Part 1 - 8th May 2022
I started this blog because I haven’t found many blogs that I can fully relate too, and I feel like the full truth of being a full time working mother and wife is often polished around the edges.
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In this blog it will all be laid out to be criticized, related too and laughed at (hopefully)!
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So people would describe me as a “Martha Stewart” recluse with an anxiety disorder and grandeurs of greatness. My standard outfit would be a dressing gown and my Ugg slippers, and I love them!
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I am initially from South Africa, lived in the UK for a few years and now reside in Ireland with my husband and two daughters. My husband is South African and my daughters were both born there too, and until we immigrated to Ireland none of them had ever left South Africa.
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WOW! has it been an adjustment. It really took more mental, financial and physical stress then any of us ever thought… But we keep reminding ourselves that it is worth it in the end. I don’t think I would suggest immigration to a country that you have never even visited previously, no home, job or school organized, or even what county you want to live in. Unless you have a thirst for adventure,
JUST LIKE US!
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So we boarded the plane for the first leg of the very long journey on the 8th January 2019. With tears, laughs, hugs and kisses we wished our extended family goodbye not knowing when we would ever see them again and shuffled off to the departure lounge. Our flight was called at 17:30pm and the adventure had begun.
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I thought Kid A (my eldest) was going to faint as we took of for the first time, and Kid B (my youngest) was going to vomit all over the plane. I was just a nervous wreck. Luckily the first flight was only 1.5 hrs to Johannesburg so we landed without much mess or fuss.
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Now for the second test, not for the faint of heart.
My husband had lost his credit card 48 hours before departure, which we needed to hire the car in Dublin and to present to the hotels for our bookings along the way. Luckily we had managed to arrange for the new card to be waiting at OR Tambo airport for us when we landed. We just had to run to the bank, collect the card, and should make it in time for our connecting flight to Dubai with some time to spare.
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As you will see as this blog goes on, in our family NOTHING goes the way it should! We have become the masters of contingency plans.
So we arrived at Johannesburg airport at 19:00 pm, located the bank and requested the credit card. However lo and behold it was not there, and the panic set in. We were on the phone to the credit card department in a flash, screaming, tears, ultimatums and did we manage resolve it, NO!
With about 15 mins remaining before our 22:00 pm plane to Dubai departed we slammed the phone down to the credit card department, made a irrational scene in the middle of the bank and dramatically made a running exit to the departure gate.
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Just arriving at the gate in time, doing a headcount of family and luggage, at the same time trying to locate all the necessary documentation to board the plane, we made a very unflattering entrance on to the flight. Trying in vain to stuff everything into the overhead compartments with a stream of agitated fellow flyers pushing and shoving past us as we trying to close the door to the overhead compartment which is only about 30 cm x 30 cm and we have 4 incredibly large backpacks and jackets unceremoniously shoved inside and it is taking the full strength of Hulk, the agility of a gymnast and the patience of a saint to get closed.
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Finally we manage to all get situated in our seats, buckled up, the in flight movies blasting on head phones for the kids and my husband and I start freaking out at each other about how we are going to survive in Ireland without the magical wonders of our credit card. With nothing more to be said on the matter we sat back watched some movies, picked at some very unappetizing plane food and wished for the 8.5 hr flight to be over.
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We arrived in Dubai at 8 am in the morning and we were to depart from there at 3 pm so it was a long layover. With two very cranky, tired and hungry kids we set off to see if we could find something to eat and drink. Due to us not having a CREDIT CARD we only had about R200 to exchange to be able to buy food and drinks. Apparently R200 can only buy you two cokes to share…. so it was safe to say that NONE of us were very happy at this point.
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We did about 17 laps of the departure area to keep ourselves awake, and on every lap I kept noticing that we seemed to be the entertainment for all the local Emiratis. Not all of us but especially my 13 year old daughter. Then it dawned on me, my daughter was parading around Dubai airport in SHORT shorts and a spaghetti strap vest (it was 32 degrees when we had left South Africa)!!! A BIG no no for Dubai. I grabbed her shielded her with my body and shoved her into the closest ablutions. After a long explanation of respecting the culture in Dubai she quickly unpacked her suitcase and changed into LONG sweatpants and a LONG sleeve T-shirt. We emerged from the ablutions looking much more civilized and the staring STOPPED!
