a different visa-area. When we came back my boyfriend was allowed to stay for another
three months on a tourist visa. This visa ends on the 20^th of January 2014. We avoided the issue for a while but had a long and hard talk when we were ready to face the consequences. We decided to move back to Australia. We would have a place to start, some family and friends, familiar surroundings and I could get a visa – I can get a visa as long as we can prove we've been together for at least a year. Australia seemed like the best option. Our house here is only temporary and neither of us has a job. My boyfriend decided he wanted to stay here and applied for a whole bunch of jobs and even got a job interview for one of them. This was through the same recruitment agency as his previous job so they were also willing to arrange his visa for him. However we had no hope that he would get it since we had become just that pessimistic. We were getting ready for the move, we started sorting out forms for my visa and we even started packing and sorting through some things we'd had in storage for ages. We told all our friends and family about our decision to move to the other side of the planet.

Progress

In the Netherlands we have a law that states that houses or office buildings or really any liveable building for that matter cannot be empty for longer than 6 months. Housing is a major problem in the Netherlands so I think this is a really good law. Because of this law something called anti-squatting has become very popular. In Amsterdam there is one company that does most of the anti-squatting placements. It basically means that the owner of a house tells this company to find someone to live in their property temporarily. You barely pay any rent but in exchange they can kick you out every 28 days. There has been a registration stop for Amsterdam because it's so popular and in demand there just isn't enough housing. But sometimes this company posts on facebook that they have property available and you write an application letter convincing them why you deserve a place to stay. You have to have an income and no children or pets are allowed. They posted a place and I decided to go for it and write them a letter about our situation. We were invited the very next day for an intake interview. They told us at the interview that they had a place available for us and that we had to move in there within 12 hours. Without ever seeing the property we agreed and signed the contract. To this day I am so incredibly thankful to that company for giving us a place to stay. It turned out to be a house with a garden and everything. It is a great place to live and our neighbours are lovely. However we still had the problem of my boyfriends visa. I knew that after 6 months we were going to have to move to England or Australia because there was no way a job would come along that was willing to sponsor him to stay in the Netherlands. I decided to just be happy that we had a place and live in the moment.

We moved a couple of days later – we were required by law to place a chair, a table and a bed the same day that we got the key and signed the contract. We even went to the city hall the very same day and signed up as the new inhabitants. - Slowly but surely we made the place our home. We weren't allowed to drill of paint so we had to think of some creative ways to cover the windows and the empty concrete wall. We hung a massive map of the world on the ugly wall and stapled some fabric to the wood above the windows. 

This is what our living room wall looks like.

I got settled into my job and did a poor job the first few weeks since it had been a while since I made coffee but I got better and better and eventually made about 800 coffee's and cappuccino's a day. Being a barista wasn't too bad but they were 9 hours shifts and it was hard work. Since the café had only recently opened it was full all the time. We had about 1500 customers a day. The company I worked for has more than 60 locations across the Netherlands and I eventually asked if there was any way I could be transferred to a less demanding job. My manager said she saw how tired I was every night and said she thought my work ethic was good and always tried to find more to do – if there was a moment of rest. She said she wanted to keep me within the same company and started looking around for another place to work. I eventually got placed at a small café right next to my barista job. This time however I didn't have to make only coffee I did everything. Serving, cash register, making sandwiches etc... It was much nicer to do a variety of things than to be concentrated on just making coffee all day. 

Dreaming of coffee wasn't uncommon.

