***For this post, you can assume you’re reading in October – the catch up continues!***
I’m not sure whether it feels like we’ve been in Bermuda for a long or short time. It’s that typical feeling during adult life when time feels like it’s flying by at an incredible rate but when you look back, lots has happened. Well, in October, we celebrated our ‘1 year in Bermuda anniversary’.
To tell you all the truth, which we like to do (!), we celebrated the wrong day. And when I say ‘celebrated’ – I mean in a public forum we advised it was our anniversary. Toby was actually presenting at the local .NET user group and I was co-ordinating it so it wasn’t exactly a celebration! It was only when we spoke to my parents that weekend we realised we got it wrong. Needless to say, it wasn’t celebrated!
I guess an ‘anniversary in Bermuda’ is when you’ve done every event in the Bermuda calendar and you’re back round to the first you attended. We therefore seemed to find more significance in the fact it was our second Halloween! The lovely Tim and Tia hosted a party which we attended…this time completely ready for the need to dress up and the fact it doesn’t need to be scary….this is no UK Halloween celebration! Enter Cleopatra and her Roman hunk!
And I’d like to publicise Kerry’s comment here; “Check out the tan!!!” I agree, in a totally unexpected turn of events, pasty white Chelle is getting some colour. Who would have thought it was possible? That’s what a year in Bermuda gives you…
So, what else do we have? We’ve certainly become localised. In fact, that happened within a couple of months but we weren’t aware of some of the seasonal specifics until we’d completed a year. When we first arrived were we told;
- “The summer’s amazing, it’s a bit quiet at the moment” – But we were busy exploring the island and so happy with what we found, we thought these people didn’t know what they were talking about.
- “XYZ is far away, I’m not sure if we can make it so far tonight” – Errr, it’s less than 10 miles and it’s a 20 minute scooter ride…..these people don’t know they’re born! We used to travel 2 hours to get to work/1 hour to meet friends in town etc etc. Geez!
- “It gets cold in winter” – Pardon?! Are these weather reports not accurate? It suggests it will be in the low 20 degrees in winter, that’s a reasonable summers day in the UK!
Well, having been here a year I can confirm the winter is rather dull, 10 miles is not to be taken lightly and winter is COLD! 🙂
We’re truly adjusted and with more than these silly points. Day-to-day life is a little different than we were used to but we now have a nice routine and less surprises. It’s been a fun year, but also a year we’ve not seen family and friends and the familiarity of home. Nick and Leki visited the month before which was wonderful but it did also make us a little homesick. We know we’re very lucky out here but we’ve made sacrifices and not seeing family and friends is by far the biggest. We try to Skype regularly and are more active than we’ve ever been on Facebook which bridges a few gaps too. If we’re honest, we might not manage to see some friends for 6 months anyway, but I guess knowing you can is comforting!
One great piece of news a year brought us was the opportunity to move. We had a year’s contract on our apartment and while it was fine, our wanderlust had already struck. I guess that will be the next blog…..
