We're leaving, on a jetplane, don't know when we'll be back again.

Yup, its official, we're leaving. We booked out flights on Sunday night and will be flying home on the 21st February, arriving in Auckland around lunchtime on the 23rd.

It was a really difficult decision which we have been thinking about for a while, we have always planned on coming home for Julia's wedding and it really came down to finances whether we could afford to return afterwards. Tn the end the decision was made very quickly once we realised that flights were very quickly getting more expensive as the cheap ones sold out. So we booked.

We're left with pretty mixed feelings about the whole decision. On one hand we are really looking forward to seeing our families and friends and to living near to them again. We are looking forward to settling back into real life with proper jobs and a proper sized house with a sink in the kitchen and a bit of disposable income. There are a lot of aspects of living in the UK which we are not going to miss, like banks and accents and attitudes and being called 'love' by old men.

On the other hand there are lots of things we are really going to miss, particularly the friends we've made. It seems that each time we go somewhere and just start getting to be good friends with people, we leave. We have loved living in London, there are so many opportunities here that we haven't yet taken advantage of, even the 20 or so restaurants within less than a minute walk of our house. And there are still so many places that we want to travel to all throughout the UK and Europe. It might be the end of another phase in our lives but it doesn't mean we will never travel again and we've still got plenty of time to see the rest of the places we want to.

Well that's it really, we're sad and we're excited, we don't want to leave and we can't wait to be home.