We’re Spending Christmas In England!

Posted on November 23, 2016

We left England in late December of 2014, ready to start a new life in Australia. Now, two years down the line, it’s time for us to go back again… for a holiday.

This year has been a big one for Dean and I. We’ve worked our butts off, moved house to a third-floor walkup, got a major promotion (in Dean’s case) and started something totally new (in mine). We’ve also dealt with the somewhat anticlimactic grant of the first part of Dean’s permanent residency visa, and with it the ability for Dean to finally travel out of the country. We did a small trip to Indonesia for my birthday, but England has been on the horizon for us for quite some time.

Two years is a long time to spend away from your family, and while Dean’s mum did come to visit us, there are a lot of people he’s really eager to see and celebrate Christmas with. I’m also super excited to see my ‘England family’, as well as enjoy a more traditional Christmas than the one we celebrated last year, which was very Australian (read: hot, sweaty, and tropical).

We’re both looking forward to enormous walks in the commons in Dean’s home area, with lots of geocaching, and a large amount of general rambling. I have my walking shoes already worn in and ready to go, and now we both just need the winter clothes to get us through. It’s going to be a shock to the system to say the least, as the temperature difference will be around 30 degrees. Dean and I often joke that the temperature that we cool our house to with the air-conditioning, is around six degrees higher than what we warmed our house to in England during the winter. It’s going to be cold!

Dean is also super excited about getting to be with his favourite non-human in the entire world: his doc Hecter. This guy was Dean’s shadow in England, and we are both excited to have a dog again. Hecter has had some health issues, but he’s still in good shape and we are definitely going to get him out and about everywhere with us as we explore England again.

So, get ready for a whole lot of posts, photos and blogging goodness on England and the many wonders it contains, because we’re going to be there for three weeks over Christmas and New Year.

Oceana Setaysha

Oceana is the blogger behind Maps + Mandalas. She’s a wanderer more than a traveller, with a passion for walking, geocaching, and photography. She used to be a tropical person, but now lives in Melbourne, Victoria with her wonderful fiancé, and a super chunky baby who arrived in February 2019. She drinks too much coffee and spends most of her time wishing it was some other kind of weather.