opportunities...

You guys that have been reading for a little while know I am constantly in a dilemma about where we're going to live once I finish school.
You may also recall that we were looking at travelling to Australia's capital over Easter to see if it had potential, but that the trip turned out to be too expensive.
Then we talked about going hiking in the mountains since they're too far to go for a regular weekend (4-5 hours), but not too far compared to going out of state.
Anyhoo, the other day, I did a bit of research on grants they give to graduating teachers willing to work in rural schools- schools most people don't want to go to because they're challenging and far away. Now I'd said I think working in a rural school would be kind of neat- it'd be a great little community, they probably have a veggie garden, you might have more opportunities to do things your own way... you know, it's different.
So I did this research and found out that there is, indeed, a scholarship program for new teachers wanting to go to 'priority schools', whereby you get $7,000 upfront just for going there, plus you get paid from Jan 1st (schools don't start until Feb), plus if you stay for a 2nd year, you get an extra $4,000 bonus. Sweet. I like money.
Somehow it came about that I mentioned to Nic that we should go look at this town up at the foothills of the mountains called Bright. There's a few little towns around there, this one has 2,200 people, so it's not just a pub (do you guys have pubs??) and a postoffice. And I told him about this scholarship...
Then the talk got really serious, in a good way. Like:
"Dude, Bright is really beautiful, and check out these mountains, and you can go hiking and skiing (and you don't have to drive 4 hours) and kayaking and swimming in the creeks and streams and horse riding! And look, I'd get $11,000 extra just for working there... And since Bright and that area is a complete tourist area all year, basically, there'll be cafes and restaurants and shops, which is what we want, but only it'll be a nice community... And there'll be mountains!! And sometimes it snows".
And we had a quick look at real-estate online, just for fun, and there's affordable places there! Still like... $300,000 for a house, but that's 'affordable' for here... Or you can get a block of land, for under $200,000 (can't do that anywhere within an hour of Melbourne any more) and then you could build.
And we could plant fruit trees and get chickens, and maple trees, and elms and oaks and they'd change colour in fall, and I could have a horse because there's heaps of forest up there where horses are allowed...
And suddenly it's exciting...
And we haven't gotten there yet, we'll be there over easter... and we might hate it... But... we're super excited that there's this new possibility.Yay!

I have a kitten sitting on my stomach now purring away so I can't see the screen any more.

Also Nic and I rearranged the whole living room today. Again.
We do this every 2 or 3 months, I swear. We want to change one thing. One little thing. I said: "I wish the bins were somewhere else, hidden" today, and BAM, our living-room/dining area looks completely different now. Thankfully we didn't go to ikea to get something for the change this time. I think we have about as much stuff as anyone could ever want (bad us, I know), but... we love to do this. I'm loving how it is though. It's made our space much brighter, more open, our big bookshelf with all my books and our photos of adventure is now a feature of the room instead of a weird thing. That being said, any friends who come here for dinner once every couple of months must think we're insane. Anyone else do this? Random and frequent massive upheavals of furniture and room design?
Poor Mal mopes around the whole time thinking we're about to up and leave him.