The background

While my daughter is napping I have a chance to fill in some of the (currently rather hazy) details...

Saoghalbeag is Scottish Gaelic for "small world" (saoghal = world/beag = small). I travelled to the UK, like so many other Aussies, on a working holiday maker visa in 2002. Before I even set foot in the place (Scotland) I knew it was where I wanted to live forever. 3 years of drecht weather, fickle boys, midges and being the Aussie outsider did not change this. 3 and a half years in exile in Australia have still not eroded my desire to live in the best wee country in the world.

http://www.scotlandistheplace.com/

http://www.visitscotland.com/

Anyway: why aren't we there? Well, immigration is a fearful enemy and so far none of my elaborately constructed plans to return have come to fruition. Not even the fact that I have a half-Scottish child will bend the ear of the British Home Office. So we have been condemned to exile in the blistering Australian heat - in a country where green frogs live in my toilet and cockroaches clamber up the walls at night! There are wasps and snakes and spiders in the garden (and sometimes in the house!) and the heat, did I mention the heat??

I will leave my frustration, rage, feet stamping and head banging to your imagination. So many times I have cursed the place (Scotland) and wished the dream to set me free so I could try to make myself happy with life in the Aussie 'burbs; with my 4WD, plasma telly and 6 burner BBQ...

Sometimes I can be slightly mulish and it can take me a little bit of time to notice the open window because I am so busy stamping my feet and shouting at the door that has just slammed in my face. (Even when I do notice the window I have sometimes been known to continue stamping and shouting at the door).

My daughter has just turned 3, and for a long time the idea of teaching English overseas as a way of continuing the travels that were interrupted when my daughter arrived has slowly been growing on me. It was fired up last year while we were in Alice Springs as the ESL kids were the brightest and best to work with - they didn't sap me dry with apathy as the local kids did.

When I finally started googling to find out a bit more about this Tesol caper I was stunned at how much sense it made ... (but I still gave the closed door a few more swift kicks before I started trying to clamber out the window.)