Life in February

Jane and Davy here - or as you best know as us as Davy and Janey. It’s been a while since we updated properly and you’re probably wondering why there has been such a huge gap between our last post and now. Our last post was September, and since then we have celebrated our third year as a couple and finally had our first Christmas and New Years celebrations together as a couple and we even had our first LDR couple meet up / double date with the lovely Chelsea & Chris over at LoveMyBrit.com - which by the way was amazing and we can’t wait to have another!
In the last few weeks, and months, we have been trying to deal with the ups and downs of a long distance relationship. We’ve been a little cranky occasionally and have been trying to make sure that we put each other first, hence why we haven’t written anything in so long. Added to the stress of a long distance relationship are our own ventures. Jane since September, participated in her first NaNoWriMo and managed to hit the 50k word goal. Something that took a whole lot of time and commitment to, of course, and now she’s in the process of editing that novel (the working title was Sinking Fast but she has now renamed it to something awesomer, obviously) whilst having an idea of another novel. Jane’s also been progressing a lot with her Dutch, she recently took a language test over at Dutch Language School and managed to score an 83% (around an intermediate level roughly)! Of course, the test only included writing and reading Dutch but Jane has also been working on her speaking and listening - which have improved vastly. When she first began Dutch, the first six or so months were full of ‘I can’t do it’ etc but now Jane plucks up the courage to speak more Dutch. She’s also been reading books/news articles, listening to radio and watching Pokemon in Dutch.

Meanwhile, Davy has been busy looking for a second job - on top of the one he has - as the agency he works for simply doesn’t give enough hours, and if we’re going to close the distance between November 2015 and February 2016 this is something that is really important especially on the money side of things. We’ve also looked into packing boxes, and shipping companies. As well as that, on the job front - we sat down and re-wrote his CV, one in Dutch and one in English (for when he moves over) so we can give him the best possible chance of getting an interview. Just a heads up, but for those who want a CV format that is recognised all over Europe - EuroPass is officially recognised by the European Government, as well as the UK Government. They also have information on their website about the recognition of qualifications all across Europe - it may take a bit of clicking about, but it’s not that much of a difficult website to navigate. They also have an editor to create your CV online which they then save into a fancy and smooth looking PDF!





Davy has also had to deal with some other issues, in particular an altercation between him and his father (for those who speak to us regularly will know what happened but other than that, we won’t go into too much detail into it as there’s no point wasting our breaths and our typing time on it) and we’ve got some plans for this year to really help us reach our shared and individual goals. One of Davy’s being a Football Journalist, he has created a portfolio blog where he will be displaying his articles on. In the next few months, Davy has also decided that to get his confidence up about his own writing, he will be attending football matches of his local city’s club (a second division Dutch team) to report on them. Not only will this boost Davy’s confidence but it will get him regularly writing match reports and being able to regularly take notes down during matches for his own articles. We’re planning, when he has moved over, to get him into a BTEC fast-track course for Journalism in Cornwall as he has decided it’s something he really wants to do, but he doesn’t want to spend another 4 years in the Netherlands studying to get onto a higher degree there as the distance, for us personally, has been long enough and we really would like to close the distance whilst being able to follow our dreams, but as a couple together so we can deal with the inevitable stress life brings in an easier way.

To help us cope with the distance, we also gave each other ‘Open When…’ letters. Which was written about as a possible three year anniversary gift, but turned into a joint Christmas / New Years gift for each other. We thought that it’d be better if both of us did a pile of them for the other and we had a ton of fun sitting at Jane’s dining table for hours on end, cutting bits of small paper, writing in different coloured gel pens etc to create them. Of course, even though we were sat next to each other we weren’t allowed to sneak at each other’s letters, otherwise there would be no point! As well as the letters, every week we send each other an email - sort of like a love letter, or a list of reasons why we appreciate each other etc. The idea was inspired by a post over at LDRMagazine  but of course, as postage isn’t cheap especially with our financial situations, so emailing letters is just as good! Because it helps us both think creatively and we use it as a writing exercise to inspire each other and other ideas. If you’re in a LDR and are finding postage expensive, emailing and writing letters like these every week is just as good!

We do apologise for those who haven’t heard from us in a while and follow our posts. But we are still on twitter (our sidebar says that it can’t find our tweets) but we’re set as private currently, just send us a follow request if you’re interested in interacting with either of us and we’ll accept - just as easy as that! We do hope to update a bit more now. And hopefully, in the next few weeks we can detail our future plans as a couple. If you’ve noticed that our book reviews have disappeared off the blog, that’s because we’re going to keep the blog couple and life orientated and de-cluttering it.

Up next for us is Valentine’s Day! Unfortunately, we aren’t able to spend this one physically together but we’ll still do our best to make it as amazing as possible. Speaking of which….Jane still has to order Davy’s gift. Ooops… best get onto that! ;3

Thank you for being so patient with us both and we hope everyone had an amazing Christmas / New Years period and continue to have an awesome February. We promise that this time it won’t take so long to write to all our followers….not that we’re that popular right? ;)