Day 31–*OUR* future sailing boat…

So I have noticed that my husband so gracefully referred to the boat we will get in the future as *his*. I would like to make a clarification of this. It will be *ours*.  

On that note, I am just as excited as he is for the boat! We will take sailing lessons as soon as we move to Shetland and build up our skills as much as possible. I would LOVE one day to sail to the Azores or any crazy far away destinations just like Will’s dad, Jim, and Becky do. Even just to go on trips around the Scottish islands would be amazing!

A huge fear Will had last year on my first trip to Scotland was if I would have seasickness. Well luckily, I don’t! We learned this while on a 30 hour ferry ride in the North Sea during a galeforce storm in 10 metre waves! Ya I think me surviving that means I can handle being on a boat!! Not only did I not get sick on the ferry I was also having fun walking back and forth and jumping in the boat as it crashed into the waves.

So yes this is my simple post for today….just a little clarification. One day we hope to write our blog from OUR very own sailboat docked in some crazy harbour in a remote part on a tiny island!

- Michelle

Day 30–My future sailing boat?

One of my greatest personal dreams when I move over to Scotland is to own a sailboat. Ya, every guy’s dream, right? Doesn’t have to be big, it just has to be mine. My father owns one called Rona and he treats it like it is his castle, well because it kinda is. He lives in it with his wife Becky. They both own houses outside of Edinburgh but they are having a fantastic time living on their yacht. And their adventures are simply  spectacular, the latest of which was to the Azores and back from Shetland (look it up!). I simply cannot believe that they went for so long, sailing in the Ocean on four hour shifts for literally weeks down. The physical and emotional strain must have been tremendous. My boat (possibly named GingyBoat, a joke with my newer friends) will not do such trips for many, many years, if at all. Sailing can be a lot of fun but it is not without its need for focus, attention to safety and vast knowledge of sailing. This neither comes lightly or quickly and will require years of sailing experience for me to be able to even think of doing a trip like the one my father and Becky did. And lets not forget the money I will need to not only buy the boat, I need to be able to maintain and pay for docking her. This certainly is not a cheep dream by any means!

*Sign*

- Will

Day 29–Toes in the sand

If you know me this topic is so obvious and natural to my personality. I have a real love for beaches, sand, oceans and swimming. So it is only natural for me to look up resorts and beaches that we would be able to vacation at when living in Shetland without paying an arm and a leg.

Living in Canada there are only a select few countries that offer the all-inclusive option at resorts and they are so overpriced, crowded and cookie-cutter. To name a few there is Cuba, Dominican Republic, Mexico and Jamaica. Then there are the higher-end resorts on islands like Aruba, St. Lucia and Turks and Caicos. These resorts definitely are a dream to visit but cost more for a two weeks stay for two people than we make in a month. To travel outside the resorts in these countries tourists are heavily warned of the conditions of poverty and it is recommended to never leave the resort grounds during your stay.

So I began my search on Expedia.co.uk for resorts in Europe to visit. I was astounded at what my search turned up. First though is to mention that I looked up vacation packages from Glasgow International Airport. Shetland to Glasgow flights would cost us on the high end about £150 for the two of us round trip.

Now to my results I found for resorts. Again I started by picking locales that I figured would cost about the same as Aruba or St. Lucia (read: outside our budget). Greece for example. Well my simple search for a vacation in May to Greece turned up these results: One week all-inclusive at a resort in Crete, Greece would cost all of £440 per person including flights!!! (to give a bit of comparison to “cheap” resorts in Cuba or Jamaica, they would cost around £1050 per person)

So to push my luck I searched more on these criteria: one week all-inclusive, four-star resort, flights included. This is the result of several destinations…

- Algarve, Portugal: £420 per person

- Bodrum, Turkey: £398 per person

- Costa Del Sol, Spain: £432 per person

- Malta: £492 per person

Doing my research and looking into different places to go I think this will add to our experience of living in Shetland immensely. Besides the amazing prices it is also the experience in these countries, I can only imagine the great day trips we can take in places like Greece and Turkey! There is so much history and the countries are tourist destinations in and of themselves even without the resorts.

After all the summer daytime highs in Lerwick average about 13-14 degrees everyday. Who wouldn’t want to jet away to Portugal or Greece to soak up some vitamin D?? Especially at these prices I better start stocking up on bikinis and sunblock!

- Michelle

Day 28–Audience

This is cool. Really cool. Extremely cool. Well at least a novice blogger like me thinks so. I know so little about the blogging world and I basically just jumped face first into it, typing away about whatever crap fills my little head so long as it was along the path of getting to Shetland. And I do know that some of it is crap, boring crap, smelly even and to those who agree with me, I do apologize. A millions question started to emerge when I started this such as Would I really be able to keep this up day after day after day? or Who the hell would really read this other than my wife and I many, many years from now with glasses of scotch in our hands both laughing and being red from embarrassment at what we wrote. Ok, I said a million, but those two are the only ones I can think of right now. But you get the idea. Our main purpose was to simply create a sort of chronological history of our thoughts as we entertained such a ridiculous idea as uprooting and moving to a place we had both only ever been to once. One day I think it would be a really great idea to print this and make a book and I’m sure it would make a really BIG book when its all said and done.

