Hi everyone, Just thought we'd write one final blog to let those of you who are living overseas know that we are back (we've actually been back for almost a month now!). For those living in NZ they're probably already wishing we were back over there!!! There was no rest for us when we got back home. Daniel was picked up from the airport with his bike - and the boys headed straight for the hills! I headed home and rather rapidly turned our nice neat house (thanks family!) into a bomb-site, while showing off all our new purchases to my [View Full Entry]

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Hi again, We've made it to Hong Kong. It's hot again here. We have a two hour stop over. Can't tell you if Daniel is on the next part of the flight or not as he had to go through customs and then check in again, but hopefully it will be OK. We got two seats at the back of the plane for the first part of the trip, with a spare seat next to me. After taking some herbal drowsey pills we both managed to have a reasonable rest. You never sleep properly sitting up in a chair, and especially [View Full Entry]

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Hi, We are sitting on freezing cold seats in London Liverpool station waiting for the cheap train fare time (9.30) so thought we would update the blog for the last time from overseas (probably). We had a nice few days in Holland visiting family. It was sad to say goodbye as we have really enjoyed getting to meet them all. I have however made a promise to them - that if I ever learn Dutch properly then we will try our best to come back again - pressure! I have bought myself a Nintje book and an English to Dutch dictionary, [View Full Entry]

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That’s it...our time in Guildford is over (except for Daniel who has to go back to collect his bike). It’s kind-of sad to leave as we have really enjoyed our time over here, and could happily stay (for a while longer), but at the same time we are looking forward to coming home to see our family and friends, and coming back to the familiarity of NZ with our house, and our things around us. The week was rather uneventful, I again did no work, and Daniel did lots of work. I made some lollie cake for our office shouts, along [View Full Entry]

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Hello all, Monique & Daniel here - writing for the last time about a visit to a different country. We are now on the Eurostar train heading back to London from Paris. Heading back to our last week of work in England - man, time has flown. After arriving in Paris we walked the 3km from the train station to the hotel, past about 1,500 sex/XXX/AO shops! Shocking! After we managed to escape the seemingly never-ending shops, we passed Moulin Rouge, and found our hotel, in a nicer area of the town. We dumped our bags, opened the windows (to get [View Full Entry]

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Our last weekend in England…gone…just like that. Yeah, technically we still have two more weekends over here, but next weekend we'll be in Paris and the weekend after that we'll be in Holland!!!! So, what did we do… On Thursday night we went to see the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra play ‘Best of Broadway’. Because of the train’s efficiency, and my high heels and the queue to purchase tickets, we managed to miss the train by 30 seconds - so we had to catch the one 15 minutes later, but managed to only miss the first song in the concert. We had [View Full Entry]

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Rome...we came, we saw, we conquered... (in rough chronological order) - Santa Maria degli Angeli - Plazza della Repubblica - Fontana del Tritone - Trinita del Monti (and the Spanish Steps) - Fontana de Trevi - Piazza Colonna - Palazzo Chigi - Palazzo Montecitorio - Saint Ignazlo dl Loyola - Tempo Adriano - Pantheon - Palazzo Madama - Palazzo Navona - Colosseo - Arco di Costantino - Palatino - Arco di Tito - Monumento a Vittorio Emanuele II - Colonna Traiana - Mercanti Traianei - Campidogilo - Arco di Giano - Circo Massimo - Saint Maria in Cosmedin - Isola Tiberina [View Full Entry]

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Well, we made it. I'm sitting at the hostel computer trying to learn how to use these strange keyboards - took me a good few minutes to figure out how to use the @ symbol! First impressions of Rome - WOW! Amazing place with sooooo many things to look at. We've seen quite a bit in our half day here, but I'm not going to bother about telling you about it until we put the photos up at the same time (and that way I can check the spelling also). While Venice had the hand-bag sellers, Rome has the 'junk of [View Full Entry]

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For some reason it seems that all we really have to tell you about this weekend is alcohol! I hope you don’t all get the wrong impression…really we’re not that big drinkers…I like my wine, and Daniel likes his wine, beer, whiskey, rum, bourbon…!!! On Friday night Daniel and I headed out to the Hog Back Brewery, with about 20 people from my work, for a brewery tour. The tour was fun and we learnt lots about the process of making TEA. Yes TEA. I’m sure you’re wondering what TEA has to do with making beer, but TEA is a brand [View Full Entry]

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Daylight saving has ended…dark nights, cold days, frost and SNOW (yes, snow), skating (on the pavements), lack of sleep due to 3 ½ hour delay in our flight from Glasgow due to a hacker in the Easyjet system leading to an arrival in Gatwick at 2am meaning no more trains travelling to Guildford so a £40 taxi ride instead of a £20 train ride which meant not getting to bed until 3am and being up again at 8am for a late start to the work day which meant walking home in the pitch black at 5.30pm…but I’m getting ahead of myself. [View Full Entry]

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