Homesick

Well, it was bound to happen. It coincidentally happened around the same time that we started to poke our heads up from vacation mode to look for jobs. It turns out that vacationing is easy, whereas moving across the globe is hard. Who'd have thought?

But, somewhere around noon, homesickness hit. It was short lived, but there nonetheless. All of the things we'd thought about resurfaced: Where should we stay? Is Wellington the right city? Should we be trying to find jobs right away? We miss our cat.

In reality, NZ has met or exceeded our exceptions in all areas but one (Internet access is costly and slow). Evaluated objectively, everything has gone as smoothly as could possibly be expected even in our wildest dreams.

They say acculturation takes place in five phases: euphoria, distress, re-integration, autonomy, and independence. I don't think that we're going to hit these in order. I suspect we'll experience all of them at various points and at varying intensities.

The upshot is that, after a good dinner and a trip to a dojo, we're feeling better for the moment. We also had a nice afternoon chat with some friends over the instant messenger, and that helped immensely. Thanks, Casey, Heather, Jonathan, and Tim! :-)