One Daily Positive

If you're following me on twitter, facebook or instagram or in my whatsapp group, you'll see life is a little tough for us at the moment.

Not tough as in someone has died, is ill or lost a job, but our lives are in a pickle after relocating from South Africa to Dubai, our second international relocation, as we are originally from the UK.

We have no home, no sense of identity or belonging and yesterday I told my friends in my whatsapp group I just wanted to go home, but I didn't know where that was anymore.

We are in our 3rd week in a hotel, our furniture is sat at Jebel Ali in storage until our residency visas are processed, we have one and a half suitcases each with all our wordly goods. Our carefully thought through airfreight is still in South Africa in storage also and the house we have rented is filthy with some major work required to make it habitable.

I was going to blog about all the stuff that had gone wrong, but I'm too tired for that. Once we're in the house and all this hassles is out the way, I'll tell you about it all, in detail, but until then I've decided to take a step back from it all. All the problems are not of our doing, we have no control over timescales, quality of builders workmanship and reliability. The company will reimburse our costs, the rental agent will be back off holiday tomorrow and he can do the job he was paid for to sort this mess out with the landlord. The relocation company have been paid to sort the visas and I'll probably never get a satisfactory response from HR, so I'm just giving up.

Yesterday we both reached a low together, we had to leave the hotel and move to another one, we had to find somewhere for our 19 to sleep every night as he's not part of the relocation package as he has left home, the cat had disappeared again, christmas had been a bit flat as our gifts are in the air freight, we all missed being with our other children, but our last 'family christmas was in 2009 so we're kind of used to that anyway, the plumber failed to turn up (again)

Last night after dropping the 19 year old off at the beach with his friends from South Africa, we checked in at the new hotel, which has a pool, a bath and a proper outdoor seating area, meaning we no longer feel trapped just sitting in a hotel room. We unpacked, dressed up and headed off to the Marina where we had a lovely meal then wandered onto The Beach where, with 1000's of other people we sat and counted down the new year and watched the fireworks off Palm Island. They were spectacular. We arrived back at the hotel at 2am, drank G&T, saw the new year in with South Africa and fell asleep.

I'm a regular contributor to #MySundayPhoto, run by @onedad3girls where I post a weekly photo, taken on the day, summarising my week or outlining what's to come. I was also challenged by Polly a FB friend a few months ago to take part in '3 positives a day for 7 days' which I really enjoyed doing and last week I stumbled across @fatmumslim who runs #FMSPHOTOADAY and @theboyandme #Project365. I'm also adding #snaphappybritmums photo prompts.

I've decided I'm going to link up with them all but I'm going to add my own twist of #onedailypositive to it all.

Every picture I take and upload will be along the theme of #FMSPHOTADAY and #snaphappybritmums which I'll link up weekly with #Project365 every picture will have something positive to say, about our lives, the move, Dubai, life. I'll continue with #MySundayPhoto separately.

It's not been easy being an expat, we've missed out on so much back in the UK, births, marriages, christenings, deaths. We can now add to that list of all the things we'll miss and miss out on in South Africa, our friends, our lives there, our work. We will always visit both 'homes' but that's all it is, a visit, we're not part of those lives anymore and people move on. But what we can do is make a new home for the two of us in Dubai and as before, leave our doors open, keep that extra bit of money put by for the air flights to our 'homes' and keep going forward and find the positives to share with you and all with my brand new camera I bought myself as a moving present.