It has been just over a month since Logan and I packed up our lives and moved to Ireland. If I said that things have gone the way I expected them to, I would be lying. There have been a lot of amazing adventures in the past month and also a ton of difficult ones.
We spent our first week in Dublin, going to appointments, getting SIM cards, trying to figure out vehicle insurance (which is surprisingly complicated and expensive here), searching for housing and trying to navigate a capital city with a dog. The first week in Ireland was beyond challenging, and Logan and I both wondered more than once if we have made the worst mistake of our life by leaving our comfy situations for something as crazy as living on a new continent. However, I think a lot of our fear had to do with the fact that we were in a concrete jungle and neither of us are city people. We isolated that issue pretty quickly and so we decided to Campervan for a week and spend some time travelling the country and seeing the incredible nature that exists in Ireland.
So, we rented a Campervan from an awesome company in Wicklow called Lazydays. I can't say enough great things about this company or their campers, but I will go into that more in our videos and a future blog that talks more about the Campervan adventure in particular.
We drove from Dublin to Glendalough, to Killarney and then up the west coast all the way to County Leitrim. The trip was incredible. We saw so many amazing parts of Ireland, witnessed insane winds, ate lots of tasty food and spent time with awesome people. The van was a great place to sleep every night and was even decent for cooking and drying out, even with a big dog on the floor with us.
The van trip was over much faster than we would have liked and soon we were back to real life and trying to find a place to live, as well as a vehicle to buy. If you are outside of the cities in Ireland, there is next to no public transport, so having a vehicle is a must. Having a place to live is obviously a must as well haha. We were extremely lucky that our friend Lynsey was willing to lend us her van for a few days so that we could get around, move into the Airbnb we have been able to rent for a month, and so we could go check out vehicles for our own purchase.
Not long after borrowing Lynsey's vehicle, we found our own little red car. Finding a car really helped to decrease our stress levels. It's funny how hard it is to do life when you don't have a way to get around and that is something I haven't had to consider since I was a teenager, so it was a bit of an eye opener fo me. Also, I'm still figuring out how to drive a manual vehicle on the wrong side of the road on super narrow roads. Thank goodness Logan is a good driver and figured out the wrong side of the road driving really quickly.
This last week has now shifted to us focusing on finding jobs, long term accommodation and figuring out how two of us can work with just one vehicle (cuz we can't afford insurance on two). Also, Logan was sick and injured from a bike crash which didn't help with the whole life planning thing, although he is feeling better now :). Our close proximity to Christmas isn't helping with our searches either I don't think.
Logan and I have both moved quite a few times in our lifetimes, but this has by far been the hardest move. Even with the similarities between Irish culture and Canadian, moving to another country has posed a lot of challenges that neither of us anticipated. However, it has also opened lots of doors and given us plenty of opportunity not only for physical adventures, but for self exploration as well.
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