Some facts…

Ivon is a mum of two children, who was born in Colombia.

She works as a drilling engineer and has moved countries four times so far.

Her last move was a couple of weeks ago and I just made it to talk to her about her life before she left Norway.

I got to know Ivon about two years ago, when she invited my son to her son’s birthday party. Somehow my son was really good friends with all the Spanish speaking football boys in his year. I remember feeling a bit funny in between of all the Spanish speaking parents and only my son and another boy not being or speaking Spanish at all!

Colombia

Ivon spent her childhood and youth in Colombia, but already in school she started to have the desire to move out of her country one day.

As she was good in maths, later in life she wanted to be an engineer and ended up studying petroleum engineering, what she thought was very different to other subjects and therefore interesting.

In 2005, Ivon started to work in the oil and gas industry in Colombia, but because of the financial crisis, she was not able to find a position with an operator company. After working for two years, Ivon had saved up some money and she began to think properly about leaving her country.

Ivon always knew, that Colombia, due to the political situation, would not be able to offer her the life she wanted! She wanted to get to know new cultures and places and she wanted a secure life. A lot of her friends felt alike and also left Colombia sooner or later.

Patagonia

Ivon was very young and rather nervous, when she decided to move to Argentina, where she would be able to do her Master in Oil and Gas. Even losing her voice from being anxious could not change her plan to move. She would stay a couple of years and would then maybe return to Colombia after that.

Soon after arriving, Ivon was offered a studying spot in Patagonia, where she would be able to study and start as a “new professional” with an operator company all at the same time!

As I had never heard about Patagonia before, Ivon described it to me in a very rough way: the city of Comodoro, where she lived, was awful and quite remote and the weather was much worse than in Norway, apparently always and every day there is a strong wind in Patagonia.

Just about the surroundings a young woman would wish for with her first move! Not.

Ivon made the best of it though. At least the culture in Argentina was close to that of Colombia! The people in Argentina were very open-minded and soon she found a nice group of friends who supported each other.

The first three months she received a training and after that, she was working in the company for about two and a half years.

Ivon tried to travel and enjoy Argentina, with the nearest touristic city being five hours away, but in the end she got used to living so remotely.

In Patagonia, Ivon also got to know her future husband, who was working as an expat in the same company! When it was time for him to head back to Spain after a year of them both knowing each other, Ivon, who had a local contract, persuaded HR to find some job for her in Spain too!

In the end of 2010, after being apart for a year, Ivon was finally offered a drilling position in Madrid and she could not wait to being closer to her boyfriend again!

Madrid

Ivon was very excited to move to Spain! The company helped her with the move and she was speaking the language of her new destination already, so she was really looking forward to that new life in Europe!

It turned out to be pretty perfect! Ivon and her boyfriend were working in the same company and also lived together and very soon she got pregnant. She continued to work until her maternity leave started.

When Ivon’s first child was only little, it was the first time she and her boyfriend went back to Colombia to see her family after a long while. It did not make Ivon to want to move back though!

Whilst Ivon was living in Madrid, they traveled a lot around Spain, as she was excited to learn more about the country. They were planning their holidays along with their work schedules and the schedule of their child’s nursery, what always meant a lot of logistics! They quickly learned their tricks around it and it was not long when Ivon got pregnant again! After their second child was born, Ivon had another tiny break from work for 7 months.

As Ivon was working in a drilling position again, it meant that she had to travel sometimes for a week to the UK, Russia or other countries. Then her brave boyfriend would juggle work, life and two small children all alone!!!

At some point, Ivon had a Norwegian boss and he then offered her a position in Norway in 2017! As they had a position for her boyfriend too, after seven years in Madrid, the whole family was ready for a new beginning in Stavanger!

You might have noticed that I keep writing about Ivon’s “boyfriend”. Of course, he was already much more than “just” a boyfriend, but Ivon’s family life was so busy, that they never managed to get married! So shortly before their move to Stavanger, they got married in Madrid in May 2017!

Stavanger

Ivon had two business trips to Stavanger before they moved in summer 2017, so she knew that it was a beautiful safe place where they were moving to and hence she was not anxious at all. She was looking forward to experience a new country with her family.

Yet again, also with this move, Ivon and her family had the company support, so there was a lot taken care of! They as well had received a lot of advice from friends about houses, cars and schools, so making decisions about where to live and which school to choose was much easier!

