Mitt liv i 23 kg

That's all I'm taking with me. Plus a carry-on with 2 laptops, the camera and some toiletries for the flight.

I don't really have a lot, no furniture or big pieces need moving.  However I just started packing and my bag is already 18 kgs! Dags för beslut.

What I'm leaving is mostly sentimental. I'm going to miss a lot of my plushies. I'm only taking 2 small ones with me which are are already inside. I wish I could take you all, you guys. But they'll stay safe with my family.

Image description: Picture in black and white of three teddy bears (one panda and two uniform coloured ones) trying to climb up my suitcase. A large crafted cosplay sword on the side.

Jag ska flytta till Sverige!

(I actually don't know enough Swedish yet to be confident enough to write a whole blog post, so I'll be writing mostly in English for now.)

I will be moving to Sweden to be with my fiance in 19 days. We will finally be able to live together.

It's been nearly 2 years. Our 2 year anniversary is on April 1st. That's when we became a couple officially. I have always loved that it was on April 1st because we both have terrible memories and this makes it really easy! I also like to joke about how the whole thing was just an April fools thing the whole time.

2 years. We went for the long con.

We did the long distance thing. We shared an uncountable amount of chat logs, pictures, sounds, videos - pieces of our respective worlds - over this time.

We visited each other over 9,858 km. Spent almost as much time in person than away because of these visits. I realize we were lucky we could do this. It's so far away, just look:

Image description: The picture is divided in half vertically, the left side says "9,858 km Distance from Oxelösund to Neiva, Huila". The right side shows these two locations as red dots in a worldmap with a red curved line joining them.

But visits were not enough. We decided to live together. I applied for a residency permit to be with him in Sweden on January 27th 2015.

13.5 months later, I got my decision! And now I'm moving to him. The waiting process was very difficult, to put it mildly. Migrationsverket (the swedish migration agency) has been swamped. The refugee crisis has been beyond precedent (and it's still ongoing).

I am just happy I get to go to him now even though I've experienced a lot of anger and frustration during the wait. It's not so bad. We're safe. We'll be together soon.

Image description: A cartoon with two stick figures inside separate bubbles that are trying to touch each other. One of the stick figures asks "Merge?".

(He has a beard. But it's very hard to draw beards in this style.  But I also have hips and they are not in the drawing so it's okay. Or feet. Or fingers... You get my point.)