[Trigirl]

We made it. We arrived yesterday. Staying in the very very lovely Terrace Villas till we find a rental.

So far we've mostly slept a lot! But bank accounts are done now with huge thanks to the helpful migrant team at Westpac. And we're off to try and find house and car.

I'll post in a few days with proper first impressions. But right now I just want to say :D and :raebanana

Mandy

[Hannah]

Wha-hey, well done Mandy and family!!!
Look forward to your future posts and insights,
Welcome to NZ!!!!
hannah

[jess]

Congratulations! :D:D

[sarahw]

Welcome to Welly!!

Looking forward to your posts on how you find it!

[Brijan]

Hi Mandy
Wellcome to Wellington
Hope it all goes well for you
Brian and Jan :nice1

[Marie P]

:raebanana Woohoooo you made it :raebanana

Welcome to New Zealand !!!

Best wishes,

Marie x

[willsken]

Congratulations Mandy, great to hear you are finally there! :raebanana :raebanana

[dangermouse]

Congratulations, we hope to be joining you in Wellington early next year so looking forward to your first impressions and advice. :cheers

[Helsandfamily]

Congratulations :cheers

Look forward to reading that first post!!

Hels

[Smiler]

Welcome to Wellington, Mandy. Enjoy! :raebanana:raebanana:raebanana

[suebeenz]

Welcome home trigirl! I do hope summer comes sooner rather than later for you. :yes

[KerryS]

Welcome to NZ!

[gil]

Hi Mandy, welcome to NZ!:raebanana :raebanana Gil

[Nienke]

Welcome!!! :nice1

[wanderingoregonian]

Yea you!!! I very possibly will be there by this weekend with by brand new passport! Feel free to pm if you want to grab a cup of tea/coffee in the next few weeks!

[Anita & Marco]

Welcome in Wellingon!
The C.O.T.U.

Cheers,
Anita

[Big Puku]

Welcome to Wellington :) let me know if I can help at all!

Matt

[Trigirl]

Thanks everyone for your messages.

We've been here for 9 days now and first impressions of Wellington are starting to form. Mostly due to people being so helpful and giving their time on here to help other immigrants things haven't come as too much of a surprise.

The big news is that today after a week of looking we finally found a rental we are happy with and have agreed terms with the landlords. Its a 3 bedroom upstairs apartment in Brooklyn. I've put a couple of photos on my blog if anyone is interested. Its in very good condition, is only minutes from Brooklyn shops and cinema, is insulated and has gas cooking (how happy am I about that!) Plus its got a gorgeous little outdoor deck. It feels like a place we could be really happy. We move in between Christmas and New Year.

So we're pretty sorted now. We have a home, a car, bank account, phones, I've got a job and 5 weeks holiday to enjoy before I have to start it.

Other things....

I guess the weather is as expected - changeable! Its gorgeous today but has been awful at times over the last week. The shopping is great! And that I really didn't expect. So many people said Wellington shopping was rubbish and its really not. OK if you are used to UK chains and knowing that you can walk into Next or Gap and be guaranteed to find something to fit then it may feel a bit harder but there are some fabulous boutique clothes shops and at a good range of prices too. Its so much more fun than UK shopping! I love the public art (even if some of it is a bit odd), the wind sculptures, the poetry. I love how friendly and how trusting everyone is.

So really the only bad thing so far has been how hard it was to find a rental - we looked at about 20 places before we found anything suitable. Some of the places we saw were lovely but just not right for us. Others were horrible. But now we've found our place and I couldn't be happier.

Mandy

[jess]

Glad you have found a place to settle in Welly and are having great weather! Looks like we should have clear skies again tomorrow. :yes (I shouldn't say that; I'll jinx it.)

[Marie P]

Great update :nice1

Good luck with it all ..........off for a peek at your blog :exit

Marie x

[Brijan]

Hi Mandy
The Penthouse cinema has a great little cafe, we're sure you'll love Brooklyn and enjoy wellington as no two days are the same, have you found your way to Westfeild in lower hutt-more shops there.
Brian and Jan :nice1

[andreamatt]

Hi Mandy

Great posts and blog - please keep them coming! So glad your first impressions are mostly very positive.

Presumable you went with a rental agency to find somewhere to live? Would you recommend it? Matt's future employer (met. service) will find us somewhere to live for 2 weeks then it's up to us. It's months away but I'm getting somewhat worried about finding a primary school (Northland, Kelburn, Karori, Wadestown etc) and somewhere to rent (and not necessarily in that order).

Enjoy your current time off, have a good Christmas

Andrea Matt William and Martha

[wanderingoregonian]

Congrats on the rental. Loved the photos. You have the exact same color cabinets as our rental! We were very lucky to have our bosses help us connect with their family friends who needed someone to sublet their wonderful house while they were traveling. In a couple months we'll be racing around finding our own place too.

I agree in my first few days that the weather here in Welly has been up and down - its actually made the transition from the similar weather back home in Oregon easier. Luckily it was chilling before I flew out here so all my sweaters and turtlenecks weren't shipped and came with me on the plane. I'm loving the sunlight after dinner--- We got adventuresome the other night and walked back to our rental in Karori from downtown after dinner. It was just getting dark when we arrived. I think it was 90% uphill, but such a great chance to help sink in that we're really here!

[Trigirl]

Thanks everyone for your comments. We're continuing to have a ball here - we've been to Te Papa today to see the Blood Earth Fire exhibition. Mark is off at the cinema tonight seeing The Departed. Not my sort of thing so I've been down to Freyberg for a swim - lovely!

Brian and Jan - we've found the cinema cafe and you are right its gorgeous. I had bacon, kumara and pumpkin soup there and it was really lovely. I love the idea of being able to take your coffee or wine into the cinema too!

Andrea and Matt - we used a relocation consultant (only cos work paid for it) but to be honest I think we could have done fine ourselves. In the end the rental we got was one we found ourselves on Trademe. The one thing I would say is see if you can get someone local to drive you round the main suburbs you are interested in. A look at how the suburbs fit together and what the local shops etc are like can really help. Rentals are advertised on trademe and in the dominion post (wednesdays and saturdays). Good ones go really quickly so you need to be able to go and see them fast and make a decision on the spot.

welcome to wellington wanderingoregonian - catch up with you soon.

[Helsandfamily]

Hi Mandy,

Glad that you have found somewhere that you want to live, and it is really interesting hearing you take on Wellington.

Good luck

hels :)