Yes, I got the post doc position in New Zealand.
Wednesday night in bed instead of imagining life in New Zealand, I sternly told myself to consider for a change the future in which I would stay in Freiburg and do the other job here. I fell asleep.
One of my colleagues and her husband are considering moving to the Netherlands, and her husband would get an offer Thursday, so she said to me “perhaps we will be both celebrating something on Thursday!” but I replied that I probably wouldn’t hear from NZ until Monday at the earliest.
When I thought about those and some other details I wondered if there is such a thing as coincidence?
Thursday morning I arrived at work late. I opened the window, drank a glass of water, started my computer and opened my emails. There was an email from NZ, which I opened immediately and it said “can I call you tonight, we want to offer you the position”. “OOooooooooooohhhhh …….” I exclaimed/sighed. Then I started shivering and tears welled up. I couldn’t move or think or feel.
After a good deal of shivering I called Thomas. Then we were speechless on the phone together.
Somewhere deep down I had feared that regardless of all his dreams and hopes and promises, he would just hang up the phone on me and never see me again. I know, that is a bad thing to feel about someone you love and trust. And that is not what happened. I love him so much!
Obviously, the rest of the day was a blur. Paradoxically I had to extend my university email account which was due end of December and required intense bureaucracy. I told the news in the coffee-break, my prof seemed just as happy as me and shook my hand and the others seemed just as undecided as me about how to feel and murmured things like ‘far away”.
As my dear friend Rensie predicted I didn’t exactly get anything substantial done. I sat through geology presentations by students, I sat through a thesis presentation, and at the end of the day my colleagues noticed I was being totally “cool” and not overly excited as would be expected.
Well, it is difficult to describe this feeling. I am excited, terribly so, but I am also seeing the world with different eyes. Suddenly Freiburg, Europe and this hemisphere are already in the past. This whole year of waiting, for my proposal rejection, for my defence, for job openings, for interviews, for yet another 3 month contract: all at once that is over and I am now moving forward with incredible speed. I feel as if New Zealand is racing towards me ready to swallow me whole. It is wonderful and horrifying at the same time.
There is so much to do now! Get a visa, get rid of my stuff, decide how and exactly when to move, and hope Thomas will follow soon. I want to tell the news to the whole world (this is a start) and I want to see and hug my parents, brother and friends in Amsterdam. I am full of energy to finish up everything here: another paper from the Freiburg-research (that I started writing Wednesday), move all my samples to storage, clean out my office, burn everything behind me and fly out to down down under Kiwiland …
