Who are we and why the flying Monkey

Alma is Israeli, I am Colombian, we both met in Toronto and now are living in Hong Kong. Alma is doing a post doctorate in Art History and I used to work for a bank.

Why Flying Monkey..well, many years ago while I was living in Costa Rica, monkeys were part of my daily life, their freedom, speed and apparently (from our human perspective) fun life made me always think of flying monkeys whenever a change was approaching to my life.

8 months ago Alma got an offer to continue her research in Asia, a unique opportunity and one that pushed us to change our comfortable and stable life in Toronto. We decided to leave our comfortable and brand new two bedroom apartment, our dog who now has the best life even in Tel Aviv, my job et etc etc.

Was it an easy decision, not at all, specially for me. After 6 years of working with a company that had been in many ways very generous and a positive influence  in my profesional  life , a team that truly challenged me and with whom I developed strong friendships , to say  bye to them was not easy.

I talked to a number of people, some told me it was the biggest mistake in my life, how could you leave, you have a promising career, look at the economy, to have a job now is a bless..others were, go, dont think about it, there is only one life, jobs, there will be many, opportunities like that...few...

I call it my ping pong period..every morning i woke up thinking..what am i doing..leaving all this..then a few hours later..of course i am doing the right thing..finally one day my dad told me something that made  me achieve the balance I needed for my decision.

Sebastian, tu no te acordaras de los 5,10,20 anios que trabajes para una compania, te acordaras del anio que viviste en Hong Kong con Alma.

And that was it, I realized and decided  that my life, now linked to Alma's was going to be an universe  of memories and that we had been given the chance to start building them in a place we never thought would be part of that universe; Asia.

And so, with the chance came the decision, lets leave the known for the unknown, lets do what we want to do, lets not wait for when we have moneyor our careers are fluorishing .lets just grab the moment and go.

One thing that is important to know if that we both in a way come from traveling families. My parents traveled for many years and always pushed us to explore and see the world, after my mom's third cancer (she is 100% ok now)  I realized that really, there is only one life and that it can be shorter than you can expect.  So in my short life I have lived in 7 countries, between working, studying etc. 

Alma so far has lived in 4 countries. So in a way we are used to move.

Once the decision was taken, the planning part followed. For the ones who know me..well..I am a planner, not the type of planner who wants to know where and how I am going to get to a place..really, in that part I am terrible...I am a long term  planner...how are we going to live once we come back? that is my specialty if you can call it this way.  So it took me 8 months to organize things, save money, rent the apartment,  define objectives for the trip and simply..be ready for a return.

So after all that, Alma Left last september and I left on March 31,2012.

This blog is to tell our family and friends about our trips and experiences. 

Sometimes I will write in spanish, others Alma will write in Hebrew.

The Monkey is flying now.