We are doing this again...

 Well, it turns out that 'Once in A Lifetime' things can happen more than once.  We are once again off to Malmö - this time for 18months. Sadly this time there is one less Puplett travelling with us - Alana has elected to stay back in Adelaide so she can continue her university studies.  It's strange that you can be so proud that she is growing up, but so sad that she won't be coming with us at the same time.

We found out about the trip in November, just before we headed over for the Christmas trip. We were scheduled to come over in March, which would have given us only a few weeks to prepare, but due to some delays in work visas we ended up getting a contract start date of 19th June.  Unlike last time, we are much more familiar with Malmö and much more comfortable travelling, so we departed Adelaide on the 15th, arrived on the 16th and started work on the 19th. Last time we had just over two weeks in Malmö and still didn't feel ready, this time it feels more like a return to our second home.

But I am getting ahead of myself.  The few weeks before we left were pretty crazy. We needed prepare the house, complete all the paperwork and then we found out that we also needed to take a trip to Canberra in order to visit the Swedish Embassy to be verified.  All this around rugby, school work and family commitments.

We'd started the house packing in November when we found out, but now we could finally start packing seriously.  The trouble was there was a sort of limbo where you wanted to pack everything down but you also needed to live in the house until it was time to fly. It meant that a lot of the time we felt a little like we were in a holding pattern, not quite able to finalize the packing but feeling like there was a lot still to do.

On top of this we also needed to find Alana a place to live, as our house would be too big for her and she'd have trouble finding a rental as a fresh university student with only a casual income. Eventually we found a nice flat for her and she moved out a few months before we left which gave us a chance to ensure it would all work before we moved overseas.