As her children did not speak a word of English or Norwegian, they had quite a rough start in nursery and school. Thankfully the international schools have it, that normally there will be other children to speak your mother tongue too and so her children soon found Spanish speaking friends who would help and translate for them and would make them feel welcome.

They were enjoying life in Stavanger, exploring its beautiful surroundings and also the rest of the country! Sure, their first summer was rather rainy, but they were still happy to see and experience new surroundings!

In 2019, her company offered her a job on the oil rig, nothing Ivon would have ever even thought of doing!

As it was hard for her as a woman and furthermore as a mother in that business anyway and definitely always harder to get a promotion than her colleagues, she finally overcome her fear and decided to go offshore.

Not only did that mean night shifts in an office on the rig, helicopter flights back and forth and being in the middle of the sea the whole time. It also meant being away from her children every four weeks for two weeks for a period of a whole year!!

Thankfully, Ivon had the support from her husband who once again would manage his job and his both children’s lifes at once alone!

Already the preparation course for going offshore was quite stressful for Ivon! As you have to train for several emergencies, she had to overcome a lot of fears in that course already and still had to work on a lot more with starting on the rig!

When she finally went out to the platform with the helicopter for the first time, she had a lot of respect for her new job. She went further than out of her comfort zone and actually she even now is not sure how she managed it all.

Ivon was feeling alone on the rig at times, as it is a hard job to be in the middle of nowhere, and most of her colleagues were men. It did not help that the official language offshore was Norwegian!

Sometimes also the feeling of being a bad mother overcame Ivon, as normally you do not leave your young children alone (with your husband) for two weeks at a time…but on the other hand her children gave her the strength to go through with it, as especially her older child was showing her a lot, how proud he was of his mum overcoming all of her fears and accepting the challenges!

After nine rotations her job on the rig was done and she is still happy and proud of herself that she was brave enough to ignore her nerves and go for it!! Hopefully now, she will be taken in consideration for a broader range of positions in her career.

Their contracts had been for two years initially, but they had received an extension for another year. They knew, that in summer 2020, they definitely had to go back to Spain and with the COVID-19, other Spanish co-workers, who got their friends now, are leaving earlier that they wanted to, together with them back to Madrid as well…

Madrid

Ivon just started to work in her new position in Madrid, whilst her children are enjoying their time with the grandparents as school in Spain starts a bit later.

For now, Ivon and her husband hope to be able to stay in the office for a while.

The children will continue their education in an international school, as Ivon and her husband are not sure, for how long they will stay in Madrid. As they really enjoy expat life and discovering new places, they are keen to move again and see more of the world! They do miss Norway, with its nature and its quietness at the moment though.

Conclusion

Although Ivon is so far away from her family for a lot of years now, they do support her and are happy to see her happy! At least they are talking on the phone every day! Very rarely families have so much contact, even when they life close!

Ivon is very proud of her children, that they were able to learn English so quickly! She is happy about the opportunity for them to speak a different language now and she is happy that they got braver and more open-minded. Her hope is that it will teach them for the future, that they do not have to be afraid of changes, but are able to cope and adjust to whatever will come!

She states, that expat live is definitely not for everyone. It is lovely to get to see new places and maybe learn a new language, but it is always hard to say goodbye or see friends around you leave. To move every couple of years and start completely new, to get to know a new culture and new people, that is not always easy! You definitely have to find your group of people in every new destination, to have some support and a nearby “family”.

Ivon seems to be made for expat life though! As she knows that she has only a given amount of time in every country, she makes sure to make the most of it and see whatever interesting places the given country has to offer! Unlike her family and friends in Colombia, who always stay in the same place and do not even think about travelling, Ivon makes plans for nearly every weekend and holidays to experience all of the given possibilities!

This is also the biggest difference between her and her family and “old” friends. She is definitely not the same person anymore as she was before and with every new country she lives in, she changes again. She thinks it would be hard to live a “normal” live again and is not even sure, if that is possible after all!

Having said, that Ivon is perfect for expat life, I was astound when she told me, that she is a rather nervous and frightened person! Not the type of person I would send off to live an expat life! She has a trick though and tells herself, when others did a certain thing, she will be able to do it too! She never accepts the limits her fears are trying to set her and always tries to accept the risk! In the end, the appetite for seeing the world is stronger than all of her worries!

Apart from all the expat buzz, it is hard for Ivon to find a good balance. On the one hand, she wants to succeed in her career, but on the other hand, she wants to spend as much time with her children as possible. It never seems good enough either way, but I suppose, as with everything, there is no 100% perfect!