I must have jinxed it big time since the days after my last post, it snowed and the temperature dropped to -9C for the past few days. No chance of chucking aside my winter jacket yet.
Anyway, that's that about the weather for now. The more important event that happened yesterday was our very first wedding anniversary! I really can't believe that it has been a year already. I remember last year so vividly - the few months leading to the wedding were very stressful.
It was really hard to plan a wedding when the other person was thousands of miles away. There were lots to discuss - dates, outfits, food and location for the wedding dinner. We had to plan everything through our FaceTime chats and countless of messages to and fro. On top of that, the cultural differences made everything doubly hard since we both had different visions of how a wedding should be like. It took a long time to explain to him how the Malay traditional wedding looks like, but in the end, we got everything sorted.
I did feel quite overwhelmed sometimes since he wasn't with me during most of the preparations. He could only come over a week before the wedding. However, with help, especially from my amazing family members and friends, we managed to pull it all off. The wedding went smoothly and I think the guests were quite happy and well fed. I was mentally and physically drained that day, but once we both were officially married, I relaxed and simply enjoyed the moment.
The year after the wedding, though, was one of the hardest I have had to face. It was not difficult to say goodbye to Pete after our short honeymoon. He had to go back home while I had to stay and sort stuff out before I moved to Sweden to join him. I would see him in less than two months so it was manageable.
I didn't really have much time to say goodbye to my family and friends though. The weeks flew by too fast. I tried to spend as much time as I could with my family and closest relatives. I tried to eat as much local foods that I know I would miss as I could. I also took the time to pass on my recipes to my sister and mum, and learn my mum's recipes.
The last two weeks before my move, I had lots of friends to meet. It seemed like I was out every night. I never knew that I had so many friends. It felt like it was impossible to meet up with everyone, and I did miss meeting some. Oh, and the packing! There were lots that I wanted to bring with me but travelling alone meant that I had limited capacity so I had to leave behind lots of stuff. I only had to bring what was important to me. That was the hard part. In the end, I had to be ruthless and only brought the stuff I needed. I was lucky to have the foresight to start bringing my stuff over the last two times I visited Pete, so I didn't have as much to bring with me this time.
The scene at the airport was really tough to relive, even now, so I would skip that part. Once I got to Sweden safe and sound, there were more things to cope with. But our first priority was to spend time together. With long-distance relationships, the time that couples like us got to spend together physically was very limited. Although we became a couple for two years before we got married, we only spent a total of about two months together.
The first few weeks were great. We were never far from each other and we would do everything together. There were lots to do too, like redecorating the apartment, planning a wedding lunch for his family, getting the paperwork done and working on the garden. However, we had some tough times.
Pete has been living on his own for most of his adult years and on the opposite side of the spectrum, I have never lived on my own. And again, being brought up in two totally different countries make our experiences and expectations very different. Something basic like throwing rubbish is done differently from what I am used to. I guess it's not hard to imagine how it was at the beginning.
We both had many things to learn about living with each other. I had to learn about how things are done here. He had to learn how to live with another person in the apartment. It wasn't easy sometimes, but with every disagreement we had, we learn more and more about each other. And that is a truly important thing.
Some of the most important lessons we have learnt is that we should never take each other for granted and that we could always talk with each other to figure things out. I would say that we now understand each other even better but of course there would always be something more to learn. But that's marriage, I guess. Like everything else, it's not perfect. We are both not perfect, so naturally our marriage isn't perfect.
What we could do is to always work on it to make our marriage as happy and fulfilling as we could. We both agree that respect and love are the foundations of our relationship. And that makes me so thankful. I still get up in the morning every day, utterly grateful to God that both of us, from two opposite ends of the earth, have found each other. Two of us with similar values and interests have managed to chance upon each other in an obscure website and take a leap of faith to promise to grow old together as husband and wife. And here we are, one year in, happy as ever and in love. May this be the first of many...
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