Last week marked the first anniversary of my move to Holland with the good wife. I’d like to say that the year has gone fast, and it has, but it has also been a fair slog. Relocating internationally to a new culture, even one as similar to my own as The Netherlands, takes it out of you. In the first year I have found full time gainful employment and we have purchased out first house which we are in the process of renovating. In fact, I am sitting down to write this after taking a short break from pounding mortar off an internal chimney, (for the study, you see).
I think for a first year that this is an extremely good result, and it is what I had planned towards. The other excellent result of our first year is that we have more money saved than when we left Australia. So after paying for relocation costs halfway around the world and the costs of purchasing a new house the end result is that we have more savings in the bank than when we started.