maui is one of the most beautiful places in the world and it's been my home
for the past seven years
the natural beauty is incredible but what makes maui really special is the people
the small community feel and the connection each of us make with the island
there are so many lessons to be learned from living a simple island life life
is much slower here and this gave me a chance to pause from the path i was on
and pay attention and appreciate the little details in my everyday life
i am forever grateful for the lessons
and the impact the island had on me and i'll take these values with me wherever i go
i hope you're all doing well i know it's been a while so i thought that i would sit down and
give you a quick life update and as you saw from the title of this video i left maui i
know it seems a little bit abrupt but actually we've been planning this for quite some time now
so i want to let you know what's been going on why i left maui and where we're going next
as i mentioned earlier i've lived on maui for seven years and it's the longest that i've
lived in one place i really had no idea what i was getting myself into i moved because my husband is
from here and he had an opportunity for a really cool job so i moved to paradise with him and i
also wanted to get to know his hometown and also get to know his family thinking back not knowing
anything really gave me a chance to come without any expectations and it really opened me up to new
possibilities this is the place where i made real friends i connected with a lot of different people
i also got married and adopted my two adorable little dogs it was such a significant time in
my life where i transitioned from this 20 something year old girl with big ambitions
to who i am today 31 and really content with life and i really do think that the simple island life
had such a big impact on me and my outlook on life maui is also where my minimalist and
simple living journey began i got my first decent paying job and went a little bit crazy buying
cute clothes and decors and furniture because i thought that was the way to build my dream life
clearly i had no financial goals at the time so anytime i got a paycheck i would spend it because
that was a way to kind of justify for working so much then of course i felt trapped because i
had to work even more just to sustain this do more half more lifestyle and it really made me question
what's the point of living on this beautiful island if all we're doing is working so much
to come home to a nice place and to have nice things after a long day of work and
i know that that's a blessing on its own but it just wasn't the lifestyle that suited me
and i started to think about what i actually wanted to prioritize in my life thankfully
my husband and i share a lot of similar values i think eventually we realize or i should say
that i realize that we're really simple and we don't need a lot of material things to be happy
i mean we would rather spend our money on good food and travel and experiences over things like
nice cars or designer clothes so then i started to think about how we can actually use our money to
achieve the things that we really want our goals and dreams and i think that's when we started to
talk about the possibility of moving abroad and living in a different country maybe i mentioned
this a few times in my videos but i always dreamed about living in a different country
with a different culture different people and language and of course traveling is so great
but i think living someplace for an extended period of time it gives you a chance to kind
of explore the country more slowly and it just gives you a different perspective outside of your
own life which i value so much and to me this was a financial goal that was worth working towards
so that's what we did we minimized and we were really conscious of our expenses we set up
our finances and our investments to be able to move abroad and after three years of preparing
we left our beautiful home we sold both of our cars most of our and packed up our whole life
in five suitcases and we left maui for a whole new chapter in our lives
early on this journey we sat down and thought about if we could live anywhere in the world
where would it be and we both kind of looked at each other and knew is probably my favorite place
in the whole entire world and that's portugal back in 2019 we took a month to do a road trip
all across portugal and absolutely fell in love the locals were so welcoming and friendly and
i fell in love with the walden towns with the cobblestones the most amazing seafood and the
dramatic coastal views it was just breathtaking it was my first time ever visiting portugal but
i felt so right at home and i really haven't stopped thinking about it since my dream is to
eventually have a little house little property in the countryside somewhere in portugal and
explore the towns nearby on the weekends work on my portuguese definitely and also integrate with
the local communities and also with the locals i should probably mention that this is not a for
sure thing yet we still need to get our long-term visas approved and that's why we're here in san
francisco and it's going to take a couple of weeks for us to find out whether or not we got approved
we're heading right now to our visa appointment running kind of late this is my accordion folder
it has all of our life documents there's just so much so many moving parts and we don't really know
the directions here so hopefully we make it on time for two miles how do you feel nervous nervous
i know we barely made it now it's not up to us anymore we just gotta wait in the
mail to get our passports with that visa stamp and we can go to portugal
and in the meantime we'll be doing a road trip across the us from the west to the east and slowly
making our way to portugal we are starting the road trip today it's kind of a foggy day in san
fran but i kind of like it it fits the bay area we get to experience it for what it is
just walk the dogs they're tired which is good because it's gonna be a long ride we thought that
this was a really great way to kind of enjoy the waiting process and also the best way to travel
with our dogs and we're trying our best to keep things as normal for them as possible it's been
really bittersweet and scary leaving something so familiar especially for my husband because
his whole family is on maui but we are also excited for this new chapter in our lives and the
adventure that's to come i just want to thank you guys for being such a huge part of my maui journey
and i hope that you will follow our journey to portugal as well and i'm so sorry for not posting
these last couple of weeks but i really wanted to be present in my life during this huge transition
i've been busy packing saying bye to our friends and family and just tying up loose ends but i
will be posting regularly from now on and if you want to follow more real time you can follow me on
instagram at malama life i will leave the link in the description below thank you guys so much for
all your support and love i always appreciate you guys talk to you soon take care bye