I can’t believe it’s been a month since I’ve written! I keep meaning too, but keep finding other things that need to be done, or not in the mood, or stressed out about plans and changes. So what’s been going on? We were hoping for a move to a rental in Takapuna closer to the beach, but we had to find a renter for our place first, since we had a lease until October. The rental market is dead at the moment though, and we’ve had no bites. Plus the whole move has been overshadowed by other decisions. Sarah’s been here, which has been fun. We’ve done a couple caving trips, which I’ll write about next. I spent a number of evenings sorting through some old work files (which I also want to write about), we spent time planning a road trip for when Cindy’s sister visits, but the most stressful has been coming to terms with our decision to return to the States.
We told friends and family that we were planning to spend “a year or two” down here, one year so as not to upset family too much, two years allowing Max to finish High School down here without disrupting his schooling again. Cindy has been missing her family a lot, as well as the holiday seasons – Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas in the winter instead of in summer. Max has been doing fine academically in school, but has not been happy with the different school environment and classroom approaches, and has not really made any friends.
The decision to return could be easy, except that I really like it here, I was in no hurry to return to the same-old-same-old, and we put a lot of effort into coming down here in terms of time, money, stress, paperwork, moving, job change, etc., etc. Also, I have a year commitment to Navman (or repay moving expenses), and a year commitment to avoid paying double-taxes (have to be resident outside the US for a year to qualify for foreign tax credit).
So, we have struggled through many options, but have come up with a plan for the shorter term and the longer term. Coming here was to grab an opportunity to live and work abroad rather than just travel through a place on vacation, and an opportunity to get away from friends, family, Bainbridge, and America to gain perspective on it all, and clarify our thoughts and goals.
For years we’ve been planning our dream cottage, but didn’t know where to build it. Unhappy with the growth and changes on Bainbridge, but unwilling to move the kids out of school – it was almost easier to move 10,000 miles away rather than 10. One clarification we’ve achieved in coming here was where to go next, and that is Gig Harbor to be closer to Cindy’s family.
But we were going to focus on the experience here for the two years, so as not to disrupt Max’s schooling again. However, with his growing unhappiness and discontent, it seems the best option is to return to let him attend his Senior year back at Bainbridge High School.
This all came to a head over the past couple weeks, and our two year timetable became one year, with only a couple months left. Beyond the stress of coming to terms with this, there is suddenly a huge logistical load – figuring out transferring of school credits (since the school years don’t line up), moving, work, and a million little things like mail, phones, banks, insurance, cars, etc., etc.
The short term plan currently is to fly back up in the first week of September, which will allow Max to finish the classroom work for the year here, and complete his internal exams. We’d love to come a week earlier, both for Max to have a few days to settle in before starting school, and to do some activities over the Labor Day weekend, but to ensure transfer of credit he really needs to complete at least the internal exams. (The fourth term of school here for the upper level students is essentially study time for the external exams at the end of the year.) So this means Max will miss the first couple days of school, but so be it.
I will spend a month to get Cindy and Max get settled, to visit family and friends, and then return to New Zealand to finish out my year commitment. As the weather will be getting nicer at that point, I hope to do some type of South Island trek before heading back to what will then be winter in the Northern Hemisphere.
Longer term plan will be to buy or build a place in Gig Harbor, once Max is out of school. This gives us the school year to figure out if we keep the Bainbridge house as a rental or sell it, fix it up accordingly, and scope out options in Gig Harbor.
Tomorrow I buy plane tickets.