As I write this I sit on a big green cooler in a huge empty room that echoes like an cave. The walls are bare, the scenic paintings of Trinidad have been taken down, carefully bubble wrapped and boxed up for shipping, and last night a friendly family from Ireland came and disassembled our brand new IKEA sofas and took them home with them. One by one all our possessions have been sold and collected, and now all we have left is our bed. Yup, that’s right, we’re moving. To be more precise, we’re not just moving, we are leaving Dubai.

Seems a bit abrupt, considering we only just settled in, but it was a while in the making and, to be honest, a bit of a relief. Sometimes you have to make tough choices to follow a new opportunity, and although we have only been here for a few months, we are moving on to greener pastures (literally). I won’t get into the details, since it wasn’t an easy decision or an easy position to be in. But, as they say, life is what happens when you are busy making other plans, and we just have to trust that it will all work out for the best in our next move.

In my last post I said it takes at least six months to a year to fully settle in, so we have not even reached that point yet, so what can I say about Dubai? When we arrived in July it was the worst time of the year, with 45’C highs every day and 100% humidity and everyone hid inside. Now as we head into November it is finally cooling down, and it is lovely to be outside. We went to the beach a few days ago and watched a whole lot of families playing with their kids, trying to catch crabs, and I thought what a shame we will not be here at the best time of the year, when you can actually do a lot of activities. But overall, I am glad to be leaving, and though the moving process is always a big hassle and lots of stress, Dubai is not a place I’d like to spend the next five years of my life.

Moving is always a big choice, a leap of faith, a calculated risk, and it does not always work out for the best. I went to Turkey for six months and ended up never getting a work visa and then getting kicked out of the country, which was bad. But that led me to a job in Japan, which I loved, and where I met my husband, which was good. He then took me to Hong Kong where I got a lucrative job, and if I hadn’t done so I would never have been able to take a year off for travelling. But then again, if I hadn’t quit my job in Hong Kong, my husband never would have applied for a job in Dubai in the first place. So like I said, every choice you make has pros and cons, opportunities and losses, pains and gains, relief and regret. We will see where the next step takes us, but I can certainly say that deep down I am glad we don’t have to spend five years in the desert.

Here’s to hoping the next move is a good one!