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Rosie’sFrenchAdventuresandIrish Shenanigans.com

~ Letting ‘Life’ show me the way.

Rosie’sFrenchAdventuresandIrish Shenanigans.com

Tag Archives: exciting times

Making A New Life: Home

04 Thursday Feb 2021

Posted by RosieJoseph in Change is a coming, coming home, For the live of dogs, Ireland, Irish Adventures, Learning and Evolving, Making our own way, My home, The continuing adventure

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

exciting times, home, home is where the heart is, house buying in Ireland, location is everything, making a new home, Welsh Terriers, Welshies

Our possible new home, and yes the land comes with it!

Buying a house was one of our priorities after arriving in Ireland. RD and I have always been home makers, we don’t do well without a house that is ours. Many years ago, just after we married I had to sell my previous marital home and we moved into rented accommodation. Luckily our landlady was a gem, and allowed us to decorate and make some changes, but it’s not the same as being able to make big changes or hanging pictures, or shelves.

Luckily we were blessed enough to have a guardian angel who allowed us to buy her house at a time when prices were rising faster than dough. Trust me I am grateful for that every time I buy a home. But that’s not to say that we haven’t worked bloody hard renovating properties, and making them our own, to get us to where we are now.

A selection of our homes over the past twenty years

We love to pull things together and even now we’re not afraid of hard work, but we also know that we’re not getting any younger so with this in mind and due to my leg injury we both agreed that this time we wanted single floor living.

In the early autumn we sat down and each wrote our idyll of what our next house would be, it was a helpful thing to do, enabling us to stay focused this time round and not allowing the romance of a building take over our decision making.

Learning from previous decisions we wanted somewhere that was in a quiet location but within walking distance of community and the pub (of course!) In addition we didn’t want too much land. So by the fifteenth of January we put in an offer for the semi-detached bungalow in the picture at the beginning of this blog, and it was accepted!

It is a tiny house, but has plenty of potential with a half acre paddock at the side, a courtyard and scope to develop if we want to. Situated in a small community it is also only two kilometres from a village with enough pubs, shops and amenities that we can walk to; it is also only seven kilometres from two large towns, and half an hour from the biggest towns in Donegal, whilst also virtually on the border to Northern Ireland, meaning more job opportunities.

In the beautiful county of Donegal and only thirty five minutes from the beach, it holds all we need, we knew that location was essential. We have loved living near the beach, and so have the Welshies, so easy access to the beach at weekends is important for us, but it was also important to be in a quiet place, but not too isolated.

The deposit has been paid, so hopefully all will go smoothly and quickly. It will be the smallest house we have ever lived in, but we know it will be home.

Watch this space. But for now we will be enjoying the here and now.

Rosie

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Off Grid! Huge changes!

28 Friday Feb 2020

Posted by RosieJoseph in Change is a coming, Learning and Evolving, Making our own way, Reflections, The continuing adventure

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Change, charlatans, con artists, emotional intelligence, exciting times, Kittens, letting go of the rice, life showing the way, listening, Love, Mark Nepo, new beginnings, new jobs freedom, no internet, off grid, poor service, professional, Welsh Terriers

So here I am nearly two weeks in from losing our internet. I have now been off grid for 12 days, apart from one trip to good old Maccy D’s to pick up some emails, and there is still no sign of Orange repairing anything. In fact I was advised yesterday that the engineers do what they like, and Orange find them difficult to control, because there is a shortage of them. I find that ironic in a country where people need work, perhaps Orange should think outside the box and put some apprenticeships in place.

I cannot begin to describe how difficult is without the internet, and have lost count of how many times I have told people I am off grid but they then email me documents, or message me! We have an air printer that won’t work and it is frightening how we all rely on the internet now. What about all the people who cannot afford the internet, or the homeless, how do they stand a chance?!

The attitude of Orange is just another thing to make me reconsider France.

Much has happened, and decisions have been made. We are putting things in progress to make that move onto the next stage of our adventure. Life showed us the way in many ways: not least realising that there is so much negative energy generated in the ex- pat community in this area that it is like a beacon, and more and more shallow, insecure people are joining the throng. Just as Deepak Chopra and the book of Cosmic Ordering confirm the energy generated is the energy that comes back.

I have lived here five years, and written often about the people here. Being off grid has allowed me to sit and write my journal nearly every day, and clearly this was just what life had planned. I realised the level of negativity, petty jealousy and nastiness that underpins life here in this area, and I have come to many conclusions, including going back to the UK to work.

In the the book ‘ The Cosmic Ordering Service’ they explain that the left hand side of our brain (the conscious) can take in 7 impressions per second whilst the right hand side (the sub-conscious) can take in 10,000 impressions per second. It sees and understands so much more than your conscious brain, but we often don’t listen to it when it sends us small messages telling us which way to go. After writing in my journal I have come to the conclusion that there is a low level of emotional intelligence around me, generally. With everyone fighting for a buck, and undermining each other. It was time for things to change.

Writing my journal I realised that my sub-conscious had suggested something to me, a job, a while ago, but my left hand side of my brain had talked me out of it. But a few weekends ago we encountered people, and a level of ignorance and lies like we had never experienced before, which finally brought things to a head. We realised just how low people will go out here to get money. We have often had it said to us ‘Oh they’ve got money, you should charge them a higher rate.’ We have seen people over order building materials and take the surplus. Quite simply that is not us. Our rate is our rate, and we would no more over order materials than the man in the moon. In fact when a client recently gave us a tip for the good work we had done I told him I thought he had overpaid.

I am who I am and I am not, and we are not going to lose our integrity to live. If we lose that then we could have all the money in the world but we would not be living. Sadly if you don’t have emotional intelligence then you won’t understand that.

What happened was the straw that broke the camels back. We are not like these people and we don’t want to be associated with them, or even have them on our radar. To the point that RD said, ‘get me fucking out of here.’ To work out here we have to interact with the English, and apart for a select few, quite simply we don’t want to. It was a no brainer that I went back to the UK.

It isn’t just the salary, I realised when I wrote my journal just how much I have been starved of emotional intelligence, I am at risk of stagnating, and I cannot stand it any longer.

Then on Sunday some dear friends came to see us to tell us that they were moving back to England. It did and didn’t surprise me. They had been here the same amount of time as us, they had built up a community of ‘friends’. When I asked why, they too said it was because of the ex-pat community and how they too had been stabbed in the back.

I knew it was life telling us to move on. In addition my friend suggested a job for me in the UK which pays well, it was the very job I had talked myself out of only a few weeks ago. I knew it was life telling me to do it.

I have applied and I am now sitting in my seat on my way to my new job! (Hence the internet connection!) After the first conversation with my new employers I realised just how much I have missed intelligent professional interaction on a one to one basis, missed talking to others who are also professional in their approach. It felt as if the door had finally swung open, and the sun was streaming in.

It will mean having to leave RD for weeks at a time, and I will miss him and my puppies and kittens so much. But it will give us choices, it will give us the route we need to leave France and move on to Ireland. It will allow us the choice to only interact with those we want to interact with, it will give RD a break (not counting the lists of jobs I have for him!), it will give me interaction with professional people who are not only looking for a fast way to gain a buck, it will allow my brain to be used to its full potential, but, seriously, it will give us freedom.

Life will show us the way. It has confirmed it is time to go.

We have let go of the rice.

Wish me luck.

Rosie

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