So today I was screwing around on the blogger site I am on and stumbled across something called “stats”. Hmmmm, I thought to myself. Perhaps this is if I want to get somewhere quicker….you know….”go to this page, click me stat!”. But no! I was mislead! It brought me to a magical place of viewer information, where not only could I see how many people had visited our blog but from where. That in itself was pretty cool but when I started looking closer I realized something a little cool and scary at the same time. Firstly, 369 people have viewed our little blog. And that’s just in Canada! 9 people in the USA, 3 in Germany, and 1 in the Netherlands!!!! Like I said, for a novice blogger like me, I think that’s pretty cool. This is especially exciting because we have really told no one about even our intent to move to Scotland let alone tell them about our blog.

So I will end today’s note by saying one thing and that is “Thank You!” Thank you for putting up with my silly humour and silly rants. Thank you even more for putting up with my wife’s! HA! Join us if you like. Comments would be fantastic and very welcome (just remember that this is a family blog!). I would love to hear about others out there who are contemplating something as crazy as what we are contemplating. It is said that misery loves company, well so does crazy! Either let us know we are not crazy or join us in our craziness!!

And for those of you don’t like our blog, I say, with respect, the following:

- Will

Day 27–AAAAACHOO!!

So as I sit here on our balcony congested, sneezing and with itchy, sore eyes I smile knowing that my allergy will not be an issue in Shetland!

I have the very common seasonal allergy to ragweed. It flares up usually in beginning to mid-August and stays active until the middle of October. Usually once the first couple nights of deep frost hit the allergy subsides for another year. Those two months however are filled with days of painfully sore eyes and sinuses that could explode. Last year when travelling for the first time to Scotland in prime allergy season here in Toronto, I realised that my allergy literally does not exist in Shetland! No one knew what I was talking about if I brought up ragweed! BLISS!!! I can not wait for the days of never dealing with this again!

- Michelle

Day 26–Is your heart in it?

Its funny how every single decision I seem to make always brings to the surface our move to Scotland. Assuming we move in two years, every time I want to buy something, I ask myself if I really need it. I ask myself if I can get by in the next few years without it. Invariably my answer is always NO to the first, and YES to the second. I kinda wish that I had this mentality before. I would have saved so much money not buying useless garbage. I can’t remember who I was talking to when we went to visit Scotland last year but she told us that North Americans have a very unhealthy need to spend money on so many things they don’t really need. She said that when payday hits, they have to go out and buy stuff, any stuff. The response in my head was ya, ya, ya. Whatever lady. (I hope it wasn’t my wife who said that!) But wouldn’t you know it, she was right! Here Michelle and I are scrounging every day to save enough money to have a very relaxed trip in September. and the second I get paid I think to myself Sweet! What can I spend this on?! And it shocked me! Its sick! Gross! But the worst thing about it is that it is so easily fixable. We can live off so much less than what we were and save so much more. I would hate to think what we could have saved. Oh well, better late than never, as they say.

So, I suppose the underlining lesson here is that if you are passionate about something, if your hear is really in it, it may be very surprising what you are able to give up to make that passion become reality.

- Will

Day 25–Pet passports

I mentioned in an earlier post about bringing our cats with us when we move. Many people are used to the idea of pets being quarantined for six months when moving to a new country. The UK has done away with this practice and has now put the responsibility of this on the pet owner. There is a strict process which we will have to follow to get what the UK calls “pet passports” for our cute furry family members.

It is a fairly simple process, it just needs to be done in an exact way to be accepted. Six months before we intend to leave we have to take the three of them to the vet to get micro chipped. Apparently this is very simple and only requires a tiny incision in the nape of their neck that needs just a little amount of freezing to do. That say day we have to get them their rabies shots (although they have had these shots before they have to get them after having a micro chip ID). The entire reason for this is because rabies apparently takes six months to surface if it is present.

Then a couple weeks after the rabies vaccine is administered the cats all need blood tests. These are to determine if they have a satisfactory amount of rabies vaccine in their system.

After all this is done and the blood test comes back with clear results (should happen in one shot) a Pet passport is issued. The vet needs to sign off on different aspects of the pets health on the passport. Then the last step is to vaccinate all the cats against ticks and tapeworms no more than 48 hours and no less than 24 hours before we leave for Scotland.

Although this will be a stringent and somewhat picky process to go through I am relieved to not have to be separated from them for six months while they are in quarantine. In the grand scheme of things of moving too this is one of the easiest things we will have to do while moving.

Let’s just hope they still love us after a long plane ride….

 

- Michelle