The last few weeks saw me get married, quit from my well earning job to switch to low stipend academia and preparing the move to Ireland. Life is changing, and change is good.

Ireland

Moving a country is strange, from knowing all about the environment you are in, you go to knowing nothing at all. Finances, Rent, Language nuances and slang, and anything else you took for granted is non-obvious now.

I'm learning hard and fast everything I need to know about setting up financially in Ireland, how banking works there, trying to look ahead of time at a bank to open my account in, deciding how much cash I need to have for the start until I get a bank account opened (It's expected to take a month to get everything setup with the bank!).

I also need to understand the rent terms in Ireland, it's a bit different, and we will probably only figure out most when we try to actually search for a place.

We would like to rent a house, but houses are 100 euro more per month compared to an apartment, we'll probably settle for an apartment, we'd rather have some extra cash for travelling on weekends.

We are also debating how best would be to be setup with a computer, should we bring our current desktop computer and buy a monitor there, or buy a laptop and be done with that?

Lots of questions, very few answers. I've been asking the peoples at the University so much, that I feel uncomfortable to keep asking them, I get answers and it helps a lot to build the security feeling that we partially know towards what we are going, but there are always more questions.

A good source of information is Move To Ireland website, I've paid for the full site to get some more answers, it's been useful, but it's not targetted at students, so information on residency permits for students and student-dependents (my wife) is non-existent.

We've called the Police in Ireland to ask about the status of my wife, it took quite a bit of effort to do the conversation, but it paid off, she will get a residency permit, so we can stay there together.

Timeline

Three last days to work, Then a week and a half of prepartions to pack our belongings, move everything to a storage place in my wifes parents house, return the rented apartment to its owner, than a bit less than a week to leave with the parents of each side, say goodbyes, and on the 2nd of August we will be on the plane to Ireland for a fun adventure!