OK it is now November 2009 and we have 3 weeks before the Christmas holidays start, in some ways it felt like a lifetime as Gordon had been gone since August and we'd been in France but now we were all here and all together and all living in the Seaview Hotel.
Jet lag was a total nightmare, me and the kids didn't know which way was up for the first week and I was also strangely convinced that it was the summer (so easily confused by sunshine). My recommendation for jet lag - I have none, it hit each one of us differently and in the end we had a week to sleep it off and believe me the 3 of us spent that week sleeping till around 12pm every day but staying up till all hours at night. All of a sudden it seemed to just click in, but being in a routine helped.
So that was 1 week down and now we have 2 left before the school holidays so our next challenge was to get a house, to our absolute delight (not) we were given the brilliant news that it looked like it would be March before we were going to be housed. To say that the a feeling of total despair and desperation came upon both Gordon and I is to put it mildly, but then a ray of light shone through the gloom as we were told that it might be mid December after all.
Getting this news lead to great excitement, however we then started to "stalk" the house we were told might be ours. I am sure the people who live in the same road were starting to wonder who the wild eyed people were driving up and down staring longingly at the house, or at least I did think this until everyone who I spoke to seemed to say the same. Possibly the only place in the world that this behaviour could be classed as normal!!!
In between the crazy house stalking, Maddie started school (and loved it instantly) and Amelie went to nursery, I would at this point like to report that she also loved it but Amelie being Amelie didn't quite see it like this and decided that having a major hissy fit was more fun.
Leaving nursery every day feeling horribly guilty I would return only to be told that she had been fine and enjoyed herself, Amelie would also tell me she "liked nursery and wanted to go back tomorrow" - this I decided was not to be believed as she would repeat her Oscar winning performance the next day (and as I write this still does). The only difference now is that I don't feel guilty now.....
Over the next 2 weeks my days were filled with going between the school, nursery and Seaview hotel (with some house stalking taking place when I thought nobody was watching). Gordon had bought several million DVD's so I also caught up on a few films and read all the books I had with me, I also became quite brilliant at sorting out washing into bags that cost $40 (this was our daily laundry allowance). This would definitely be classed as a life skill!!!!!
At the end of the 2 weeks of school we had the start of the Christmas holidays and Amelie's 3rd birthday, this involved chocolate cake, candles and balloons followed by a shopping trip to the toy shop in KB. ToysRUs has nothing to worry about!
Then we were off to Kota Kinabalu in Malaysia for a weeks holiday so techniclly our 4th week in Brunei was spent in Borneo but the good news was the house was ours and we got the keys before we left and arranged for our house contents (all 243 boxes of our stuff) to be delivered so we could move in on the 22nd December.
Do I miss going to work? Yes. Do I miss working? No.
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