I should be working but...Ireland is calling

[ladypeace82]

I usually go through these phases where I don't want to live in America anymore. Just b/c of all that goes on. All the censoring, all the lies, and other things.

Canada was one of my obessions at one point. But then I remembered, I hate being cold. Now I hate being hot, but I still love North Texas. :D
Oh, and I could never have a garden there. I'm sure I could, but again, I don't want to be cold.

Right now my obsession is Ireland. I've been scouring online for an hour about jobs and housing in Ireland. IT"S EXPENSIVE!!!!

Does anyone live there think good produce and organic produce is easy to come by?
p.s. their work ethics draw me to want to move there more.

[SuBu]

You're a trip!

[StarFire]

and quite the adventurer too!! wow... :eek:

I'll be visiting this post cuz I wanna see what you end up doing... this is like a 'cliff hanger' on a favorite show!

http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g131/billy7948/CLIFFHANGER.jpg


http://i149.photobucket.com/albums/s43/FireStar_830/COOL_G16.gif coool.....

hmmmm.... okay -- this picture is pretty darn scary!!! :eek: aaand that is why I live on an Island surrounded by water.... close to the ground.... aaaccckkk...!!!

[aililiu]

i LOVE ireland, ive been obsessed with it for years. i lived in the uk for a bit and got to travel around ireland in my time off work. i miss it immensely. but i wasnt raw at the time... actually i mostly lived off of dry cereal and tins of tuna. LOL. backpackers life for ya.

ps... my part of canada doesnt get cold.
i found it wayyyy colder in the uk/ireland
i had to buy a winter jacket for the first time ever.
hahhaha

[ladypeace82]

what part are you in? i see it says vancouver Island.

[aililiu]

what part are you in? i see it says vancouver Island.

mhm, vancouver island is off the west coast. do you know where vancouver is? you take a ferry from there. its gorgeous here. rains far less than over on the mainland, as well. we maybe get ONE day of snow a year, a couple centimetres, and its a huge deal. haha! its absolutely stunning here, too. and a much more laidback feel than the mainland. mmm.

[ladypeace82]

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
Sounds excellent! i have a map up of it. :)

[sport]

Well I am still here and today I finally decided that it is time for a trip to Florida because I am COLD. This is the first day this winter that I could say was cold. It is nice and bright and sunny but COLD.
It is easy to be raw here. There is no shortage of good organic produce. I love the food choices and I do not think that produce here is more expensive than in the US or the UK but buying equipment is.
As you already said, housing here is a ridiculous price but it went down 5% in the past year and they are predicting a further drop of 8% next year so now would not be the time to buy.
I have stated here in the past that anyone that wants to come over for a look can have my spare bedroom for a couple of weeks and will be made very welcome but had better check the dates with me because I can see me heading to the airport within the next 2 weeks unless I get my nice warmer weather back. I will probably spend most of Dec here but the end of the first week in Jan will see me taking off again for warmer places for a couple of weeks.
From the first of Feb I will put my roots down again for the summer so book your flight.

[luna99]

wow, you sound like me.. always dreaming of the next place I want to visit or live. I wish I had done more travelling when I was single but I never seemed to have the money..

good luck on your journey! I am living someplace cold right now and really don't like it one bit (I'm orignally from Texas myself). :p

[Nurse in the Raw]

I wish I could just pick up and go on a whim. Where do I want to be today.....perhaps Japan. Okay let's go! I so want to be retired so I can do this.

[aililiu]

I wish I could just pick up and go on a whim. Where do I want to be today.....perhaps Japan. Okay let's go! I so want to be retired so I can do this.

retired and rich! haha.

[Ireland]

Ahh...all this talk about loving Ireland. I feel so special! ;)

[ladypeace82]

hahahahahha name well chosen!

