Hello, my name is Kathy and I’m an American living in South Greenland. If you’re reading this, you’re probably asking yourself why did I move to Greenland to live? I am a Navy brat born in Charleston, South Carolina but Florida raised. My younger years were spent in South Florida while my teen to adult years had been spent in North Florida. Most would ask, is there a difference? Yes, there surely is.
I’ve had a hard life growing up as well as part of my adult life before I moved to Greenland. When you grow up in abuse sometimes you marry into something similar. I stayed in it for 21 years or up till when he murdered himself. He left me and our kids with all his wreckage. After that, I decided that I would never allow another man to make me feel I wasn’t good enough or that it was okay to mistreat me verbally, mentally, and physically. Never again.
For three years I was single and at first, it was hard because I didn’t know how to feel about that or even how to act. When you’re out of circulation for 21 years, things change during that time frame as well. Fortunately for me, I bought my first computer in 1994 and learned how to be online with all the other newbies starting out and before long I made friends with a few people in two different channels. In one particular channel, I met almost everybody in it except for three or four people. This is where my story takes an interesting turn.
I had an eight-year-long friendship with my now “husband – my heart light” online. We talked about all kinds of things. We had similar interests and that is probably why we’d spent hours sometimes talking. He’s a native Greenlander and he’s also a seaman. He works in a very big Shrimp Factory/Trawler. He was spending a big amount of time at sea so we talked to each other when he was on his off-shift or when he was on leave. Out of the blue, he told me he was planning a vacation to Florida and asked me if I’d be interested in meeting and my showing him some of Florida. I said yes, sure, why not.
I have to admit I was nervous and scared too. Not of him but more about going off to meet a man in a town two hours south of where I live whom I’ve only known online for 8 years. So he flew into South Florida and called me to say he was there. I drove down to Tampa where he was staying and it was rather funny pulling up to the hotel and seeing him walk out the front door barefooted. It made me smile and laugh because Florida had already rubbed off on him!
When we hugged something unexpected happened. Neither of us was looking for a relationship but when we hugged something clicked. It felt right. I felt safe. We sat up and talked all night like two teenagers. We laughed and we giggled and we asked questions and well basically we had all night to talk about all the things we didn’t talk about online. He made me laugh a lot. He’s a happy person, positive, and always looking for ways to make me smile. We had a fabulous weekend and then he came up to Lake City with me and checked into a hotel. I ended up there at the hotel more than I did at home. It was comical. The pool and hot tub were our two favorite places to sit and laugh and talk. I took him to St. Augustine to see the Castillo as well as we floated down Ichetucknee Springs and we visited the Devil’s Millhopper sinkhole. We had a blast while he was there. Got to know each other and discovered we had so much in common. When he had to fly home it was hard to say goodbye to him. It felt like a piece of myself was going with him.
A few months later he told me about his ship going into dry dock and that he’d have a couple of months off. I asked him what he was going to do? He told me he was going to go and see a girl. Of course, I’m asking him oh yeah who?” He said, “You!” I got really excited because he was coming back for another visit. So he came around the end of January and stayed till the first part of March. We had the best ever time. We made a trip to South Florida to Clearwater and then over to Orlando to hang out with my friends Myra and Bill and went to Disney World and Epcot. It was a phenomenal time. During that time frame, Nikolaj asked me to marry him. I took a leap of faith and said yes! So when he left the second time we were engaged. This was in 2010.
During the summer months, we talked on the phone a lot as well as online about getting married and when we might do that as well. We decided that I would come to Greenland in the middle of December and stay about a month to see how my lungs handled the winter months in Greenland. I lived in North Florida and my asthma would be horrible during the fall and winter months so we had to see how my asthma would be in Greenland in order to decide on where our permanent home would be.
I have never flown across the ocean to another country. It was scary and I had no idea what to expect. So there was a lot to be accomplished for me to fly to another country. The first is getting a passport. That was fun. So in December my friend took me to Jacksonville so that I could start my flight over to Greenland. Basically, my flight went from Jacksonville, Florida over to Copenhagen, Denmark. I spent the night in a hotel at the airport so that I could get my bearings since I have never been to such a big airport. I was so thankful to be able to just walk to the hotel once I figured out how to read all the signs. The airport is enormous. The next day I took a flight from Copenhagen to Kangerlussuaq Greenland. Kangerlussuaq is the bigger airport in Greenland. Then I took a flight from there to Nuuk the capital city of Greenland and spent the night there. The next day I flew from Nuuk to Narsarsuaq on a small Dash 8-passenger prop plane. That was so cool because I have never seen such a small passenger plane like that before. When I arrived in Narsarsuaq, I then took my first-ever helicopter flight from Narsarsuaq to Qaqortoq where my “heart light” lived. It was awesome flying in the helicopter because I could see the mountains and all the snow and ice that was covering some of the mountains there. Basically, my flight from the USA to Denmark lasted around ten hours in total. Denmark is six hours ahead of Florida EST. Denmark is four hours ahead of Greenland time. Greenland is two hours ahead of Florida EST. So by the time I got to Greenland, my sense of time was all mixed up.
I had the most amazing visit and Nikolaj showed me around the town. I took loads of photos of all of the trip every chance I had. I got to experience a Greenlandic Christmas as well as New Years too. I was totally blown away by seeing people shoot off huge fireworks that we never had access to in Florida. As we neared the first of the year Nikolaj decided that we were going to get married there in Greenland before I flew back to the USA. So on January 2nd, 2011, we got married. I had a beautiful time and I felt so happy and loved by Nikolaj. The whole time I was there my asthma was barely active. So apparently the weather here along with the coastal air is a good thing for my lungs because my asthma has improved 85% after moving here permanently.
When I returned to Florida I started a six-and-a-half month downsizing of my belongings, finding homes for four horses, one dog, and a cat while preparing Ichi (my dachshund/terrier mix) that was coming with me to Greenland. I put what I wanted to keep in storage and in August of 2011, I flew to Greenland to live. I have not regretted moving here and I finally know what it feels like to be happy. To be loved. To be treated well and to be accepted for who I am. I’m married to a truly amazing Greenlander who looks at life with zest and positivity and who is giving and kind. I have been living in Greenland since August 18th, 2011. I have truly found healing in this beautiful amazing country.
When I first moved to Greenland I discovered that I had too much time on my hands while Nikolaj was at sea. starting my life fresh so I had to figure out what to do with all that time.
I’ll be writing quite a bit about this part of my life in the future so stay tuned. 🙂 🙂
Living Greenland 