This week, I’m celebrating my third anniversary of moving to Dublin by sharing lots of stories with you! From how I ended up here, to what were the hardest adjustments and biggest surprises – check back here all week for the inside scoop!

Read about how I decided to move to Dublin here, what the first year was like for me, and see inside my home here. And if you think moving across the ocean might make you homesick, here’s my take!

I mentioned on Monday that when we decided to move to Dublin, we planned on staying for only one year. And I promised I’d explain why we’re still here three years later!

We came to Dublin thinking we’d only stay the year. We knew we wanted to live in Europe, and we thought it would be perfect to do it for a year and then settle back in America for good. Once we got here, Michael decided he wanted to go back to school to become a guidance counselor. Since Michael is an Irish citizen, it’s way cheaper here for him (think 5,000 euro/year), so we figured staying an extra two years for him to get his master’s would be well worth it.

Michael finished his master’s in June of this year (yippee!), but we’re still here. Once Michael started his master’s, we realized it would make the most sense for him to finish his master’s, then get experience working here in Dublin as a guidance counselor in a high school before moving back to America. His degree is transferable, but we thought it would be better to have a degree plus experience when applying for jobs back home.

Is your math catching up? That’s one year while he applied to school, two years while he completed school, and a year or two to get some experience to take back to America. Four or five years total. Just a little longer than that one year we planned.

Re-reading that whole account of how we’re still here makes it seem like we’re only staying because of Michael and his career. On the surface, it would appear that way. But the real reason we stay is because we love it here. It’s the place we started our life together, the only home we’ve known as a married couple. It took so long for this place to feel like home that I’m not ready to give it up and start over so quickly.

We both have jobs here, and in this economic climate, uprooting ourselves is an exhausting thought. We’ve worked hard to make friends, and are so lucky to have Michael’s parents and brother (and his wife!) within walking distance.

When people ask how long we’ll stay, my answer is usually that we’ll stay until this isn’t the right place for both of us anymore. I can’t picture that on the horizon, but if we feel we should be somewhere else, that’s where we’ll go. For now, we’re at home in Dublin.

The hardest part? Breaking the news to family and friends in Maine. Every time the plan has changed and we’ve decided to stay longer, it’s broken my heart to explain to my parents, siblings and friends that we’re not coming back as planned. Thankfully, they know this is where our home is for now. They’ll wait for us, visit as much as they can, and welcome us with open arms when we arrive back in China Village.

{So there’s the end of this little Moving to Dublin series. Thanks for letting me babble on all week! And thank you for your lovely comments. I love hearing from you all! Have a happy weekend and see you on Monday!}

This week, I”m celebrating my third anniversary of moving to Dublin by sharing lots of stories with you! From how I ended up here, to what were the hardest adjustments and biggest surprises – check back here all week for the inside scoop!

Read about how I decided to move to Dublin here and visit my home here! 

I think I”ve written and re-written this post about seventeen times. It is tough to explain my first year in Dublin without writing a novel. But here goes, try to bear with me!

When I moved to Dublin, I was getting a new husband (remember, we lived across an ocean for the first two months of our marriage!), a new country, and a new career. Not to mention new friends and a new family. That is a whole lot of new.

I learned to drive when I was fifteen, and loved it so much I planned motorcades on a presidential campaign. So when I moved to Dublin and didn”t know how to drive our standard car, let alone navigate Dublin traffic and street signs on the wrong side of the road, it was a shock. It took me five months to get up the courage to learn to drive our car. Isn”t that crazy?!

For the first year, I didn”t have friends who were my own. Only what I called hand-me-down friends from Michael”s youth club growing up. They were so nice to me, but I felt they thought they had to be. So Michael had his buddies, and felt I only had him. That”s hard on any relationship, no matter how strong.

When I left America and my last political campaign, I had already decided I didn”t want to try out the Irish political system. While I know that was the right decision, it made finding a new job in Dublin even tougher. I had no idea what I wanted to be! But the recession took care of that problem by making any job really tough to find.

