NZ News......

Hello to everyone

Well would you believe it, I am sitting here looking out of the apartment window and it is teeming it down with rain!!! We have been assured by several Kiwis that this is extremely unusual weather for their Summer. It has been like this probably 70% of the time we have been here! I just can't believe that, of all the hot and sunny countries that Graham could've picked to get a job in, he's chosen one where the weather appears to be WORSE than the UK!! So if you were at all envious of us being out here in beautiful countryside bathed in glorious sun and heat, there is no need to be after all.....(although the countryside still is amazing!!)

Firstly, a big THANK YOU for all the emails that we have been receiving. You don't know how good it is to get messages! Especially for me (Vida) - it is my lifeline out to the world at the moment because it seems that my face-to-face contact with others currently consists of estate agents, plus I get some telephone contact with personnel at banks and utility companies - Mmmmmmm.

We knew (and had been forewarned) that Wellington was all hills, but you can not imagine what it is like until you get here. The backs of my calves are soon going to be disproportionate to the rest of me (and that is saying something!) I counted the steps in our route down to town the other day and there were 210 - so you can imagine what fun that is on the walk back up!

We are really enjoying ourselves looking at the houses. Our estate agent contact, Tim (the one who originates from Chelmsford!), has been a very useful person to know. Estate agents here are NOTHING like the ones you get in the UK (I'm desperately trying to think now who may get this email that is an estate agent or is related to someone who is before I generalise big time and offend them - can't think, so here I go....) They seem very genuine (or it's a good act), not slimey/sleazy at all and they really seem to put the work in. Tim drove us around for about 2 hours on Saturday afternoon (his supposed day off) and took us to see about 6 houses. He's also popped over to see us quite a few times and kept in contact by phone. Given that there are several estate agents that we are in contact with, the likelihood of us finding the house that we want via him, is quite small, but he has been brilliant. We suppose that he is working on the basis that we will recommend him to other people and that's how they build their businesses up.

The Open Homes that I mentioned in an earlier email have also proved very effective in us trying to get a feel for what's available on the market. They are held every Sunday, so I think I said that we whizzed round 12 on our first weekend and then yesterday we saw another 8 and checked out a couple more areas to live. Some of the harbour views you can get from the houses are fantastic, but wherever you go there is usually something pleasant that you overlook. We have seen quite a few houses that we both like and, a couple that we could see ourselves living in, but we don't want to rush into anything. We obviously also have to wait for our flat sale to go through in London. Things move so quickly here in NZ re: house selling. It is similar to the Scottish system in that as soon as you have signed to agree to buy and the seller signs to agree the sale, that's it - it is a legally binding contract.

One house that we liked had this cable-car-type-thing to take you up to your front door. This is supposedly quite common in Wellington, although it is the first one we have seen. You can imagine what a fun job some of the removal companies based in Wellington have.

I had greatly enjoyed the house auction that I went to last Thursday. A house that I had really liked (but that needed quite a bit of work) was first up and it was one of those itchy times when I did have to make sure my hands were securely planted in my lap so that I didn't give any misleading signals to the auctioneer! Especially as at one point it nearly went for a bargain price. It finally managed to make it up to its reserve price, but we had been advised beforehand that they thought that it may fetch about 20-30,000 NZD over the reserve.

Graham has now been in his job a week today. He is finding it a bit of a challenge he says. At the moment he is going in from 8:30am - 5pmish. Much of his time is taken up with getting used to the differences, quite a bit of background reading and learning place names and NZ geography. On Friday he was doing free-hand curve drawing (isobars and fronts) under time-test conditions, which is something Gra has not had to do for many years so I think that he found that interesting.

Because we have got to vacate this hotel/apartment on Friday, I have had to find us a rental place for a while. Our shipped-over stuff doesn't arrive until mid March, and as we are unsure at what point we will buy we were hoping to get a place with a standard 21 days notice. Unfortunately all the good flats had longer periods of tenancy and as we wanted a furnished place (so that we don't have to go and buy duplicates of stuff we have coming over) it has been a little difficult. However, just before the weekend, I found a place which is a bit more expensive than we had hoped for, but that is very well equipped, closish to town and, even better, right near to where Graham works (although the walk to work is up an extremely steep hill - ha ha!) We have had to take on a 3 month tenancy (until 16th May), so it means that we will definitely have to pay for our stuff to be held in storage for a couple of months which is a shame but then again we don't know what will happen re: buying a place so it is all a bit of a gamble anyway.

I can't really see me getting involved in doula work until we are settled in our bought home, so until then I am going to concentrate on the house buying and finishing off my dissertation-type theory exam for my IAIM qualification (International Association of Infant Massage). I had planned to complete that before I left the UK (by the end of December) but I think that I had been a little unrealistic as to how much time would be spent preparing for the move and seeing family and friends before we left for NZ. I now have until the end of March to submit it and as some of the material that I need is in the shipped over stuff, that will not be an easy deadline.

Well I will finish there for the timebeing. Please do let me know if I have put you on our regular NZ News mailing list and you would prefer not to be...... :-) Perhaps I should do one of those unsubscribe message thingys!!

Will write again soon.

Lots of love

Vida and Graham