What I hadn't anticipated was that my colleague would be the most annoying guy to work with in the history of my career - so far. Since it was just a small café with usually less than 50 customers a day we worked in pairs. There were usually two people managing the café and the actually manager would come maybe once a week to create a new schedule and to do some minor administration. I usually worked with one particular person who worked there 6 days a week and because he had been there since the opening of the café he decided it was his job to boss other people around. Nothing I did was ever good enough. When I stayed late to clean everything thoroughly I was taking too long, when I went home sooner but couldn't finish everything as thoroughly I hadn't cleaned properly. If I didn't make a certain salad in time I was being irresponsible. And by on time I mean the time that he find appropriate not an official time limit of salad making. If I didn't do things his way they weren't right. Even though when it comes to coffee making I now have full confidence I know what I'm doing. I wasn't using a spoon to make a cappuccino so according to my colleague, I was doing it wrong. Of course no self-respecting barista in today's coffee culture uses a spoon. I was frustrated but realised that going against him resulted in nothing. So I went along with everything except the coffee making, I stood my ground on that and he eventually accepted that. Even though the work wasn't actually that bad I dreaded going to work every day because of my colleague. All the while my boyfriend was still sitting at home and moving to England seemed like the right thing to do. I didn't like my job anyway, our house was only temporary and in England he could get an ancestry visa because his grandfather was born in England. But then again we didn't know anyone in England, it was very expensive, the job market was quite bad and we wouldn't have a place to go. It was a list of pro's and cons but when you're forced out of the country you don't have much choice.

July came and September was our deadline. Just as I was getting ready for me and my boyfriend to move to England - we even applied for his ancestry visa for England and received it - the best-case-scenario happened. He got hired for a job that was willing to sponsor him. Finally I wasn't the sole provider anymore on my minimum wage. He finally wasn't sitting at home all day and we both had a job, a place to stay. Things finally picked up and we were both feeling a lot less sorry for ourselves. I was still stuck doing something I hated with a person I couldn't get along with but we had income and prospect. If everything came through I would perhaps even be able to start studying again and do something I love. 

Life Bumps

The other day I was waiting for the subway to come when a guy suddenly started laughing. He struck up a conversation with some other guy and proceeded to hand him a cola he had in his bag. He then said: 'I expect nothing from you other than that you'll drink it.' The man then walked away shouting: 'Cola, everyone should drink cola!' This scene made me confused about several things. First of all why did he hand out a free drink? Second why cola? And third what is in it for him? The bag he had seemed to be a cooling bag to keep drinks and food cold. If he was just in a good mood then why was he so prepared? Why carry a cooling bag just to hand out free drinks? I'm sure that if the guy isn't just odd or illogical there must be a reason behind his actions. I wish I had the capability to deduce the man's reasons like Benedict. I'm sure he would've figured it out right away. For me it'll forever be a mystery. But what's life without some mystery. I wonder if that's why Sherlock Holmes did cocaine and never took a case below his means. He understood too much and therefore had too little mystery in his life and had to think of other ways to enrich his life. Maybe all drug abusers have this problem. Maybe they're all secretly geniuses but you can't tell because they're constantly high. I guess that's statistically unlikely. In the world there are apparently about 130 million people considered geniuses according to Mensa. And There are about 230 million drug abusers in the world that have used drugs in the year 2011. So maybe my theory was off by just 100 million people but still according to statistics about 2% of the population is a genius. If we take the 230 million people on drugs there are still about 4.6 million genius drug abusers. Although I wonder how that number is influenced if you take into account people who were once geniuses but their brains started to deteriorate because of the drug abuse. It's such a pity. I'm sure that even if they aren't geniuses there would be some kind of talent or potential in there. Some people say that when your kid is growing up you shouldn't praise it too much because if you do they'll expect too much from life and eventually feel like a failure. What if that was your family's issue and you raise all the children in your family to expect great things. It's like everyone expects to go to buy their first wand and be told that great things could be expected of them. But then somewhere along the line they find out that they're not Harry Potter but just Neville Longbottom who does some impressive things but never enough to be remember throughout history. And then what? You accept that you're just normal. Not exceptional. You try to fit in with society as best you can and settle down and lead an uninteresting life.

