To settle down or not to settle down

Lately, I've been spending a lot of time wondering where we should live. We bought this house with the aim of renovating and then selling it, and moving somewhere with lots of land. I love this house now and can't think of any place where I'd rather live in South Africa. But should we stay here?

We lived in England for nine years, nine wonderful years. We moved on as we never really intended to stay for good. We kept our minds open to different options as we lived there, but the open-minded plan ruled out staying for good. By being undecided for so long we never dug our roots into the ground.

South Africa is a wonderful place to be, but is it the best place in the world to bring up children? If not, then we should maybe move. The school is good, though, and the kids are getting a brilliant education. But should we find even a better school? We should think of their friendships, too, and we do. The fact that the friends change, as the school is an international one and most children are from families who live here for two-three years and then go on to other places. That means friends change and the kids wouldn't really leave good friends behind as eventually they would move, too. If we stay here for good then we need to start digging our roots into the ground now. Otherwise this place will never feel properly like home. I'll have to get more interested in the African politics, for example.

Some options I've considered in the past month or so are the US, Canada, India, Philippines, Japan and the UK. Finland is not a strong contender even though my heart wants to be there because of the family. One of the reasons is, that we've lived there already. Another reason is that the children would maybe not fit in properly. They're not very Finnish, but then again they're not foreigners, either. They're something in between and so kids would find them hard to classify. They would be the odd ones out.

I'm hoping that by this time next year we have a plan of what to do. We'll most probably stay here for a year or two and then move the children to an International school somewhere else in the world. Hopefully somewhere warm.

Whatever the case in the long run, I have a plan for our next holiday. I want to buy a rickshaw and drive around India for a month or so.