8 years

Today (19 August 2008) we celebrated our 8th year in the UK.

I won’t say it was easy, but we’ve survived.

Seven years ago we got off Virgin flight VS602 at Heathrow. My wife and I, a 2 year old toddler and a 8 month old baby.

We knew we had to go to Romford in Essex, but had no idea how to get there. We were told that we could take the train, but with tired kids and loads of suitcases, I didn’t want to chance it.

We got a taxi, and the taxi driver asked me where Romford is. Upon questioning he told me that he’s been in the UK 19 years. We’ll I’ve only been here less than an hour at that stage……. Luckily he had a SatNav, which he ignored at stages…., but we got there in the end.

The first 6 months was bad. We moved out of a 4 bedroomed house in CapeTown into a 2 bedroomed flat on the sixth floor. On Monday mornings you couldn’t use the lifts, because it was used as toilets over the week-ends. Every week-end we searched franticly for a house to buy, and when our 6 month rent contract came to an end we had a house!

We moved out of London to the Country-side. And after 7½ years we are still glad we made the move.

When we got here we promised ourself we’ll get Citizenship as soon as possible, and to get our red passports. We made sure we got our ILR.

Well after a few years we pushed our citizenship application to the back, seeing that it wasn’t priority, because like Koos Kombuis said :” Ons het ‘n kuiergas, Mr. Ooievaar.” Our youngest was born in 2004.

On the 1st of August 2007 we attended our Citizen ceremony.

We've seen most of Wales, Scotland and England.

We got our maroon passports in December 2007, and now there is no issues with travelling!

We can’t complain about the UK, so far we’ve been treated xcellent, BUT this is not the place we want to grow old.

As most of you know we have been setting our sites on France, so watch this space!