Sometimes in October 2018 Steve came home from work and shared the news with me: “I’ve been asked to head support globally” to which I said “How exciting, that’s great!”, and he replied “Well, as you know most of the delivery is from Sri Lanka and I usually travel there at least four times a year, so I was thinking that we relocate there.  We will have a great adventure and I will be better equipped to lead from its largest location rather than remotely from the UK.”

Those who know me, I am a flexible person, and this was an easy decision to make as we always felt that living in another country would give us an opportunity to live a different way of life and be a great adventure for us all! We had to negotiate as the kids had just started secondary school and were settling well amd I would have to sacrifice both of my part time jobs.  This was a possible way of slowing down and be a mummy only, though!

We told kids openly about this possibility right from the beginning – each of them separately as we found it is always better to give explanation to one of the twin leaving space for expressing themselves without the other one influencing. However, it was still at the outset and nothing was certain, so Misa adopted the code words “Project Salad” whenever we wanted to discuss things in the presence of other people. It felt we had a secret and got lots of pleasure out of it.

We made a plan for Project Salad which all four of us were comfortable with:

1. Research what we could do with our house while abroad.
2. Discuss with both of my line managers the possibilities for applying for a career break
3. Spend 2 weeks Easter holiday in Colombo in rented accommodation rather than in a hotel to see, what is it like to cook, live, and look after ourselves, and breathe the life of a Sri Lankan family.
4. Giving time to the kids to think how they would be able to leave their friends and school behind to start new life somewhere else (house, school, friends)
5. Make a collective decision by May 2019
6. If we chose to relocate, to do so during the school summer holiday to minimise disruption

Everything followed from here!

Rennie