[S&D]

My wife mentioned that I had a surprise at home, and sure enough when I arrived from work I was met with a US passport with Blue Stickers affixed! :raebanana I imagined that they would be small and rectangular, not taking up two full passport pages!

We're very excited, as this is one of the first pieces of physical evidence of our coming new reality. So many things to take care of before setting off from the West coast of the US for Wellington this November. We'll see how the conversation with my current employer goes in the next few weeks... :o Hopefully supportive and helpful. :)

Even though I'm still "Testing the Water" I've been trolling these forums continuously since April and have answered soooo many questions without even posting my own. At any rate, I just wanted to thank the forum populace for this wealth of real-world information. It has helped us immeasurably.

[Oregonkiwi]

Congratulations! :raebanana :raebanana

[tigerlily]

Welcome S&D! Congrats too! So spill the beans a bit about yourselves. Where are you now and what line of work are you in? Do you have kids? Jobs lined up? Have you told the family yet?

[Moorf]

Congrats!! :clap

Huge aren't they - our passports feel positively wallpapered as we have work permit stickers from when we first arrived which are same size AND two lots each of the PR stickers as they made a mistake on our initial ones!!

[Smiler]

Hi S&D

Welcome to the forum. :cheers:cheers


Congratulations on your blue stickers too. :raebanana

[StevieD]

Congratulations S&D - yes they are nice aren't they :) Look ever so good in our UK passport.

Steve

[marcia]

Welcome to the forum - and congratulations on your blue stickers have a couple of these guys!! :raebanana :raebanana

[Bruckner]

Congratulations! We're sending in our passports on Monday.

Emily

[S&D]

Thank you for the friendly welcome all!

To answer tigerlily's questions: My wife is gearing up to go to University in Wellington (although she is keeping her options open and may instead become a Kiwi entrepreneur by starting a small home business doing something, just not quite positive what :) ) As for myself, I work in IT (more on the enterprise support side instead of the programming side) and so far have been bolstered by what the market looks like in Wellington and NZ in general. I've always been excited about the thought of doing what I love in another country.

We're currently residing near Seattle, WASHINGTON and are at the point of starting a family (but we haven't yet so the move isn't as complex for us but still exciting and terrifying at the same time). We look forward to starting our family in NZ and seeing how things progess from there (putting certain worries aside in the meantime such as raising kids without family close by, etc).

Otherwise, I don't have a job lined up yet and didn't want to start that process until right around now (i.e. within 3 months of moving) and after I've spoken with my current employer (there is a slight/small/sliver of a possibility of continued employment by the same company even after the move due to offices abroad). Once I've had "the talk" with my bosses, we'll see how things proceed :roll.

As for our families, we've been planning and working on this move for nearly two years and have talked to them about these plans as they’ve developed. However, it's funny now that I have the Blue Stickers and the paperwork is official we get a lot of comments along the line of "Oh, you're still going through with this whole New Zealand thing?" It seems that most of my family members thought we were in a phase or something, but now are a little uneasy and sad that we're moving so far away (but are coming around). My wife's side of the family is just plain excited and based on their stated intentions of visiting us frequently, we may be able to open a small B&B with the amount of traffic :) .

At any rate, we'll be missing everyone dearly and plan to bring our Vonage phone with us so that they can call us via a local number. Ultimately, the promise that New Zealand holds for us in terms of living abroad and gaining another perspective on the world, and just experiencing something that so many people talk about but don't do (and later regret) can't be passed up. Just being physically in New Zealand for any amount of time will change how we see life. At least that's what I feel in my more philosophical of moods :o.

[tee and dee]

Congrats to you both - ours went off in the post to London on Saturday so hope we are celebrating too soon,
Tracey

[StevieD]

Funny you should say that, but that is the impression we got off people - the very same "oh, you're still doing it?!", an almost incredulous look as if we were nuts or something :laugh
I'm sorry, but life is too short and too precious to stagnate in one place, if things don't work out, you should/can try something else. Don't let the grass grow under your feet and good luck with the family :nice1

Steve :cheers

[Trigirl]

My parents definitely went through a stage of this. The initial “what a fabulous idea darling, how lovely for you” was clearly accompanied by total lack of comprehension that we were actually serious. When we had PR granted and put the house on the market it finally sank in and I got a lot of “helpful” comments about how we’d never cope financially, I’d never find a job etc etc. Luckily, as they’ve got used to the idea, they’ve gone back to being really supportive again and mum has even started a building society account to save up and come and see us for christmas 2007.