A sightly more comprehensive first post

Becoming an expat has, in theory, quite a few pros and cons. Learning a new language? Pro. Surviving until you've learned that language? Con. Seeing the world? Pro. Taking a thirty hour flight with two children? Con. (Thank goodness the flight 'only' ended up being 24 hours, else I might have gone mad, though perhaps I should instead be thanking my old doctor and his shared lack of faith that I could survive the ordeal without valium.)

The reality has pros and cons as well, though the priorities seem to change. Despite having perfected the art of pretending to understand unsolicited conversation by old ladies in the street--I sometimes even repeat the last word of every third sentence, just to show I'm 'listening'--I'm currently feeing less keen to take up Air Berlin's offer of ridiculously cheap flights to Croatia armed with nothing but a phrase book and am leaning more towards the planning of two short trips in the next six months. The next bizarre priority on the list is managing to communicate with everybody left behind without spending more than thirty units per month of whatever currency my preferred calling card website happens to accept. Voila, grandparents: a public blog!

For the sake of the internets I'll change names on this blog. Since my name here somehow shows up with a book reference that I have only a dim memory of setting up years ago I might stick with the theme. Miss 8 shall be Jill. Master 3 shall be Maddyn. I considered calling my dear husband Nevyn, except that somebody back in Australia just gave that name to a baby and I can't, in good conscience, use that. I asked his opinion and he'd like to be Tangential; and thus a family is named. More content when it's not after eleven on a night when I have a packing box on my side of the bed.