Sicily Here We Come

Hi all, following on from our previous post about applying for jobs Teaching English in Europe, we have finally had some good news! We got a job offer from a school in Ankara, Turkey, but turned it down, pinning our hopes instead on a preliminary chat we'd had online with a school in Sicily who seemed interested in employing us. Small town/island life would be our ideal rather than a big city like Ankara despite the fact that the pay was better in Turkey!

It's not all about money though and after waiting a few weeks for a skype interview with the school in Sicily on Sunday, we got offered jobs! We don't start until October 1st but plan to go a month early so that I can immerse myself in Italian....wine, food and the language of course, and get to know the island a bit. Rene doesn't need to work on the language so will just work on the food and wine bit!! We will be living and working in a town called Giarre, it's looks very quant and historic on the internet and we've already checked out the eateries there online!

Now we just have to find some work teaching English at a summer school, and this week I have applied to about 10 different places in Spain and Italy and now we are just waiting to see what comes back. So we have three more weeks here in CR and our very good friend Susan is flying out today to join us for the remainder of our time here. We have retired from our voluntary positions at the animal rescue centre as we have done a hard 5 months slog there and it's back breaking work. We will be visiting over the next few weeks as tourists though and taking lots of pictures of our friends there, both human an animal.

Recently we had a gig at a local restaurant - we called ourselves Fused Blues and mostly did blues and soul covers. Our good friends Jana and Tom came with their new puppy who danced the night away and video filmed most of it! All our friends from the rescue centre turned up too and we had a great night. My hands were bleeding at the end of the night, I'm not quite as hardy a musician as Rene. He sang and played his heart out as usual and was brilliant!

On a philasophical note, giving up everything, changing our life like we did, was the scariest thing we have ever done, and of course at the time there are always nagging doubts in your mind wondering if it's the right thing. Now though we can honestly say that it worth all the worry and the fear because we've realised that the possibilites are endless and our journey is full of new and wonderful experiences, places, people and excitement that we would never have found had we not had the confidence to close old doors. Off to the beach now, it's too hot not to swim!