All I could envisage was us all being led away to some long lost cells in Dubai and charged for indecent exposure in public.
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Thankfully 3 pm rolled around and we boarded the plane again, for our last 8.5 hr leg of the journey. The food was a lot better on this flight so we all stuffed our belly’s, watched many more movies and tried to doze here and there. (unfortunately I suffer from travelling sickness so closing my eyes on an plane is not an option, so I was slowly sinking into sleep deprivation, it’s not fun.)
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Then we landed at Dublin airport and the nerves kicked in for immigration and I was wide awake. It all led up to this point, will we be accepted or will we be refused at the gate. I just kept repeating the phase, ” I am exercising my EU Treaty rights” over and over in my head as this was the phase that I had learnt to use during all our immigration research, we gathered our belongings and slowly disembarked from the plane.
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The first fun treat that we had to deal with when entering the airport was trying to locate our baggage, an easy enough task on its own, but with no sleep for 24 hrs, two kids that were over life in general at this point and 8 o’clock at night in unknown territory it is not easy feat I can tell you. My husband standing at the baggage conveyor belt with two trolleys, me standing off to the side with the two kids and all the hand luggage finally spotted our 5 very large suitcases.
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To say that they were not in the same condition that we left them in was a understatement. The majority of our suitcases were wrecked. The ones that weren’t opened and riffled through were missing their little wheels, the handles were missing, and the suitcases were cracked open and spewing out their contents, it was more than any one family could take. With a lot of words that cannot be repeated, dragging shoving and rolling we manage to lug all our suitcases onto two trolleys, and start heading towards the immigration desk. I plastered on my biggest and friendliest smile I could gather together from the last bit of energy I had, walk up to the desk and state: ” I am exercising my EU Treaty rights”!
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With a big welcome from the very friendly, smiling Irishman at the desk he stamped all our passports and wished us well on our way. In utter disbelief we quickly pushed our luggage and kids out of the Dublin airport doors (just incase they changed their minds) and scrutinized the awaiting crowd for my sister and her boyfriend who had thankfully made their way from England to meet us at the airport.
Spotting my sister elbowing her way through the crowd frantically waving at us to get our attention, I abandoned my fully loaded cart and run into her open arms and had a small mental breakdown...
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WE HAD ARRIVED!!!
(in somewhat one piece)
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Part 2 - 1st June 2022
My sister and her boyfriend Paul escorted us out of the airport into the Irish icy night air. It was a breath of freshness after all the airports and planes we had been on for the last 24hrs.
Just walking out of the airport onto Irish soil was exhilarating.
We walked up to the nearest taxi rank and had to get two taxis to get all of us and all our luggage to the hotel. This, I left in my sisters’ very capable hands to arrange as I had officially run out of adulting for 1 day.
So, we all bundled into the taxis and took off through dark streets like it was a Formula 1 circuit. Our faces all plastered to the windows and pointing out the most amazing sites you can see travelling through the streets of Dublin at night.
Until my youngest daughter brought to my attention that there was a young girl (in her 20’s) jogging down the road. I asked my daughter what was wrong, and she said to me “mom why is there a girl running at this time of night all on her own?”
That is a comment that I look back on every time something is not going right, and it reminds me that not matter what is going on we made the right decision to immigrate, because no matter how tired my youngest was and all the amazing, new and wonderful things she was seeing the biggest event that stood out to her was seeing a girl jogging on her own at night!
(You see this is not a common occurrence in most places in South Africa after dark).
So, we arrived at the hotel at about 11pm and luckily, I had paid for the accommodation before we left South Africa, so there were not issues checking in (credit card-less and all).
We made our way up to our rooms and then sent my sister and Paul out to try track down anything to eat and drink, while we tried to make ourselves comfortable.
While everyone was off getting themselves sorted out, I walked out on to the balcony of the hotel room and looked out over the Dublin City Centre and burst into tears. I cried for everything we had left behind, for everything still to come, the excitement, the tiredness, the anxiety and the adventure. After about 5mins of very ugly crying, I pulled myself together, turned my mobile phone on, connected to roaming and watched all the messages come in that had been building up for the last 36hrs, until I saw a very important email and the panic set in.
