The story so far

I'm not sure who knows what about our Australian adventure so far, so forgive me if you already know any of this.

After making everyone cry at the airport, we left on 12th January, stopping off for a few days in Hong Kong, where we saw the city, Disneyland, and a giant Buddah. Next to Starbucks. Neon signs, skyscrapers, smelly dried fish and ferries. We arrived in Adelaide 15th January, just 4 months ago. It feels like a lot longer.

 We were made very welcome in the home of Sharon's cousin Gareth and his family, who really helped us out and we'll be forever grateful to. Sharon had a brief trip back to England for her Grandad's funeral. We found a really good church, Trinity Bay, on our first Sunday and have been going there ever since. That has been fundamental to us feeling settled here. The boys enrolled in the Primary school near Gareth's, and I stated working at a Hospital in February.

At the end of March we bought our own home in Woodcroft, a

bout 30km south of the city centre. It's a modest (by Australian standards) 3 bedrooms, one bathroom single storey with a big garage and an outdoor all weather entertaining area (although, how you entertain snow I don't know). We Aussie-cultured-up to the max by buying all our furniture from, erm, Ikea. Owen has started a new school here, which he loves (his teacher at his 1st Aussie school was truly awful). Robert has stayed on at that school until the end of the year (his teacher there is truly wonderful).

Last week our 55 boxes of personal effects arrived from England, so we're now busy cosying up our house and making it home.

The verdict so far? We love it here. There is so much we miss about England - people (the most), places, events. But this still seems to have been the right thing to do. It's been difficult sometimes, and sometimes we're just plain old homesick. But it's been exciting. It's been so good for us to be stripped of all our security blankets. We've learned to enjoy the present with all it's inconveniences, rather than getting stuck in the 'everything will be ok when...' mindset.

We miss you. Come and see us!