Life has moved on

August 22, 2008, Denmark

It is an age ago since the last post, over a year and so much has happened in that time. Two trips out to New Zealand, multiple trips within Europe, New York and the UK at christmas time also. The boys completed their second year at de Blijberg International school and also endured 3 months living in New Zealand attending a local school; Redwood Primary School in Tawa. Too much to recap here.

I'll add the text of emails I sent while in New Zealand to friends and from Denmark in our first weeks here, which will prompt my memory in years to come. The twins are now 5 and doing well in everything they do, they are reading, writing, and talking, talking, talking. Both are riding bikes and have been doing so without training wheels since they turned 4. They are completely into Lego - obsessed really, which is turning into an expensive hobby for us. Hard to believe they will be 6 in a couple of months time.

To backtrack...Stuart was made redundant from Maersk just after the Christmas break, a very stressful and painful time for everyone, especially him with the weight of the welfare of all of us resting on his shoulders. The redundancy was particularly cruel and unexpected and typifies how Maersk treat their employees. It was announced on the eve of Christmas by the "big men" that there would be some 'structural changes' in the new year, have a good christmas and see you on January 8th. That day rolls around and completely out of the blue to Stuart and his boss, we find that he is now out of a job. His boss (a Dane) didn't have a clue it was coming. We never received anything in writing, was prevented from finding the terms of redundancy, they withheld the internal job portal and drip fed information for several weeks. With Lars having been made redundant also, our only source of information was gone. When the job portal opened up for Stuart's level mid March, he was given 5 days to apply for a job (before knowing terms of the redundancy). He was in South Africa at the time.

The decision of whether to move back to New Zealand and all its' unknowns or make another expat move was hard. Maersk did not make it any easier for us to come to a decision, out of the 4 jobs that Stuart subsequently applied for, he was offered one in Copenhagen and we had the weekend to decide. We were not allowed to find out the terms of the redundancy, or wait one week to hear of the other jobs he had applied for before having to accept. He was to start the following week.

With me in New Zealand for 3 months, it was a difficult and stressful time. With me being so far away, I could not guage or understand fully what was happening, with Stuart being back in Rotterdam to have to go through it all alone. I was going through my own set of dramas in New Zealand with the stress of our unknown life in the background.

But decision made, Stuart came out to visit for 2 weeks and took up his new post 1 week after arriving back in the Netherlands in the second week in April. The holiday was great fun, we took the boys all around the island - luging, jet boating, to Napier, Taupo and Rotorua. We put everything out of our thoughts and just enjoyed each other and our precious family time. The weather was superb. When we weren't travelling around, we hung out at the bach and caught up with friends. It was sad to see him go, as we had another month to go.

We arrived back at the end of April, had a couple of days rest then drove up to Copenhagen to have a look around. Stuart was staying in an apartment in the city, so it was a reasonably relaxing and informative couple of days. We were able to drive around for me to see the different suburbs and locations of the schools. Very helpful over the coming weeks when Stuart was trying to find a house.

After 3 days, the boys and I left Stuart in Copenhagen and drove the long drive back to Rotterdam. We stayed on for another 5 weeks until the end of June when the boys finished school. Stuart came down for the last 2 weeks of our stay and took leave from work.

As we had come to expect from our experiences in Holland, the preparation for the final move was arduous and time consuming and involved many phonecalls and much paperwork.

We weren't sorry to leave, Stuart more so than me. I was ready to leave and resigned to it, the hardest thing about leaving was saying goodbye to all our friends and there are many. Some we may never see again. We had created such a good life, I enjoyed the friends I made and the friends the boys made, it made everything much more bearable. I was surprised at how upset I was at leaving but ready for it. Four years was enough.

I am writing this from my new desk in Denmark and I have started a new blog for this next chapter in our lives.