Intermission

Well, that was a much longer "intermission" than I planned! But somehow, before you know it a week turns into a month and a month turns into a year... and here I am 18 months after my last blog post!

As you can probably guess, a lot has happened while I've been "away". Far too much to cover in any detail. By far the biggest change has been trying to get used to our new way of being without my "NZ Mum" as an almost daily part of our lives. It's still hard to accept that she has become "history", just a photo on the wall since her sudden death in November 2012. I think of her often, and frequently catch myself wondering "What would 'Nagymama' think?"

Other than that, the major change has been that I resigned from my Speech-Language Therapy job, effective in early February this year. Five days after my last day at work, I started studying Early Childhood Teaching - a "Graduate Diploma" via distance learning at Canterbury University. What a joy it has been to meet the others on my course at our regular "On-site intensives" at the university in Christchurch - such a diverse group of people. I've surprised myself with how easy it has been to slip back into full-time studying and I'm loving the intellectual challenge, even enjoying writing essays! Whilst I was in Christchurch studying in February, I finally delivered the 1000 paper cranes I started folding in 2011 after the fatal Christchurch earthquakes, and so many of you out there helped fold paper cranes for this project too. So I'm proud to say that our 1000 paper cranes formed part of the 3rd anniversary commemorations of the Canterbury earthquakes. Link to my original post re 1000 Paper Cranes.

The completed 1000 paper cranes just before handing over...

Another exciting thing for our family was our incredible round-the-world trip in December 2013/January 2014. We set off from NZ a week before Christmas and spent several days in Washington DC and then caught a train to New York for another few days. We flew from New York to London, arriving on Christmas Eve. After an unpleasant journey in a jam-packed train (standing room only) we made it to our family in Somerset late on Christmas Eve. We had a fantastic family Christmas, including spending time with my lovely 97 year old Grandad, both my parents, brother, nephew and niece. After a few weeks in the UK catching up with family and friends, we took a trip on the EuroStar train to Paris, and spent a wonderful few days exploring Paris from the sanctuary of our historic apartment in Les Chatelets. A couple of days in London, and then we came back home again via Tokyo. On our day trip to Mt Fuji from Tokyo, Sonny Jim finally got the snow he had been longing for all winter.

What a trip!

Anyway, I hope to update the blog again a bit more regularly from now on. I've really missed the pleasure of regular (non-academic!) writing... "Talk" soon :-)