Day 5 - Fears of moving

So of course with every big change in life, there are always concerns and fears that go along side the amazing excitement and positives. In the beginning of planning everything we have come across a couple things that worry us but they are just minor things that will be resolved in time (we still have a couple years after all to figure things out).
Will comes from a childhood that involved moving around a far bit. Toronto, Richmond Hill, Guelph, Calgary, Edinburgh and Cambridge. Me, I have only really lived in Toronto and for a few short years lived in London, Ontario for school. So considering I have been born and raised in the same city my entire life I understandably have quite a bit of anxiety when it comes to moving across the ocean!!
Some of my concerns and fears have already been fixed or I have just decided that I won’t let them hold me back from a huge dream of ours.

• Being so far from family is going to be a huge change for me. I no longer have my Mom around and don’t get along with my Dad but I am fairly close with my Mom’s family. I dread the day I tell them that we are moving, it will involve a lot of tears I am sure. Right now I am only a two hour train ride away from my Grandparents, but even in Scotland we will be only a seven hour flight away. (To ease this fear of mine we have promised ourselves to ALWAYS keep enough money aside that if I am horribly homesick for my family or need to get home for some reason all I need to do is book my ticket and go).
• Midges. The Scottish equivalent of black flies. (Apparently after some research they are not much of a concern in Shetland, at least not like on the mainland. With regular gale force storms, open fields galore and barely any trees around, I think I will have more chance of getting hit with a flying sheep in a gale force storm than getting a midge bite)
• Isolation. Shetland is either a one hour flight from Aberdeen or a twelve hour overnight ferry ride to Aberdeen. So with this comes what I am sure some days becomes a huge sense of isolation. The native Shetlanders are used to this and it still gets to them sometimes, so I can only imagine how myself, a city raised girl, who has grown up with everything within a bus ride away will do. (If we want off the island some days we can always get on a flight to Aberdeen. Only one hour on the plane and cheap, cheap flights! This is another thing I have learned. The second we move to Shetland and get a fixed address we will apply for “Islanders Cards”. This will entitle us to 30% off ferry tariffs to the mainland and 40% off flights to the mainland.)
• My health. Of course for the rest of my life  this will be a concern no matter where I go. I need doctors that know what to do with me if god forbid something went wrong that I needed help. Just from talking to my specialist about travelling to Scotland though I have learned that there are well known and highly respected specialists for my condition in Scotland. One in Edinburgh and one in Aberdeen. Perfect! (I know these are both atleast an hour away from where we will be living but again, I have looked into this. If I was to show up at the hospital and needed help to get to one of the specialists right away on the mainland they would get an air ambulance to fly me down. Even if the weather was so bad that air ambulance wouldn’t fly, Shetland is equipped with a coast guard helicopter. It apparently will fly in any weather at all, even the storms where the massive seaworthy cruise ship ferries wouldn’t dare go out in the ocean.)

Sorry my rambling went so long, it feels good to write out my concerns and see that they are all getting solved.
So rain, snow, gale force storms and flying sheep won’t and can’t stop this city girl from moving! I think it will be one of the best things we have done in forever and so refreshing to live in such a small community (22,000 people on all of Shetland to be exact).
- Michelle

The absolutely gorgeous sunrise sitting on Rona in the Gremista small boat harbour.