The move

A lot has happened in a month since I last wrote. I wrapped up my work at BSR, moved to Shenzhen, started working at Huawei, and found a new apartment here. Andrea and the girls are still in Beijing for a few months due to Andrea's work but will hopefully move early in the new year, while I'll be going back to Beijing next weekend to see them (and managing other plans so we can see each other every couple of weeks).

The main reason for the move is around the job - which is a really exciting opportunity for me, and hopefully Andrea will be able to make her work benefit from the move too. It might be tough on Hannah to move to a new kindergarten, and we';; likely have to find another nanny for Leah, but we've been open to moving somewhere else for a while since we've been in Beijing a long time. And Shenzhen is a great place - it's cheaper and greener than Beijing. There's no such thing as Winter here and there is less pollution.

We're going to have to adjust our lifestyle that's been fairly fixed in Beijing (going to parks, cycling everywhere, certain favorite restaurants, of course certain groups of friends) but we'll manage. We know a few people down here who i've already met up with and of course through our work we'll make many new friends (Huawei's campus here has 40,000+ working there for a start)!

At first it does seem strange to have different routines (how to get to work, how to get to kindergarten, where the local shop is etc) and it was really hard (and tiring) finding an apartment and trying to work out what is more important (a kindergarten that is 2 mins walk vs 10 mins walk; a local high st with tens of restaurants vs a few restaurants down stairs; a subway 5 mins walk away or 2 20 mins away; and more on bus stops, balconies, number of bedrooms, a bath, a study, a big kitchen, a swimming pool, a kids playground, and many other things). Eventually we made a decision and we'll see how things work out!