sarahw
21st January 2006, 08:04 AM
Hi Guys,
Not been online much in the last 5-6 months! So thought I'd post a quick update.
We've been in Welly for a year now & we've had plenty of experiences good & bad that I thought we'd share (also a quick update for the people we haven't seen for a while & the people I was in almost daily contact with on this forum for a while).
We arrived on 6th Jan 2005 & after 4 weeks in B&B's & a motel we moved into our rental property in Whitby (about 20-30 mins from the city). Despite shipping our sea container many weeks earlier, it didn't arrive when we thought it would (due to backlog from the Xmas break - we didn't realise the whole of NZ shuts down for a few weeks!) so we spent our first couple of weeks sleeping on the floor & getting by with deck-chairs in front of a 14" TV in the evenings & one pan in the kitchen - if you couldn't cook it in a pan it wasn't on the menu!!
When our stuff arrived in Feb it was like Xmas - I have never felt so happy to see a tea strainer in my life!!!!
We settled into Whitby life really well - nice suburb - pub, takeaways & shops within walking distance and nice neighbours.
Ian started work at the end of January and I had planned to study full-time to finish my Open University degree and to volunteer with a conservation NGO 2 days a week. Ian hated his first week (he was a buildings surveyor at home on construction and refurb jobs & he got a job as a quantity surveyor here which amounts to the same thing) - he went into work suited & booted as he always did in London (he'd even bought new suits, ties & shirts) and was promptly taken to the building site at Wellington Hospital that was to be his workplace for the next few months to find that other people of his rank were wearing jeans & some even were wearing shorts & workboots. He very quickly gained the nick-name 'the suit' and we had to go shopping that weekend to sort him out with some jeans! He found work extremely frustrating - the fact that he hadn't been given a job of his own straight away.... he's since realised that he had his first proper induction of his working life & that he'd just been chucked into the deep end in all his UK jobs! He arrived home at 3pm on the first Friday afternoon quite shell-shocked that he had finished early as seems to be the NZ tradition & we were drunk at the local pub by 6pm!
After 6 weeks of me volunteering admin work I got offered a maternity cover job (originally for 9 months, but now 12 months) doing my dream job working with NZ community groups conserving NZ habitats for creatures such as Kiwi, Petrels, etc. I worked 4 days a week & crammed 5 days worth of studying into the remaining 3 days a week.
During this time we found out we can't have our own kids (one of our reasons for moving over here was to start a family) & I was also going through all sorts of tests & emotions. We seemed terribly far from home & I ended up having some rather nasty treatment that lasted a month the day after my final degree exams! Stress was exceedingly high.
We sold our house in the UK which took 8 months from when we put it on the market (so we were paying NZ rent & a UK mortgage without me earning much money for 6 months - so money was terribly tight) and we bought a fantastic 4-bed house in Paremata overlooking the Pauatahanui inlet with 180 degree water views.
After being very inactive at home we've both taken up mountain biking, fishing and kayaking and I'm sure there's more interesting sports to come.
Things that helped us settle here were making friends with some ex-pats and some Kiwis, neighbours, work colleagues etc., getting 2 beautiful kittens from the SPCA just after we moved here, and saying yes to all invites during the first few months.
Amazingly, despite all my health problems & the lack of hours for studying, I got a 2.1 in my degree, we both absolutely LOVE our jobs, we wouldn't swap our cats for anything, we have to pinch ourselves when we wake up looking over the beautiful views every morning that this is actually our house, and we just got married over Xmas in the Bay of Islands and some friends/family came over to see the wedding - it was sooooo wonderful to see everyone but made us realise when the largest contingent was friends we'd met over here how many friends we've made during the last year. In short - we LOVE our life and wouldn't swap living in Welly for living anywhere else in the World.
We're looking forward to hopefully adopting a baby & making our family complete during the next few years.
I'd just like to say to anyone who is torn as to whether or not to move here - it was the best idea & decision we EVER made & I would do it all again, even going through the hellish year we've been through financially, emotionally and physically. If you're sat there in the cold right now wondering... go for it!!
