Although I love my family and Scotland.  I also have mixed feelings and sometimes I feel like I'm miles away from everything I used to love... Everything I still love!

I haven't seen my parents, my family and many of my friends for the last 7 years.  Sound crazy isn't it? 7 long years !!! I have been unable to do it for many different reasons.

I keep connected with them thanks to the glorious social network and  I can see their children grow from far away.

But for a long time, I  have been suffering from a kind of soul sickness.  I can't explain the feeling but it was a fizzy sensation in my chest and throat, it upset me and make me feel sad... people call this depression. 

Living indoors and the long cold dark winter here doesn't help so making videos to share the joy of papercraft on my Youtube channel  + my interaction with many of you on the social network have to help me to fill in the gap and to avoid feeling alone... although I'm not alone at all!

It is a weird thing!! Due to motherhood, I don't go out very often. I really like to spend time with my children and hubby so I have deprived myself of a more active social life and because I have been "depressed" I really don't fancy to go out or even to dress up to go out.

My friends here resents that but they don't know what the heck is going on.

So my husband and children are everything to me but I miss like crazy all those people important in my life. Especially my mum.

My hours of paper crafting have filled that part of me that needed to be filled with nice things. Papercraft is a beautiful hobby.

I'm more organized and settled now but the moving country has been a CRAZY  life changing event. I totally changed my lifestyle. 

I said to my hubby: I'm a tropical fish swimming in frozen waters...  the culture here is so different!  not better, not bad.. just different. Only those who experienced the cultural barrier will understand what  I mean.

Latin people tend to smile even in the most difficult circumstances so that also makes me look a bit crazy and insensible in front of mt British friends.

Something that really adds a lot of stress to the whole situation is the "Spouse Visa process". 

In my case is a 5 years process, very very expensive, complicated and in my opinion discriminatory. 

Although we meet every single requirement to get the visa and my husband is pure British blood the process to get my  Visa and to claim my eldest daughter and my British nationality is taking longer than expected.

The Home Office is holding my passport for the last  16 months while "checking on my application".

We applied for Indefinite Leave to Remain in April 2018.  The process should take a maximum of 6 months. We have been working on it tho but nothing seems to be effective. Not even with the help of our local MP...  It seems all we can do is to wait!!!

So this is one of the reasons because  I have been unable to assist my mom during very difficult times.  It is driving me crazy!

This  Visa limbo also generates a lot of issues to change a job or to study. Although we have been living here for longer than requested to get the nationality, under my Visa type,  we are still considered foreigners.  We paid for everything as foreigners.

Oh well !!! Making the decision to come and live here wasn't something I took lightly .

I meet my husband in 2005 when I was studying in the Sorbonne Universite in  Paris, France.

We married  7 years after.  We call it 7 years of love in the distance.  We tried everything to make a normal love- life with people from our own countries but we just couldn't.

We kept in touch all the time - we had long chats very often...Thanks to the glorious Internet!

So after thinking a lot and considering many facts, I said yes when he proposed to me when I came to Scotland for a holiday.

I found love far away from home and we thought that Scotland is a safer place to raise a family so I  give away everything I had, I sold my brand new card only 6 months old for pennies, dropped a job with 16 salary per a year as I had 4 double extra juice cash bonus and I moved here. Done!

I don't regret it tho. I couldn't find a better man to share the rest of my days and I also found in my little papercraft corner a job related to my career.  Who will know? This also has made my days happier.

That's all for today...

Thanks for stopping by!

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Bibi

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