I come from Sibiu, a charming town in the heart of Transylvania, Romania. Although I love my country, today I am a citizen of the world. I always dreamed to travel and experience other cultures.
I was born during the communism and when I was little I did not have many opportunities to travel abroad. Even after the fall of the dictatorial regime, in 1989, there was a psychologically barrier, some sort of fear: “How will I manage beyond our frontiers?” I felt somehow we were isolated and behind compared with the rest of the world.
My family was quite adventurous, and most of our weekends were spent in the nature, camping in the valleys of the Carpathian Mountains. Because of these outdoor trips my sister and I developed an adventurous spirit and a love for nature, wildlife and traveling. We would often see foreign motorhomes on the road and wondered: “How is it travel in a motorhome?” It was an idea of freedom and adventure I could only fantasize at that age.
Growing up my will and curiosity to see the world only expanded. I kept repeating to myself: “I want to be international”. Whatever that supposed to mean :). I knew that my best chance to fulfill my dreams was by studying hard. So I did it. At university I was granted scholarships and enrolled in exchange programs abroad in Belgium, USA and China. After graduation I worked for a multinational and then I started my own company in the field of communication in Sibiu.
In 2010 I received a job offer abroad as project manager for an international media agency in the oil and gas sector. It was the opportunity to become “international” as I always wanted to be. So I took the job and left Romania.
With the oil price booming at that time at 110$ per barrel, I had discovered a gold mine and I didn’t not want to let go. I continued this adventure for 7 years conducting hundreds of business meetings and negotiating with top executives and governmental officials of the energy sector globally. Icing on the cake, it was during my work assignments when I met my Brazilian husband, João Paulo. We were working and living together in places like Nigeria, The Netherlands and UAE. Suddenly I was “international” and living what I thought was “the dream”.
We were in Dubai when we realized that our busy “international” careers became consuming. I was drifting away from myself and we were drifting apart from each other. So we decided to do something unexpected to our families: to exit the “system” and quit our jobs for a sabbatical adventure. My mother said something like this in Romanian: “I can see you are tired of too much good”. How could we give up the “dream life”? Well, it was not easy, we worked so hard for it, but we were convinced that was the way forward. We bought an overlanding expedition truck, packed our hopes and dreams in a couple of suitcases and jumped into the unknown.
It was the best decision we could ever made. We had the space and time to rediscover each other, whilst being fascinated by the new worlds we encountered. It simplified our living and opened our minds and hearts. Little did we know that from Mexico onwards, we would be traveling with a new fellow adventurer on board, our first baby boy.
Since then we keep on exploring the world wherever it takes us, our inner selves, and parenthood, trying to find balance in life.
