The end of an era

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There’s been a distinct lack of posts on here lately and for that I’ll apologise: life got very busy, very quickly and I’m no longer living in London! My ‘big OE’ is almost over but fortunately there are plenty more travel adventures to be had before I’ll anchor myself on New Zealand’s shores once more.

While leaving London was always on the cards, Russ and I left London in what felt like a bit of a hurry. So it’s been several turbulent months of wonderfulness, craziness, love, laughter, exhaustion and tears. I suspect I’ll mostly remember the good bits – but that’s not to downplay the stress involved with finishing up at work, moving out of our flat, shipping stuff home and booking a few flights through Europe and Asia before we resurface in Aotearoa in a few weeks.

Which is what’s happening right now: we’re in the Europe leg of our long journey homewards, and I’m writing this post on a train from Gdansk to Krakow. We’re 2 hours into a 9-hour train ride so now’s as good a time as any to catch up on things. So that’s pretty exciting. I’m loving the freedom of travelling. Although it hasn’t sunk in yet that I’m unemployed and that this is it for the next few weeks…right now everything just feels like a holiday. And although I know we won’t be going back to London, part of me calls that place home and can’t quite believe that we won’t be back there anytime soon.

The good thing is that before we left London, Russ and I managed to cram in some amazing ‘bucket list’ type experiences that I’m going to blog about retrospectively, whenever we have a free moment in our travels. These experiences were way too fun not to share – but as I’m talking about things that happened back in June, July and August, the timing of the next few posts might feel a wee bit out of whack.

So the blogging is back on – and if you also want to follow our worldly adventures over the next couple of weeks, Russ and I have made a joint travel blog (awww, ain’t nerd love so cute?) which you can check out here: home2.nz. I’ll keep posting my personal ramblings here, as the travel blog isn’t that well suited to my introspective essay-length posts 😉
But I’ll share links to anything fun we post from our adventures.

And in the meantime you should totally check out my girl Claire’s amazing article for thewireless.co.nz, where she reflects on what it’s like coming home after the Big OE. I read this story intently a) because she’s one of my dearest friends and she was my rock for the first 2 years of London living and b) because the girl can fucking write and she deserves massive kudos for this article! It made me happy and sad at the same time, which I suspect is how it’ll feel adjusting to the Kiwi pace of life. Transitioning into London-living wasn’t easy so I expect transitioning back the other way will be a struggle too – but one I’m finally ready for.

More posts to come…