Big Changes!

Hello girls! 

So sorry to have been missing for a while now... With our trip to Northern Ireland for Christmas, then me falling ill near new years' and having to postpone our return flight (bloody norovirus!), all in all 2012 had a bit of a rough start and  didn't have the energy to blog. 

But it's not all doom and gloom, another reason why I've not been around as much is that Mr.Fish and I have been thinking a lot these past few weeks, about our future and how dificult our situation has become here in Portugal. There are no jobs, everything is getting more expensive and well... we all know our global economic situation so there's no point going into that. But one thing is for sure: Portugal is definitely worse than the U.K., and we've been going over and over the topic until we came to the conclusion.. it's time we move to England.

Yes, one of our 2012 Resolutions is moving to the U.K.! I am so happy and excited now that we have a goal, an objective, something concrete that's going to happen and I'm sure that even though it will be tough to begin with, it will bring us so many good things! I've been looking into all the things we have to do prior to our move, and we have a lot of work ahead of us:

- Save up!! (yeah, as if we haven't been trying already!!It's so hard to even get by, let alone save.) For this I have to get some sort of a job, at a supermarket or something.. and as sad as it sounds, I'm handing out C.V.'s that DON'T mention my degree in Pharmacy because overwhise they simply don't accept me! I guess they think that with me being a graduate, they will have to pay me more? Anyway I'm confident that this way SOMEONE will take me and we will be able to save some money to help us move.

-Sort out the cats. Prior to January 2012, all animals going into the U.K. had to go through a lenghty process of quarantine (6 months) but I was thrilled to find out that now all we have to do is microchip them and get their rabies vaccines. Then all we have to do is wait 21 days and they're ready to go! That's a huge relief, not to mention how cheaper it will be.

-Look out for jobs for us, in my case preferably to do with Pharmacy. I'm looking into Boot's "New to the U.K." programme, where they help pharmacists from the E.U. get settled in the U.K. and start working with them. Fingers crossed!

-English lessons for Mr.Fish! He really is not that bad, he understands most of what we're saying, it's just he doesn't feel confident enough yet and is terrified of moving without feeling more at ease with the language. So we're having "Only English Days" here at home, where all I do is speak English with him and pretend I don't understand anything he says to me if he dares to reply in Portuguese! Poor sod. :)

-Sell the cars. It's not like they're worth mega bucks, on the contrary. My little Ford Ka was about 1000£ and is 13 years old. But hey, everything helps!

So... I'll keep you posted and hopefully in a few months I'll actually be, geographically speaking, closer to most of you! 

xx