As a girl whose whole identity was wrapped up in her career, not having work left me  feeling very lost. I remember a lot of tearful conversations with my mom (and dad!), crying that I wanted to come home, but knowing I didn”t really want kasyno poland that at all. Michael probably took the brunt of my frustration, loneliness and lost-ness. I used to say to him, why do we have to be in your country? To his credit (and he deserves a ton), he always used to say he”d take me back to mine.

At the beginning I let Dublin, the move, the struggle beat me.

One day, sometime during the summer of 2009, I had a bit of an epiphany. I remember thinking what if, twenty years from now, I”m telling my kids about when their parents got married and moved to Ireland and all I have to tell them was that their mom was unhappy? How horribly lame that would be!

And right then, it clicked that this whole moving-to-Dublin thing was really my adventure, totally up to me to make or break. I realized that so many people would give anything to have this adventure, and I was wasting it worrying.

My journey from lost to home in Dublin wasn”t that simple or instant, of course, but that was the turning point. Now I know my head had to be in the game before the rest would fall into place.

I”ve learned about a million lessons since moving to Dublin, but this might be my best one. I”ve learned my life isn”t happening to me; I have the power to turn it any way I like. And it”s a heck of a lot more fun if it”s turned toward fun discoveries, learning every in and out of this wacky city, and enjoying the sweet people we get to see every day.

This week, I’m celebrating my third anniversary of moving to Dublin by sharing lots of stories with you! From how I ended up here, to what were the hardest adjustments and biggest surprises – check back here all week for the inside scoop!

Good morning, everyone! I thought it might be fun to share a peek at our apartment, along with everything I can think of to tell you about Irish homes that might surprise you. How about that?

We live in a neighborhood on the north side of Dublin. It’s actually on the same street where Michael went to primary school!

Here’s what we love about our little spot:

It’s close to the Dart – only 6 minutes walking takes you to the train station, then a 20 minute ride and you’re in the City Centre!

Our street is full of friendly families and the cars drive slow – pretty safe for our less-than-quick kitty.

In barely ten minutes walking, we can get to the sea. One of my absolute favorite things about living in Dublin is how close we are to the open water. Even though we’re so close to the city, we also get lots of fresh sea air.

Along the seafront is a biking and walking path that stretches all the way down to the City Centre. It’s such a luxury coming from little China Village where there aren’t even any sidewalks!

Our apartment is cheery and bright and has its very own back garden, fenced in by walls so it feels very private.

We have a shed that fits our American-style dryer and my art studio!

And the more challenging bits:

No closets. Some Irish apartments and houses have closets, but for the most part, no closets. We have dressers and wardrobes, but that doesn’t leave much space for size 14 basketball sneakers! The lack of storage space for clothes quickly curbed any shopping habit I may have had.

Older Irish homes have hot water heaters called The Immersion, which you need to turn on to heat the water before you have a shower or do the dishes. An Irish-American comedian does a hilarious skit about moving to Ireland and learning about The Immersion. It’s a killer when you need to grab a quick shower and you’ve forgotten to turn it on!

Most Irish homes have a combination washing machine and dryer. They fit about half of what a load would be in America, and they take forever. We’re talking well over an hour to wash a load. And forget about the dryer. Three hours later, you’d still have wrinkly, damp clothes. In fact, most Irish people just hang their clothes on the radiators to get them dry!

For Christmas last year, Michael’s parents gave us an American-style dryer that fits in our back shed. It’s a lifesaver with all of Michael’s basketball uniforms that seem to need washing every other day!

Now, for the tour.

Come on in! I made that little welcome sign from a piece of driftwood, a little like this one.

This sideboard hides all the basketball bags and sheets and towels. I found it for 11 euro on Ebay when I first moved here. Such a steal!

From the front room, you can look all the way to the back of our house – it’s long and narrow like a boat! Through this door on the right is one of the bathrooms, and another is attached to the bedroom.

Here’s our little kitchen nook! It has tons more cabinets than our last apartment, and there’s a skylight in the ceiling so it stays pretty bright. My only complaint? It doesn’t allow for someone to keep you company while you’re cooking! Well, the kitty sleeps on the rug, but he’s more of a nuisance since you trip over him!

This is kind of an odd photo, but I wanted to show you our cool chalkboards (made from pieces of plywood I found in the shed) that we have on either side of the kitchen cabinets. They’re so useful. Oh, and some garland that I put up at Christmas and couldn’t bring myself to take down.

