A Year in the Land of Smiles

Paul and I have started a new blog dedicated to our move to and adventures in Thailand, which you should bookmark and keep an eye on. It's fairly quiet at the moment, but there will be increasingly more to write and read about as time goes on.

I'll still be writing here about everything else :)

A Year in the Land of Smiles

The Agony and The Ecstacy

I'm Up North for Easter, staying with my parents. This is an excellent opportunity for a proper rest - I've got nowhere I need to be, and no way of getting there anyway; out in the middle of nowhere in a beautiful house and no option but to relax. This is, in itself, excellent news. However, just to put the cherry on top, my mum and dad have recently acquired a gorgeous, soft, rottweiler puppy called Meg.

The ecstacy comes from the playing, the cuddles, the excessive cuteness and the restorative nature of playing with a puppy for a week. The agony comes from her needle-sharp teeth and her apparent desire to rip my face off to express her love.

I can live with that :)

Goodbyes

Now that we're all decided about moving to Thailand, the quest to sell the flat and organise our trip has begun in earnest. The first step has been to have the flat valued, and the results have been very positive, suggesting we might expect up to £250,000, which is incredible. We paid £180,000 for it less than 3 years ago, so making £70k on it by doing not much at all is always good news.

Now we need to get the flat ready for the market - finishing off niggly cosmetic jobs, doing the tasks we've put off for months, and choose a firm of solicitors to represent us. We've had tradesmen in giving quotes, some dates in the diary and have arranged a date to move all our unnecessary furniture into storage -this Friday!

Part and parcel of all this, however, has been rehoming our pets. We've been really lucky in finding people who are prepared to take Sari and Cara on a temporary basis, and a family who want Loki, but only permanently as they have a child. In fact, I was absent from training tonight because me and Kal took the not-as-long-as-we-anticipated trip to Broxburn to introduce Sari to her new foster home. The man taking her seems a true animal lover, very kind and caring and I'm sure she'll be well looked after, but it's a very sad thing to do. I'm hoping that by the end of the week Cara and Loki will have homes to go to, and may already even be in them within a week.

Once that is done, the major work in the flat can take place and we will hopefully be on the market by the end of April at the latest. After that it's Visas, plane tickets and continuing to learn Thai and we will have done everything we can do. Fingers crossed, touch wood, weather permitting etc etc, we will sell the flat for a decent price without too much delay and be able to leave for Thailand in July with all our debts paid, money in the bank and nothing to tie us down for a year.

Bliss.

A trip down Memory Lane

also known as falling off your bike for the first time in about 15 years.

Yes, I actually fell off my bike this afternoon when I was cycling to trampolining class when I went round a corner and my back wheel slid out from under me on a patch of mud. I skinned my knee, hurt my palm a bit and bled everywhere, but nothing that wont heal and form a badass scab...

And, AND! I didn't cry at all and I even went to trampolining even though I fell off my bike. Because I am A Big Girl.

Admittedly, I did go "Aaaaargh! Owwwwww!" and glance around to see if anyone was there to look worried and ask if they could help/call an ambulance/give me a cuddle/kiss it better, but sadly I was alone and my manly whimpering went unheeded.

My bike feels weird, though - all wibbly and unsteady (or is that just me?) so it's a trip to the bike shop to have it checked over and my front brake fixed again (remember how the kids playfully sabotaged my brakes? Well, they're still dodgy).

In other news, last night I went to the Tall Tales Oscars with Lovely Kal, at the Scottish Storytelling Centre on the Royal Mile. It was a fun night where storytellers competed to tell the best tall tale, for the honour of winning a trophy shaped like a gnome. Lots of jokes and very good fun, and obviously good company.

Tomorrow I have about 4,000 people coming over to value the flat, give estimates for work and so on, I have to get a passpor application form because my passport's still in my maiden name, have lots of passport pictures taken, and other wee jobs like that. I also need to make another appointment with my lovely doctor as my voice is still fucked, and I think I'm in need of a higher dose of anti-depressants. Training in the evening, and sorted.

One small step for man...

... one fuck-off, scary-ass, massive, life-altering trip of a lifetime for Aarayan and Paul.

Mum, dad... we've got something to tell you.... we're gay.

Nah, not really (well, only a bit) - we're just going to live in Thailand for a year.


Following a period of epic unrest for me and a lengthy period of what can only be described (providing you're a bit middle-class and pretentious) as ennui for Paul the fates have presented us with a set of circumstances which are never likely to align again.

