A Year in Aotearoa

Well, somehow we've been here a year today so a bit of reflection seems in order...

For a pictorial snapshot of the last year follow this link, but read on for a bit of description.


We left the UK on Saturday the 14th May 2011, totally skipped the 15th and landed at Auckland Airport on Monday the 16th May.  We sailed through customs only to find we'd left Reuben's car seat on the luggage carousel.  After waiting for ages in the 'help for incompetent jet lagged travellers' queue behind a lady who'd left her paperback on the plane (I cursed her at the time, but having since seen the price of books in NZ can now see her point in making an effort to retrieve it), said car seat was rescued and we were off in the Super Shuttle to our first abode.  We'd booked a house near Kohimarama beach to the east of the centre of Auckland, in an area that looked good on Google maps, and turned out to be so great that we're only a mile or so down the road now.  We got lots of funny looks from the locals (all buttoned up in coats and hats) as we played on the beach and paddled in the sea those first few days, "you are brave" they all said, unable to comprehend that 17 degrees and clear blue skies is a good summer day in Leeds.

Three weeks later we had a rental house, a car, bank accounts, existed in the 'machine' and I had to stop sight seeing and start work.  Luckly this was the view I had from my office window each morning of winter sun, so it wasn't so bad.

My job's turning out great.  I'm getting my head around being a consultant and starting to get stuck into some projects that interest me and should improve the renal department here at the same time.  My colleagues are friendly and helpful and have a much more sensible view of the work/life balance than the NHS allows.

Hannah of course didn't have a job waiting for her when she got off the plane, so she had some work to do making inroads into the NZ job market.  As far as I can tell NZ employers are so used to not finding enough people to fill their roles that there are loads of jobs that could exist, but that aren't advertised. What you need is a friend of a friend, who knows someone, who's heard about a colleague who could do with a hand and that's your in.  In fact Hannah ended up with 2 jobs, one via a colleague of a friend of a friend of an old university friend of mine, and one via an acquaintance of a friend of the husband of an ex work colleague of Hannah's from Leeds.  Simple when you know how!  As of today she's quit one of these and is down to one job, tutoring German at the university.  This is still relatively low key, but will hopefully develop into something more substantial over the coming months.

Tilly and Reuben have adapted with aplomb to Kiwi nuances of pronunciation and the Kiwi tradition of not keeping shoes on for more than 5 minutes at a time.  Day one had them both complaining of the 'gritty stuff' on the beach that stuck to their feet (that would be the sand) and later they were very confused as to why they should 'keep to the lift (left)' on the stairs.  Now it's not unheard of for them to forget to take shoes when we head out for the day and they're peppering their conversation with Kiwi-isms.  Awesome hey!*  We've been really happy with the day care they're attending, and I still use the example of the tool bench with real hammers, saws, nails, screws etc that the children from 2.5 years and upwards can use freely as an example of what I think is a much better view of risk and childhood.  Of course, a health and safety officer would say this is getting uncomfortably close to natural selection and urge a return to cotton wool nanny-stateism, but we quite like the NZ approach.

Altogether we're gradually exploring all Aotearoa has to offer in our little 'Combi', although we've barely scratched the surface really.  Reuben and Tilly have come to love the van as much and Chris and Julie's team love theirs and regular readers will know we're having some great times on the road.

As I write this we're preparing to move into our new place (last few days of renting - hurrah) and then for our trip back to the UK soon after.  We're really looking forward to seeing you all, but it had better not be a typical English summer whilst we're over ok!

There's a spare room and van to borrow for anyone that can brave the flight.  The new address is:

440a Riddell Road, Glendowie, Auckland 1071, New Zealand.

Come on down, you hardly notice the blood rushing to your head after the first few days.

p.s. for those that didn't get it the picture in the header is a 'Long White Cloud', Aotearoa of course being Maori for land of the long white cloud

* - and that's an ironic Kiwi-ism for you right there.  Many, many things are awesome in NZ.  Some genuinely so - the scenery for example.  On the other hand, handing over the missed delivery card when Hannah went to collect a parcel from the delivery office generated an 'awesome' from the girl at the counter.  Really?