I haven't known you all that long, but I think you're a pretty cool person. I'm looking forward to getting to know you better over the coming months.

You are a very cool person. I wish I was more like you. Sometimes I worry that the feeling isn't mutual and that you don't feel the same way about our friendship as I do. Thanks for being there for me.

You were always a friend to me, but some things you've done lately have really thrown me and left me feeling deflated. I wonder if you even have a clue how hurt I am with the way you've been acting? I'm always the one who automatically assumes that the problem lies with me - well, I'm over that now. Either you grow some balls and tell me what your problem is, or I'm done trying to figure you out.

I hate the way your friend is treating you. You are a genuinely lovely person and you deserve so much better than that. I hope that you realise that! I wish that you lived in Sydney, so that you'd be there when I go home.

You're all I want, you're all I need, you're everything.

I wish that we could go back in time and change how things are with you. We had it all once, we all did, and now it's seemingly unfixable. I wish that you, and me, and the others, could all sort it out. Yes, it'd be hard and yes, it'd probably take a while to get back there, but aren't some things worth fighting for? I hate that things have turned out this way. I wish I could wave a magic wand and sort it out. Instead, I'm stuck and I don't know where we go from here.

I wish you and I hung out more often. I miss how things used to be with us, and I hardly ever see you anymore. I loved having a laugh with you over a cider at the pub. I wonder if you miss that too?

You are going to go on and do great things! I am sure of it. I know that all the hardships and the worries will pay off, and you'll achieve everything you hope for. You've got talent, and on top of that you're an amazing person. It will all work out, and then I will point and say 'Aha! I told you so.' And then I will hug you and we will go on and do great things together.

Thank you so, so much. You guys are amazing and I don't know how I can ever repay you - in both the financial sense, and in the support sense. I'm a really lucky girl.

I am sorry. I've said it before, and I'll probably say it to you again. I am sorry. I wish things had turned out differently. There's only so many times I can apologise, and you know what? It wouldn't hurt for you to tell me that you are too. We may never fix things, but I'm trying and I'm not done yet. I am sorry. I miss you.

I have the world's tiniest little cut on the tip of my tongue.

I bit it the other day, and it's been hurting ever since.

Now that I've noticed it, I keep running my tongue against my teeth and wow, it hurts.

It's really, really irritating me.

Did I mention that it hurts?

IT REALLY HURTS.

... and that's about all I've got to say about that.

In other news, our internet connection is on the fritz, meaning that a post this long is about all it can handle right now. I promise to never take the interwebs for granted again, when our new router gets installed, that is. Sad face.

I miss teaching.

There, I've said it. Teaching. I miss it.

Before this little adventure abroad, I taught in Western Sydney for two years as a newly qualified teacher. They were two years at a great and supportive little school that showed me the ropes and made me feel completely comfortable with myself in that role. Some days were rewarding and some days were more challenging than I can remember but even still, they were two fantastic years.

When J & I discussed moving to the UK, I knew my time at that school would be coming to an end, but I was excited to be doing something I never dreamed I'd actually do - to uproot myself from my comfortable routine and to live overseas!

After a telephone interview lined up by a recruitment agency, I was offered the first job I applied for. A Year 3 class quite a way out of London in an average, run of the mill primary school. I stayed confident. I was excited. I left my lovely little classroom (with its decorated walls and labelled book trays) and said goodbye to the staff I'd grown to know and respect, and I stepped off the plane at Heathrow ready to throw myself into the teaching world over here.

I got a rude shock that day.

Needless to say, I didn't go back. I did casual supply teaching in a few different schools before landing in a nice block, covering relief across the school, but it didn't feel right. After a few short months, I was looking into other options in education - and soon found my current role. Now I'm on the other side of the desk, working in the education field but in recruitment. After a while, I was offered a different role, acting as a coordinator for newly arrived international teachers.

I work with teachers every day. They are teachers who are quite literally mirroring my exact journey over two years ago. They've come from Australia, or New Zealand, or Canada. They're probably more than a little terrified. They either have jobs lined up for them in schools, or they're relying on casual work to get them through. I support them, I help them transition into a whole new environment - from the minute they step off the plane and get acclimatized into the UK, to their first steps into the classroom over here. I've helped primary teachers. I've helped secondary teachers. I've helped preschool & nursery teachers. I've helped teaching assistants.

But at the end of the day, I'm working for the man (every night and day!*)

I'm not in that classroom myself. I don't have a class full of kidlets to call my own, to be with every day - the good ones and the horrendously bad ones. I don't have the work to take home with me, or the planning, the crazy amount of planning to do in the holidays. I don't have the organisation, of setting goals each term and assessing against those goals.

I just feel like I'm missing something. I'm not saying I'm an amazing teacher. I'm certainly not the most experienced teacher, and I never even had a permanent job - so I have nothing to fall back on. At the very least, I'm an out of practice teacher thanks to my time here in London. But I loved what I could do in the classroom and I loved seeing what my kidlets could do, and I kind of want that back.

I don't know.

I don't know how I'm going to get what I want. It's not the right time or place, or heck, even the right country, to be thinking about this. All I know is that the quarter life crisis I thought I'd averted? May still be looming in the distance.

*I couldn't resist a little bit of Proud Mary. It soothes the soul.

Oh, I have been a glum little chicken lately.

Luckily I have been kept busy with work stuff and little errands that pass the time. I'm really looking forward to this weekend, keeping cosy indoors and doing a little wedding planning with Jason. Alright, well, it'll probably just be me doing that, because it makes me happy, but that's the loose plan at least! Lately the weekends feel like they've been few and far between.