I realised reality was harsh when I couldn't get a place to stay for ourselves or get a decent job. This brings me to my own issues. My mother and I have never been exactly close. I have always resembled my father more and had inherited most of his sense of humour as well which made my mother and I slightly incompatible. Not that it made me love her any less of course. It's just hard to have a long lasting conversation without me getting annoyed, mainly because my interests are so different from hers and she doesn't quite understand what I'm talking about a lot of the times. She had been unemployed for a while when I moved in with my boyfriend which meant that she was home most of the time. It was only a one bedroom apartment so she slept in the living room while we slept in the bedroom. My boyfriend started looking for a job and I started studying. Things were ok except that it's not exactly ideal to stay at home all day with you mother-in-law. Weeks past. Months past. My boyfriend finally got a job but it was an hour and a half away from home, the pay was bad, travel costs were not covered, they wouldn't provide him with a visa, and his boss was a dick. My mother's health deteriorated. One day she was hospitalised and it was quite a scary time for me. The whole situation happened right when I was doing exams for university and I was emotionally and physically drained. My boyfriend's job was getting worse and worse and his boss got angry at him for not friending any of his colleagues on facebook after being there a week. I kept telling him to hold on and that he really needed this job but he dreaded going to work every day. His boss specifically told him that although his contract stated that he should work for 40 hours a week he was expected to work about 55 hours a week and he wouldn't get paid overtime. He was home late every day and things were going badly with me at university. Although I found Cultural Anthropology very interesting my emotional state was not allowing me to enjoy my studies. Eventually one day my mother told me she wanted us to move out and move in with my father. She was emotional and intoxicated but I took it hard and called my father to come pick me up. The same day my boyfriend got fired from his job and I had an emotional breakdown. Since getting a job was needed to get a visa to stay with me it took our hope away for him to be able to stay in the country. In order for me to keep my boyfriend in this country I had to earn at least 1500 euro a month and have a year contract – even if we got married. With only a High School diploma it would be hard to find a job with pay like that but I decided to quit university anyway and try to find a job. I felt like a failure. I was living with my father and his wife and her children in a house with six people, my father and his wife were sleeping in the living room in order to have enough space for us. Since we decided to move out of my mother's place completely we brought all the boxes filled with our things and ended up surrounded in a small room with boxes of our stuff. We were in a dark place. I felt things were never going to get better and the smallest things made me burst out in tears. I once missed a tram and started crying. 

So I did all I could do and searched for a job. Since neither of us had jobs we couldn't possibly afford any place to stay so my first step was to make us financially independent. I didn't have much experience in any one thing but I had done a large variety of jobs including sports photographer, tele marketeer, corporate box server, pawn shop employee, and a few small hospitality jobs. I had also done a barista course in Australia but didn't have major confidence in my coffee making skills. I applied for everything I could find and thought I could do. There were days when I applied for at least 50 jobs online same for my boyfriend who applied without end. I had different cover letter for different positions that I could alter slightly for certain jobs. But I got only a few rejections two interviews and the rest didn't reply to me at all. One of the interviews I remember as the worst interview in my life. I tried to do some research about the company but couldn't find much I tried to find out what the position essentially entailed but didn't quite understand what it really was. So when I got there after being lost for about half an hour I felt incredibly unprepared for what was coming. The reason I applied to the job was because the ad said they wanted someone who could speak several languages and had commercial experience. Since I had been a tele marketeer and could speak 5 languages I thought I was a decent candidate. I couldn't have been more wrong. I couldn't answer any of the questions adequately and felt greatly incompetent. A few days later I got a rejection over the phone and I wasn't surprised.

