A Continent and an Ocean:
That’s what separates where we’re from. To get from England to California, first you have to cross the Atlantic – great grey-blue ocean that for millennia was simply seen as the end of the world. Once you’ve done that, you have to cross America: from the Gulf Stream Waters to the redwood forests, past golden valleys and diamond deserts, as Woody Guthrie once described it.
It’s a really, really long way.
By plane it takes 11 hours. If you wanted to do it any other way, you’re looking at weeks. The time difference itself is 8 hours. As you might guess, dealing with that comes with complications. The Welcome Stamp helped us to overcome at least some of them…
Everyday differences:
It’s hard to think about where to begin with the difficulties that arise when being from different countries.
Sure, we both speak English – but, still, a lot gets lost in translation. In the UK, alright is a greeting, similar to “Hello, how are you?” with which you don’t need to answer, or you just say “alright” in return. In American English, it means ‘something is wrong. Are you okay?’. You can probably imagine how that might lead to some difficult moments.
The rules are different, too – what is acceptable or polite in one country often isn’t in the other. In the UK, swearing just isn’t a big deal like it is for Americans. I try not to swear around Lindsey’s family, but I still fuck it up (sorry Americans).
It’s not just the way we speak and what’s considered polite either, the way we view the world is deeply shaped by our cultures: the California, golden-state, hippy vibes with interminable cheeriness isn’t just a stereotype. And I love tea and complaining about the weather.
We’re just different in lots of ways.
These things all bring their own challenges, but an international relationship is also an opportunity for learning and discovery. If it hadn’t been for Lindsey I wouldn’t have realised how good peanut butter and jam on toast is ( for all you skeptics, try it), and she wouldn’t know the pleasures of a nice warm ale or a nice cup of tea. Real tea (the black stuff with milk in), not iced tea.
Crossing oceans:
These things can make being together tricky, but being from different countries is what makes things hard. Getting into the US and the UK is difficult. Unless you’re married (or plan to get married), your only real option is a work visa, and they’re not easy to come by. Even if you are married (as we now are), it’s still not easy.
But, as with our differences, these difficulties can also be opportunities. Without them, there’s no way I’d have ended up living in the tropical paradise of Barbados. Though I write this as a tropical storm blows through and it doesn’t feel much like paradise…
From London to Barbados, via California (in a pandemic):
Me and Lindsey met living in London. Lindsey’s job was on a fixed term contract, and when it ended she didn’t have another work visa waiting for her. This meant that we needed to figure out how we’d be together early on.
Once we had everything figured out, the world created a problem for us: COVID. Does Lindsey stay in the UK on a tourist visa or go home? Well, in the end we were locked down in the UK, Lindsey on a tourist visa and me working remotely at home. After a few months, Lindsey’s tourist visa ran out and the government asked if she would kindly leave the country.
So, from July 2020, in the middle of a pandemic, I was living in the UK and my fiancée was in California. It was a shitty situation. Travelling to see each other was almost impossible, so we needed a plan, a way out, an escape. At that point, we couldn’t even point to Barbados on a map, much less consider it as an option to move to.
Enter the Welcome Stamp:
A few weeks after Lindsey had left for California, I was out for a hike with some friends. It was August and, predictably, raining. I was discussing our situation when one of them said ‘why don’t you go to Barbados?’ I didn’t really have an answer because it seemed like a stupid fucking question. Move to a remote island. In the middle of a pandemic. Sure, that sounds logical.
‘They have a remote work visa, you could both apply for it and go live there’, my friend said
‘Is that, like, a real thing?’ I asked.
‘Yeah, have a look into it. Could be an option.’
Me and my friend didn’t discuss it much more, but when I got home I did some research. It seemed too good to be true. The Barbados Welcome Stamp was (and still is) a 12-month remote work visa, with pretty limited restrictions on it: you have to work remotely (which everybody in the UK was), and you need to be able to support yourself financially.
That was more or less it. It seemed too good to be true. It somehow didn’t feel like something we could actually do…. Still, we wanted to be together.
Moving to Barbados on the Welcome Stamp:
Barbados went from being a bit of a joke idea to our definite plan in the space of about 3 weeks. It was the only way that either of us could see out of long distance. As England entered another lockdown, and America registered record cases of COVID, Barbados sat at the bottom of the North Atlantic with almost zero covid cases.
It was, to boot, a tropical island with blue skies, sandy beaches and a climate that resembles an endless summer.
We were both working remotely anyway, so we asked our jobs if we could go. It seemed a no brainer for them to let us, especially as the Welcome Stamp meant there were no tax implications for us or our employers. They both said no. We asked why. They were vague and mentioned tax and HR policy. We both threatened to quit and, lo, we were free to leave for Barbados and to work remotely. The fact we wouldn’t have been able to afford to live without our jobs meant that, in reality, it was unlikely we would have followed through on our threats…
In December, we both flew out, and here we still are. Living in the endless summer of Barbados. The difficulties that forced us apart, pushed us to find a solution.
Welcome Stamp nomads?
To me, the idea of moving to a new place every few weeks or months isn’t very appealing. I like to get to know somewhere, to get a feel for the people and the culture. I enjoy settling into a place, making friends and getting to know my neighbours. I enjoy being able to know the good spots for a particular type of food or where the best beers are. I don’t just want to just touch upon a place, I want to be a part of it.
That doesn’t mean I don’t like holidays, it just means I don’t want to live on holiday.
I knew when we came to Barbados that we weren’t planning to hop about because we couldn’t – COVID had made sure of that. We were forced to not just be nomads, but to be expats. I’ve met expats on previous travels, in Southeast Asia, and in parts of Europe, they seemed to live a nice balance between travel and normal life. Not constantly on the move, but not necessarily stuck somewhere either.
#ExpatLife?
“Expat: a person who lives outside their native country.”
So that’s how we’ve ended up living a life that I wouldn’t describe as nomadic, but as a slow-motion, shifting expatriate life. The thing is, for at least one of us, wherever we are, we’ll always be expats. Being from different countries us forced us to be expats, now we’re embracing it – moving with life, work and everything else as it comes.
Barbados has been our first stop, keep an eye out to see where’s next!
