Hola — I'm Catalina.

On the 28th of December 2000, my plane couldn't land.

There had been no snow in the UK for years, apparently. But the day I arrived — at 21 years old, one 13 kilo suitcase, a head full of plans to stay four years max — London was buried in it. The plane circled for an hour before we could land, longest hour of my life. I took it as a sign. I just didn't know yet what it was a sign of.

I'm Catalina. I'm from Ecuador. I've lived in the UK for 25 years. And I still say Ecuadorian when people ask, even though the answer is considerably more complicated than that.

I came with the quiet confidence of someone who had no idea what she was walking into. I expected it to be hard in the obvious ways — the weather, the food, the distance. I didn't expect the particular loneliness of being surrounded by people who are perfectly warm, perfectly polite, and somehow still unreachable. I didn't expect the grief of missing things that hadn't happened yet — weddings, funerals, Christmases, New Years… I didn't expect one day I'd go back "home", for the first time and the feeling that was't the home I left behind. And the punch-in-the-tummy moment you realise you are no longer fully from there, and you will never be fully from here.

For a long time, I wasn't ready to write any of this down. You need a certain distance before you can look at your own messy life without flinching. It turns out, 25 years was just about the right amount of "distance". I'm old enough now to understand what I've been through. I'm settled enough to say it without judgment — of myself, of the country I left, of the country that took me in.

So I'm writing the blog I wish existed when I landed. The one that would have told me: the first winter will lie to you. You will make friends that don't speak your language but understand your heart. Your children's home is different from yours. And that your homesickness is always there, you just learn to live with it.

This blog is for you if:

• You are reading this at midnight and you are trying to figure out why you would ever thought about moving here in the first place.
• You only came here for a couple of years and now, you don't see yourself ever going back… and yet you hate it here.
• You are way funnier in your mother tongue.
• You are missing home but home is not longer what you remember.
• You are holding your baby and you want your tribe with you.

Yes, I have felt all of it…It gets better, but it gets complicated … and along the way you learn that complicated and better are not actually opposites.

This blog is written in English but I have not forgotten Spanish nor do I pretend to erase my heritage. I speak it everyday. I also know how tough life is when you can't express what you want to say. You need to fill in forms, read letters, bank statements, talk to neighbours or parents at the school gates. You can speak Español anywhere you want here, but you are missing out on a great life if you don't speak English… remember what your mum and your teachers told you back home?… Learn English, it gives better opportunities, turns out, it is true. I want to help you to the fullest… even in the heated arguments.

Bienvenidos a Fully Landed.

— Catalina