In February & March 2019 we embarked on our second trip back to England in over 4 years! That is a fact that we don’t like to admit, to have only gone back to England 2 times in 4 years is crazy to us! We always said we would like to come back once a year but it just has never worked out. Plus we have been lucky in the last 4 years to have always had a visit by one of our family members at least every 8-9 months or so.
Last time we went back we wrote this article, about how we felt nothing had essentially changed, people were still the same, the places were still the same and oh boy how this time we felt this was a completely different experience for us and here’s why: e were the visitors…
We were the visitors…
This was the first trip back that we felt like we were ‘Visiting England’ rather than going home. If felt foreign to land at Heathrow Airport, to hear different accents, to use a different currency (I actually couldn’t remember the coins!) and the culture of London certainly shocked me. (Culture Shock?) But perhaps that was because we had landed at 6 am on a Monday morning and had a 1.5-hour trek across the city on the underground to reach Isaacs nans house – all whilst millions of other city commuters were going doing what they do every day – heading to work. Clever planning on my behalf I know!
Needless to say I got a cold as soon as I stepped onto that underground, I hadn’t been ill in over a year. February was certainly germ season in England and it got me bad!
Our loved ones are growing up…
Will everyone stop having babies?! It is baby season in our friend group, we even had two new nephews that were over 6 months old that we had never met. So many visits were planned to visit our friends/family members of new offspring. It also seems to be marriage season and let’s not forget buying a house season.
It seems like everyone had moved in the last two years and everyone was planning a wedding or had gotten married. Isaac was best actually Bestman at his best friends wedding which I know I can say on his behalf was an absolute honour, it was an incredible day and something we now realise is important to return for. These pinnacle moments in people’s lives are something we have missed and we have certainly told ourselves we are making more of an effort to return to England for future events like this.here still isn’t enough time…
There still isn’t enough time…
This time around we decided to stay for longer, but there still wasn’t enough time to visit everyone! People wanted us to visit them and their new homes, we weren’t so interested in that, we wanted quality time and experiences with them not their four walls!
Every day was planned to the tee, we were torn in all sorts of directions and we got tired and exhausted from it all. Which I personally hated, yawning at what my Nan had to tell me was not how I wanted to spend my precious time with her The tiredness caught up with us I hated that it affected my time spent with people.
But if we go back for longer next time will it before the same? Probably!
The grass is greener…
It’s always scary returning to you’re the place you grew up, your inner critic questions if you have made the right decision. My inner critic feared that as soon as I had arrived into Cornwall all I wanted to do was just stay there and never leave. It’s almost like being a kid again, the safety net of your parent’s house makes life so seem so…easy.
However, this time around I do feel like the grass is greener. We are happier and more contented than ever with our decision to move to NZ (5 minutes on the underground in rush hour was really enough to convince me!).
We moved to NZ for adventure and we have it. We have our RV, we travel the country and decide the day before where to move to next. It would be hard in Cornwall to have that, hell our mind sets would never have thought this way if we had stayed in our home towns!
Here are a few more snaps of our time away, oh and we also went on a backpacking trip to Thailand & Malaysia with Isaac’s Dad and what an adventure that was!
