Posts Tagged ‘emigration’

It’s finally the time to really begin the preperations for our emigration. I am that kind of person that doesn’t like to wait. I always have to do things. So the last months kind of killed me, because you know that there is so much work to do, but also know that it is way to early to begin the work.

Last week I began to pack the first two boxes with my books and this week we packed a few more. An today the first piece of furniture had to move out. We emptied one of our cupboards and brought it over to my parents house. It finally also is clear where most of our furniture and stuff will go. To me this feels really good. Everything that I can get out of this flat is something that I don’t have to worry about any more. It also feels good that most of our stuff will move to family and friends.

Through all this stress I somehow forgot to get myself into the mood for christmas. So yesterday we took a little break from packing, working and worrying, invited some friends over and had a super nice Saturday baking cookies, eating delicious food and watching the National Lampoons christmas movie.

I want to get a lot off my to-do list before christmas, so stayed tuned in the next two weeks. We might take some serious steps forward!

Right now I kind of surprise myself a lot. Certain situations totally make me realize that I don’t know myself as good as I thought and that I have grown a lot in the last months or even years. What I am mostly amazed of are the feelings I am feeling right now regarding special circumstances or people. But let me explain this step by step. Or let’s better say feeling by feeling:

Fear
I actually am not afraid at all right now. Sometimes I try to panic myself and list all the things that I am giving up and might be losing next year. But somehow I think am I, for example, old and unromantic enough to know that friends and jobs come and go. And that the most important things in life are family and love. And there is no place on earth where I can go to lose those.

Hate
Some years ago I wanted to get out of Germany to not have to face certain people or situations anymore. This week I accidentally ran into a guy that once broke my heart and that I hate a lot. But I just don’t cared. He belongs to a part of my life that I am done with. In that situation I asked myself if it really is fear or hate that drives me out of Germany. But it isn’t! It is love that does. Love for my future home country and love for my husband.

Honesty
That may be the hardest part. You so have to be honest with yourself and your partner when you want to do this huge step together. And honesty means to really come clean about yourself, your relationship and your friendships with other people. That means to realize which mistakes you made, which friends you should better get rid of and what really matters in life. This is a hard and really painful lesson to learn. But for me going through that was already worth it.

To everyone that is in the same situation or will be soon, I really recommend one thing: Allow yourself to feel! Allow all the bad feelings and tears to come out! Because this helps you to realize what matters and what doesn’t. And this may be the most important step towards a successful emigration.

Flo and I kind of want to build the perfect circumstances for our emigration. This means that we want to get arranged as much as possible before our plane hits the LA ground in late January. But somehow this is not as easy as we thought it would be. Because being early – as we germans love to – is far too early for US circumstances.

First we tried to get a job. I have been applying for jobs in the US for the whole last year when I saw good ones. But in September and October I really applied to a lot jobs. One company actually got back to me and during the phone call it became obvious that they weren’t searching for a employee to come in 2011 (as I wanted to), but immediately.

As an emigrant you always have to learn. Learning that applying and getting a job in the US is a way shorter process than it is in Germany was surprising and changed our plans a lot. But it kind of feels good to cut one thing down from our long list of things to do now.

This week we began to search for a short term rental for our first three months in the US. We don’t exactly know where we want to live and even more important where we will get jobs, so we try to rent a furnished place first. But: Many of the landlords or owners that wrote back told us that we are too early. They asked us to get back to them by the end of december, because they might than know about free places for the end of January.

My parents and my environment always taught me that being the early bird is a good thing. Now it seems like that being the early german bird in the US means being way ahead of time.