In one week we have our flight to Dubai – and no return flights. Seriously, there is only one week left and we are almost ready to go to Dubai! So exited and anxious and happy and… All kind of feelings are flying around. Our home here in Finland is like a chaos at the moment, almost all furniture have been replaced with garbage bags.
Roller coaster of feelings
Last three weeks has been quite busy – feelings has been going up and down. Some days I have been full of excitement and some days (especially those ones when kids have been fighting all day since waking up) there has been even tears. Is this worth all this work, would it be easier to just stay here.
Thank god my husband got home last Friday! It all feels a lot easier when there is two adults in the house. Last three weeks I have been home alone with kids and dog and at the same time I have been selling our things and organizing dogs flights etc. Just taking care of the normal everyday life with two vivid kids alone is a lot at some days. And then you put all this preparing on top of it.
Birth and marriage certificates
In the past weeks I have been also finding out about what it takes for us to get the visas in Dubai. Every expats in Dubai needs someone to sponsor them to get the visa. My husbands sponsor is his employer and now that he got his visa and emirates id, he can sponsor me as I am his wife and the kids.
As for him sponsoring me we need to prove that we are married. First I thought that it is enough to translate our marriage certificate that we received when we got married to English. But thank god of me overthinking about almost everything I started to google things again. And the English version of the marriage certificate isn’t enough – we need it to be translated in Arabic and by legalized translator.
I found a really good translation agency already in spring when I was translating our daughters school certificates and they were also able to translate from Finnish to Arabic.
Then I started to doubt again that is it enough? How can we prove that our marriage is still valid, that we are still married? So I ordered also a certificate about our marriage from Digital and population data service agency at the same time I ordered our kids birth certificates from there. When we receive them we still need to go to Ministry of foreign affairs of Finland to legalize those documents. So still a lot to do!
Selling almost everything we own
As I wrote before we are moving with only few suitcases. That off course meaning that everything that doesn’t fit to those suitcases needs to be sold or thrown away.
Our apartment in Finland found new happy owners already in June. Now it has been selling everything that’s in that apartment. We have this service in Finland, tori.fi, where people can sell things to other people. So I have been taking photographs about every furniture and pricing them and adding them to tori.fi. After that I have been answering SO many messages about the furnitures. But it has been worth it because almost everything has already been sold. Now almost all that remains are waiting to be taked to dump…
Getting the dog ready to go to Dubai
Our dog, poodle called Kaapo is off course flying with us. We cannot even think about leaving him behind ❤
First we were thinking about flying through Stockholm (because at summer time there are no direct flights from Finland to Dubai) so I first requested an offer from an agency in Sweden to transport Kaapo as a cargo (all pets needs to travel as a cargo to Dubai) from Stockholm to Dubai. That seemed a really expensive so I then asked an offer from a finnish company. That was a little cheaper, yet expensive, but what can you do. So Kaapo is now flying via Amsterdam to Dubai.
But of course there were surprises also here. When I accepted the offer they asked me do we have an agency in Dubai that is going to take care of customs clearance of the dog. And off course we didn’t have, we thought that it was including in the service fee. Thank god I found a great agency in Dubai who also shared a lot of information at once what is needed to import a dog to Dubai. Hint: if you ever import a dog to Dubai find an agency in Dubai first, that will save you a lot of trouble, because you get all the information from there so easy.
Now all we have left with Kaapo is to get an official health certificate from an official vet and then he is ready to go.
So, one week to go, so much being done and still some to do. Making a dream this big to come true takes a lot of effort. But I believe that it is all going to be worth it! We are almost ready to go to Dubai.
Read the earlier posts here.
