This year, we decided we were going to do it. We were really and truly going to write a holiday letter. We’d talked about it for the last six years, each time, more and more determined that we would write said holiday letter. Next year. We would write it next year. It’s finally next year, and here we are, writing a holiday letter. It’s our first time so be gentle, and despite grave misgivings, we shall forge ahead.
Ireland. We are living in Ireland, to be specific, Dublin. Baile Átha Cliath [ballia aha clee-a]. All of you know that, right? We did tell everyone, didn’t we? Suppose we ruined the surprise if we didn’t. It’s our big news of the year.
2009 started quiet for us; Scott worked at Shopflick (right down the street from a lovely children’s books store, might we add), Michelle worked on her novel and volunteered at 826LA, a free writing center for youth. And LA was brilliant, warm, and sunny with lots of palm trees. At the end of January, Michelle started studying German with her friend Meg, and in February, Scott ran his first half marathon. We took a jaunt around the western Caribbean with thirty of Scott’s family members on a really big ship. Yes, truly, thirty, and it was fantastic. We visited turtle farms, played with sea creatures, wandered around Mayan ruins and Mayan caves (called Shibaba, Underworld, in Mayan and believed to be the site of human sacrifices as well as the favorite destination of the local runaways). And when we were somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico, Scott’s work called (Hooray for international roaming rates!), and we learned that the company was in dire financial straits.
The next two months, needless to say, were a bit fraught with worry and tension. However, a friend of Scott’s from years back had happened to call him in January, and he happened to work for this really great company called EWT, and they happened to be looking for developers for their LA and Dublin offices. Just in case, Scott started the application process. On May 31st, Shopflick officially became part of another company and Scott’s job ended. On June 2nd, Scott flew to Dublin for the second round of interviews. A few days after that, we flew to Seattle just in case they offered him a job. Part way through the trip, Madison Tyler Europe, the European branch of EWT, offered Scott a job. We had a month and a half before we were to move, we already had a trip to Syracuse planned (just in case), and so we did what anyone else would do: We went camping in central California with friends.
Scott started at EWT/Madison Tyler just after we returned from Syracuse and Michelle started preparing for the move. Her dad kindly drove to LA to help with lost and delayed mail, incorrect new glasses, missed flights, and missing immigration papers, and at the beginning of August, we said goodbye to our MINI Cooper and moved to Europe.
And just like LA but not at all like LA, Ireland is lovely, cool with rainy sunshine and indecisive temperatures. We found an apartment near Merrion Square in the heart of Dublin, and when people hear, they say, “OH. Merrion Square.” It’s worse than when we said we lived in Beverly Hills, and everyone said, “OH. Beverly Hills.”
In September (Meán Fómhair [mahn-four, literally middle Autumn], Michelle started tutoring at Fighting Words, a free writing center for youth based on 826National. We started Irish lessons because Gaelige is the first language of Ireland, and we began going to plays at the Abbey, the national theatre. We, in fact, transplanted our lives to Ireland with a rainbow-gray-sky hue instead of a blue-blue sky hue. In October (Deireadh Fómhair [dara-four, late autumn], we caught our first soccer (sorry, football) game in Europe, Ireland versus Italy. We bought their colors, a shirt for Scott, a scarf for Michelle. Welllll, she bought the rugby scarf because she liked the color of the green better. We caught the Cork Jazz Festival before the city flooded out (Did we mention that water is free in the Republic of Ireland?), and one night, we went to dinner:
[With a glass of wine just after ordering]
Madison Tyler Europe’s main headquarters are moving to London.
[Pause, deep breath] What are you saying about your job?
-It’s moving to London.
-Are we moving to London?
-If you’ll move with me.
So, yeah, though we said moving to Dublin was our big news of the year, perhaps we should amend it to say that moving to Dublin and then to London in less than a year’s time is our big news. For Scott’s birthday in November (Samhain [Saw-when]), we went to London to see a play, and we wandered in and out of rain and contemplated that which is the magnitude of London. We returned to Dublin mildly dazed about the bizarreness of it all, and continued with work, plays, tutoring, and our Irish course.
No comments:
Post a Comment