Looking Back And Moving On

Today is our last day in Dundee until September.  We embark tomorrow morning on another adventure, this time to London.  To prepare for this new adventure we're reviewing these last 8.5 months, hoping to remind ourselves of what went well and what could've gone better.  This exercise, along with other lessons, will hopefully help to make this move easier than the last.

Dundee is a picturesque town.  It's situated right on the Tay, the city centre is super cute, and the weather has been better than expected, especially this last week.  But, even with all these positives, we may have set our original expectations a bit too high prior to our arrival in August 2010.  We expected a larger city, a live music scene, a college town vibrant with youth and idealism.  We were disappointed.

To avoid this type of mistake in the future we're trying to keep expectations for future adventures low.  We're hoping for the best but expecting the worst, the latter of which we neglected when relocating last year.  We were so convinced that our new home would be amazing that we didn't even consider what would happen if it wasn't.  The reality was nearly devastating but, happily, we've nearly overcome it.  Now, although we're smarter about both mental preparation as well as recovery, avoiding that type of surprise in the future is our goal.

The number one priority upon our arrival in London is finding employment.  The second priority continues to be travel.  Looking back, we're very happy with our travel experiences since arriving in the UK.  We haven't travelled as much as originally planned but we have done the big trips we had hoped for (winter break and spring break).  This summer we hope to continue to take advantage of proximity, especially since London has more airports and easier access to the continent than Dundee making weekend trips possible.  We're especially looking forward to our summer rambles and exploring the areas surrounding London.

One thing that has gone better than expected is Mike's education.  Mike is getting a great education here (Duncan of Jordanstone is one of the best art schools in the UK) and he's loving every minute of it.  Plus, because he was a 2nd year direct entrant, he'll be graduating a year earlier than expected.  Yes, this is one area of the past 9 months that has gone exceedingly well.

Overall, we're pretty happy with the direction we've taken.  It's a complete and drastic change from our previous existence and we're still living abroad amateurs but every day we're learning something new and we believe these lessons have been worth the sacrifices.