After a 36 hour marathon of flights in the direction of New Zealand we finally landed in Christchurch on Thursday 29th March. I immediately felt welcome when we arrived; Gareth went off to get the many articles of luggage we’d managed to slip onto the plane (two car seats, push chair, travel cot, and as many suitcases allowed for a family of four), our 10 month old was strapped to my front and just waking from a middle of the night sleep (it was now 3pm) and my two and half year old daughter was screaming her head off on the floor surrounded by the 8 hand luggage items we had dragged through four airports.  Her reaction was totally reasonable and I was completely sympathetic, heck I wanted to join her!  As I stood there holding both my children, sweating under the weight and general discomfort of the situation, a wonderful woman who smelt like a field of flowers in comparison to my rather pungent traveller odour, scooped Minnie up in her arms and gave …

Once we decided we were going to move to New Zealand and it looked likely Gareth would get a job with his company, we put our house up for sale.  At the time we figured it could take months to sell and we didn’t want to be in the position where he was due to start his job and we still had a house in the UK to shift.  As we knew we wouldn’t be coming back to Liverpool it was an easy decision.  The sale was a lot easier than we expected and we accepted an offer in a week!  The day Gareth accepted an offer of a job in Auckland, the sale of our house went through. That was three months ago now and we are only just posting off our application for residency, yes people it takes that long.  Don’t get me started on the costs, I may weep.  Right up until the residency application process our move to NZ seemed fast and smooth.  I’m actually told 3-4 months isn’t that slow …

My family and I are moving to New Zealand next month. That is such a wonderful statement that I am so excited to be able to write.  I always envied the people who lived in foreign lands because they had a job or family there and jealously coveted their opportunities.  Now it is I that is going and I never get tired of saying New Zealand to the question of “Where are you moving to?” We’ve never been to NZ, we are going on recommendation, which seems cavalier when you think we are taking our beloved two year old daughter and 8 month old son, but how bad can it be?  We’re not intending to go forever either and I reckon you can do anything when it’s not forever, obviously if we’re talking stomach crunches the time needs to be considerably less than forever.  I give us 5 years with the NZ thing but I’m open to more.  All I know is, after the money we’ve spent on health checks alone we need to go …