I’d always wonder what impact taking our three daughters to NZ for five years would have on their outlook on life and attitude to travel.  Over the years it’s been clear that they view travel and spending time away as very much the norm and this becomes even more a feature of our family’s life with my eldest daughter heading off to Auckland University of Technology on an erasmus year as part of the Journalism and Communications degree  she’s studying at Cardiff University. She sets off from the National Express bus station in Cardiff (part away through the Wales v Scotland Six Nations opening fixture) for Heathrow with a mixture of trepidation and excitement.

The erasmus semester runs from February to June and she’ll be in the International students halls. She’s met up with some erasmus students from previous years who’ve, to a person, confirmed it to be a life chaining experience. It’ll be interesting to see who much she remembers of a city she lived in from the age of 9 to 14 years old. I have a feeling she is going to enjoy  New Zealand  as a student even more than she enjoyed New Zealand as a child.