Not been online much in the last 5-6 months! So thought I'd post a quick update.
We've been in Welly for a year now & we've had plenty of experiences good & bad that I thought we'd share (also a quick update for the people we haven't seen for a while & the people I was in almost daily contact with on this forum for a while).
We arrived on 6th Jan 2005 & after 4 weeks in B&B's & a motel we moved into our rental property in Whitby (about 20-30 mins from the city). Despite shipping our sea container many weeks earlier, it didn't arrive when we thought it would (due to backlog from the Xmas break - we didn't realise the whole of NZ shuts down for a few weeks!) so we spent our first couple of weeks sleeping on the floor & getting by with deck-chairs in front of a 14" TV in the evenings & one pan in the kitchen - if you couldn't cook it in a pan it wasn't on the menu!!
When our stuff arrived in Feb it was like Xmas - I have never felt so happy to see a tea strainer in my life!!!!
We settled into Whitby life really well - nice suburb - pub, takeaways & shops within walking distance and nice neighbours.
Ian started work at the end of January and I had planned to study full-time to finish my Open University degree and to volunteer with a conservation NGO 2 days a week. Ian hated his first week (he was a buildings surveyor at home on construction and refurb jobs & he got a job as a quantity surveyor here which amounts to the same thing) - he went into work suited & booted as he always did in London (he'd even bought new suits, ties & shirts) and was promptly taken to the building site at Wellington Hospital that was to be his workplace for the next few months to find that other people of his rank were wearing jeans & some even were wearing shorts & workboots. He very quickly gained the nick-name 'the suit' and we had to go shopping that weekend to sort him out with some jeans! He found work extremely frustrating - the fact that he hadn't been given a job of his own straight away.... he's since realised that he had his first proper induction of his working life & that he'd just been chucked into the deep end in all his UK jobs! He arrived home at 3pm on the first Friday afternoon quite shell-shocked that he had finished early as seems to be the NZ tradition & we were drunk at the local pub by 6pm!
After 6 weeks of me volunteering admin work I got offered a maternity cover job (originally for 9 months, but now 12 months) doing my dream job working with NZ community groups conserving NZ habitats for creatures such as Kiwi, Petrels, etc. I worked 4 days a week & crammed 5 days worth of studying into the remaining 3 days a week.
During this time we found out we can't have our own kids (one of our reasons for moving over here was to start a family) & I was also going through all sorts of tests & emotions. We seemed terribly far from home & I ended up having some rather nasty treatment that lasted a month the day after my final degree exams! Stress was exceedingly high.
We sold our house in the UK which took 8 months from when we put it on the market (so we were paying NZ rent & a UK mortgage without me earning much money for 6 months - so money was terribly tight) and we bought a fantastic 4-bed house in Paremata overlooking the Pauatahanui inlet with 180 degree water views.
After being very inactive at home we've both taken up mountain biking, fishing and kayaking and I'm sure there's more interesting sports to come.
Things that helped us settle here were making friends with some ex-pats and some Kiwis, neighbours, work colleagues etc., getting 2 beautiful kittens from the SPCA just after we moved here, and saying yes to all invites during the first few months.
Amazingly, despite all my health problems & the lack of hours for studying, I got a 2.1 in my degree, we both absolutely LOVE our jobs, we wouldn't swap our cats for anything, we have to pinch ourselves when we wake up looking over the beautiful views every morning that this is actually our house, and we just got married over Xmas in the Bay of Islands and some friends/family came over to see the wedding - it was sooooo wonderful to see everyone but made us realise when the largest contingent was friends we'd met over here how many friends we've made during the last year. In short - we LOVE our life and wouldn't swap living in Welly for living anywhere else in the World.
We're looking forward to hopefully adopting a baby & making our family complete during the next few years.
I'd just like to say to anyone who is torn as to whether or not to move here - it was the best idea & decision we EVER made & I would do it all again, even going through the hellish year we've been through financially, emotionally and physically. If you're sat there in the cold right now wondering... go for it!!