Six Months!

Well, six months ago today, John and I left the UK. The time has flown by, and yet it also feels like we have been here forever.

I've gone back through my old blog posts, and it amazes me how much happened in our first month or so - I had forgotten how quickly the various job "incidents" had happened. And, after all that, I think I've landed in the best job for me. It may have its ups and downs, but the downs don't last that long, and the ups are very good. So it all worked out for the best!

I still absolutely love it here - we have a gorgeous house in a perfect area, my commute to work is amazing (every time I get a window seat, I get to spend 10 minutes staring at the sea, with colours which range from deep grey, though all the shades of blue you can think of to a salmon pink this evening as the sunset reflected off the near-still waters), and we have got a fantastic social life.

I do occasionally have wobbles where I wonder whether we have done the right thing in uprooting ourselves and moving so far away. However, those wobbles don't last long, though I do still miss friends and family, and wish that the distance wasn't quite so far for those home visits! All in all, happiness is the overriding emotion, tinged with a little bit of disbelief that we are actually here!

We had another excellent win at hockey this week, with a very early start (9.15 meet up for a 9.45 whistle) - 6-1, with a moral 7th goal that was disallowed after the other team claimed that we'd done something wrong beforehand that the ref had missed. I was too far away to see what happened (I have difficulty in picking out anything detailed past the halfway line), so I don't know whether they were correct or not. Though the scoreline seemed quite heavy our way, I didn't get to rest for the game, as they had a number of very good players who came very close to scoring on a number of occasions. However, our defence has clicked in a brilliant way - I knew where both of the backs were the whole time, which meant that I was able to really push out to stop the attackers becoming a threat. A good game all round! There was a Tui singing away in the trees behind the pitch, which, combined with the warm sunshine (after a very chilly start, a reminder that we are actually in the depths of autumn and heading into winter, though you wouldn't know it to look at the blue skies) made it a lovely start to the Sunday.

And, finally, NZ has started broadcasting Dr Who! We've now seen the first episode, and are therefore only four behind the UK. Enough for me to still have to avoid spoilers at all costs, but at least not too bad - we aren't going to have to resort to filesharing to get our fix...