Tickets booked

Our tickets are now booked for December 15th so we will be celebrating Christmas in Stockholm.  The shipping company on this side has already contacted us to come by and check the volume of boxes we have to ship so we can get a confirmation on the price for shipping.  They will be coming by tomorrow when John is home from school. 

We've taken in a flatmate, one of John's school friends, to rent out our second bedroom while we're here. He needed a place to stay and we were quite happy for the company.  He's a lovely guy and it's working out great! 

It's harder to settle back into work after the two week holiday and I don't know if it's because I was in the work mode before and had gotten into the swing of things and now the break threw me off or if it's because I know I'll be heading back to Stockholm in just two terms and it's difficult to put as much effort in as I was doing term one.  Don't get me wrong.  I still want to do a good job, but all those hours I was putting into planning term one just isn't happening this term.

John has gotten most replacement visas and id cards.  We went to Wellington this weekend to fill in the paperwork for his Danish driver's license and got that taken care of.  Once that arrives, he's only waiting on his Nemid, which will probably be shipped to Stockholm since they don't want to ship it here.  Then we need to wait for the guy renting our apartment to send it onto us.  That will be about a month away as he's on holidays.

So no more news to share for now so no news = good news :) 

Life gets exciting....

Well this past weekend our car got burglared and John's wallet, our gps, our camping backpacks with all our camping gear got stolen.  Our car was parked right outside our apartment.  We thought we locked the doors, but they must not have locked properly since nothing was broken to get into the car.  It's sad we lost our stuff, but now we know we live in a shady area and I can't get out of here soon enough.

Just like when moving to NZ we might have something more exciting to come, but nothing to confirm yet so it's just a waiting game.   Won't write yet to spoil anything so you'll just have to wait too.  This is my last week of holidays until my next 2 weeks in October which can't come soon enough, which feels crazy to say now. 

We are keeping an eye on flights and plan to book shortly, just haven't done so yet.  So I'll leave you off for here just with our newest disappointing news and hope something happier comes along next time.

The month of July and 6 months left.... and counting

Well although I don't always feel like time is flying, it really is.  I've already been at my job (which I love) since April and have had to learn heaps in a short amount of time.  It looks like John and I will be going back to Sweden together (yeh!) not separately as he signed up late to get back into Stockholm University and based on the statistics we see he doesn't have a chance to get in so late.  So he'll have to apply for the January 2013 entrance instead.  The lady at the university he has had contact with will make an individual studieplan for him since he has already done two years of study already, but we know he'll have to go past the original graduation date since the degree has changed from an entire primary school teaching degree to a 1-3 degree or 4-6 degree.  I'm just thrilled he'll be with me here until it's time to leave.  I booked a bus ticket from Palmy to Auckland since there was a cheap ticket for us both at 4.99 total on the 15th of December.  It's a night bus ride so we arrive in Auckland the morning of the 16th.  Our current plan is to book tickets for the 17th of December, but we will book those tickets shortly. 

We just got back from our first ski trip at Mount Ruaphehu and the first day went very nice with beautiful weather, although for me I found the slopes a bit twisty.  John loved it.  I'm just not as confident a skier as he is.  The 2nd day the slopes were closed due to high winds.  The 3rd day (as we had a 3 day multi pass) you could only go up if you had a 4 wheel drive car or chains on your car, neither of which we had.  So we did try to ask for our money back for the passes and they said no.  In addition, they did not offer free bus rides from the bottom of the slope to the top for those without chains or 4wheel drive vehicles which I thought was very poor considering the price of the passes.  So it was a bit of a disappointment since we know we won't go back.  It's too expensive of a journey just for one day.

Now we're back in Palmy and John's back to school next week while I have another week's holidays after this.  We've put a few bits of furniture we bought up for sale on Trade Me hoping some of it sells now as they are the big things and stuff we can manage without.

So while in New Zealand I think my Raynaud's (which I'm not officially diagnosed with, but pictures of my fingers match it perfectly) has become prominent and with the tad bit of cold now my fingers go fully numb and white.  I even notice while sleeping I'm waking up with pins and needles in my hands even if they aren't cold.  I'm in the process of visiting doctor's and waiting on a blood test to see if there is any underlying condition for my problem.  Bad circulation runs in my family, but I don't know anyone else in my family with this.  John says I don't exercise enough and he's right, here in NZ I don't, but with my almost 12 hour work day I just have no energy.  I also don't believe that's the cause.

I have to say that I still think for winter, the weather isn't bad outside compared to what we're used to.  It's still just inside (which is a shame).  I'm counting down the months to going back to Sweden and I'm simply going to have a long unpaid holiday from the middle of December until the middle of August.  Hopefully I have something to enjoy that time with, but that will remain to be seen for a while yet.