So here we are a month and a day in. So far we’ve:
- Landed in Auckland
- Set up mobile phones and bought a car
- Drove down to Wellington
- Kelly started work
- Found a new daycare for Hopscotch, she starts full time on monday
- As of yesterday we’ve found a place to rent and signed a lease.
We’ve been slowly getting the hang of things and it turns out that one other huge bonus of Kelly having a job lined up is all the tips and advice she gets from her co-workers. They’ve been a great resource for explaining how things work, places to see, things to do, and we even found Hop’s new daycare through them.
The hardest part so far has been the constant movement. So far we’ve stayed in nine(!) different cabins, motels, resorts, hotels and VRBO-type houses since we left our house in Colorado. We have three more weeks until we move over to the house we just rented and unfortunately we heard that our container is a week behind schedule, so it’ll be even longer than that before our stuff arrives and we can really start feeling like we live here. The hardest thing so far has been finding a place to live. I’ll talk about it soon, but suffice to say it’s been difficult to find places for rent that will allow a dog. The other thing to note is how expensive everything is here. That part isn’t a surprise, we knew it going in, but there’s still a bit of sticker shock once you start paying for things with Kiwi money instead of US. Once I’m able to find a job it’ll help a lot.
There’ve been many highlights so far though. The time in Fiji was great and the trip down from Auckland where we saw the glowworm cave, volcanoes, and just generally beautiful scenery whet our appetite for exploring the country this summer. And we survived one a Wellington’s famous wind storms. There are some great places for Clara to play here, whether it’s a fantastic trampoline playground place, or just throwing rock in the stream. One great thing we’ve found is that in contrast to the US where generally kids 2 and under are free, here it’s kids 4 and under, so it makes doing things with her easy. There have been hiccups for sure (see our unlocking mobile phones experience) but overall we’ve been able to accomplish most of the big tasks like buying a car, bringing the pets over, and finding daycare for Hop without too much drama.
So overall, we’re still really looking forward to our container ariving and really being able to unpack and feel settled. I think that’ll go a long way to making it feel like home, but so far we’re still on the upward slope of the sine wave. And now we’re off to take a ride on the cable car up to the botanic gardens for a nice spring day exploration.
Kiwi Bound 