Hello! I’m Henissi, and I am so glad to meet you!
Since you have stumbled across/taken the time to visit my blog let me tell you a bit more about me.
Here are the highlights:
- 30-something
- British
- Splitting my time between Valencia, Spain and London, UK
- Day job – “something corporate” that I do mainly from home
- Passions – “social-butterflying” (in life pre-Covid), travel, books, music, stationery (I just love the stuff!!), personal development
This blog is where I share my experience of planning, establishing and maintaining my dual-country lifestyle between the UK and Spain.
“So how did you end up living in London and Valencia?” I hear you ask.
The short(ish) version goes like this:
I’m a born and bred London girl but in 2016 I decided that since I was still single and “untethered” by children or a mortgage at the ripe old age of 34 I might as well take the plunge and do something adventurous and interesting with my life. I studied Spanish in high school but then never used it. I would have loved to have taken a gap year after university and gone to travel South America or something like that, but I never did and I forgot most of my Spanish. So, my first thought upon asking myself “What’s something you always wanted t do but never did?” was – take a career-break to spend 3-6 months in Spain to “become fluent” in Spanish! But as I thought about things more I realised that I could actually just move to Spain… as in really move to Spain. So that’s what I decided to do.
Of course things haven’t exactly worked out to be that simple (when do they ever?), but in a way they have turned out even more interesting.
I couldn’t just up an quit my job to move to Spain full time and my employer turned down my request for a transfer so I ended up living a kind of hybrid part-time expat life – or as I like to call it, my “dual country-lifestyle”.
I “moved” to Valencia in February 2017 by renting a room and frequently coming out for long-weekends and a few holidays. For a year and a bit I travelled between Valencia and London so I could be in London for work mid-week but make the most of my free time (and the better weather) in Valencia at weekends.
In 2018 I finally found a job in Spain and now I spend most of my time in Spain interspersed with periods in the UK as that’s still “home” too. I feel that I have 2 homes now… best of both worlds!
