Week Four – The Highlights

This week has been as busy as ever; here are some of the highlights. Homeschooling, job hunting, house hunting, blogging and art were standard activities each day and having this routine is working well.

Home hunting: we went to look around a few more homes, this time we looked at some Hallmark home properties. We ended up speaking with ‘Mark’ for nearly two hours about our move from the UK, what the UK is like, what are plans and aspirations are etc. he was such a nice guy. One thing that stood out for us was that we arrived at 16.30 and they were due to close at 17.00 and we didn’t leave until 19.30. 

Business Studies: we started exploring online business studies courses for our daughter. We found the perfect course, spoke with an advisor and she is going to start the course at the end of April/beginning of May. It is an online course for new small business owners and has the perfect modules, so when she is visiting the UK she can keep up with her course and developing her online business.

Short and long term financial planning: we wrote our 24, 12 and 6 month financial plans this week. We set clear goals, measurements and agreed how we would hold each other accountable. This was a really helpful process, it allowed us to check in with one another about our long and short term goals and to visualize how we will get there.

Second savers account: we went to the bank and set up a second savers account and transferred the bulk of our savings from our UK accounts. There was a scary moment when the money did not appear in either account. Well, I was having kittens and Ahmed was a cool as a cucumber lol.

(AJ) Cucumber you say? Try, swan! Though I was poised, graceful and dear I say it, beautiful above the surface, below the surface I it felt the a thousand horses galloping across my chest!

Jalloh conference: we had our first husband and wife conference since arriving. We used this time alone to talk about how we were feeling, anything we were finding difficult, to ask any questions we had for each other, to talk about our goals in a little more detail and to have a general check in with each other. We also used this time to talk about what we want and do not want in a house.

(AJ) Talk to your significant other openly and honestly, especially when it comes to planning your future. Sometimes your thoughts are occupied with things your eyes see and your brain processes it as a problem!

This was probably one of my personal highlights of the week. Oh and we had an impromptu photoshoot too.

Recruitment company: I had registered and had an interview with a recruitment company in Canberra. The interview went well and they sounded confident that they could find me work, so wish us luck.

Jobs: I applied for a number of jobs again this week and Ahmed applied for four jobs. This was a particularly good week for him as his teacher registration came through so he can really start putting his foot on the pedal with applications now.

Settlement team: we confirmed our meeting with the settlement team in Canberra for the 30 April.

Homeschooling: we signed up to local home schooling networks to learn from other families and share resources.

(AJ) This process is more challenging than expected because I try to make it as fun as possible and let the learning be led by J, but he seems to be carefully selecting activities which he already knows or he knows would be a difficult concept to teach. I know he is trying to break my spirit so I would give up but he doesn’t know I had a class of 34 in 2017, where at least 6 children regularly used this tactic. The difficulty has been trying not to make it look, feel and sound like school so the first change is to call it Home Learning. J and I will write a short blog about our experiences in the coming weeks.

ADHD/ASD: our son made breakfast for himself and his cousin. For children with ADHD, Autism etc. sometimes they do not see the needs of others, so this was a lovely moment for us that we wanted to share.

Thank you for reading .

If you want something, go get it.

Peace, Love and Happiness

The JallOZ