It's Monday now. I move home on Wednesday. Two days. This past week has been intense and amazing and a little heartbreaking all in one go.


TJ's parents were here from late last week until Tuesday and it was great to spend some quality time with them. Teej and I have been together for years but with living in a different country, seeing each other's family kinda goes out the window at times because we're spending all our time with our own when we visit.

During their visit we went on lots of trips to various places in the area but my favourite was a day trip to the Emma Bridgewater factory. If anywhere is going to make you want to throw away all your hard earned money on crockery, this place is it. It's based in Stoke and I'd highly recommend their experience day. Painting and afternoon tea is included!

Behind the scenes action ______________________________________ My evenings all through the week have been dedicated to theatre. Tuesday & Wednesday consisted of rehearsals and making sure everything was ready for our show 'Rock of Ages', and Thursday, Friday and Saturday were dedicated to performing our hearts out in front of an audience. This was the best show I've ever been in. The whole experience was amazing from start to finish and the show received some fantastic reviews. I've spent nearly two years with this drama group and as of last night, my last performance with them was done. Its hard to describe how I feel about leaving them behind. It has been an absolute honour to share a stage with some of the most talented people I've ever come across but it breaks my heart a little that I won't be up there with them for the next show.  On reflection, I'm lucky. A lot of people don't ever get to share their passion with a group of amazing, likeminded and talented people who inspire them to push themselves.  I'll miss them most of all. Rock of Ages ______________________________ Now all the excitement is over, I'm suffering major post show blues and am ready for the house to be left behind. There are boxes everywhere you turn, and countless more trips to the dump and the charity shop have been made. We pick up our moving van tomorrow so some of our boxes can be moved out of the house and into it ready for leaving on Wednesday morning. This move has been a year in the making but it still feels like it has just snuck up on us.  Come at me Wednesday. Until next time,

 Morning Folks!

 As I type on this bright and sunny Thursday morning, I have (officially) thirteen days left in England. THIRTEEN. Madness.

This past week has been another busy one, we're finally getting into the swing of packing and while it's great that we're making a good dent on the stuff in the house, it's driving me sightly mad already. Unlike most moves where you have a new property to gradually move all your boxes and furniture in to, we are having to wait until move day to try and cram all our worldly belongings into a van and a car and ship them to a new country. Whose smart idea was that?! Needless to say, the house is a state.



This is how the living room situation is looking. Nice, right? Cosy. Thankfully, the bags and boxes at the front of the pile in the photo were all shipped off to the charity shop and the dump so we've got a little more space to play with.

 

If you're moving and you're a charitable sod, I would 100% recommend doing a quick search for a donation station. We found this Age UK station just up the road from our house and it has made donating goods a million times easier. Before we found this, we were having to park at a shopping centre and fill up a trolley or two with our bags and boxes and then wheel everything through the shopping centre to get into their tiny charity shop or there was the other option of driving right across town to the other tiny charity shop which wasn't always taking donations as they had too much already. This place is amazing though, it's a huge building all dedicated to the charity, you can park right outside the door and it's really easy to get to. Perfect! Plus, we'd rather donate than just dump our unwanted items; just because we don't want them anymore doesn't mean that someone else couldn't benefit from them.

As well as donating to charity, we also thought we'd get rid of some games and DVDs. TJ had an old Xbox & I had a PS3 both with a bunch of games that we didn't play anymore. We decided that we wanted to trade up and save for a ps4 together. The best place we found for trading up was CEX.

     Well, this past week has been a tad manic. On Saturday evening I finished my last ever shift in work which was far more emotional that I had anticipated! I was greeted with flowers, a card & a mahoosive cookie and lots of hugs. I was fortunate to work with an amazing bunch of people and I will truly miss them.