But rather than continuing with the Whingy McWhinge routine, check out these babies! I'm kind of in love with them as a) they're cute, b) the heel is low enough that I can actually walk a few steps in them without keeling over and c) um, did I mention they're cute!? I may or may not be contemplating going back to the store and buying them in every colour because seriously... love.

And that's all it takes to make me suddenly feel just the teensiest bit better about things.

Today was one of those Mondays.

I had trouble sleeping last night - something which I NEVER have to worry about. I love my sleep. I don't think there is such a thing as too much sleep. I get quite sad when I miss out on sleep. So suffice it to say that wanting to sleep and not being able to actually do it? Super frustrating. I tried all sorts of things. Hot milky chai latte. Random block games on my iPhone. Playing with the cat. Reading. Sitting at the window at 2am and watching the cars drive by. Nothing worked! Couldn't sleep.

I managed to get about two hours of shut eye before my alarm went off (an alarm in the sound of a yowling cat at 5:30am - even I can't sleep through that one) and so began my day. I forgot about an appointment and ended up being late to that, which is another pet hate of mine. There was light snow here in London again, meaning my trains were chaotic and the weather was gloomy. I had to go the long way home because of signalling failures, and I was tired. Oh so very tired.

But the last straw? I nearly lost my shoe during the tube journey home.

Peak hour. It's just another perk of public transport in Central London on a Monday evening. As usual, we were all squished into our carriage like sardines. Some guy had quite literally squeezed himself through the doors as they were closing, and very thoughtfully dumped his backpack onto my feet, so as the train approached Notting Hill Gate station, I got ready to hoof it across the carriage to the exit.

Well, hoof it I did. With just one shoe* on, in fact! The guy's stupid bag had trapped my shoe. So what do I do? I stand there hopping on my one good foot, as a wave of other departing passengers push past me to get off the train. And what did the bag man do? Nothing. He stood there reading his newspaper and not paying me any attention what-so-ever.

I got a bit panicked then, and quite literally had to bellow "YOUR BAG HAS GOT MY SHOE!" at the top of my lungs while standing on one leg, and praying that I'd get out of the door in time. (Keep in mind that all of this happened in a 20 second timeframe - though it felt much longer than that!) He kicked his bag aside and I managed to hop over to my shoe and rescue it, throw him a filthy look and then RUN out of the train as fast as I possibly could without making any eye contact and trying desperately not to lose my shoes again.

*Typically, the shoes that I wore today were the oldest, crappiest black flats that I own. And typically, due to the aforementioned damp weather conditions and a pair of wet tights, my shoes were fairly whiffy.

Is it Friday yet?

I've spent a lot of time in the past few months scouring the interwebs for wedding inspiration. I'm still yet to narrow anything down, but I have a good two months to organise that - until I go home and get planning, that is.

Church? Nope.
Reception Venue? No idea.
Colours? I think they're sorted, but really not sure.
Dress? HA!

As you can see, my searches haven't been very fruitful. I've started bookmarking anything that I'm vaguely interested in, because I figure at some point in the future I'll be more sure of what I want.

Most women are super excited to start the search for their wedding dress. I am not most women. In fact, I'm not ashamed to admit that the thought of finding a wedding dress terrifies me. I'm a big girl. I have boobs and I have curves and I have a tummy. Add that to the fact that wedding dresses run small for even average-sized girls, and well, I'm scared.

When I'm home in April, I would love to have my two bridesmaids checking out and trying on dresses that suit them - but the thought of me trying a dress on? Oh Em Gee. Shouldn't I be looking forward to this?

Here's what I don't want: a dress so tight that even the model can't stand up in it.

"Help!"

"No. Really. Get me up."

It's hard to blog when all you want to talk about is something which could possibly not be happening at all. The land purchase so far has been exciting but also just a tad stressful. We're in the process of having surveys done with a solicitor at home, and playing the waiting game. Buying things like property from abroad is possibly the trickiest thing we've ever done. In reality, it's always a fairly tricky process, but doing it thousands of miles away is just crazy.

What's even crazier than that, is the learning we've been doing along the way. Building, for example. I was always under the impression that a new build would take around 6 months from start to finish. I'm not sure how I jumped to that number, as the only real experience I have of home-building is through my parents journey as they built their family home. And being that this all happened about twelve years ago when I was way more interested in sleepovers and the Backstreet Boys, it seems I didn't pay much attention to it all as I'd thought.

The entire process is more than likely going to take between 8-10 months, holidays & good weather permitting. Our original plan of moving back in with the folks for a couple of months while the house is finished doesn't really work anymore. That would be a great solution for a little while, but for a year? With a cat? Living separately? Throw in wedding planning on top of that and it just wouldn't work. What if we rent for a year while the house is built? It's doable, yes, but means that not only will we have a mortgage to pay off, we'll also be forking out weekly cash each week on top of that. It's just not the best idea, from a financial perspective.

Instead we're looking into other options, like starting the building process earlier than planned - while we are still abroad. Which could be a whole new can of worms... but it's all in the future, so let's just talk about something else for a while before my head explodes.

How about... GLEE! I know I'm super late on the bandwagon, but I have quite literally spent every second of free time in the last week catching up on Season 1. I'm hooked. Jason thinks I'm mad - I suppose from where he's sitting, all he can hear are musical renditions every few minutes, but I think it's gold. And Will Shuester, where have you been all my life? Phwoar. That's all I'm saying.