[kaybee]

I LOVE ireland; dingle, kerry is like my summer playground, ive been there the last 3 summers, but I found it really difficult to get the variety, availability, and inexpensiveness of produce and other raw goods that I'm used to here.... Some of it has to do with where I was, that I was in a small, sort of isolated tourist town on the coast; I know sport doesnt have a problem getting greens and stuff where she is, but where I was (dingle), it was hard to get stuff unless you grew it yourself, or found out who was growing it and got some from them. even if i went to the nearest big town/city (tralee), i didnt find much improvement in the availability of organic greens and stuff. probably you would have better luck in terms of variety in cork or dublin than where i was. If you can find stuff locally, thats great, and your best bet. , but the organic stuff in most of the supermarkets is going to usually be shipped from far away, which im not used to. in massachusetts or DC where im used to living, so many things grow so easily--all sorts of greens, veggies, and fruits, berries, melons, etc, so im not used to stuff having to be imported from switzerland or israel or south africa or australia or whatever; more used to going to the farmers market and getting the stuff that was picked that morning, at least during the spring summer and fall. anyway, in ireland, Most fruit is imported, as are alot of veggies too, i think. if you can find a niche where theres a good hfs that gets stuff locally, or find someone who does organic gardening and buy direct from them, you'll be ok, but I didnt find the quantity or availability of things like especially greens that Im used to here. I found it pretty difficult, but AGAIN, it depends on where you are. I also found organic fruit to be really expensive, and most of the fruit, organic or otherwise, is imported, as are alot of the veggies. You likely will not find the same variety of veggies, especially greens, as you are used to in the US or Canada.

As for other staples besides fruits or veggies.... raw grains and legumes, and some seeds (buckwheat, wheat, rye, lentils, beans, sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, flax seed etc), i found to be very affordable, but if you are used to using alot of nuts, your going to be out of luck, or broke, or both :) Any nuts there tend to be outrageously expensive compared to here, as well as most dried fruit. you can get dried currants and figs reasonably priced, but theyre probably not really raw, just like most of the dried fruit in the US. THings like Dates, as far as im concerned forget it... they sell "dried" ones for cheap but i really dont think they're raw... the organic medjool dates are between 18-20 euro per kilo (2.2 pounds) at the hfs or the market, which is CRAZY compared to the 5 bucks a pound I pay here for organic dates at the co-op. you can get medjool dates at tesco but only some of them carry the organic ones and the non-organic ones, i believe, based on experience, are sprayed with something nasty, because i got a detox rxn with flu-like symptoms after every time i ate them......

i found olive, sesame, sunflower, and coconut oil at the hfs that were apparently raw, but things like coconut oil seem so pricey according to here..maybe because im still thinking in dollar conversion..

Also, in part because the dollar to euro rate is so bad right now, "specialty" items tend to be expensive. things like raw cacao, raw agave, raw carob, olives, etc, also, i dont think you will find these things readily; i think you would have to mail order unless you got really lucky. i didnt see them in any hfs that i looked in in dingle or tralee...but again maybe thats just because i was out in the boonies :) ...

I guess alot of it depends on your preferred diet. I found you can get along cheaply if you go to the bulk distributor (like munster wholefoods in farranfore, kerry), and buy like 10 lb of sunflower or sesame seeds at a time or stuff like that. i still found the nuts and most dried fruit to be unaffordable though (and probably not raw anyway). it also depends on how tight your budget is, how creative you are with your food, and how much you need variety in your food. this summer i basically went and got a bunch of dry goods (seeds, grains, lentils, sprouting seeds) in bulk, worked on an organic garden which i ate out of, spent alot of money on alot of fruit, and tried to supplement what veggies i couldnt get in the garden by buying from a local organic farmer or the hfs (mostly imported though). i took a couple pounds of raw chocolate and 2 jars of coconut oil with me and about 5 lbs of nuts and dates. it wasnt enough for 4 months ;) . i got pretty sick of my monotonous diet, because mostly what we had in the garden was nothing at first, then lettuce lettuce lettuce, mustard, kale, chard, all kinds of greens that I planted, but i got tired of them, some string beans, zucchini, cucumbers, and not a whole lot else. things like peppers, tomatoes, etc need a much longer season and are hard to get locally until the late fall... carrots, onions, potatoes, mushrooms and cabbage are readily available. anyway, i mostly subsisted on stuff from the garden, a few veggies from the hfs, tons of lentils, buckwheat, and sunflower and sesame seeds, dulse seaweed (unexpectedly expensive..i thought it would be cheap since it comes from right off the coast, but not) , raw oils, occasional nuts, and alot of fruit, though mostly just apples, bananas, pears, oranges,avocados..... you can get other stuff, but not as readily or affordably, depending on where you are living there. i tried to get into foraging but didnt have alot of luck finding someone to show me, and i was told to be careful because alot of the fields are sprayed... its frustrating because its such a green and growing countryside but theres not alot of people farming fruits or veggies there.

