As the sun sets lower in the sky, and the shadows of the trees on the ground stretch to see the last of its light, so we celebrate the end of a long and tiring week, soaking up the last of the day.
There is jazz playing from a show further in the park, and people chatting and laughing fill the rest of the air. Grafton’s buskers’ tunes float towards. Different languages pass you by, mixed with the songs of birds and the gentle rustle of their feathers in the small lake nearby. Even the passing traffic’s invasiveness is swallowed by the tall green trees surrounding us.
The 400-year-old park, that holds so much of Dublin’s history, now holds yours too. For whatever reason you came to the 27-acre cut-out of the city – whether it’s to read or picnic or paint with your friends. Whether it’s to think about your problems or escape from them. St. Stephen’s Green offers you a bit of “fresh air” from the stale air of work and the hyperventilating of life. Here, you are given an opportunity to grasp the peace that’s calling to you. And ask yourself: maybe if we spent more time just ‘being’, we wouldn’t feel the need to ‘be’ something all the time.
Yesterday was supposed to mark our last day working in Swords but the promise of our work transfer has been delayed. So what we thought was an 8 day push of exhausting ourselves with 4 hours of travel a day, has been extended another 3 weeks. I wouldn’t mind the travel as much if I didn’t suffer so much from motion illness.
I have been trying to use the time to think.
Think about what, I’m not too sure. I usually circle back to “What am I doing with my life?” And “what should I be doing with my life?” Unfortunately, that’s left me with a small case of the morbs – wondering why I wasted 4 years of my life to get a degree I now know I won’t use, and wishing I’d just stuck with something (anything) for long enough for it to show me fruition.
I realised on the tram the other day, that I’m 25 now. No longer in my early 20s – free to be indecisive and reckless. Not that I ever really loved being that- I was always fighting to make something of myself. And now is the time, really. At the very least, I can choose to dedicate myself to the things that leave me fulfilled. For enjoyment of toil is a gift from God.
Ken and I have decided that there is no better time to change everything in your life, than when everything in your life changes. Embrace the chaos – then find your footing in calmer waters. So we’re both on the hunt for new jobs. “Real jobs” as we South Africans call it – but the Irish keep reminding us that “any job is a real job” and that’s the beauty of a first-world, liveable-wage country.
It’s just time to focus myself on what I want to live for. Instead of floating aimlessly – I want to float on the currents that at least align with my passions.
So I’m writing again. Straight from the heart of the city that inspired all this in the first place (even if I did lose sight of that for some time).
Thanks for reading, dear Traveler, With love from Dublin, Cheylin.
So… it’s a long story but basically, we’re down to one income for now (and by now I mean the next 6 months to a year). We’ve got one measly waitress salary to get us by. Praise God, though, it might actually be enough.
Through our marriage, Ken and I have had very limited financial resources. Now, without the weekly meals at our parents’ houses, we have to rely on what Ireland deems a “liveable salary”. (Sorry if you hate hearing about finances but I honestly feel like fewer young people would struggle if the older generations actually shared how they used their money so..) here’s a breakdown:
I’m contracted for 35 hours of work a week, which means I make €1355 a month, after tax. In reality I make a bit more than that depending on how many hours I work — usually 37–39 hours a week.
Rent is self-explanatory, its a double room in a big town in Dublin in the middle of a housing crisis. Not cheap.
Rates depend on what the household spends each month — this includes gas, electricity, water, bins, wifi. Our first month we simply paid €20 for bins but the amount can change every month. We’re praying we don’t get hit with the €100 we were quoted when we moved in.
Groceries:
We try to keep our groceries under €50 a week. This is a very small amount. I eat a full meal every day at The Grill which cuts our costs a bit. I’ve always felt that in general people seem to struggle to buy groceries in the right quality or buy food for full meals without it costing a fortune. I’m working on putting together some booklets that include the list of groceries and recipes to feed 2 people for a week on a budget of €50.
Airtime and Phone Contract:
Ken’s phone broke the other day. It was one expense we really weren’t expecting but we managed to fit it into our budget (just). Basically, my extra hours each week cover the phone.
Spending money and Coffee:
Ken always reminds me of a quote he heard on some video that says “Don’t give up coffee, get paid more”. We can’t be expected to work hard without reward. Without things to look forward to. We agreed to give each other €10 a week as spending money and €20 a month for coffees/treats. Because a frugal life doesn’t need to be a boring one.
