Walking on a Dream....

As many of you know, my killer determination can often take on a life of its own in helping create or find opportunities wherever and whenever I choose to let it exert itself. My ambition and ability to create huge change within my life seems to happen with relative ease these days. All I ever need is a little of my unmistakable courage, a splash of life’s passion and a big slice of energy and I seem to be able to create a focus within me that cannot be silenced until every last detail of my desires and goals have been achieved. My ability to build a focus and consistently work towards it in a meticulously calculating way is sometimes quite shocking to me once I am left standing on the other side of it. I often put it down to luck, and I certainly feel a lot of it must be (thank god, it hasn’t run out yet!) but I do appreciate that a lot of what I do achieve comes down to my focus and knowing exactly what it is I am working towards.

And so here I am again... Standing on the other side of that killer determination, wondering how on earth I was able to create such a huge amount of change for myself yet again. With less than 24 hours before I find myself beginning the next adventure I simply cannot wait because this time I know the change I have created is the change that I really want. This is what I know I need and really want more than anything right now.

So whether it was luck or my determination or a mixture of the both I seem to have created a life for myself in London. A great new Job, a lovely apartment which I will sign the lease for on Tuesday, an amazing friend from Australia as my house mate, a new city to explore in a new country of residence for me and a wonderful new partner to share it all with. Normal life awaits me and I cannot wait to begin it.

My new job will see me become a private chef for a family who live in Notting Hill. The family are Norwegian and have three children under the age of ten. The hours are great; From Monday to Friday, 12-7pm, which will allow time for me to pursue my other passions and the best part will be having my weekends back! YAY! What a relief!

My lovely new apartment is in Parsons Green (SW6). Yes that’s right, Kimberly Parsons in Parsons Green!! Bec, my Australian house mate, whom I used to be in the same state volleyball team with fell in love with the Parsons Green, Fulham area. We fell in love with this apartment and cannot wait to move in. It is currently being renovated with new carpets going down and a brand new kitchen and bathroom to be installed also, thus we are very excited and feel lucky to have found exactly what we were looking for in our area of choice.

So it seems I have hit the trifecta! Is it actually possible for me to sit here and consider that I might just have it all? Everything I have wanted and desired seems to have materialised and now all that stands in my way of actually beginning my new adventure in London is one final night in Morzine.

I am hoping it isn’t all an illusion and I do find myself actually walking on this dream....

London Calling

London has never been on my wish list as a destination of desire and certainly never a place I thought I would ever call home. The bustling city felt harsh and cold whenever I visited it. I once, not too long ago related it to like being in an Ant farm. And now I am deciding to become one of those ants!! I am about to become another face, another image in the collage of millions of other faces and images that make up London.

Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think I would become another token Aussie in London. Another ‘flamin gala’ to be found in one of those Australiana pubs of Sheperds Bush! But I am! And I can’t quite help but wonder how London will change me. Will it embrace me and allow me to see and feel its inner essence or will it leave me wanting to run screaming from its cold harsh depths? Will it give me a sense of belonging, a community atmosphere or just eat me up and spit me out just as it does to many of its dwellers trying to make it in the big smoke. Personally, I think I may find the answer in the knowledge that for all that is cold, harsh or brilliant about London it will change me for the good, better and worse!

A New Chapter...

The need to put away my travelling shoes for a while has allowed me to think about what my next move will be. What skills I will now choose to use in the steps I take to find a base. How my migration story might play out, which country I choose to call home for a while and what I decide to do with my life after I put away the travellers’ shoes.

It seems my time travelling has given me two things. Firstly the time and perspective to work out what it is I am good at and what my true passions are. Secondly travelling seems to have given me the opportunities and experiences to learn new skills which I am now able to use and integrate into my now well developed passions.

As I brought in the new year, perched on an old stone bridge with the ice cold water running off the French Alps flowing below me, I realised it wasn’t the next destination I craved. Instead I craved a place to call home, I craved my friends and a life lived more purposefully than the selfish lifestyle of a traveller. And if I thought about having to deal with one more guest I feared I may flip out beyond the point of no return!

I realised I couldn’t continue along this lonely travellers path anymore. I had neither the energy nor desire to find a new adventure in which I would find myself surrounded by new people and a new place to explore and get to know. So with that said I went about and set myself New Year resolutions in the hope of curbing my loneliness and somewhere I could call home for as long as I desired.

The lure of normality and a place to call home won over in my mind which had been hardwired with the travellers’ mentality for the past 2 years. As the search for a normal life begun to control my thoughts I realised it was the small things about ‘normal life’ that I missed and had begun to crave again. Being able to enjoy weekends of leisure, Sunday lay ins, reading the newspaper (and being able to understand it), the luxury of joining a gym, shopping at the local fresh produce market, cooking simple single meals, nights out with friends and coffee from the friendly local cafe!

As it was, life was weaving its web for me long before I arrived in my humble surroundings of the French Alps and realised these answers within me. An instant connection made with an individual along my travels made my destination known to me. What was left was to somehow find a life for me there...

Why do we travel....?

To travel!
To grow, to become more than what we are....

Because sometimes you have to go to the ends of the unknown to work out what makes you happy

Beyond These Skies....Part 9....Piecing together parts of the jigsaw

As a rule I have never let fear rule my life. I am not generally afraid and I perceive myself to be a strong capable woman. I have always believed that a coward dies over and over each day, yet a brave person only dies once. I have my Sicilian heritage to thank for teaching me that courage runs freely through my veins. So is it any wonder that with the inspiration I had drawn from my Nonno Antonio that I found myself immersed in the chaotic brilliance of life in the country of my forbearers.

Living in the heart of Italia, the word which sings to me every time I hear it, I discovered Italy’s stark beauty, witnessed its day to day life, unfathomable bureaucracies and mad drivers. I was able to revel in and embrace its culture and richness of history. Able to marvel and wonder at the Italians who enjoy life so fully. Their simple lives blending beautifully in with the simplicity of the landscape around them. I can now begin to fully understand and piece together my heritage with my very own eyes.

Beyond These Skies....Part8....Voyages of different kinds

I am constantly amazed at how the world has changed so much in the last 50 years to create a world which air travel and distances mean nothing anymore? To me, the world has always seemed an accessible place in which I viewed as a wonderland of travel destinations for me to explore with never as so much as a thought that I would have to leave my homeland never to return or see it again.

Travelling by water as my Nonno Antonio, Nonna Maria, Zio Joe and Mother did, you get a sense of time, space and the enormity of the voyage in which you have just taken. But by plane, once you are seated in your seat you are enclosed in a sterilised neutral environment in which time does not exist and the space around you becomes a tunnel in which to transport you from one country to another without understanding the distances travelled.

Without even knowing it, I found myself holding my breath. On the other side that plane flight was the place I had heard about my entire life. From the time I was able to understand the water lapping on my homelands shores also met other shores in distant places, I dreamt that I would one day be a part of the place which my parents and grandparents talked about and told me many stories of. Its chaotic brilliance instilled in me through tails of past lives lived in its streets and life in its simplest forms. I dreamt of its’ piazza’s, rolling hills, olive groves and pasta! From as young as I could remember I had been fed other peoples experiences, thoughts and views about Italia, but finally I was going to see it for myself.