Deep Connections in Temporary Circumstances: Noemi's Words for Wanderers

"It is okay to seek deep connections in temporary circumstances...Knowing that a friendship might end doesn't make it any less meaningful."

What does it take to survive and thrive abroad? In this Words for Wanderers series, expats and TCKs share their experience and advice. Today, Noemi shares her story of moving to the countryside, finding community, and trusting God in the unknown.

Please introduce yourself! Who are you, what do you do, and what’s one thing you’re loving in your life right now? 

Hola! I’m Noemi. I am a community physiotherapist and one of the things I am loving at the moment is where I live. It is a little annexe in Dartmoor National Park. Apart from two other houses, my neighbors are the sheep, cows and the famous Dartmoor ponies. 

Tell us about your experience living internationally. Where were you born? Where have you lived? And what brought you to where you are now?

I was born in Galicia, Spain. Before I turned 4 my parents moved our family to Valencia, on the opposite side of Spain, where I lived until I was 18. By that time we had moved houses 2 more times, to nearby towns. 

At 18 I moved to Argentina to study for six and a half years, visiting Spain once a year. Once I graduated I returned to Spain for a few months and then went to Mexico as a volunteer for 9 months. 

 After that I came to the UK. Initially the plan was only for 3 months, as I had been offered a scholarship to continue my studies in Loma Linda. Things didn’t work out with the scholarship in the end and I’ve been in the UK for nearly 12 years now.

You left London, where many expats seem to congregate, and moved to the wilds of Devon! What inspired your move? 

I spent 9 years in London and I loved it. I visited Cornwall a few years ago and it reminded me of Galicia; the scenery, the people and culture are very similar. I told God that I wanted to move there, but life in London was good and didn’t actively do anything towards moving until the pandemic hit. I worked through the lockdowns, so I didn’t experience being at home all the time as most people had to.

I was sharing a house with two other women, and one of them decided early during the first lockdown that Covid wasn’t real. I would come home after work and find her friends visiting. I felt a lot of stress because of that and started praying to God to help me get out of that situation. 

It was only after the second lockdown that I had a conversation with your brother and yourself. You were telling me about all the research you both had done about moving to Devon/Cornwall, despite not being certain if that was what you wanted to do. 

I told myself that if you were not sure, but still were doing the research, what was stopping me from doing my own? I was sure that I wanted to move to Cornwall, and I was desperate to move out of the place I was in. So I started praying and doing my own research for a job and a place, and in a matter of 3 months God had sorted out everything and I was out of London to start my Devon adventure.  

What’s something you enjoy about Devon or countryside culture? What has been a hard thing about it, and how are you working through that challenge?

Devon is beautiful, I live by the moors and the beach is not far either. I feel very blessed to be in the countryside after 9 years in London. Everything is slower, which took a few months to adapt to, but now I wouldn’t change it for the world.

My work-life balance has drastically gotten better and now I have the time to enjoy the places around me. It is very usual for me to end my day at the beach during the summer, which brings me unequalled joy. 

It was very hard to leave everyone behind and having to find my people again. All of a sudden I lost my community, and building that up again has taken a long time.

For the first year I couldn’t find a place to worship. There is a church nearby but it wasn’t the right fit for me, so I ended up joining a house church in St Austell, Cornwall, which is one hour and twenty minutes drive from my house at the best of times, but worth it. Not having a church community made me realize how difficult it was for me to make friends outside of church. I felt like I had lost part of my identity. I had to learn to be in my own company more, which was both hard and a great discovery.

What is it like to be a foreigner working in the UK? Did you experience any culture shock within your professional life, and if so, how did you manage that?

London is very multicultural; in all the places I worked there were other people that were not British too, so there wasn’t much of a shock.

Then Brexit happened and I moved to Devon, making me the only foreigner in my team.

People ask a lot more about the origin of my accent, not always with curiosity. I’ve had to tell a couple of patients that if they were not happy with me being foreign I could put them back on the waiting list and someone else would contact them, but thankfully neither of those situations escalated. 

How has living abroad/moving around impacted your spiritual journey?

It adds a higher degree of uncertainty to life in general. To this day I don’t really know the next time I will see my family in Spain, or how many more times I will spend time with my parents.

And for years it was the not knowing that was very difficult to manage, but I’ve learned that the Unknown is part of who God is, and sitting there is uncomfortable, but freeing. That I don’t know doesn’t mean that God doesn’t, and if I trust that He does know I can be happy even when facing the uncertainty of any circumstances. 

What is something you’ve learned about yourself through your travels/life abroad? 

My life is not like I expected it would be, or how others expect it should be.

In me, there are parts of all the places I have been, all the friends I have made, even if they are no longer part of my day to day.

There is richness in seeing your own culture in contrast with other cultures, not to compare or say which is better, but just to see how the differences can make us closer, on the basis that we are all the same -- humans wanting to belong. 

How would you encourage other expats and global nomads? Or, what advice would you give them?

Maybe this isn’t going to sound like advice, but I wish someone had told me this years ago:

It is okay to seek deep connections in temporary circumstances. You don’t need to limit the amount of friends you make, or the depth of those friendships just because you know that you will move back home or forward somewhere else.

We all deserve to be our real selves and find meaningful connections, and you can only do that by being vulnerable with the people you meet. (Not everyone deserves your vulnerability, but that’s another topic). You will not be able to maintain all the connections that you make forever, but that is also part of life, and knowing that a friendship might end does not make it less meaningful. We all need to belong. 

Anything else you’d like to add?

It can be hard sometimes to find yourself within all the labels that being foreign adds to who you are. I’ve learned to be grateful for all the things I am, but also for all the things I am not. And that adds a layer of grace when I deal with myself and that extends to everyone else around me. 

Where can we find out more about you?

@ranitanoe on Instagram

Thank you, Noemi, for sharing your experience with us! 

One of the things that has helped me in my own journey of learning to trust God in the unknown, is listening to the scripture meditations in the Dwell app. Check it out here! And if you decide to sign up, you'll be helping to support my work on this blog.

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