6 Months later and this is now real life.

Well I really cannot believe we have been in Austraila for 6 months now it seems real strange. In some ways it feels like it was only a few weeks ago we arrived tired and bemused at the tiny airport in Adelaide with our 2 kids and all our worldy possessions in 14 pieces of luggage or packed up in a ship on the ocean somewhere!! However on the other hand it feels like we have been here for ages, things have become so familiar and even very entrenched in everyday life.

This was one of the biggest decisions of our lives and with not even having been to Australia it was a journey made blind with very little expectations. Adelaide to us felt so very like "home" when we first arrived and we did become very settled very early on. The city itself is not huge by any means but it has a quaint township feel about it and is actually a very pleasant place to spend the day meandering around the shops and taking in lunch in many of the cafe's. The suburbs tend to merge into each other with no real distinction from one to the next which in some respects in real nice but in others a pain as you fail to know where you are at times as they all look so similar. We decided that in order for us to become really involved in all aspects of aussie life it was time to buy a house, but after 3 months of looking at real horrible and over priced houses we were becoming disallusioned that the right house for us just simply was not out there. We eventually by sheer chance came upon the house we have now bought and we fell in love immediatley with the place and it is now so much home for us it is unreal.

The christmas festivities are now about to begin and it feels particularly strange as we are now having days of 30 degrees and trying to get motivated to prepare for xmas in that heat is very strange but is also a difference I am starting to welcome (slowly!!) The feeliongs of any homesickness have been absent for most of our time here however there was a period of feeling particularly low when the kids were at school and Darren was at wo and I was sat at the rental in the winter with no jonb and very few friends and I did become rather lonely and plain fed up. The changing point in all our lives was when I finally got the job that has made me become ME again!!! I cannot believe how much I have changed now I am back working and doing the thing I do best and this has even proved very positive to my superiors as I have already been promoted in the short 6 weeks of being there.

The Aussie lifestyle for us is just so US we are very outdoors people and spend the majority of our time outside on the patio or in the pool and having many barbies it is really everything we dreamed it could be but reallyu thought in the back of our minds that we couldnt possibly acheive this. There are still times when we all miss our family back in the Uk but this is only natural and part of life but we have a new life here in Adelaide and the way that the whole family has adapted and embraced the lifestyle is just evident that this is meant to be for us. What will become of our time here? I ask myself this many times and genuinley I feel we will kick back and enjoy Australia for all it has to offer and embrace and changes or difficult decisions that come along. I am being very naiive if I believe that this will be home for the rest of our lives as I am not totally sure tht is the truth, however I do lnow we for the future will not being going back to the Uk but maybe in a few years when the kids finish school we may move to a different state to see what they have to offer. Who knows the world is such a huge place and for the time being we are very happy settling here in Adelaide and can see ourselves here for the next few years.