Immigrant Story: Nathalie

Nathalie has lived in six countries: South Korea, Germany, Belgium Vietnam, and England. Israel was her first, but she left when she was two.

As the daughter of a diplomat, she moved frequently. But, she says, she didn’t suffer from it. The schools were small; she made friends easily; and her parents were always at home for dinner. She liked the sense of adventure.

It’s no surprise then that after two years of university in Brussels, she moved to Vietnam. She had only planned to stay for a couple of months, but an internship in a design firm materialised into a permanent job. She loved it. Hanoi is the opposite of Brussels. The climate, the culture, the cockroaches–it can be a bit much, she says.

Understandably. After two years, she packed up and moved to London. It isn’t Brussels and it isn’t Hanoi. It’s just a very creative city that functions.

–To a point. The city has too many rules, she says. Stand on the right, walk on the left. It can be rigid and inhospitable. She had to move three times while she was there (once during her final exams). It was tiring. And she knew that moving again was going to be tiring.

With three passports, three languages, and a Masters from the University of the Arts, Tel Aviv wasn’t the obvious choice. But it was familiar. Every year she would come back to visit her extended family, and because she calls no country home, Israel was her de facto domicile. More than that, she could move here without thinking about when she would leave.

So in her first six months, she settled in: flat, job, boyfriend. It’s an adventure of a different kind.