And so the adventure begins!!

Well after a year in the making it has finally come down to a week of lasts.... The last night in Australia for a while, the last time I see my family and friends for a while, the last time i can be completly selfish and not have to consider a partner for....well...ever! Meaning watching what you want to watch on tv, being able to just go to a friends after work and not having to let anyone know, making plans with friends without having to consider what your partner might have planned....(wow, thats scary!). However, it will be followed up with a week of firsts! The first time I will live with a boy, the first time I will work in another country, the first time I will be a true adult and 'leave the nest'. 

One of my friends asked me at my going away party if it had 'hit' me yet. At the time it hadn't, as I was too occupied with having a laugh and a drink with friends. It only hit me the next morning when I was listening to good old Bryon Adam's song "I will be right here waiting for you". My eyes filled with water as I started to imagine my Mum and Dad singing that about me.... Which then made me giggle a little bit as the mental image was quite hilarious! 

It's only those brief times when im on my own that I let myself 'go there' and think about how hard something will be. I don't know if that's a good or bad thing, but now days I tend to push away the negatives and concentrate on the positives. Some of my friends and family call me strong because I think this way, others might call this nieeve. All I know is that battling anorexia and bulemia for 4 years when I was 16 and beating it was the hardest thing that I have ever done, so now nothing ever feels hard in comparison to that and after being numb for those 4 years and hating the world and myself I am just so happy to feel all the emotions life gives me, including that shitting yourself fear, butterflies in your stomach excitement, bitting your fingernails nervousness and the rush of adrenaline of the thought of endless possibilities.  

Don't get me wrong, I am going to miss my family and friends so much and knowing me reality will hit me in 6 months and I will be a blubbering mess. I can picture it now, panda eyes, tears down my face and a snotty nose in the fetal position. Poor Dean won't know what to do except to back away slowly and not make any sudden movements. However, I am kind of looking forward to that too, coz it means I'm living my life to the fullest and once I pick myself up and dust myself off I will be stronger because of it. Haha, I can imagine this post is going to bite me in the arse when I do get to that point. Dean will look it up and point out this part and be like "look, you said you were looking forward to this part, why are you crying?!"

I won't go through all the goodbyes, but I will say this; feeling the amount of love I felt from all my family and friends when I left is what made it easier for me, which I'm sure any of them reading this would be like "that's the opposite of what we were trying to do!". However, it was all their words of encouragement, them 100% believing in me, them never making me feel bad for leaving and them being so proud that I was following my dreams that I knew I was 110% doing the right thing. Plus, Dean and I have been together for one and a half years, so its been a long time coming and I just wanted to go and start my life with my best friend. 

In saying all that, it didn't stop me from being a blubbering mess at the airport when my sis and I said our goodbyes.... I have a love/hate relationship with Melbourne airport; I absolutly hate the international departure gate, but I absolutly love the international arrival gate! 

With that I was off to start a new life in England with my boyfriend....who would have known that going to Thailand in 2010 would have brought me to this point..... 

A pandora bracelet I got from my family and friends

A DVD one of my best friends, JH, lent me before I left - do you think she is trying to say something? 

Just a normal everyday girl who decided to take a leap into the unknown

Hi Everyone, 

Have you ever thought about totally changing your life? About just packing up everything and starting fresh? 

My name is Beth, I am an everyday girl of 26 years from a regular town on the Mornington Peninsula in Victoria Australia and I have done just that, and I'm not going to lie, I'm scared shitless! 

Only a week ago I had a job I had been in for over a year, I lived with my parents with one of my best friends, Amy, I spent a lot of time with my family and friends and I enjoyed the in and outs of everyday life. Now I am sitting in the lounge room of an English house which they call a bungalow, in Essex England, with people that may have the same words as us, but speak a totally different language, with nothing but my suitcases, my iPad, my new SLR camera that i bought from the airport (i love it!), my dreams and ........my English boyfriend, Dean, who just left for work. 

This blog will be a mix of how I managed to get here and how I cope with missing my old life, friends and family to how i go coping with a new country, new friends, new family, new job, moving in with a boy for the first time and basically starting a new life, and I guess, a new beth! 

I am not going to fluff any of this up, I want to give you a real view into not just the good times, but the bad times too. I will be as raw as possible with my feelings and how I go about coping with things....and NOT coping with things. All I ask from you is to PLEASE excuse with grammar and spelling! Everyone that knows me, which you will to in time, knows that this area is not my forte and I really don't like it when people pull me up on it. Why let spelling and grammar errors get in the way of a good story I say! If you know what I mean please be kind and just go with it ;P 

You may wonder why i decided to write this blog and why I want to be so raw.... and the answers are both deep and yet some boring and selfish. boring and selfish first, so by the end of the paragraph you will still like me. Firstly, I promised all my friends and family i would keep in contact with them, and by doing a blog it means that i only have to tell the story once. I'm sure you can relate to this, for example when you have just come back from holidays and everyone asks "how was it?". the first time you tell someone you go into great detail and length, but by the 10th person you just answer "it was good". The 2nd reason is that this blog will act like a diary for me, so when I am old and grey sitting at a nursing home I can read back on my adventures and remind myself of everything I have done, and because I will be senile I will forget what I read and so can read it over and over and it won't get old! Thirdly, I what to show people that everyone goes through moments in their life that are scary, hard and tough, but by pushing through those moments you can have those other moments in life that are rewarding, amazing and make you think "life is pretty fucking amazing!".   

I wont lie, I'm excited, yet a little nervous, to invite you into my new world and allowing you to get to know me by telling you about my old one, but here it goes........ 

Oh my god, it just hit me again....... I'm living in England!!! :-O