Working Holiday Visa... how to make a break overseas for a work "vacation".

After whole days locked in the house, stuck on my computer, doing a lot of research on Google, I can call myself quite prepared on the subject, and I feel ready to share my knowledge.

The first Working Holiday program that I discovered was the one for Canada. Unfortunately I arrived late, I decided to leave Italy near the end of February and the 15th was the day when the visas for Italians ended.
Canada was my first choice, a family I know lives there and surely everything would have been easier, they would have helped with accommodation and work, but Canada allows us to participate in this program up to 35 years of age, so I still have some time!

After this first disappointment, I stumbled upon the Working Holiday Visa for Australia (This is the official Immigration link). Here, the age limit is 30 years of age. I am still on time to apply for it, same thing for the Working Holiday Visa for New Zealand.



The WHV for Australia is renewable for a year if you work at least for three months in a farm (I need to get informed on the age limit), while it is renewable only for three months in New Zealand (again if you have worked in a farm).

The Working Holiday Visa allows us to travel, work and study in a country in another part of the world, a unique chance in life, which will be neither undervalued or forgotten. With the WHV you can work for the same employer for 3 months in NZ and 6 months in Australia (check the Immigration website for more details related to your nationality).

You can apply online for the WHV, pay the fee by credit card and wait for your brand new Visa delivered on your email address. Then you have a year of time to arrive to NZ and a year to stay there from the date of arrival. Same thing for Australia.

You have two options to start this adventure. Just organize everything by yourself, like booking flights, transfers and hostels online, or rely on agencies that help you get accustomed to a new country, helping you find jobs, homes, and with bureaucratic practices, etc, obviously for a high price.
I have decided that to do everything by myself. It's a way cheaper and not that difficult. It could seem scary, but actually it's a piece of cake.

Here is what you need when you arrive in NZ (but the same goes for Australia):

• Health insurance that covers the period that we are abroad
• SIM card from a local telephone operator
• Accommodation (very easy to find online)
• A bank account 
• A New Zealand IRD number(Inland Revenue Department)  To work in NZ you will need a national insurance number (or an IRD, Revenue Department Nubmer), otherwise you will be subject to a taxation of 48% (the so-called Emergency Tax or Emergency Taxation), so that you can begin to earn money and pay the taxes according to the normal tax of 29%. At the end of the trip it is possible to request a reimbursement of the taxes paid in excess.
• A job! !

Things, as it seems, are quite simple, have I convinced you to leave? ?

It's not because things are difficult that we don't dare to do them, it's because we don't dare to do them that they become difficult. (Seneca)

After 10 years in the same work place, I have decided to leave, not just to leave my job, but to really leave.

Do you know when we say

"Do I quit everything and go away?"

So, this is the perfect sentence to start my story!

I thought about it so often, but what always held me back was the house I bought four years ago. A 30-year mortage is quite the commitment. How are you going to pay the rent in another city plus the mortgage payment for your house? And then there are the taxes, there's the local property tax, and blablablah, in the end we are always talking about money. And then there's the Unknown of leaving a job you don't enjoy, but with a permanent contract, to go look for work who knows where, to do who knows what, for who knows what kind of remuneration (money again).

Leaving behind the security that depresses you, in search of a happiness that will not give you security.

I have chosen to take this risk.

I should certainly have done it earlier, but, after all, I am only thirty years old (in a month and a half, it will be thirty-one, but I will keep saying thirty); I still have time to discover what I want and to do it. I should have listened to my inner nomad a few years ago, when I heard it inside of me, but I pretended not to hear it.

When I went to school, I remember that I wrote in the diary of my classmates part of a song by Tiromancino, "La Descrizione Di Un Attimo" (The description of a moment).

"They have told me about your travels

they have told me that you are sick

that you have gone crazy

but i know that you are normal

you ask me to leave now

because numbers and the future

don't get you worried".

Today I think that, actually, I always found out what I wanted to do. Travel.

And why not do it now?

Let's do it !

Passport and go.

I have applied for a visa for New Zealand and Australia, and as soon as they give it to me, I say goodbye to everyone at work, I rent out my house, I get on a plane and I'll see you in two years.

This blog will accompany me on my journey, it does not have to be interesting, does not claim to have a million visits a day, but it will be useful for someone maybe. I would be happy to know if, reading, someone else found the strength to break the chains, open the cage's door and go towards new worlds, towards a new life, that maybe on return will be like the old one, but after this experience we will be changed, this is certain.

how it all began - intro

I want to start this diary quoting Oriana Fallaci (writer), with a piece taken from the book "If the sun dies", I bought but never read, even if I almost know by heart the lines that follow

I enjoy being thirty, I drink my thirties as a liquor: I don't wither away in an early retirement copied on carbon paper. Thirty is amazing, and also thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-three, thirty-four, and thirty-five! They are amazing because they are free, rebellious, outlawed, because the agony of waiting is over, and the discontent of decline have not begun, because we are finally lucid at thirty.
If we are religious, we are devoutly religious. If we are athiests, we are convinced athiests. If we are doubtful, we are doubtful without shame. And we do not fear the mockery of the children because we too are young; we do not fear the reproach of adults because we too are adults. We do not fear sin because we understand that sin is a point of view, we do not fear disobedience because we found that disobedience is noble. We do not fear punishment because we know that there is no harm in loving each other if we meet, to abandon each other if we get lost: we must not make more accounts with the school teacher and we should not even make them with the priest of the holy oil. We make them enough ourselves, with our pain of grown up. We are a field of ripe wheat, thirty years old, not too sour and also not dried: the flowing sap within us, with the right pressure, swells with life. Each of our joys is alive, each of our sorrows is alive, we laugh and we cry as no one ever will again, we think and undetstand as no one ever will again. We have reached the top of the mountain and everything is clear up there, the road that we climbed and the road that we will go down. A little breathless and yet fresh, you will never again sit on the edge to look backwards and forwards, and contemplate our luck, and why it is not so with you. How did it seem to my forefathers crushed by fear, boredom and balding? But what you have done you have done. What price do you put on the Moon? The Moon is expensive, I know. It costs each one of us dearly, but no one can put a price on the value of this cornfield, no one can put a price on the value of this mountain peak. If it was worth it, it would be pointless to go to the moon, it would just useful staying here. Wake up, so stop being so rational, obedient and wrinkled. Stop pulling your hair out and languishing in your equality. Stracciatela the carbon copy. You laugh, you weep, you are wrong. Take it to punch the bureaucrat that watches the time clock. I tell you it with humility, with affection, because I value you, because I see you as better than me and I would like you to be much better than me. Much, not so little. Or is it too late by now? Or the system already bent you or swallowed you up. Yes, I must be that way.

I was 30 years old on March 27, 2012, I celebrated greatly, with a trip of four full days between Milano Marittima and Valencia, to finish up on a weekend "en la Isla" (my lovely Ibiza).

I was waiting a lifetime these 30 years.

I always waited for them with eagerness, imagining who knows what, convinced that my life would have taken who knows what turn. I was sure, in any case, that at 30 years old I would be a woman, no longer a kid, or a young girl, but a woman.

A woman aware of her own identity, of her own limits, of her own expectations.

I thought many things, but in reality, after this fateful day the months passed and nothing happened. I remained a bit disappointed. Going from 29 to 30 was not "such a big deal".

Same job, same life, same places, same friends.

In the end, however, towards October something unexpected happened, a company "crisis" (they called it that, I prefer to avoid commenting in this place) badly upset our work roles and habits, changing our shifts and making worse the quality of our professional, as well as our personal, lives.

After a lot of anger,

I made of this negative moment,

a positive turn.