All this time there was one branche I hadn't applied for yet because I didn't want to work in hospitality but realised I didn't have any choice. I even applied for McDonald's and when they didn't even invite me for an interview I felt that there was no way I would be able to get a job anywhere. Finally -after a few weeks in desperation- I got invited to my second interview which I applied for because I was desperate and they were looking for a Barista. I pretended I knew everything about coffee and even ended the interview with the question: What type of bean will you be using? Arabica? Which just suddenly came to me I couldn't remember the other type of bean (Robusta) and decided to just ask it. She gave me a story about how the blend was being specifically made for the café and ended the interview on quite a positive note. I was ecstatic when I found out I got the job the very same day. Something good happened. Improvement. I decided to start looking for a place to stay because we were suffocating at my father's place. To this day I am greatly thankful to my mother and father that they were willing to take me and my boyfriend in – without ever having met him before. I was 21 years old going on 22 and they accepted us without question.

Moving In with him

Usually you move in with someone because you've known them for a while, you are engaged, have been together for a while (months, years) or you want to take it to the next step. And then there's moving in with someone out of financial trouble, necessity or just because it seemed the logical thing to do.

Moving in with someone you only met the month before might seem a bit rash but to me it felt like moving in with someone I had known for a long time. After talking to each other for over a year we decided to take the risk. At least that's how it feels like in hindsight. At the time I had no idea what I was doing. Things really just happened. I was starting to run out of money and I had been trying to get a job. Staying with my newly acquired boyfriend seemed the logical thing to do. Suddenly months past and I was starting to get really desperate to find work. I quite literally - literally? Yes. Literally. - called up every café in Brisbane I could find online and asked if any of them were hiring. Then I would go to the ones that said they were and hand in my resume. None of them responded, sent me an email or called me. Eventually I ended up getting a job which I found through a recruitment website (seek.com.au) at a pawn shop in one of the dodgier areas of Brisbane. Or as the Australians would call it an area filled with bogans. It was great working there. Even though the hours were long and it was a 45 minute drive every morning and evening, the pay was good and the people were friendly. I didn't have that much trouble fitting in. I knew how most things worked and was actually the number two salesperson from when I started until I quit. 

My boyfriend had all the while started on his third job in Brisbane which was unfortunately only a contract job and had no possibility of growth within the company. Being quite young he had his university degree but barely any experience so he couldn't get a graduate role and no one would hire him for a senior position. So although the job wasn't stable he didn't complain.

When I left for Australia I had every intention of going back. I was always planning to go to University and even bought my ticket home before I left. My boyfriend lived a six hour flight from his family and didn't have many close friends in Brisbane and even his job was something he wouldn't be doing long term. Taking all this into consideration and the fact that we are madly in love with each other it didn't take him long to book a flight to Amsterdam with the intention of moving with me. Living together and having a job was so pleasant I nearly forgot that my reason for coming to Australia was to travel. So I housesat in Alice Springs for two weeks, I went to Cairns to dive in the Great Barrier Reef and went to Tasmania to visit a far removed family member that I'd never met before. As a final destination we went to Perth to meet my boyfriend's family and say his goodbyes before we left for Amsterdam. More than being sad at the idea of a family member moving to the other side of the planet my boyfriend's family was happy that he had found someone to be with.

The plan seemed simple enough. I would start studying Cultural Anthropology and my boyfriend would first have 3 months to find a job that would sponsor him and if that didn't work out he would apply for a working holiday visa so he could stay for a year longer while he continued to look for a job that was willing to sponsor him. We would be staying at my mother's place because I was still living with my parents and finding an affordable place to rent in Amsterdam is extremely difficult. 

In case you didn't know what Cultural Anthropology was.

The current (social) renting situation in The Netherlands is that in order to be allowed to rent in a certain city you must be in some way connected to the city or area by work or school. Then there is a priority system in place where the waiting time for an apartment in Amsterdam is at least nine to eleven years. There are possible emergency transfers possible for extreme cases like being pregnant and being kicked out of the house by your abusive drug using father. Anything less will not be seen as an emergency. There are of course student housing but they're mostly small rooms, with sharing bathrooms and legally only one person can live in such a room. 

Or rent privately but then the only thing we could afford was a parking space...

