Greater Vancouver was not a great fit for our family. Yes, there were positives. I loved living so close to the mountains and the sea, my job was amazing, and I got to see my brother a lot. But there were also a lot of negatives. The high cost of living meant a constant tension between work and childcare, without much time left over for us to enjoy our family life together. We were much closer to home than when we lived in England, but it was still really difficult to see family because traveling around Canada without a car is difficult due to the immense distance between places and the relatively small population doesn’t call for better public transit infrastructure. And, raising two little kids and having work eat up most of our spare hours meant it was very difficult to meet new people or even see our existing friends. As we talked about the years to come, it seemed pretty clear that we weren’t getting the work/life balance we wanted and the current situation needed to change.
One day, a little before Christmas in 2015, David asked me how I felt about moving to China. And I found myself giving a very positive “yes, sure, new adventure” as a response, and he told me that he’d been approached regarding a Post Doctoral research position at one of China’s top universities. I gave him my blessing to start the process and we broke the news to our families.
Fast forward over a year later and here we are, or at least there we are going… David has already arrived and the children and I hope to join him in the next few weeks. We just need to wait for David’s residency number to come through. Until we move the kids & I are staying at my parents, soaking up as much of the Island as we can before our next adventure.
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| morning snow -- shot over the front deck |
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| morning snow in the back garden |
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