D'ya miss me?
Hi honey, I'm hooooome!
I think I'd better say right now that spending 103 days buzzing around the Southern hemisphere on holiday with no responsibilities and no commitments is really rather relaxing, because I fear the relaxation element may come to an end sooner than hoped if today's job hunting exercise is any indicator. Anthony is rather pissed off at being unable to find a file on a disk 15 months after we dumped it in a box at his parents place.
The long holiday thing was really rather good. To summarise:
We spent two months driving up the east coast of Australia, across the top to Darwin, down through the centre and back to Melbourne. Highlights included crocodile watching, diving on the Great Barrier Reef, and Uluru.
From there we headed off to New Zealand for a month, which is nothing like enough to explore such a fascinating and varied country - geysers, waterfalls, Maori culture, yachting on a friends boat etc. We spent Christmas camping in the mountains in the middle of a 3 day hike, and it was just wonderful. The corned beef and cous cous Christmas dinner was at least tempered by a piece of Christmas cake which we took along, and the hut warden was very sweet in organising a carol sing-a-long and mince pies, which got us out of the cold and the wet for an hour if nothing else.
After New Zealand we spent 9 days in Japan, where we saw an awful lot of temples and discovered just how effective conversations entirely made up of body language are - or aren't. It was an amazing way to end the trip, because it was just so different to anything we've done before, and a wonderful country to visit.
Now we are back and have had a lovely weekend with the entire family - his and mine - down at my parents place in Surrey. Since then we've been to Wales to see his grandparents, one of whom is very ill :-s and now we're back at his parents place near Cambridge, wondering where all our stuff is and making some happy reunions with old treasures.
I have no idea how you all are. 4 months is way too long to try to catch up. I'll assume you're all basically well and as I left you back in October, if you've had any major changes/events could you let me know?
(PS words currently used to describe me: well, relaxed, happy, tanned. :-P)
xx
I think I'd better say right now that spending 103 days buzzing around the Southern hemisphere on holiday with no responsibilities and no commitments is really rather relaxing, because I fear the relaxation element may come to an end sooner than hoped if today's job hunting exercise is any indicator. Anthony is rather pissed off at being unable to find a file on a disk 15 months after we dumped it in a box at his parents place.
The long holiday thing was really rather good. To summarise:
We spent two months driving up the east coast of Australia, across the top to Darwin, down through the centre and back to Melbourne. Highlights included crocodile watching, diving on the Great Barrier Reef, and Uluru.
From there we headed off to New Zealand for a month, which is nothing like enough to explore such a fascinating and varied country - geysers, waterfalls, Maori culture, yachting on a friends boat etc. We spent Christmas camping in the mountains in the middle of a 3 day hike, and it was just wonderful. The corned beef and cous cous Christmas dinner was at least tempered by a piece of Christmas cake which we took along, and the hut warden was very sweet in organising a carol sing-a-long and mince pies, which got us out of the cold and the wet for an hour if nothing else.
After New Zealand we spent 9 days in Japan, where we saw an awful lot of temples and discovered just how effective conversations entirely made up of body language are - or aren't. It was an amazing way to end the trip, because it was just so different to anything we've done before, and a wonderful country to visit.
Now we are back and have had a lovely weekend with the entire family - his and mine - down at my parents place in Surrey. Since then we've been to Wales to see his grandparents, one of whom is very ill :-s and now we're back at his parents place near Cambridge, wondering where all our stuff is and making some happy reunions with old treasures.
I have no idea how you all are. 4 months is way too long to try to catch up. I'll assume you're all basically well and as I left you back in October, if you've had any major changes/events could you let me know?
(PS words currently used to describe me: well, relaxed, happy, tanned. :-P)
xx