Spending the Day with Jen!

For those of you who don't know, Jen is the girl I met on the plane to Ireland last may, we became friends and then both randomly decided to move to Scotland at the same time, but for different reasons. She lives in Dundee, which is extremely close (in a Canadian's sense of the word) to Aberdeen and today she is coming out to visit! She is just here for the day, but it is going to be awesome to talk to someone going through a very similar experience to me, on the jobhunt and experiencing life as a weird pseudo-Canadian immigrant in Scotland. I say pseudo, simply because we are both UK citizens, so technically not immigrants, but nevertheless setting up a new life in a different country is still an extremely difficult process. I will never claim to say I know the hardships of being a complete immigrant in another country, but I can definitely understand to some extent. In fact, the amount of times I have been asked the question "Where were you born?" in regards to setting up some NI number or doing something governmental has been shocking. Also the fact that when the answer is "The UK." they get all relieved and say things like "Oh, that's alright then, you'll be fine." Like just being a citizen wasn't enough for them.
I wasn't born in Canada. And you know what? No one ever asked me about it. I received all the luxuries of being a citizen there when I was only a permanent resident (which I later rectified), maybe that was a grand mistake. But I'm thinking not. I guess I am just vastly surprised at the amount of anti-immigrant sentiment here--I expected it, but not the level that I see it.

Anyway, it will be nice to spend the day with someone else trying to make it in Scotland while being in some sort of odd UK-Canadian citizenship limbo.

Jen is my people.