Continuing in our series of Migrant Tales, first hand accounts of the migrant experience of New Zealand taken from places around the net.

Today’s tale was published recently on an expat forum. The author is a British woman of retirement age living in Christchurch for the last five years and enduring  repeated earthquakes.

Hello everyone expats and soon to be expats

We will be moving back to blighty next month. I am excited and nervous all at the same time.  Have had lots of emotions these past couple of years with quakes and stuff and now the last of my daughters has made the move out of NZ and gone to Perth we felt it was time to go as well as our kids are once again in all four corners of the world. 

We moved here because our daughters and grandchildren were here, in hindsight (which is a wonderful thing!) we should not have done that cause your kids will always do what they want and live here there and everywhere so never follow your kids unless they are tied to your apron strings and you and they don’t ever want to be apart!  For us, it has been an experience that we have both grown from and in a sense made me better able to cope with things that could be thrown at us back home.  Hey, if anyone has been coping with living in this area these past couple years then they can cope with anything, but I don’t want to dwell on quakes and wonder about them for the next god knows how many years so time to move on.

For me it seems the right time and I can’t wait to be reunited with my family back home especially my old mum in her 90’s, one of our daughters and grandchildren and my brother and sister and extended families.   Oh and to have another winter Christmas will be bliss.  If I lived down under for 20 years I would never feel like it was really Christmas in the heat we endure here trying to make it feel festive!

So off we trot next month, having a stop over to visit our Son in Arizona for a week before we fly into Heathrow on the 21st.  Oh and we have treated ourselves to Premium Economy, couldn’t quite stretch to business but it is still on my bucket list!  Well we could but would mean less pounds to spend at t’other end!

So farewell friends,  been nice popping in and out of here these past years.  Hope you all have a good winter and try and stay warm and toasty.  Hoping to settle back in the west country again.

Goodbye and goodluck  peeps.

Previously:

 We are eligible to apply (for citizenship) in November but I don’t feel I want to stay here until then although it would give us options!  I don’t want  to be one of those people who gets Citizenship and pledge my allegiance and then do a runner to OZ which is what so many do and I can fully understand why they do it, just not sure if that is for me.

We are off to Oz for 8 days in a few weeks so I will have to see what I think about it. Not been there before, all our trips have been either USA or UK so Oz here we come, well can’t return home not having visited can we.  Doubt I will be coming back this way in a hurry.