3 Cubic Metres

I have a two year contract in Suzhou, a lovely Husband, my little fluffy Labradoodle, an obscenely large sheet music collection, a ridiculous amount of text books (mainly about Wagner and Russian music), a snowboard, some rather fabulous shoes, a one of kind wedding dress made by Josie Smith Couture and the usual sentimental items that a 27 year old female would have. I should probably add that I also have a shipping allowance of 3 cubic metres for my little family of 3 to go to Suzhou.

So, as I've said before we have both done a fair bit of backpacking and we can live without a lot of things. Things have changed since we last backpacked though. The major round of backpacking that we did together was a relatively short time after we had started living together and so we didn't have a lot of possessions that were of great importance. Yes, there were some things, but predominantly we didn't have quite so many material possessions that represented our life together. 3 cubic metres seemed fairly simple to us. We were wrong.

It turns out since staying in New Zealand for 4.5 years we have accumulated some belongings. My parents have always joked that I have expensive taste. I can look at a magazine and pick the most expensive item on the page as being my favourite without even looking at the price tag. Quite a skill really. We thought we would be staying in New Zealand so we bought the beautiful Italian leather sofas, the Balinese boat wood table, the sleigh bed we've always dreamed of... Then there are the hobbies; triathlon, snowboarding, surfing, dressmaking, cooking.... I'm thinking our new hobby should be "eye spy". Far less specialist equipment necessary.

We started to be brutal with ourselves the moment I had the contract in my hands. We got the tape measure out and we measured an area of the exact size in our kitchen. This gave us a really good idea as to what had to go and what we could keep. I was always trying really hard to keep in mind the advice I was given by another teacher who was already working internationally just to go with what you could fit in your suitcase. The school organised a relocation specialist to assess our shipment and we came up at 5 metres cubed. Interestingly the school that has employed me offers a single teacher the same shipping allowance as a teacher with dependents. Still, at least they are offering shipping and the company even pack for us.

Immediately after our assessment we have reassessed. We have 40 items on "trade me". We are both making sacrifices. We have had to consider what is irreplaceable and what we can perhaps upgrade or live without. It is incredible how attached you become to pieces of wood, fabric, leather, metal and paper. Our future as we see it right now involves seeing a lot of the world and making the most of every moment we have together and every beautiful place we get to experience.