Adventures/ Dates:
Romance in a marriage is absolutely vital. You cannot expect to go through a difficult time (financial or not) without constantly coming back together and enjoying time together. I’m putting together a series on Instagram called “Dates under €30” — with the intention of sharing cheap but great date ideas. The rule in our house is that we go on a date every 2 weeks and we alternate who plans it. That date can be a sight-seeing adventure (which usually costs more) but the total budget for the month stays €80 — it’s basic math, I’m sure you understand.
Savings and Other Expenses:
Which brings us to the question of other expenses; because there are always other expenses…
As I said, I do tend to make a bit more than €1355 a month and we do still have some savings we can chip into during this time. Every 3 months or so I get a small amount in tips — which is nice. And Ken and I are both used to catching the odd freelancing job here and there.
This does not leave us any room for dedicated savings. Many people say that the ideal model for spending your income is 20% savings – which is just not a realistic number for people living on such a tight budget. I’ve already made my argument as to why the coffees and spending money and adventures are there and not being stored as digits in a bank account (so I won’t repeat it). As it stands we have no definite saving plan. The rule for us, is simple, anything we don’t spend, is savings. We’re not saving for anything crazy right now (like a house or car) all we want to do with our money is explore and that mostly comes out of our adventure money anyway. When Ken is working our goal is to save 3 months worth of income before making any massive purchases or getting any sort of credit. It’s just smart. But for now, it’s not our biggest concern.
We’re not scared. We know we rest in the hands of our God and our Father, who will not let us go hungry or without clothes. We have seen his provision again and again and again and we know that we can trust Him to get us through anything that might arise.
Hope this helped!
With love, from Dublin Cheylin
“So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all of these things, and your heavenly father knows that you need them. But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of it’s own.” — Matthew 6:32–34
Familiarity is something you have to agree to leave behind when moving to a new country. And while you may be driven by a spontaneous-seeking, mundane-fearing brain that drives you to hardly ever do the same thing twice, eventually you will, because it will be something you know.
Lately, I’ve found myself double-taking many faces walking past as my Fusiform Gyrus mistakes those passing as someone I might know. The sliver in my brain, working harder than normal, is continually trying to spot someone recognisable in the crowds that pass by The Grill all day long. There are none. And it will be a very long time before there are.
This sense of needing something familiar comes from what we know as our understanding of normality. Our sense of how life ‘should be’ because that’s how it’s always been. And today I really needed that.
I’m so tired of working so hard to learn and be someone normal in this foreign environment. I’m constantly outcast by just the sound my voice makes, never mind the actual words (or lack of certain words) that I say.
In my need for my sense of normality I’ve found myself using South African slang and Afrikaans words a lot more than usual. Some days I feel I’ve made my accent heavier than it used to be. I find myself looking at specific things I know we have back in South Africa, comparing them and imagining them. I find myself idealising the country I’ve left behind. I tell people how wonderful it is and I genuinely long to visit it again.
Today I made the well-known fatal mistake of saying “ag shame” to a lady and her one-month-old baby. I backed away slowly as I remembered that the very common, enduring, South African phrase meant something completely different on this side of the equator. I remember being told the story a few years back — the one about the nurse who said “ag shame” to a disabled child and nearly lost her job. During the trial, she had to prove that it held a different meaning where she came from.
And the funny thing is that everywhere you go people will use words outside of their English definition to express something; usually in slang. Much like how the Irish say “cheers”, not to initiate a toast, but as a way of saying thanks. However, when one’s slang too closely resembles a deep offence, it’s not so easily understood.
Luckily for me, nothing has come from my mistake. Either the woman lost what I was saying as I swallowed the end of my words as I said them, or she simply didn’t hear me. Let’s pray I won’t be getting a disciplinary hearing anytime soon. And as I continue to be constantly over-aware of absolutely everything being said to me, or by me, I am trying to change “shame” to “cute” — significantly better and hardly offensive.
As much as I want to fit in here (to have this place be my normal), South Africa was my home for all of my life. All nearly-24 years of it. It’s a big part of me. It’s my normal.
It’s been more than a month now, of leaving everything we knew to move abroad.
A lot has happened in this short period of 30-something days. We immigrated to a country where we knew nobody. We moved into a stranger’s house. We started attending a new church. We figured out how to use the public transport. We explored a bit of the towns around us. We ventured into City Centre a few times. We got phone numbers and bank accounts. I got a job. We moved houses again. We celebrated our first Valentine’s overseas. We celebrated a year and a half of marriage. We spent time reflecting on the last year and a half of marriage and how far we’ve come. We’ve missed our families and learnt to live life without them around. We’ve missed our friends and have had to try and make time to talk with them. We’ve done real adulting things like deep-cleaned a room and priced fridges. We’ve worked through difficult days. We’ve lived through lonely days. And we’ve celebrated exciting days. It’s been the adventure of a lifetime.