I had received an email from a company that I had applied for a job at before leaving S.A, it was to work as a Youth Councilor, and I was desperately hoping to get the job. However, they had set a zoom interview for the following morning at 8am! I was to interview with the BOARD of directors in approximately 8hrs.
At this point my sister and Paul arrived back with pizza and beers...
Manner from heaven!!
As the beers were opened and the first sips were taken, it was the first time I had seen a twinkle of happiness in my husbands eye, since we had left S.A.
I blurted out the news about my interview and everyone stared at me in silence...
After the shock wore off we sat down to eat, drink and be merry, retelling the nightmarish tales of bad airplane food and airport antics.
Then we all said our good nights and while my husband very unceremoniously carried the now sleeping kids off the couch and popped them into bed, I located any clean mismatched clothing sticking out of the suitcases and wrestled it onto them.
With a quick kiss goodnight on their foreheads and a whisper of "welcome to Ireland" to each of them, I was off to bed to see if I could pull a rabbit out of the bag and not be completely comatose in the morning for my interview.
(not likely that 6hrs of sleep was going to make up for the last 36hrs of no sleep, being totally wired from the last 2 days of travelling and being in a VERY unfamiliar setting, but I naively hoped for the best.)
6am comes around and I am in no way ready to get up, I feel like death warmed up. I am so tired I cannot get my eyelids to open, to such a point that I start panicking thinking something is physically wrong with me.
I slowly crawled my way out of bed and stumbled into the bathroom,
I filled the basin with ice cold water and plunged my whole head under the water.
Re-emerging I managed to open my eyes and see a hot mess staring back at me in the mirror, how am I going to fix this!
All I hear is the rest of my family fast asleep and I would give anything to climb back into bed and sleep for another straight 48hrs.
But I know I desperately need to find work and this was an opportunity that I couldn't miss.
Firstly I tear through my suitcase trying to find the least crumpled and most sophisticated outfit that might help to make me look the least zombie like.
Secondly I take to my hair and make up like a crazed woman, slapping on a bit of this, straightening a bit of that and in the end I did such a good job it only look like I had slightly been on a 3 day bender after recovering from a grave illness.
There was a tentative knock at the door, which was my super amazing sister who had agreed to come and sort out the kids and take them for breakfast while I did the interview and then my husband and I were to meet up with her and Paul somewhere in the middle of Dublin when I was done.
I opened the door for her and she looked at me with slight amusement on her face and asked me, " is it going to be a video call?"
I took this as, I might not have done a good enough job as I thought.
My sister had also brought up her laptop for me to use for the interview, so I busied myself with setting it up, while my husband made me a cup of coffee and tried to reassure me I was going to be wonderful....
(he has learnt to lie with a straight face by now.)
10 mins later my husband and I were sitting at the table (everyone else had ventured off in the quest to locate breakfast.) watching the clock tick down to 8am while I primped and fluffed readying myself for the dreaded zoom ring tone to start up on the laptop.
The time had come and the ringing began. I press the green phone icon with a shaky index finger and heard a somber "hello, can you hear me?" come through from the other end of the line.
So let me summarize how the interview went..
To my dismay I came to realize that it was not a video call but only a voice call, so I could have had that extra hour lie in and been sitting comfortably at the table in my pj's and fluffy slippers and no one would have been the wiser.
(remember this was pre work from home due to covid, pajama bottoms and button up work blouse standard issue work attire)
The entire board were on the attack from the word go, firing the most thought provoking questions, that required two paragraph long witty responses each and a list of examples on where and when I last implemented my response.
Along with my 8mins of interaction with the Irish accent that I have had in my entire lifetime, just deciphering the questions being asked was more complex then my brain could handle never mind coming up with any type of response witty, or not.
So none the less I blag my way though it from beginning to end, every question feeling like hot pokers through my soul, until I hear the phrase I have been longing to hear for the last 45mins,
"Alright Amy, I think that's all we need, we will be in touch soon. Good bye!"
I slammed down the lid of the laptop and glanced over to my husband, who was staring straight down at the table.
So I asked, "And how do you think it went?"
He looked up at me and said, "I am sure there will be other jobs that you want as badly as you did this one."
Suffice as to say, he was right, a couple of days later I got a response from the "BOARD" thanking me for my time but apologizing that they had gone with another candidate...
