Friday 26 August 2011











The lovely Tim asked me what made me come to the UK.I started to type an answer and realised it was getting wayyyyyy to long winded and deserved it's own post so here goes.........

Hahaha,I get asked that all the time.Basically I've always loved travelling,my parents met travelling and are both immigrants to Oz,so my sister and I were always encouraged to get out and see the big,wide world.

Did a couple of backpacking trips through SE Asia during my Uni breaks.I decided special needs teaching wasn't for me,it's severely under resourced and under budgeted.I respect teachers greatly for what they try and do with such limited resources but I just felt special needs teaching was like a glorified creche.

Sooooo,I dropped out of Uni and thought I'd better do something with my life as all my friends were either working their ways up the career ladder or sensibly stuck it out at Uni.I decided to make my way overland from Australia to Europe/UK.Which I did,and was the most amazing and at times scary,6 months of my life.

The options to settle were either Germany,with my very rusty Deutsche or Scotland which I'd always fancied for some reason.I definitely knew I didn't want to do London,Edinburgh or Dublin,so Glasgow it was as jobs for non-fluent,non TEFL qualified people were of course not very great and I was running out of funds.

I didn't want to do the usual big 3 as I wanted to come over here and really get assimilated in the local culture,as opposed to hanging about a bunch of other Aussies in Shepherds Bush.I came to Glasgow with my last pennies,intended to stay a year or 2 before moving on and trying to do some seasonal work around Europe,but the friendship with the Scotsman turned into romance and 2 years turned into 7.

Phew! Are you still with me? ;P

I don't regret the travelling or dropping out of Uni as I had some freaking awesome adventures,and met the love of my life.At times I have pangs of,not so much regret but maybe guilt for letting my parents down - they both dropped out of school at 15 due to poverty and worked their arses off to get where they are today,and because I realise that the opportunity for Uni has maybe passed me by,which some people would give their right arm for.

It's certainly been an emotional roller coaster,but that's another post......and don't even get me started on the weather.On the whole though,I'll be leaving (hopefully,all going well) with good memories,and leaving a little bit of my heart in Scotland which is still one of the most beautiful countries I've ever had the pleasure of travelling around.

xox






2 comments:

Tim said...

Thanks for the post! :)

Wow! What an adventure you're having!

I'd love to go travelling but never really grabbed any opportunities which came my way when i was younger.

Good luck with getting home!

Jayne said...

Hi, found your blog recently via a net search for vintage/ pin up related blogs (which has become a bit of an obsession lately!) Just wanted to say don't worry about having missed the opportunity to do uni-I'm in my late 30s and am back at uni after giving up on it fist time around. And loving it :-)

Enjoying reading about your life as an ex pat Aussie!