Cheylin toasting to Kendal on Valentine’s Day
But it also comes with a lot of unpacking.
My anxiety has been high the last few days and I realised that it’s probably because I don’t know how to resign myself to a full time job. I have never just had one job. Even my first job (at the first restaurant) was my 2nd part time job on top of my full time degree. I was at university from Monday to Friday almost the entire day everyday, then I’d come home on Friday night, decorate the cupcakes I had baked the night before, head to church where I served as a leader in the youth, wake up on the Saturday and deliver the cupcakes — spend some time doing something social (probably) and on the Sunday I went to the restaurant job. Before lockdown happened in March 2020, I was working 3–4 part time jobs on top of my full time degree.
Even last year when I was working full time as a Personal Assistant, I still took on design and editing gigs (in an effort to save to move to Ireland) and then hated myself when I failed to find time or energy to do the things I actually wanted to do — like make YouTube videos.
I thought things would be different here, but the train of multiple workloads has made its way over the boarder. You see, working full time at The Grill will be enough for us, with our savings, until Kendal finds work. We’ll actually get to save money for things without taking on extra work. For the first time in my life, one job will actually be enough. And I enjoyed for the first week. I really did. I was editing a video for YouTube again, and spending time with my husband, and planning adventures and just chilling.
I’ve decided to start saying no to things. While the design and editing work is the kind of work I actually enjoy, I want to be here. I want to be present in the life that’s in front of me. I want to spend my days off, exploring the city, not cooped up in my room doing extra work. I want to start studying again and have time to pursue my creative goals. I want to finish writing my book and spend a morning going down a rabbit hole just because I can. I’m tired of of exhausting myself. I’m tired of the anxiety. I just want to have a simpler life for a while. And I think that’s allowed. It’s one of the reasons we wanted to move to Ireland in the first place. For the peace. For the lack of having to work so hard that sleep feels like a burden.
The hustle, driven by a maddened sense of success, is only there to entrap you into a life of slavery to a system you thought you’d overcome.
I want to hustle on my own terms, while pursuing my own goals. And allowing time to just enjoy it for what it is.
Not the Bog House (just a pretty, old one we walked past one day) 🙂
We’re not homeless… and I suppose that’s something to be grateful for.
Last week, we were 4 days away from literally having no where to stay, when I got home late from work and decided to take, yet another, look at the renting websites. A double room really close to my work popped up and without even reading the description I applied. Within 2 minutes we got a phone call, “Hi, you’re interested in the room?”
Now it must be mentioned that while I worked my first 3 days of 8 hour shifts on my feet (at varying times of day but always ending late at night), Kendal spent many hours applying to well over a hundred houses — literally everything in and around Dublin that we could afford. During which we received a mere 4 responses: one was a scam, one was very expensive and the other 2 were 2 hours away from work and church. And yet! During my impulsive application to a room late one night, we were booked to go and see the house the next morning.
I woke up feeling really sick — the head-cold that I had felt coming on was in full swing and I really could’ve done with some more sleep and not gone out in the cold. But, alas, we had a house to view.
As we got off the bus and began our journey (google maps in hand) we were stopped by an old man in a white combi. He was our landlord and offered to give us a lift to the house. He was sweet enough but judging by the literal spiderwebs on the inside of his car door, and the amount of junk paper all over the seats — he wasn’t going to care about the state of the room he was renting out.
You see the thing about a housing crisis is that even if you won’t take the overpriced, under-maintained bog of a house; some desperate sod will. It’s us. We’re the desperate sods.
So… we took the house. The house with awful smells coming from the disgustingly dirty kitchen with cobwebs in every possible corner, and things that really should be cleaned more often — not cleaned more often.
As we were leaving, another couple went to view the room. So we stood by the wall outside and sent a message to the landlord that we would be happy to take it. He caught us and asked for a deposit to know that we would actually take it and not screw him over. We figured that if he was going to screw us over, then at least we only lost €100.
And then it was set. We had a place to stay. A messy, health-hazardy place to stay. But as Kendal reminded me, “it’s all part of the adventure” and even my grumpy, ungrateful self had to admit that it really is.
We got the keys 2 days before move in day so that we would have some time to deep clean. We then over-spent some money on cleaning products and basic rental necessities like towels and stuff and spent a good few hours before my shift, rubbing carpet cleaner on the floors and scrubbing mold off the bathroom taps and disinfecting literally anything in our room that could have ever been touched by anyone.
