Tuesday 4 October 2011

Steps to recovery my groove

Inspired by @netcurtains and KateonThinIce and my blog post 'Losing my Groove'
I've been more active in taking steps to recover it. http://chickenruby.blogspot.com/2011/09/losing-my-groove.html

I know what I need to do and how to do it and some of you may have seen on twitter this week, my frustrations with various embassy visits.

At the UK embassy in Pretoria I was turned away at the gates by security, so drive to Brooklyn to be turned away at the gates by security. It seems I was at the wrong place and should have been at the other, so giving up, I return home, I make a call.

Seems it's not that difficult to get a work visa here in South Africa, just need to get a job offer, prove that a South African can't get the job, certain other criteria applies, which looked fairly straight forward and there you go...a work visa.

So seeing as I specialise in Autism with a HND in Pyschology, a teaching degree and a Diploma in Child Psychology and 300 credits towards a BA in Criminology I figure it won't be too hard to get a job and meet the criteria.

I call companies, I search the web and get asked the same question...'Do you have a work visa?' my response is 'I need a job offer first', which it seems I can't get till I get a work visa....I'm stuck in a circle.

Today hubby and I had a meeting with the visa agency that brought us out here and we soon discover that alot of the help they offered us with our move was declined, on our behalf, without our knowledge. It seems the work visa is going to be harder than I thought, so it's back to being a perpetual student and with a study visa I can work up to 20 hours a week, which is a win, win for me...

...all I've got to do now is try to get UNISA to reply to my bloody emails so I can find out if my OU credits can be transfered for my final year of studies...think I'd have more luck, at this rate, getting a job offer first.

All of this hasn't been helped by the fact I've had a set back this week. I've got a tooth infection and been prescribed 2 sets of anti biotics and 1 set of pain killers. I asked the pharmacist for the leaflets as the tablets were decanted into 3 seperate plastic blue bottles. I didn't recognise the names. I opted not to take the painkillers as I didn't know what was in them and put the bottle in the drawer, preferring to take 30mg codiene and 500mg paracetamol 3 times a day instead...except I confused 1 of the anti biotics for pain killers and after waking this morning with a sore throat, which hubby pointed out that on that level of anti biotics I shouldn't have, we googled to discover that for the past 2 days I've been taking 2 lots of pain killers.

This has made me feel ill, sort of drunk, my concentration has gone, I feel depressed, hot, clammy and totally disinterested. So I'm putting my 'groove' on hold, till I feel better and more positive, as getting things done here in South Africa is difficult and stressful enough at the best of times.

If you want to join in with #groovingmums you can do so at kateonthinice@wordpress.com

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