Welcome to our blog at EricLovesTara.com! I guess the most appropriate thing to blog about first is our story and what we are up to! This might get long-winded, but bear with me....you'll enjoy :)
Most of you that know us know that Tara and I studied in Stirling, Scotland for a semester when we were in college. After I graduated from Southwestern and Tara from Trinity in 2002, we had always talked about moving back to Scotland. I applied to Graduate School at the University of Glasgow for the Fall of 2003, but for numerous reasons, we just weren't ready to move from San Antonio yet. I deferred my acceptance and we actually went through this process again in 2004 and 2005. In early 2006, Tara and I had again talked about the possibility of moving to Scotland in the Fall, as we both were ready for a change of pace and venue. In June 2006, I had a business trip outside London, so we decided to go over a week early to Scotland to scope out the possibility of living in Glasgow, Scotland. We found a flat that we deemed "perfect" and were very excited....up until the point that they said that "no pets were allowed." This was a non-starter for us, since our 2 cats are our babies. Tara was also hoping to apply for a work visa, and actually interviewed at a very nice private school in Glasgow. The interview went VERY well, and they essentially told her that hadthey not posted the job ahead of her contacting them, they wouldn't even have bothered. The problem was, the actual interviews were a week later (they nornally do all interviews on the same day), and in the week between, it seems that they found the process of applying for a foreign work visa too difficult for someone that may or may not even be staying more than one year. Unfortunately, she did not get the job teaching at this school, but we knew we would figure something out, if we in fact did decide we were for sure moving to Scotland. This summer, when we were in Galveston for 2 weeks, we had a lot of long walks on the beach and did a lot of talking about our options. Tara made the decision to quit her job at Wilderness Oak Elementary School and we were off on a path to prepare ourselves to move abroad.
This included a large garage/moving sale, selling off furniture, packing most of our things to get them ready for a storage unit and applying for visas! The application for our visas was (seemed) very simple. We filled out the applications, sent off our application fees and waited for the response. It really did seem TOO easy. My visa was a student visa and Tara was applying for a "Working Holidaymaker" visa so that she could work part time. Mind you, we already had our plane tickets booked to leave on August 24, 2006 and this was the beginning of August! On August 9th, we get a call from Agnes, the lady who is handling our visas. She tells us that my visa is fine but Tara's visa is going to be denied because she technically applied for the wrong visa....the working holidaymaker is only for those residing in Commonwealth countries, which we in the US are not. We were a bit thrown, but Ag said that she would hold off on stamping it DENIED until we figured out what we wanted to do. We scrambled and stressed and told our parents on that Thursday. My parents have a friend back in Half Moon Bay that used to work for the Australian Consulate, and she has a friend that WORKS in the British Consulate. After some talks with her, she said to leave it up to her and she would see what she could work out. We were feeling a bit better, though quite uneasy....
Ok, so it's long-winded, but it's a good story....check out PART 2 for the rest!
Most of you that know us know that Tara and I studied in Stirling, Scotland for a semester when we were in college. After I graduated from Southwestern and Tara from Trinity in 2002, we had always talked about moving back to Scotland. I applied to Graduate School at the University of Glasgow for the Fall of 2003, but for numerous reasons, we just weren't ready to move from San Antonio yet. I deferred my acceptance and we actually went through this process again in 2004 and 2005. In early 2006, Tara and I had again talked about the possibility of moving to Scotland in the Fall, as we both were ready for a change of pace and venue. In June 2006, I had a business trip outside London, so we decided to go over a week early to Scotland to scope out the possibility of living in Glasgow, Scotland. We found a flat that we deemed "perfect" and were very excited....up until the point that they said that "no pets were allowed." This was a non-starter for us, since our 2 cats are our babies. Tara was also hoping to apply for a work visa, and actually interviewed at a very nice private school in Glasgow. The interview went VERY well, and they essentially told her that hadthey not posted the job ahead of her contacting them, they wouldn't even have bothered. The problem was, the actual interviews were a week later (they nornally do all interviews on the same day), and in the week between, it seems that they found the process of applying for a foreign work visa too difficult for someone that may or may not even be staying more than one year. Unfortunately, she did not get the job teaching at this school, but we knew we would figure something out, if we in fact did decide we were for sure moving to Scotland. This summer, when we were in Galveston for 2 weeks, we had a lot of long walks on the beach and did a lot of talking about our options. Tara made the decision to quit her job at Wilderness Oak Elementary School and we were off on a path to prepare ourselves to move abroad.
This included a large garage/moving sale, selling off furniture, packing most of our things to get them ready for a storage unit and applying for visas! The application for our visas was (seemed) very simple. We filled out the applications, sent off our application fees and waited for the response. It really did seem TOO easy. My visa was a student visa and Tara was applying for a "Working Holidaymaker" visa so that she could work part time. Mind you, we already had our plane tickets booked to leave on August 24, 2006 and this was the beginning of August! On August 9th, we get a call from Agnes, the lady who is handling our visas. She tells us that my visa is fine but Tara's visa is going to be denied because she technically applied for the wrong visa....the working holidaymaker is only for those residing in Commonwealth countries, which we in the US are not. We were a bit thrown, but Ag said that she would hold off on stamping it DENIED until we figured out what we wanted to do. We scrambled and stressed and told our parents on that Thursday. My parents have a friend back in Half Moon Bay that used to work for the Australian Consulate, and she has a friend that WORKS in the British Consulate. After some talks with her, she said to leave it up to her and she would see what she could work out. We were feeling a bit better, though quite uneasy....
Ok, so it's long-winded, but it's a good story....check out PART 2 for the rest!
3 Comments:
Great job on the web site. Even though I have seen some of it before, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Eric, you did a good job telling your story. Love , Mom
i really like love story so much.unn.edu.ng
i like this eric love story,is so interesting
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