Our room is cozy now. A couple at The Church bought us some housey things and really tried to help us feel comfortable here. Bless them because after 8 hours on my feet, a painful limp home a walk through the weird smell, that is still there, up past the blue light in the passage (why is it blue?!), I feel okay when I open the door to our room and see the little bedside light lit, next to my orchard, with a cozy bed made and am grateful to have somewhere to stay.
We’ve been here for just over a week and have yet to venture into the nightmare kitchen to cook an actual meal (it’s been sandwiches and cereal in our room), but we’re getting there. And God-willing it will only be a month of “adventure”.
I don’t have much to say. Since I got the job at The Grill last Thursday, I’ve barely thought about anything else.
I guess I could start by saying that “I got a job!”
But the truth is, that as I write this, excitement and gratitude are not really at the forefront of my mind (although they really should be. God answered my prayers and at the beginning of next month, we’ll have our very own earned-Euros). Unfortunately today though, I’m not in the mood.
Maybe it’s because I really longed to have my family stop by and surprise me at my new place of work. They would have sat down together and had a meal there just to see me doing something. I know that they would do that. I know that they’d congratulate me, that my grandfather would take my hand and squeeze it when he did. I know that my dad would have put a big tip in the tip jar just to show his support — not just for me but to show everyone that he cares. I know my brother would probably make fun of me for something and my dad wold tell him to stop, even though I know that that’s just Gabriel’s way of saying he loves me. I missed them a lot on my first day. Every now and again I found myself looking at the crowds of people walking past and expecting them to be there. I had to keep reminding myself that I’m not in South Africa anymore. There is no one coming to support me.
Or maybe it’s not that at all. Maybe it’s the ache in my ankles from two full days of being on my feet in really uncomfortable shoes. I’m seriously not used to this anymore. I used to work in a restaurant. Back in 2019. I was a hostess and the hours were the same (although I rarely worked more than once a week). Working at a restaurant again tries to put me back in the time of my life. I remember starting there, much the same as at The Grill where I walked in with my CV and got asked to do a trial day and then began. Working there changed my life, and it saw my life change.
When I started I was at the end of my first year of University and I was hating my degree. I had very few friends (none of them at uni) and I took on the job to try and get out of my head about how sucky life was. I wanted a reason to get up besides university. And it worked. But it also did more than that. It gave me a new perspective on people. You know, the people we so easily ignore? The people we tend to be okay shouting or having a go at. The people we think of nothing more than simple servants of our luxury?
Over my 14 months working there, I learnt a lot about people. I learnt about how absolutely everybody has something going on in their lives. I learnt that mean people just need a little more trying in order to appreciate your kindness. I learnt that people with little bits of power like to make other people feel small. I learnt that all old people want is to be noticed. And I learnt that you really can get along with anyone, from any walks of life, if you’re willing.
It wasn’t easy work and it obviously didn’t pay well, but I enjoyed those years for what it taught me. I’ll forever be grateful for that.
And I guess I’m hoping for that here too. I’m hoping to step back to 2019 Cheylin, who had her life together, who was in a new and loving relationship, who was working hard and nearly able to be independent, who was beginning to like herself physically. I just wish I could jump back.
I really thought I was over my pre-covid longings, that I had finally accepted that the last year of my life didn’t go the way I had wished.
But I suppose this journey is allowed to be a rewrite. It’s allowed to be a fresh re-start. As I got to saying last year, maybe we’re allowed to start again. But start again from where we are. Not a new start, a re-start.
Working at The Grill has been fun. I really like the idea of being a part of something bigger. Perhaps that is what draws me to film so strongly. Being a small piece in a very large puzzle. Working alongside a group of people who all have the same goal.
The last restaurant was a single restaurant and we never had any team meetings or anything like that. Over the course of 14 months, everything was exactly the same as it was before. Not even my uniform changed when everyone else’s did. Here, there is room to grow. Ways to measure our “success”, namely: getting more hours, getting an increase, being named a sort of “employee of the month”, perhaps even getting a promotion. These are all very exciting prospects and give me something to work towards. I just have to keep my head on — my goal is not to become manager at The Grill . My goal is something else. What that something else is, I’m not so sure right now. I’m at the beginning again, I’m allowed to take some time to decide.
Thanks again for reading. With love, from Dublin Cheylin
We're Ken & Chey - a young South African couple currently exploring Ireland. We're adventurer's writers, musicians, tech nerds and vloggers who love Jesus and coffee.
This is our adventure and we're so excited to share it with you.
