I would do it all over again

I've been overwhelmed by my move - as you could probably tell from my long, long hiatus of 1 month and 1 week.

At first I thought it'll be easy. Just figure out what needs to be done, do them, and bim bam boom! I move!

But it's not as easy as it looked. For one, the bureaucracy is hard to manoeuvre. And there are additional steps for when I have moved (expected). And secondly, it's a lot of mental and emotional work.

I know I have it a lot easier than most people. I was excited! This was a choice that I made. A conscious decision. I'm not escaping war or political persecution. I'm not a child with no say as to where my parents decided to move the family. I chose this. I was going to grow up, leave my parents' home and be a fully functioning adult as society dictated for me to be.

Although, to be fair, it is a romantic situation and we can argue that I do have a choice in the man I chose to marry. But I was not letting the love of my life slip through my fingers just because we didn't share a postal code!

All's fair in love and war, they say.

I think I wasn't prepared for the physical challenges (the cold) and the mental challenges that came along.

I've had to switch from being able to figuring things out to having to rely on another person to do the talking and understanding from me. It's frustrating - having to rely on a language that you haven't really mastered to do the most basic tasks like opening a bank account.

Like I've said, I'm lucky. I have the privilege of a legal live-in partner whom I have the honour of calling my husband. He has been doing such an incredible job running around town with me to get shit done. (Look, is it expected of him to do all of this? Of course. Will I still praise and thank him? Absolutely.)

But I'm still getting used to things. New routines, new language, new culture, new faces and new places. It's jarring to realise that a lot of what you knew in life had to be unlearned and relearned, all because you moved across the world. Who would have thought that?

All that being said, I do enjoy being here. I get to try new things! Like cooking on an electric stove instead of a regular gas stove. I've learned to find my own footing in terms of what I enjoy cooking and eating. I've had a chance to reflect on my eating habits and my lack of movement (the fact that my garmin is going insane with expecting me to walk 13,000 steps a day just because I was averaging 25,000 steps per day in one weekend).

I finished reading City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert which, because of the move, took me almost a month to read. I wept a little at the end. And I can't wait to weep even more when I sharpen my command of the French language because one of the first few things I could do was sign up for a public library membership - to which my sister said, "who are you, Mathilda? Are you going to bring a wagon with you to the library?"

I might do just that.

I am also enjoying getting to know my husband as a person whom I live with. He's mostly surprising, like when he asked "Are you a pontianak?" when my hair flew around in the wind. A PONTIANAK! Where did he even learn that? (A game, apparently. Don't ask me which one)

It's funny how life goes. I learned French because of Stromae, but I moved to France not for the pastries or Stromae or butter of Brittany or the gentleman playing his accordion with a tuxedo cat on the steps of Montmartre. But for a MAN.

And I would do it all over again!