Sunset over Maeda

moving
Last week was stressful! We had our first vets appointments for the move back, we packed and posted 10 boxes back home, I had a job application to write and submit (and if you've applied for jobs in Australia, you know how much work goes into writing the key selection criteria document!) and we were also negotiating a lease for a unit back in Melbourne, from Okinawa! Anyway, it was a difficult week....

Luckily our weekend was thankfully a little more relaxed. Saturday night we went over to our friend's apartment and hung out while watching this gorgeous sunset over Maeda. There's just something about a sunbeam that gets me, you know?

Hope everyone else had a nice weekend!





Leaving Okinawa

Australia
So I haven't really been sure how to write this on the blog. I've already told family and friends, as well as my work, but anyway, we'll be leaving Okinawa at the end of June.

We've been here for over 2 years now and for a number of reasons, we've decided to move back to Australia.

I'm super grateful for the experience, and although the adjustment to life in Okinawa was harder than I expected, i'm so glad that we had this experience. We've had the amazing opportunity to live overseas as a family and go on some unforgettable trips together. We've been able to live in a house on the beach and watch the sunset over the ocean everyday from our deck. These are the things I will remember.

Although there is a lot i'll miss about Okinawa (the beaches, the beaches and the beaches), i'm really excited to get back to Melbourne and set up our life there again. I want to be able to hang out with my friends, see live music, eat good food and hopefully find a cute apartment and a good job.

At the moment we are kind of living in limbo.... wrapping up our jobs here and trying to find replacements (anyone want to move to Okinawa, let me know, there are 2 jobs going!), starting to pack and sell some of our stuff, but in the kind of weird place where it's still too early to be applying for jobs in Australia, or places to live......

We've got just under 2 months left in Okinawa now, and my main goal is to get in as many beach days and snorkelling as possible before we have to leave and go back to a frosty Melbourne winter. We've just come back to work after 5 days off for Golden week, and although we spent a lot of time sorting through our stuff and packing boxes, we still managed some relaxation and beach time. Our biggest challenge will be navigating the move back for our pets! Australia has crazy-strict quarantine rules, so we've got a complicated process to navigate.

I hope you will all still be interested in reading along with my adventures back in Melbourne, although i'm really going to need to think about a new name for this blog! Suggestions welcome!

Thanks for following along with my adventures in Okinawa. There will still be plenty more in the next couple of months.



The meaning behind my blog name

Blogging
Melbourne to Okinawa


It wasn't until a month or so ago that I was alerted to the fact that people didn't know what the term Sea Change was referring to in my blog's name. I actually never realised that it was an Australian thing.

From Wikipedia: A seachange (or sea change) is an Australian term, ultimately adopted from a term found in Shakespeare's The Tempest[1] which describes a form of human migration that involves individuals abandoning city living in favour of a perceived 'easier life' in rural coastal communities. The term was popularised by the popular ABC TV television series SeaChange, which triggered the phenomenon of many city-dwellers mimicking the drama's protagonist's escape from urban life.[2] The result of this phenomenon (known as the 'sea change effect') is a rapid boom in tourism and real estate development in coastal Australia, particularly in New South Wales. A similar term, treechange, describes the movement of urbanites to the countryside.


So the reason I called my blog Sea Change Okinawa, was because prior to accepting the job in Japan, we had been thinking of making a Sea Change within Australia, as neither H nor I had been brought up in a city, and thought it would be nice for little G to experience a country upbringing at some stage during his childhood. It turns out that the places we were thinking of making a Sea Change to in Australia, either had no job prospects in our fields, or the housing was crazy expensive (Australian real estate, am i right??). Luckily, the job over here in Okinawa came along, and it was the best of both worlds! The chance to live overseas, AND move to a smaller beachside town - perfect.

All packed up!

Japan

One awesome part of this move is the fact that, for the first time in my life, somebody else has packed my house for me. The moving people came in and packed up almost all the house in only 5 hours! 
We'll be spending the next 5 days in a furniture-less house until me and the little man make the move (3 flights with a toddler! Yikes!) on Monday.

Now that our stuff has been packed and sent there is no turning back, and the reality has started to hit. 
I'm going to miss this little house and the life I've made here, but am equally excited to be embarking on such a great journey and taking up such a fantastic opportunity for my little family.

 I spent the last hour feasting on Pho while other people did the hard work of packing up my house.