I’m sitting here in the middle of a very empty living room - the movers have just been and cleared everything - except the box I am sitting on and the cup I’m drinking tea from... and my Sky HD box of course!

We’re coming closer everyday now to coming home. Only a week and a half til we go to meet Clarky and Renee in Turkey before flying out of Kiev on October 2nd. To be honest, I cannot wait now. I have bought in my leaving date by 5 days as progress is good and I’m now starting to feel that going home is a reality.

We’ve overcome the major issues at work and I am now down to final invoicing and asset selling. Even the NBU has decided to let me make my payments so things are looking up. I am due to handover to colleagues here in Wholesale banking so I hope we don’t have too much left over. Its a relief to be getting so close now.

As it turns out we’ve met some great people in the last few weeks as well - which would have been nice 2 years ago - but thems are the breaks!

We’ve also been trying to get the documents together for marriage registration here in Ukraine but after a good start the system has finally broken us - the reason: the Ministry of Foriegn Affairs in Ukraine doesn’t recognise the NZ consulate stamp or signature. 1 stamp - how ironic. I had a beer with Mark (the NZ consulate officer) so maybe I should have bought him another!

Dash is having her farewell this Friday so looking forward to a final Ukrainian club night. We’ve been into the club and booked a spot next to the dance floor, put some cash on the bar and well see what happens - plenty of vodka and rum I am guessing! This will be our main farewell as most of my mates have already left...

We are going to have a pretty relaxed trip home. Plans are now confirmed:

October 2nd we fly to Trieste, Italy for 6 days with Dasha’s family. Plenty of pizza and vino for me!

October 8th we fly to London for a boozy weekend with Pete, Lou, Anna, Mike and Brent.

October 11th we fly out for Sydney. We both will have about 4 weeks in Sydney before starting work so that’ll be an awesome way to acclimatize again.

Well that about it for now - blogs may start to reduce but will see how I go. Can’t wait for Turkey so might give you an update after we get back from there.....