Raking in rashers, having some happiness

Four months and one week after arriving in Ireland, I've found a job. Last week I started work at Esquires Coffee House, in the centre of Drogheda. Because in Ireland they call bacon "rashers', Scott and I joke that I am "raking in the rashers".

Inside Esquires, the site of a former bank.

It's definitely unlike a desk job and after working 35 hours last week, my shoulders ache from carrying trays and my fingertips have perma-prune from washing dishes. I have to admit, in my weaker moments, hunched over a pile of dirty dishes with wet feet and a stained apron, I ask myself: Why am I doing this? Why did I leave a good-paying, professional job to work for minimum wage in a country I've never been to before? Why did I sell a decent house in a decent part of Halifax to rent a room in a boarding house with five construction workers from Donegal?

Because, happiness is not only about good, professional and decent. It's also about new, exciting and different. So, as I walk home through the brisk fall air, over the dark Boyne River elegantly making its way to the Irish Sea, past the pubs pumping laughter into the streets and up the steps into our shared house, I realize that I am happy.

Posing happily in my uniform before a shift.