Only 12 days to go now...We've been cleaning out our house, it feels so good to get rid of so much rubbish. Regardless if you're go away or not I think it needs to be done; you end up finding  some real treasures as well, like things you've been looking for for ages. But I am now content. Thinking that we may be away for 5 month is now seeming a little daunting, and I didn't realise what it takes to pack up a family. And how is it that just before you go away you're house starts to have a breakdown - just 2 days ago our toilets seemed to be blocked, but luckily having a brother as a plumber pays off, he came over today to check it out and it only cost us $1.50 to fix the problem...lets hope things run smoothly until we leave

Getting there...

We are all pretty excited, I've made a special calendar that I've put up on the fridge that has the dates from Christmas to the day we leave. Alexander looks at it every day to remind me how many days until we leave (32 now).

So we've organised our passports, Vietnamese visas and I've started to clean up the house ready for it's new residents...we are coming back here, but we are happy to have Andrea and Camille house sit for us :)

So where are we going...

We leave on the 7th of February to go to Hong Kong for 9 days; there we will meet our old friend Janice who lived with us for a few months here in Ascot Vale. Can't wait to see her, she has an amazing itinerary planned including going to Macau which is a city that was colonised by the Portuguese the architecture looks amazing. We will spend the last 3 days in HK on an island called Cheung Chau Island, there are no cars on the island, it's a fishing village, very quiet with small street food stalls and a beautiful view of the shoreline.

Vietnam is next...where we will be for about 8 weeks. Matt starts a CELTA course, which is a n Intensive Teaching English course for 4 weeks. He'll be studying from 9am-5pm, so that's going to be interesting for Alex, Ashah and I. I'm going to try and home school Alex a bit, but most of the time it will be day exploring for the 3 of us. When Matt finishes we are hoping to make our way up to Hanoi...

We are then hoping to be in Manila by late April to visit our friends in Baseco, some of the families there have recently had there houses burnt down which is quite hard
(visit http://markpedder.wordpress.com/ for details and photos).
We are going to stay in the slum @ the church house/office. From there we may also catch up with some friends in Cebu (second biggest city of Philippines) that I met 4 years ago. Matt has since been back twice, as he also went back to visit the tribal people of Mindanao, south of the Philippines.

Our last stop is South Korea. Well what can I say it is the most amazing place, and it will be great to see it green, as we have been there twice and both times it was below 5 degrees. June /July is summer but apparently quite rainy, and very green.

It all seems far off, and surreal at the moment but the day is approaching...there is anticipation in the air at number 37...although there is a little uncertainty about how it will all go, and want to be sensitive to the kids, but we trust God is with us and look forward to the adventure.

please feel free to make a comment, ask questions, we would love any feedback. will keep you posted