A new Canadian friend recently asked me if I had ever been to a Burns Supper and with the 25th of January approaching I thought I would take the opportunity to tell you a little bit about a Scottish Celebration – the birthday of poet Robert [Rabbie] Burns.

Robbie Burns

Robbie Burns was born on the 25th January 1759 just south of Ayr (on the Scottish west coast) and is widely regarded as Scotland’s national poet. He was born into poverty and hardship, a farmers son. He had no formal education and what he learnt came mainly from his father, who did his best to teach his children reading, writing, arithmetic, geography and history.
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I was recently skimming the internet when I came across an article regarding living and working in Nova Scotia. In particular it discussed working as a nurse in this Province.

The article struck a chord, as I am a 22 years old, fully trained nurse! I graduated from a well known (and well respected) University in Scotland last March. The qualification I received was a Bachelor of Nursing, no less.

Now as I have said previously we always knew we wanted to move to Canada and after my graduation I believed I held in my hand my ‘ticket’, my guarantee of a healthy and happy life. Let me quote from the aforementioned article: “Nova Scotia is a wonderful place for nurses to live and work. In a national survey by the Canadian government, Nova Scotian nurses self-reported they are among the healthiest and happiest of Canadian nurses.”

However, I am not yet Canadian (first problem) and I am defiantly not happy (about the nursing situation – don’t get me wrong I love living in Nova Scotia)!

Before we decided to move here, I got down to some good old fashioned research and was told there was a desperate need for nurses. On making contact with various potential employers in the Province I was even offered a job – SEVERAL JOBS!
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On a regular basis, perhaps once a week, Cameron and I rent a movie from the local store or gas station. This is a result of several factors. 1) My incompetence with the channel changer [remote control], why do you need 3 remotes for one television? 2) My impatience! I simply cannot be bothered to search through all 1 million channels to finally find something I want to watch, only to be informed that it’s a ‘pay by view’ channel (all channels seem to be ‘pay by view’ here. In Scotland I grew up with only 4 basic TV channels) 3) My absolute refusal to watch more than one episode of Monster Trucks per week – it seems to be the only thing you can watch around the clock for free!
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