Are you happy?

I realise that our decision to move to NZ might seem very quick and unexpected, but this isn't the case, so I thought I might fill you in on how we got to where we are.

The possibility of moving overseas to work for a few years has been at the back of our mind for a number of year now. This initially came about because the reality for Peter, if he wanted to stay in academia, is that he would have to find a position overseas after UQ. This is because the academic job market in his field in Australia is still shrinking, not growing, as they are still recovering from the dot-com crash all those years ago. And as some of you are aware we nearly moved to Singapore just before Ben was born to take a job at a university there.

Most of you would know that we like traveling and have done a bit since we have been married, including the whole working holiday kind of thing (China Christmas holidays 2003/2004). We like the idea of living in a different country for a while, it means we can see stuff that we would normally only see if we spent big bucks on a international holiday, but we can spread it out into lots of weekend trips. This is an especially attractive way to do it with the kids.

NZ isn't too far, in our thinking as far as the frequency of seeing our family we don't think it will be much different to if we moved to Melbourne or some other part of Australia (Hamilton is closer than Perth to Brisbane!!)

All this doesn't mean we won't miss our family and friends a lot. So although we are happy and excited about going, there is a lot we are going to miss.