sorry, not trying to be discouraging, i LOVE the place--ive been home for 6 weeks and am ready to go back...although the winters there i dont think would be to my liking-- but im just trying to give you a picture of what youre experience could be like, depending on what your needs are and where you want to live. also, like sport said, equipment is really expensive there, so if you want a heavy duty juicer or a dehydrator or things like that, your going to want to drag it along. the cheapest coffee grinder i found there was 40 euro.... i got a friend to bring me one from here... and someone else to drag along a dehydrator last summer. and sport and her husband drove up and brought me a bunch of stuff too :) blender, dehydrator, etc--which, by the way, sport, the dehydrator is still in storage in dingle if you ever want to try to get the company to repair/replace it--if i have a car next summer ill come visit and also bring it down.

good luck--
depending on where you want to go, summer is a better time to find jobs in touristy areas, they sort of shut down during the winter. other jobs i'd say you could find in the cities year round though

kaybee

[ladypeace82]

hmmmmmmm. Thank you very much for all that info. It really helps to hear from those who are there often and those who live there. :)

[aililiu]

ireland : (the member not the place :D ) where in bc are you??

[kaybee]

yeah, no prob. sport can probably give you more/better info about in which places/areas of the country might be easier to get a variety of raw foods, etc.

a little more advice:
also, it can be a bit tricky to get a work permit there, unless you have dual citizenship or if you are a fulltime student you can get a 4 month work permit through BUNAC (www.bunac.com or org, i forget) and theres one other agency too. will cost you about 500 bucks though. or, if you find an employer that really wants you there, and they can claim that you have unique skills that they cant get from anyone else in the EU, they can apply for a work permit for you, but it has to be before you go. Ive gone under the student work permit for a couple years. The immigration guy there this year told me that apparently you can apply for a 1 year tourist work visa through the Ireland department of justice. but you have to do it when youre still in the US. that might be your best option if it really exists.... i dont know because i havent looked into it; apparently theres info on their web site. You also might be able to move there and work there for yourself if you are having your own business and your clients are here or whatever, like if you were a life-coach or something. im not sure about the rules/ regs for being self-employed over there when youre not a citizen; ive often wondered about that; hopefully it might be something that would fall into the "grey area" of the law so one could do it....

summers there are beautiful (although a lot of cold windy rain this past summer); daylight lasts from like 430 in the morning to 11 pm, which is awesome. in new england where im from it just gets dark all of a sudden by 9 pm. there there is this endless twilight that goes late into the evenings in the summer. i love it. payback comes in the winter though when its not light til 9 am and darkening by 430:)

lemme know if you want more advice on how to figure out work and stuff there. best way to get casual work/work in small towns is you really have to know someone/have some connections or else its difficult to get hired, especially for shop jobs and stuff.

-kb

[sport]

Artists and writers are tax exempt here so you can earn as much as you like from either of those sources and not pay a penny tax.

[Ireland]

Aililiu, I'm in the Shuswap, fairly close to Kamloops. I see you're on the island...what a beautiful place to live!