Life is good!
It’s time to tell the world that we did it!! Actually, Bas did it and I am just sort of tagging along.. 😉 but YES, we’re staying in New Zealand for a year!
Today our passports with work visa arrived by courier. It took quite a bit of work to get everything sorted out, but now Bas can actually legally work at Green Bay High School.
It’s about a month ago since our last update, when we told you that Bas got the job. He has been voluntarily teaching ever since and now they’ll be able to pay him for it 🙂
The fact that Bas was working full time, and I was too (for some clients back home in the Netherlands), plus we had to arrange a lot of things here in NZ, made it difficult for us to stay in touch with all of you. Sorry about that. Also, we didn’t really want to say to much on our blog till things were officially sorted out.
The last couple of weeks involved:
- working, working, working and arranging stuff for our work permits, Bas’ teacher license (for which he still will have take a few more hurdles – amongst which a language test!!!)
- living in a B&B with our wonderful hosts Timo, Olivia and little Oscar (2 years old) for a couple of weeks. They were very accommodating, because it took a bit longer than expected for us to find our own rental place. It was quite difficult with a demanding market and our list of ‘must-haves’ quickly turned into a list of ‘at least it should have this’. After several viewings of places in the area, we succeeded though:
- as of Saturday February 18 we are living in a really nice 3-bedroom place in Glen Eden, Auckland. It is about 10 minutes drive to Bas’ work and I am working from home. See pictures below.
- Filling this place with furniture and everything else that is needed to make a place liveable. Other than some built-in closets, curtains, carpeting, light fixtures and a stove, there wasn’t much that came with the place. However, we set ourselves a budget and went shopping for good deals. We also found some stuff on TradeMe, the NZ version of Marktplaats (for the Dutchies) or YK Trader/Craig’s List (for the Canadians).
- Getting a bank account, contents insurance, arranging an Internet and telephone connection, getting our electricity account set up, rescheduling our flights etc. By the way, Judith will come back to the Netherlands from March 16 – March 30 to deal with some business things and arrange a few things back home.
- Besides all the working and organizing, we also did some fun stuff. We went for a couple of nice walks and we went to the Auckland museum on the 5th of February. It was a wonderful place with lots of great exhibitions, amongst which about typical NZ things, such as the Maori culture and Volcanoes (did you know Auckland is built on approx. 50 volcanoes, and the area is due to erupt any time now within a margin of about 1000 years – which isn’t that long in the grand scheme of things).
- We also made our first friends in our new home-for-a-year. We are now part of a group of friends/colleagues who play board games every Wednesday night and we are having Bas’colleagues of the science department over for a BBQ housewarming/permit party tomorrow night. Bas is preparing the satay-marinade as we speak. Except for the weather forecast (storm and rain) we are looking forward to a great evening. Fortunately we have a covered deck and if things get real bad, we can also move inside, since we now have some comfortable couches and a dining table 🙂
All in all we can say that we’re pretty proud of what we have achieved so far! Cheers mates, life is good!
p.s. If you would like to know our address (and as of Monday the 5th, we’ll have a landline (telephone) number as well), please send us a private message and we’ll get back to you asap.
p.s. 2 Enjoy the pics. More to follow soon!