Belfast-based visual artist Joel Simon had only planned to live in Northern Ireland for a year when he first came here to study back in the mid 1990s, but life had other plans.
Now 27 years on, he has firmly established himself as a renowned animator and oil painter, started a family and created a social outlet for the city's French speaking community.
Joel, 49, was born in Belgium and lived in the USA and England before eventually settling in Belfast, which has been his home since 1995.
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His move to Northern Ireland came just one year after the Troubles ended.
"I came here to study animation at Ulster University but I hated the course and dropped out after less than a week," Joel told Belfast Live.
"At the time my parents were worried about me moving to Belfast and I swore to myself that I would only stay here for a year because I didn't know a soul.
"Back then it wasn't the vibrant city that it is today so I moved to Belfast before it became fashionable. I decided to do a short animated film so I met lots of people through that and I found it was easy to make friends here," he added.
Soon after arriving in Northern Ireland, Joel met his wife, Jenny and they live in East Belfast with their three children Jonah, Noah and Lola.
"I met Jenny through her brother Ben, who is also a filmmaker, when he came to me for some advice on animation. She's exactly my type and we fell in love straight away," he added.
The father-of-three's career also took off as he set up two animation companies Flickerpix and Hola Lola. His work as a designer and animation director included Gerry Anderson’s On The Air series and collaborating with artists such as Seamus Heaney, Richard Curtis and Billy Connolly, earning him over 50 international awards.
On a personal level, Joel also owes his life to Belfast's medical professional after suffering a life-changing injury. His left leg was amputated in December 1997 following a freak shooting accident during a holiday in Kenya with Jenny.
Joel explained: "Two years after I moved to Belfast and my parents had worried about me getting caught up in a terrorist attack here, I go to Kenya on safari and end up getting shot by a sniper in the middle of a desert.
"Unfortunately, one of the two bullets severed the artery behind my kneecap. Because it happened in the middle of nowhere we had to drive for two hours to the nearest missionary hospital while I was nearly bleeding to death. I was later flown to the capital Nairobi where they pumped me full of morphine but the doctors didn't know what to do.
"They didn't want to amputate and thought they could rescue my leg but in the meantime gangrene had set in. When I told the doctors I lived in Belfast they said the world experts in bullet wounds were based there so I was repatriated to the Royal Victoria Hospital.
"It turned out to be the right decision as the staff there said my leg was a mess by that stage so they had to amputate otherwise I would have died from the gangrene. I had to learn to walk again from scratch with a prosthesis like a baby and for a then 23-year-old, it was like having a reset button being set on your life."
In 2016, Joel started up the Belfast Frenchie Club group for French speakers and francophiles based in Northern Ireland.
His father, Joseph, came from a French-speaking village while his mum, Gerda, hailed from a German one. Joel grew up in a French-speaking village where local people all spoke German and only learned to speak English at the age of 18.
"French was the language that I spoke the most when growing up and I missed speaking it. Anytime I told people here that I spoke French they said how much they loved the language and had learned it at school," Joel explained.
"Like me, they had nowhere to speak it so I thought it would be good to create a little social club where people could come along and talk French to other people.
"At our first meeting over five years ago we had about 30 people turn up and it just took off from there. We simply meet up in a social setting so there's no agenda. You just speak French to people who you usually haven't met before.
"To date, we have organised over 150 events, including restaurant and cinema outings, wine tastings, walks in parks so we always try to diversify.
"About a third of those who come along are actually from France while the remainder are people from Northern Ireland who are quite good at French and want to practice the language or keep it alive. Because it's all abilities, it makes for a good mix."
He added: "People still ask me if I would go back to Belgium one day but I have no connections there anymore. I've built a business and all my friends and family are here so Belfast is definitely home for me now.
"I still can't get over how easy it was for me to make friends and integrate here compared to all the other parts of the world I have lived in."
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