live in a foreign country

With the political situation in this country worsening, we have decided to really put some focus into this.
We entered the Green Card Lottery this week, and have also started investigate ways of transferring either to the US or Europe via our current employers. We would like to be out of SA by the end of 2009 by the absolute latest.

Of course, the current world economic climate needs to be taken into consideration, as does the upcoming US elections.

Our deadline to be out of here is July 2010. I would prefer to be gone before then, but that is the final deadline.

We have settled on United States. Settled sounds wrong though. We have narrowed our choices down to the United States. To be more specific, we would like to live in California, and will probably end up around in San Francisco, if all goes well.

the husband and i spoke about this mid-way through last year, and said that should Jacob Zuma win the ANC presidency, we will start a 3 year plan to leave when our daughter finishes grade 7 (which is the end of primary school here). we have now moved this plan up a little, because of the other problems that have suddenly cropped up in this country – like lack of power, which is serious affecting the economy.

this is our wish list:
- Germany
- Italy
- France
- United Kingdom
- United States
- Australia

hopefully, we will be in one of those countries within the next 12 to 18 months.