Final post from Oz?

We leave Sydney later this week so this is likely to be my last post from here. I may write a couple more from the UK just to record our first impressions and thoughts on being home.

So we're well on our way to wrapping up the trappings of life in time for our departure. We've given notice on the apartment and cancelled the bills etc. The car, the furniture and my trusty commuting bike are all sold. Despite our best intentions we seem to have bought and accumulated an inordinate amount of 'stuff'. We'll be sending some but not all of it back in packing cases, a pile of which is growing in the study as I write. And we're saying our goodbye's to friends and colleagues, the impact of which I think we both underestimated. It was hard to do the same thing when we left the UK but at least that was a temporary goodbye. In contrast, we're unlikely to be seeing most of the people we've got to know over the past two years and that's now slowly dawning on us. So it's a mad mix of social get-together's and packing at the moment. There's also the small matter of two holidays to arrange for. It's a hard life!

As of Friday we're spending 10 days in Samoa, relaxing by the beach. We then return very briefly back to Sydney before going off on an exciting trip around Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand. And then it's a flight back home, arriving on the 13 August. I'm sure the time will flash by now and we'll soon find ourselves on the tarmac in Manchester. We still don't know how we're going to feel about that, only time will tell. 

Niall is still currently touring around New Zealand, living the life of a backpacker and having a whale of a time by the sound of things. He'll be flying back to Sydney in a couple of weeks to say his goodbyes to the friends he's made here. We're hoping to catch up with him briefly between our trips. Niall then goes directly home, so he'll be back a couple of weeks before us. Perhaps that should be long enough for Calum to get into the swing of not having the house entirely to himself. He's had a batchelor pad for the last two years and we're wondering if he's going to feel a little crowded in before long. We'll see.