Progress Report - Step Two

Step Two, you may recall, was Find A Job!

Here's is where it got weird. There's supposed to be this huge shortage of nurses in NZ, yet did anyone rush to get back to me when I applied?

Nope.

We want to settle in Wellington, so I concentrated my job search there. Answered some ads, sent off a general letter of enquiry to several facilities and kept my eyes open, checking the job sites regularly. From all of that, I got only one fairly quick reply and set a date for an interview (which was almost a month away due to the busy diaries of the two managers involved!). While waiting, I got a bit edgy so I contacted two agencies - one here in SA, and the other in NZ - Geneva Health. Within days, the local agency came back to me with two "fantastic opportunities" - their interpretation and mine of 'fantastic' were clearly not even on the same planet ... but Geneva, on the other hand, arranged a telephonic interview for me with a really great-sounding rest home in Karori, which is about 4 kms from Welly CBD. They phoned, we chatted, they said they were impressed with me, I was certainly impressed with them - then they offered me a managerial position at $10,000 pa more than the previous agency had offered. Woo hoo!! I said YES!

Now we're going to be getting my work visa organized and a student visa for Livi. OH, and in the mean time, a few of the places I wrote to initially have been writing back, wanting to organize interviews... but too late! Seems like NZ runs on Africa time too ....

Four weeks ago I took a Big Leap Of Faith - and booked our air tickets! We fly to Welly on 23rd January 2009. Now at least I'll have a job when we get there! Whew! :-)