See that door to the left? That’s the bedroom.

The bedroom is cozy, for sure, but we’ve been pretty creative with the space.

And see? On the opposite wall is my lovely sea glass art! It’s the nicest thing to look at when you wake up in the morning. That is, if you wake up once the sun is up – for me that’s only on the weekend!

Just one extra shot of the bedroom so you can see my favorite part – this mirror was a gift from my grandparents for our wedding. It’s made with a frame that hung over their bed for fifty years. It used to have a painting, but they changed it to a mirror and I just love it. Now they’re going on 60 years, so I think it’s good luck!

Now, the back room of the house is the living room. It has two very squishy, very reclinable couches. They wouldn’t be my pick, but in Ireland, rental properties usually come with couches, beds, and some other miscellaneous furniture that you have to stick with. I do admit, though, they are very comfy.

The gauzy curtains came with the apartment as well, but I’ve grown to love them. They add some privacy but let the light stream in. I found the corner TV unit and the coffee table for free here. I’ve debated painting them, but I think I’ll wait until we move. I’d love to paint them white, but we’ve got so many different browns going on I’m surrendering for the moment.

The big windows run across two full walls. Here’s the view from the couch by the window!

Our back garden gets sun in the morning and early afternoon. The walls keep the breezes to a minimum, so it gets quite warm back there. And check out my sunflowers! They got so big!

And there’s our little house from the back garden!

How’s that for a house tour? Of course, what I really need is one of those wide-angle lenses that make everything look huge. But that wouldn’t be nearly as honest.

{one of my favorite streets in Dublin – looking up toward the Tourist Information Office – it’s in that church!}

This Friday marks three years since I moved to Dublin. Wild, right?!

I thought to commemorate the three years in Dublin, it might be fun to share a few stories of living in Dublin, what I’ve found challenging or surprising, and maybe even some travel tips. For today, I’ll share how I ever ended up here in the first place!

Michael (my husband, if you’re new here!) and I met at Colby College during our senior year. We dated through our senior year, and when we both graduated, Michael moved to Spain to play basketball for a year. I stayed in Maine to run a congressional primary campaign. We were apart for a year – I visited Ireland once, and Spain twice; Michael surprised me by showing up in Maine once and asked me to marry him! Then we got married in Maine in August of 2008.

Still with me? Great. At the time of our wedding, I knew I had to stay in Maine for another few months to finish the campaign I was working on. We had thought we’d try to spend one year in Europe while Michael played for another basketball team, and then settle back in America for the long term.

But by the time we got married, it had become clear that European basketball was feeling the recession already. There were very few jobs going, and it didn’t seem likely that Michael would find a team. In the weeks before our wedding, we knew we probably wouldn’t be heading back to Spain, but we were so busy we hadn’t really settled on a plan.

On the morning after our wedding, Michael and I woke up early to drive from the B&B where we spent the wedding night, back to my parents’ house to have brunch with our guests. During the twenty-five minute drive, we decided, in the fastest, most matter-of-fact way, that we’d move to Dublin for a year. We’d get our European experience, Michael could work as a basketball coach and play in a league there, and I’d find work substituting in local schools. Easy as that.

A few days after we were married, Michael hopped on a plane back to Dublin, and I stayed in Maine until the November elections. In retrospect, this was such a strange way to start our marriage – and it may have made it a tad more difficult to adjust when I moved to Dublin. But more on that later.

Michael started some coaching jobs, and set about getting our life organised for when I arrived. He rented an apartment, bought a car. I arrived at Dublin Airport at 5am on November 11th to a new country, a new husband, and a new life. It took a week for reality to set in, and it took a year for me to really adjust. And it was a whole lot harder than I ever thought it would be.

So, there’s the short story of how I came to live on this little green island. For a year (so much for that plan!). Three years later, I’m happily settled and (most days) am willing to call Dublin home.

I’ll leave you with that for today – part one of how I ended up here, with this life, in this land. Tomorrow, I’ll give you the inside scoop on what it was like during the first year.

Would you ever up and move to another country? Think you could do it permanently, or would you have to return home eventually?