Hi there,

Well we have a confession to make, we have been keeping quiet but I have been aware that prehaps I should drop the forum a line. We actually flew home and arrived Christmas Eve. We found WWOOFing quite hard and were really miserable, Mike decided he had had enough and we booked our tickets. We spent the last two weeks of our stay having a ball furiously touring the bottom half of SI. We had a nature cruise on Milford Sound, went to Mt Cook, did a 4WD Safari along Skippers Canyon, had a heli hike on Fox Glacier cancelled for bad weather, but did walk to the terminal face of both Fox and Franz Josef, went to the Royal Albatross Center (expensive!) , had a cruise around Akaroa harbour and much more. We saw hectors dolphins, yellow eyed penguins, hookers sealions, fur seals and again much more.

However, even before we left we felt that we had made a terrible mistake and coming home to Britain was a real anticlimax. We should definately have stayed longer but then we couldn;t afford that without working and neother of us really wanted to do temping. Also after we did the sums, by the time we had of paid for accommodation, bills, food etc we wouldn't really have much left over to let us stay for that much longer so we would have spent a long time in an area we didn;t really want to just to stay a little time longer.

We both were in desperate need of a home and were fed up moving around. I think we porbably rushed the decision but what's done is done. We have talked about things since we have been home but will probably not be returning in the forseeable future. I want to settle down down and strat thinking about a family but as i know this will be problematic I want to do this somewhere where i know how the health system works and where i have my parents around for support.

We feel disappointed and as though we have failed, we feel like we have given up on a dream but at the end of the day the dream isn't quite what we were hoping for. NZ is a fab place and I would love to live there one day, it is still a better place to bring up kids but it is too far from the rest of the world and I wanna see that first. We don't want stressful jobs but for the time being we probably want the lifestyle that only the wage of a stressful job will bring and the truth of the matter is we will earn more in the UK. It will be better if we can save more to bring over with us. Housing is not up to scratch and the selection and quality of food is not great, books are horrendously expensive and to top it all my mum is too far away. That said the pros do out weigh the cons considerably...apart from my mum not beiong there. Being only children we feel more of an obligation not to leave them behind and i couldn;t in all conscience leave them to get old on their own, and I have to face the fact that really they are too broke to move over with us in time.

So that's our story. We had Christmas at home with all the folks, New Years playing silly games with ma and pa and a couple of their friends and we are gradually seeing some old friends back here. We have bought a car and are gradually trying to work out what we wanna do with our lives. We have no idea what this may be and how long this may take. We are living with my folks and are craving our own space but don't have the money. We feel the most unsettled and lacking of focus we have ever been and its quite scary.

Not to say that we won;'t be going back for holidays. We have not disregarded emigrating totally but now is not the right time. It is really nice to be back with family and see some friends. The dogs were soo pleased to see us.
Don't get us wrong, the WWOOFing may have been cr4ap but we had a fab time all in all and will carry the memories with us forever and NZ is still my favourite place. We loved NI and when we got to SI we thought there was no comparison.

Well thats it. I didn't know I coulld feel homesick for NZ but there it is. We feel like we're stuck between a rock and a hard place but we'll work it out in the end.

Bye for now, Helen and Mike.

PS, we did see and learn a lot so if we can help others just ask. Also apologies to Amy who's read all this already almost word for word.