Welcome to my expat world, Beyond the Horizon

Greetings to all you lovely ladies and gentlemen out here on this great world wide web, at the same time it does seem like as I have the honour of welcoming you into my very own private corner her one the internet. So at a time like this, I do feel the need to express my gratitude for the fact that you are taking the time off from your daily routine and busy schedule to check out and read my newly started blog. With this in mind, I do hope that my work lives up to your expectations and that you enjoy reading about the topics I am focusing on. At the same time, if you by any chance see anything that needs to be improved, I would appreciate the constructive feedback.

Anyway, I guess its about time for me to get started on the part where I am introducing myself and the blog you now are visiting. First of all, my name is Jack Bowler Sr or just Jack for short. I am at the time of writing this post a 44-year-old Norwegian male who is living out his dream in South America and have done so since July 2016. Here I am enjoying my life together with my small family (son, a partner in crime and cat). Yes, my friend, you did read that correctly, because I have left my safe-haven back in Norway to live the exciting and challenging life as an immigrant here in Peru. I guess you are wondering why at this point. I would say that the most important reason is my family

I would say that the second most important reason has to do with my life long fascination for this part of the world (when I am saying this part of the world, I am thinking about Latin America). Because the truth is that for as long as I can remember I have had a dream about travelling and exploring South America. For me, it has to do with the people, food, language, culture and its rich history this region has to offer. Back in 2009 – 2010 I made my dream come true and spent a whole month just exploring the streets of Lima. You would be correct if you said I was sold on the idea and that was from the moment I landed at the airport. This was an experience that kept me coming back for more until my decision to move more permanently.

So who am I as a person and what do I prefer to fill my everyday life within the form of activities and such? As it is at the moment and for the more standard mundane days of the week, these are for the most part spent as a stay at home dad. The main reason for this is because I do not have my paperwork to be able to seek employment outside the household. At the same time, I have been for a while now struggling with something called a language barrier. Let's say that learning Spanish has been a much longer road to travel then I at first had expected, why it has been like this is something I am unsure about. Might be because most people I talk with would do it in English and not Spanish.

When it comes to me just spending time with myself or enjoying some good old fashion daddy time as its called, I do enjoy wasting time on computer games (these days its more likely to be on my Playstation 4 and games like Grand Theft Auto Online or Fishing planet). Yes, I am an avid gamer or the correct is used to be, since its a lot less time spent on it these days than it used to be. At the same time, I do have a huge fascination for photography or capturing the everyday small moments as I like to call it. when the opportunity arises I am unable to turn down spending time outdoors. Either just walking around in the city, hiking in the woods or go real-life fishing.

If there is one single thing that I love doing when time and finances do allow it, it has to be travelling and exploring new cultures. This is one fascination that has brought me all over the world. I have travelled all over Europe, North America, Asia and now started that time in my life where I want to see as much of South America as I possibly can or can experience. So far it has been limited to Peru and Equador, but there are plans for Chile, Bolivia and Argentina sometime in the future. At the same time, I do want to visit Africa and Australia, just to be able to tick those boxes of as well. Anyway, way before this becomes a reality I want to take my family for a while to explore Europe.

When it comes to the content of my blog and the plans that I have for it, I have to be completely honest. The idea here is to focus on sharing my everyday experience as an immigrant and expat to this amazing country. Focusing on how I am experiencing how it is to live here and how it was to visit as a tourist. This is something that I am going to do through text, photos and videos, but the focus will be on the text and photos. At the same time, I will do my best to portray it as correct and factual as I can do. I will not sugarcoat anything and I will also avoid using things like photoshop. At the same time and as I see it, the Peruvian people do not have anything to be ashamed of.

When it comes to the “intensity” in the post publishing process, it is an area that I do not wish to promise more than I know is possible to deliver on. I am for the most part thinking about my inexperience when it comes to “working” like that and in that regard doesn't want to bite over more than I can handle, short term. As I see it with my very limited experience in this field, publishing a post once or twice a week might be doable and with time also start working on videos for my Youtube channel. Yes, I do have a Youtube channel as well, but not been very active on it in the past. Have uploaded a few videos last year, but it's only meant as an addition to the blog itself.

I have a confession for you guys and girls. This is not my first attempt on having a blog, I had this one running for a while and felt like I had painted myself into a corner. At the same time, I had issues with extremely low numbers when it came to traffic coming from search engines and such. So I took a break and work kinda got in the way, after a while I felt maybe a restart and rework of the most important posts would be a good idea. Not sure if it is, but the result is that I closed the blog, took down all posts and now been working on them for a while. At least I hope that I haven't made a crucial mistake with this strategy, not that it matters since I am doing it mostly for the fun anyway.

I guess its about time for me to start wrapping things up and at the same time, I want to end this one by thanking you guys for taking the time to check my blog out and for reading this post. I do hope you did enjoy the read and that I will have the pleasure of seeing you back at a later point in time. Before you close the tab, why not check me out on social media. The links are as following, my Youtube channel (Beyond the Horizon 2.0), my blogs Facebook page (Beyond theHorizon), my Twitter (Beyond the Horizon), my personal Facebook page (Jack Bowler Sr) and my Instagram (Beyond our Horizon). I hope to see you guys there, you might find the content that you enjoy.

As a side note, the photos that I am using in this blog post is from my hometown and to be honest, I felt that something from the past would be a perfect way to kick things off. I do feel that opening my blog again after weeks on weeks working on its content is kind of a big deal for me personally, hope you feel somewhat the same way.