1 - I'm still young enough to make a go of training and fighting full time to see how far I can get
2 - I'm about to be out of a job
3 - Paul is bored senseless and wants to re-train as a teacher (fool)
4 - We were planning on selling the flat anyway

As such, we find ourselves young (well, I am anyway), child-free, moneyed up (I hope) and unemployed.

This will Never. Happen. Again.

So, what's the plan?

We're moving to Phuket, so that I can train and fight full time with Tiger Muay Thai, which appears to offer excellent facilities, for a reasonable price, and with good promotion connections. I want to get as much fighting experience as I possibly can, come down a weight category perhaps, get ridiculously fit and come back to Scotland and kick some ass :)

Paul's going to work probably teaching English, perhaps doing some web design, spend alot of time grinning his head off, drinking on the beach and learning to dive (not all at the same time, I hope).

He also thinks we're getting a pet elephant. I haven't got the heart to tell him it's not the same as owning a dog.

We'll get a flat on the island, and try and really enjoy our year in Thailand properly. I'm learning Thai with Bun down the road, and Paul's going to start lessons next week, I'm going to get as fit as I can before I leave to avoid too much unneccessary delay before fighting when I arrive.

Before all that, though there's all the unfamiliar territory of visas, work permits, selling our flat here, finding temporary homes for our pets, putting our belongings in storage and somehow managing to say goodbye to the people we love.

Paul, at least, has done this before and has some experience of saying goodbye, coming back and finding he hasn't been forgotten. He has many friends whom he sees intermittently and whenever their paths cross.

I'm finding the idea more difficult because, to be perfectly honest, I don't have many friends, but the ones I do have I love very much. There's Kal, Fran and Giles; Ally, Ann, Scott, Tessa and the guys from training; and the girls at school and saying goodbye is going to be very, very tricky. I've been in Edinburgh quite some time, and it's taken me this long to feel like I belong, so leaving it all feels like a big risk. All I can say is expect a very, very emotional Aarayan at our going away party (which, by the way, will be huge!)

So, I'm going to have plenty to write between now and July, when we leave, and even more after that!

Stay tuned, folks

A x

Boing!

I decided to give trainng a miss on Sunday, mostly because one of my pupils will be there and I suspect I'd struggle to explain why I'm not well enough to teach, but I am well enough to smack the pads...

So, instead, I went trampolining, which is something I've always fancied trying. I'd done it a wee bit as a teenager and I managed to convince Mr Paul to come as well, so that took alot of the nerves out of the situation. At the risk of sounding abuout 12..... it was sooooo cool! I mean, how can bouncing dead high be anything other than cool, really.

The strange thing about it was that a) I was actually pretty good, and b) you don't feel nervous when you're doing it, but as soon as you get off you realise your heart is pounding and you feel sick with the adrenaline, it's all very strange. I'm going to go back again next week, but I doubt I'll be trying out for the Olympics any time soon.

In other news tomorrow I'm starting Thai lessons with a nice Thai lady up the road who teaches the language and does Thai massage. I'm going to take advantage of my excessive free-time and desire to be constantly moving by spending a few hours a week learning Thai until I go back to work, and then I'll carry on at weekends. It's something I've wanted to do for quite a while now, but put off for various reasons.

It's only been a week since I've been at work, but already I'm remembering a whole host of things about myself that I'd all but put aside for a rainy day, and it's actually quite exciting having the opportunity to pursue some of them.

As for work? Well, I'm not ready to think about that yet. I'm still struggling a bit with the symptoms of stress - panics, an aching jaw from clenching it and grinding my teeth without realising it, raw fingers and non-existant fingernails from the biting, difficulty sleeping.

I'll get there though, and before I do I will have learned some Thai and some trampolining moves :)

That Sunday Feeling.

Having spent about 10 hours this weekend doing paperwork, and about 45 minutes planning actual teaching (doesn't that just say it all?) Sunday night rolls around again.

I hate Sunday night because it means there is absolutely nothing standing between me and Monday morning. My least favourite occurence in the week. I really shouldn't be allowed to speak to people on a Monday morning as I am pathologically incapable of being anything other than utterly depressed and negative and am likely to respond to a simple "How was your weekend?" with something along the lines of "Shite! It's all shite! I wish I were dead!", which is possibly a little uncalled for.

I've got to have a shower. I've got to go to bed. But I can't drag myself off the sofa. It's been days, if not weeks since I has a night's sleep that didn't include at least one nightmare about school. Last night's was particularly bad, and it's all symptomatic of just how awful my (and lots of my colleagues') jobs has become.

I'm a grown woman and all I can think is "I don't want to go to school tomorrow"

Sad.