How it all started

How it all started

1. A few year back, my wife and I sat one evening to see a TV show hosted by Alon Gal (coacher). In that show, he helped a family which immigrated from Australia to Israel. During the show, they displayed photos of their home in Australia. At that moment, the both of us were something like "wtf???". It looked so peaceful, so ... (sunny, lovely, name it whatever you want).
2. At that time I was working or IBM in room 512. My roommate at that time was my friend Dan. He used to talk a lot about a trip he took to Australia, about family. Everytime he talked, I imagined it. A country where you don't have to fight all the time. Where you can believe people's word. I wanted to try an live in a place like this. One of the examples he gave was when he visited to a small town, and he saw a table with oranges placed on top of it, and a small bax with money in it. There was a note on the table - something like "#$ per orange - pay and take". What amazed him was the fact that people actually paid and took the oranges. In Israel - someone would have taken the money, the oranges, probably the box as well. And in most places the table. And the city would have fined you for setting up a shop without a permit.
3. So ... now we go back to 2.5 years ago. The winter of 2014-2015. One evening we sat with a very good friends of us. I talked about the need to leave the infinite race of "work work work work work" all the time. I suggested that we all take 6 months leave without payment from work, hire vehicles and drive all over Australia. Then our friend said very casually - "why waste the time? why not just immigrate?". And that was that. At that point I decided I want something else. It took me 3 weeks of anxiety to start the process. I contacted a migration agent (which I highly recommend) and paid for the preliminary check. After that I stopped the process completely. My anxiety overrun me.
4. I registered to the IELTS exam with much fear. I took it together with our friends. And failed to achieve the required score (only 0.5 a point ...)
5. So ... I registered myself to the PTE exam. and I passed. That when I really began to be afraid. Am I really going forward with this???
6. Every document I've sent to the migration agent, every time I went to a notary here in Israel, it felt like I overcame an obstacle. It felt like breaking a chain, one piece at the time. A chain which was holding me down my entire life. It took me almost 2 years from the moment I started this process, till the time we finally got the Visa. My wife and I kept saying to ourselves - "anyone of us can say 'no' at any moment and we will pull the plug on this". And we just kept on going.
7. So here we are - preparing for our trip to Australia (12/8 till 5/9). A trip of a lifetime which will help to prepare to the change of a lifetime. Its exciting, scary and basically ... I can't wait :)