Adventure to Antigua
Before Antigua
Devante and I have always loved traveling the world.
I have always loved traveling and being immersed in different cultures. The first time I flew out of the country was when I was fifteen. I went on a mission trip to Haiti and fell in love with being fully immersed in a completely new and different culture. It was wonderful getting to love on people from a different background than me. When I was sixteen, I traveled to Europe to teach english for two weeks, and I never wanted to leave. When I was seventeen, I moved to Thailand for a gap year between high school and college. When I left Thailand, I knew that after college I wanted to move overseas and never look back.
Before I met Dev, he traveled a lot because of soccer. He traveled all around North America and Europe, but he always had a heart for Antigua; his family is from the Caribbean. On our third date, he told me that he wanted to move to Antigua by the time he was 30. (Little did I know that it would be happening so soon!)
For our honeymoon, we traveled to the Bahamas and enjoyed a week of motorcycling around the islands and visiting places away from the tourist areas. After we got married, Devante and I hopped from city to city, moving all over the US + Canada, but there was always something missing. We both truly missed the lifestyle and culture of living overseas. Because Dev was so passionate about Antigua, I wanted to see the country for myself. So, for our babymoon (yes, we had a babymoon and it was awesome!) we traveled to Antigua. After seeing the beautiful beaches and culture, Antigua started to feel like home. We wanted to wait until after Aimery was born, and he was older, before planning our move overseas (you can read Aimery's birth story here).
Social Media Became my Full-Time Job
I always thought that it would be a few years before moving to Antigua. After all, Aimery is only 10 months old! But as my Instagram and blog kept growing, there became less of a reason for us to stay in Toronto. There was no point staying somewhere were we both were not truly happy. After all, I'm now working full-time from my phone, why shouldn't I be doing in it on a beautiful beach in Antigua? I recently started getting really passionate about content creation, so why not move to a country with 365 beaches, a unique Caribbean culture, and a place to stay practically for free!?
Dev is finishing up his master's degree and will graduate in July with a masters degree in Sport and Exercise Psychology. He is also planning on beginning an online doctorate of Clinical Psychology in January (which takes 3 and a half years to complete). As we kept talking about what our next steps were as a family, it seemed as though there was this 3-4 year gap where we could do as we pleased and go anywhere we wanted. This is the main reason that made us decide to take advantage of the next couple of years. It's pretty much now or never to travel so much, and so easily, as a family. Four years from now Aimery will be getting ready for kindergarten, and we will probably have another baby (no, I'm not pregnant!... Not yet anyways).
Our Move
Let me just say this, it wasn't easy. It's not easy moving away from your support system of family + friends to move to a different country and jump head first into a different culture. It's also not easy hearing people that we love disapproving of our lifestyle and not agreeing with our decision to move so far away. Devante and I have never made it seem like we are the type to live in a home with a white picket fence and work 9-5 everyday. We absolutely love the constant moving and the constant traveling. We got married young so that we could see the world TOGETHER, and now we are still traveling so Aimery can have the opportunity to eat coconuts and go to the beautiful beaches of Antigua everyday. That sounds like the best childhood to me.
Where are we Now?
Right now we are staying with Devante's grandmother in North Antigua (St. John's). She has been so sweet to allow us to stay with her for the next month until we go visit Barbados. We are staying in Barbados for two weeks in July. Devante is getting his Caribbean coaching license to have the opportunity to work with National soccer teams in the area. I will be working with companies while I'm there creating social media content and helping them with marketing campaigns. Once we return to Antigua, we aren't fully sure where we are going to live on the island quite yet. But thankfully we have some time before we need to handle all of those details. :)
Maybe one day we'll settle down. Probably not though. There's just too much world to see.