So we decided that staying with my mother - My parents got divorced when I was five. My father married my stepmother a few years ago and she brought her two children to the household. - was the most practical thing to do. 

How we met

This will be the first blog entry to our blog with two perspectives. My boyfriend and I will write about the same events or the same days or the same themes and post it on this blog. This post will about how we met each other. His blog posts will be posted here shortly. I am a Dutch girl and my boyfriend is an Australian guy and we live together.

For me it all started in 2008-2009 in Japan where I had an amazing year as a high school exchange student. I met many people and made many friends. One of the people I met was an Australian girl who came from Perth. I didn't know her very well, I met her a few times but she went to a different school and lived at least an hour away from me. We met often enough to add each other on Facebook though. After Japan a couple of years passed without much communication with the Australian girl and I went on with my life. I was only seventeen when I left for Japan and it took me two more years to finally finish high school in 2011. By this time I still hadn't figured out what to do with my life so I decided to travel. I wasn't sure where I wanted to go but I knew I wanted to take a year off and travel around.

One year before I left for my travels I read a particular comment on a status from my female Australian friend. It made me laugh and being the Facebook stalker that I am - oh don't look at me like that we all do it - I checked out the profile of the person who posted the hilarious comment. I read the biography of a guy who seemed to be in University in Australia at the time and it made me laugh even more. I decided to send him a short message saying that his profile made me laugh - I know, what was I thinking? He responded by making smalltalk and so an intercontinental friendship was born. We had lots of things to talk about and as it turned out a lot of things in common. I also found out that the girl I met in Japan was in fact his cousin. We messaged back and forth through the internet and even had a few Skype calls. I always looked forward to a message from my pen-pal and of course wondered what he would be like in real life.

Now jumping back to 2011, I had made up my mind about going to either the United States or Australia for a few months before starting my studies - I already spoke English and I wanted to make things a bit easier for me to adjust compared to the massive culture shock I got in Japan. The United States seemed difficult in terms of visas and it was even more difficult to legally work there so I decided to go to the land down under. Besides Australia has lots of dangerous animals and what's life without a little risk?

Ten facts about Australia:

1 – Australia is the world's sixth largest country. 

2 – Australia had been inhabited for at least 40.000 years before the Dutch discovered it in 1606.

3 – Voting is mandatory in Australia and you'll get fined if you don't.
4 – One of the most dangerous animals in Australia is a snail.
5 – Of the ten most venomous snakes five of them can be found in Australia.

6 – Burger King is called Hungry Jack's because of copyright issues.

7 – Only four to six people die each year from snake bites in Australia.

8 – No deaths from spider bites have occurred in Australia since 1981, since the anti-venoms were made available, despite having several dangerous spiders.
9 – Australia is the only country that has herds of wild camels.

10 – One of the Australian marsupials called wombats have excrement shaped like a cube. 

I met another Australian person while I was in Japan and he has been like a brother to me ever since. Since I knew only a few people in Australia I decided to start in Melbourne and stay with my good friend for the start of the trip. My Australian pen-pal and I decided to meet each other on the same day I sent him my first message the year before. We had the most awkward first encounter. We simply didn't know how to be around each other. Meeting someone in real life is very different than reading someone's messages and speaking a bit over the phone. I had only just arrived the day before and I was still suffering from a jet-lag so I had lost my capability to hold a proper conversation and apparently my pen-pal took it as a sign that I didn't like him at all. It took a few more messages before we decided to try to meet again. Here is a flowchart which somewhat describes the beginning stages of our relationship.

This time I went to his place for a whole weekend – it was far away and I didn't want to pay for a hotel. We watched movies pretty much the entire time and no I'm not trying to be subtle we watched at least five movies while I was there. But the movies took away the awkwardness since we didn't have to talk while we watched them which in turn gave us time to think about what to say and it obviously worked since we finally overcame our awkwardness and realised we enjoyed each other's company more than just as pen-pals. So I moved in with him.