Those are the words that keep on reverberating in my brain as I felt the wheels of this Thai Airways plane that I am riding landed on the concrete runway of Heathrow Terminal here in London.
As soon as I get out of that plane, I knew that my life is about to change. But how? That, I actually don’t know.
After 6 years of being a nurse in the Philippines, I never had the slightest inkling of an idea that I will be working abroad.
You see, nursing graduates in our country is fated to any of the following destinations:
- Get absorbed or hired in a hospital. Stay there indefinitely as a staff nurse, or by dint of cosmic luck, get promoted in your post.
- Join an industry totally unrelated to nursing. Business outsourcing, direct selling, pyramiding, wedding coordination, planning for events, anything. But not nursing.
- Enroll in a graduate school, law school, med school, business school, or even culinary school. Any school, really.
- Go abroad.
Looking back, maybe it is really the time to choose the last. As I can categorically claim that I have accomplished the first three with flying colours.
As I approached the hangar, I felt the cold Arctic wind pierces through my skin and freezes my bones. It was so cold, I could not even lift my legs.
In my mind I just toyed with the idea that, finally, I can now experience the changing of the seasons. Not the wet and dry ones like what we have in the tropics, but the ones where people actually do prepare and celebrate the coming of the spring.
As soon as the lady in the Immigration Desk noisily slammed a stamp on my passport, right there I know:
A new season has begun.
