Passports

Since I last posted we received our citizenship certificates in the post and have applied for – and received – our passports. The passports were fairly easy, it was all done online. The only catch came with the online identification. You are able to take your own photos (we used our mobile phone), and then to authenticate, you have to basically take a selfie-video while it does a facial recognition thing to compare you to the photo you submitted. The authentication gave us errors for all three attempts for both Kelly and I, but it allowed us to move on and finish the application.

After about 5 months (much longer than usual due to surge of applications and shortage of staff) our passports showed up on our doorstep, so I guess they were able to get what they needed.

Our other big change is that we’re moving! I had a series of posts back in 2018 on the process when we bought our first home in NZ but I’ll try to do a few posts on it since it’s been an interesting process to sell our house too, right as the market took a huge downturn. We’re excited to move, but it was nice having a great walking trail just steps from the front door.