We are moving abroad!

Last updated on July 4th, 2023 at 06:20 am

This post is part of a series that I will be doing on preparing to move abroad. If you have been dreaming of long-term travel or moving abroad, this will be a great resource in your planning. I plan to cover the stages of planning and what you need to consider before taking a big trip like this as well as all the emotions leading up to it. I will be posting weekly. Hope you will join me on this journey before the journey! 

Luke and I have some big news!

In April 2023, we will depart on an adventure, unlike anything we have ever done. We will be going to Bali, Indonesia to spend at least two months living there and then heading off to explore other parts of the world!  

What made us decide to move abroad?

You probably have a lot of questions and, to be honest, so do we. We have been dreaming about taking a more extended trip for a long time. The first time that I remember having a serious conversation about it was in Belize in 2017. That year is monumental to me for several reasons. 

First, I had just graduated from college and I felt like I finally had my life back. I spent college mostly with my head down, trying to get through it. Studying hard for a degree in Biochemistry at the University of Colorado Boulder and always working part-time to afford the rent, which I shared with Luke and a few other roommates. Pretty quickly into my degree, I started working part-time at a lab in Denver that required me to drive from Denver to Boulder a few times a week so I could work until 5:30 PM and then drive home to eat and do homework. I don’t regret it, but it was hard work. Looking back I don’t know how I ever did it. The energy of youth is endless.  

I hadn’t spent too much of my time in college dreaming about travel, but I did eventually catch the travel bug. This started when my roommates, Luke, and I went on a trip to Cancun to stay at a resort our junior year. The trip ignited my desire to travel more simply because it really hadn’t occurred to me that I could travel, now that I had my own money and was an “adult.” The following year, we took another vacation to the Dominican Republic, and then in 2017, we went to Paris, on a whim. We had been trying to book a trip to Vegas. 

Paris was a life-changing trip for me. We spent an entire week there, with no other day trips, and saw so many things. I fell in love hard with the city and with European culture. The food! The coffee! The cute cafes! The long, lingering meals. The restaurant outside of our AirBnB where the dinner rush would go until 2 AM. The cheap wine. The architecture. The history! It was endlessly enticing. This wasn’t my first trip to Paris though. 

Let’s back up…

As a child, I had always been interested in other cultures and was especially fascinated with French culture. Starting in eighth grade, I took French classes until I went to college. During my sophomore year of high school, the school offered a trip to France and Italy and I begged my parents to let me go. Somehow, I managed to convince them and I traveled to France and Italy with my French teacher and a few other students and volunteers.

While I am so grateful that I had the opportunity to go and I loved visiting Paris, Nice, Florence, Rome, and Piza, this trip taught me an important lesson that managed to temporarily extinguish my obsession with travel. The people you travel with (or don’t) are critical to the enjoyment of the trip. I didn’t know anyone very well on this trip. The group included students from different grades and none of my friends were able to go. I was painfully shy at this time so I wasn’t able to really connect or make any good friends on the trip. I also had my first boyfriend at home and, in needy teenage fashion, would have spent two weeks with him rather than gallivanting around Europe. 

That seems so stupid now. 

All that to say, after my first trip to Europe, I felt satiated with travel for a while. I don’t know if I was really ready for it yet. It wasn’t until this trip to Paris in 2017, a trip that I planned with my friends and paid for on my own, that my hunger for travel was reawakened. Luke and I got home from Paris and immediately booked a flight to Belize. For the last five years, I haven’t gone more than a few weeks without having a trip to look forward to. 

A Realization

At some point between March 2017 and September 2017, I decided to start this blog at the suggestion of one of my best friends, Abbie, and I published my first article on Placencia, Belize. 

Read More: A FLASHBACK TO MY ORIGINAL BLOGGING DAYS

Before going to Belize, I had been doing research on travel blogs and following other travel bloggers on social media. I had come to realize that people were traveling full-time, making money off traveling and blogging. Yes, it would be difficult. Yes, it would not happen overnight. But it was possible. This gave me so much hope! I realized that there is not just one way to live. I realized it is okay to want something different. It is okay to have huge, audacious dreams and it is okay if other people don’t understand them. 

These realizations have continued to be reinforced over the years and today I honestly believe that anything is possible. I realize that these conclusions come from a place of privilege too. I feel so incredibly blessed to have a partner that is aligned with these dreams and that we are able to build the life that we want. 

In 2017, as this realization had awoken in me and I began to question my future, I finally breached the subject to Luke. What would this look like? Could we do this? What would it take? 

Luke, being the fairly easygoing person that he is, basically said, sure, why not? 

There was, of course, much more discussion over the last five years. I want you to understand though, that this has been a dream of ours for a long time and is not something we decided lightly. We love Colorado. We have our friends and family in Colorado and we love them all to death. It will always be home. But it is time to go. 

Read more: WHY WE Picked BALI As Our First Destination

Why are we moving abroad?

I was reminded recently that when Luke and I went to San Luis Obispo for college that I was so lonely. When I moved to California, I was scared. I did get lonely. It was really really hard. We ended up coming home. And maybe the same thing will happen again.

However, I am not doing this because it is easy, because I know it won’t be. I am doing this because I feel this intense pull inside of me to see the world. I don’t know where it comes from, but I know that I have to try to see it through. I am doing this to be uncomfortable. I have been comfortable for too long. I have been plodding along for too long. I have been putting other people before me for too long. I have been putting “shoulds” and “supposed to” before what I want.

The truth is, there is a community out there that has been doing this: living their lives on the road and building the life that they want from the ground up. There is a whole wide world out there that is so much bigger than my little piece of it. I want to be part of it, even if it means failing over and over again and risking the possibility that I may have to admit that I was wrong. 

I can relate to these words by Azar Nafisi: “You get a strange feeling when you’re about to leave a place… like you’ll not only miss the people you love but you’ll miss the person you are now at this time and this place, because you’ll never be this way ever again.” 

I will be doing a series of posts about the process of planning to move abroad, including most of my unfiltered emotions about the process, as we go along. I am so excited to share this adventure with you. Check back in a week for the next installment including how we are downsizing, feelings as we get closer to moving abroad, and some additional destinations we are planning on visiting!

Have you ever dreamed of moving abroad? Are you currently traveling long-term? Tell me if you had a similar experience in the comments!

Originally written November 29th, 2022.

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