Alien in America

We have been living in LA for almost 16 months now. 16 months that on the one hand felt incredibly short, but on the other hand I also feel so home here that it scares me sometimes. In a little more than two months we will move away from LA to live in Long Beach and closer to Flo’s new work. And now it really hits us that we will be leaving a city that we have surprisingly fallen in love with so deeply.

All of you that have been following this blog over the years know that I never wanted to move to LA. I always found this city incredibly busy, unattractive, and never expected it to have so many aspects and little hidden gems. Within the last 14 months we have explored so many beautiful, delicious, and convinient sides of LA that I will miss very much once we moved away. It’s a weird feeling to now be sad to leave a city I never wanted to live in. And I am also very scared to not find all the things we love about living in this big city in the way smaller Long Beach.

But also I am very excited for that move, because since I started dreaming about living in the US I always wanted to live in or near the OC. And what makes me even more excited: Our American Dream has been going so well that after a year we move further down and not back.

With moving to the US, comes a lot less vacation days as I as a german am used to. It always makes me super jealous when we have friends or family in town and they tell us what they do all day, how relaxing and nice it is and how much fun they have. I know I am more than blessed to be here all year long, but sometimes I really miss having a few weeks off work and travel through the world.

Whenever this jealousy hits me, I try to make myself some vacation replacement time. I usually do that by going to the beach or exploring the beautiful LA with Flo. But today we felt super lazy and therefor decided to just hang out by the pool and enjoy the warm LA weather. It feels kind of weird to just go to the pool, hang out and go back to your normal life in your own apartment. Sometimes when I lay down there I feel like being in a hotel and on vacation. And that actually is that feeling I sometimes so desperately need. Even if it is just for a few hours.

I hope that once we move to be closer to Flo’s new job, we will live closer to the beach. Right now we drive around 45 minutes to the beach and that can be very exhausting in the morning. So I hope that living by the beach will provide the vacationy feeling on a more regular basis. So the regular work craziness will be a little easier to endure!

As you all know, since we moved to Los Angeles everything has been going pretty smooth. Especially job wise. I found a job 4 weeks after we arrived here, Flo two weeks later. Flo and I both came here with the goal to work in the Fashion industry. I already suceeded with this since I got hired by a big LA based Fashion company. Flo on the other hand took a job at an Online Marketing Agency.

After sending out countless applications over the last year, Flo finally got an offer from a very big and popular Skateboard and Fashion company in Irvine. I couldn’t be more thrilled for him and also be more amazed by how fast we both got great jobs at great companies in exactly the industry we always wanted to work in! I kinda feel like we totally earned it, because we both worked very hard and very long nights to get to where we are now. But it also just makes me very happy and shows me again how right it was to move here.

With the new job will also come another big step for us: We are going to move to Long Beach to be in the middle of both our companies locations. We always wanted to move closer to the beach, so this is very positive. Stay tuned for a very exciting time over the next few weeks filled with news about a new apartment, a second car we need to get and Flo starting his new job!