New Year, New Adventures

February already! Which means we've been in New Zealand for just over two years now.

There are days when I step outside the hospital and just stop to breathe for a minute. I look up at the cloudy skies, feel the wind blasting my skin, see the Brooklyn wind turbine on a far off hilltop, hear the GO Wellington buses chasing each other up and down Riddiford Road, gaze at the magnificent and lush greenery surrounding all of urban Wellington and it hits me all over again: wow, I'm in New Zealand!! I live here, this is my life now. It should feel utterly familiar by now, and often does, but somehow that sense of being a stranger in a strange land is something I've never quite gotten over.

However: it's now 2011 and we are definitely Moving On with our lives here in NZ. A few big things from the end of last year:

1. Our Permanent Residence was finally granted and I'm starting to forget how incredibly frustrating it was dealing with the bureaucratic pinheads at INZ. I'm now convinced that you only need two qualifications to work for INZ. One is tunnel vision ie if it isn't written in The Book, it doesn't exist. The other is the ability to speak without actually imparting any useful information at all. This is a skill that our CO's boss had honed to perfection and he practiced it daily - on me. :-((

2. I put my house in SA on the market in early December and within three weeks, I received an offer for almost full asking price, from a pre-approved buyer. AWESOME!! If all goes well, transfer should take place towards the end of February, mid-March or so. My thanks to a lovely agent, Juanita Gleeson of Sun Valley.

3. Matt is settling in, has found part-time work in a funky restaurant in Cuba Street called Floraditas. For the month before Christmas, he also had a second job in another very upmarket restaurant in Oriental Bay, but that has now fallen through. But he seems to have found his feet and is enjoying exploring his new world.

4. Livi finished her NCEA Level three exams, and passed with flying colours, gaining more than enough credits to gain her university entrance. She then went off on a five-week holiday back to SA and had a marvellous time with her dad and family and friends. Doing this meant she flew from Wellington (via Auckland, Brisbane and Dubai) to Cape Town and back again, on her own. She managed fine. For a neurotic mom, so did I, except for the hours we lost contact while she was on the ground in Dubai and all I could get when I dialled her cell no was a disembodied voice saying: This number is not recognized, please contact your service provider!! My over-active imagination instantly found a thousand insane reasons for this. The reality was extremely mundane, though: 2degrees does not have strong provider support in Dubai - and her battery died at the same time!

5. We moved house - yes, again! :-) We loved our last home in Miramar, but with both M and L starting fulltime at Victoria university this year, it made sense to look for rental accommodation closer to town. We found a really great place up in Kelburn, ten to fifteen mins walk to the central campus. It's a beautiful old villa, divided into two flats. We have the top one and we look down across a central valley, towards Mt Cook. Rising up behind us are tree-lined ridges with some very smart homes indeed. Kelburn Village is an upmarket suburb which also has a large student population, so the main street where the shops are is a fascinating mix of the local pub, butchery, video store and dairy, as well as a German bakery, several high-priced antique stores and a interior design showroom. Oh, and quite a few coffee shops too!

Back yard

Looking down the valley towards Mt Cook

Kitchen, before we moved in

Lounge

So now we face several years of tertiary education! M is enrolled for a BSc in physical geography, L is also enrolled for a BSc with majors in psychology and stats .. and I'm taking the plunge back into study as well, although not on a fulltime basis yet - someone has to earn the money to pay the rent, buy the food and keep the broadband connected! :-) I'm enrolling for a BA and my first semester I'll be doing papers in English and Religious Studies. Looking forward to it a LOT!

Love to you all!
Lin

Good things and bad things

First the good: The Boy (aka Matt) finally arrived in New Zealand last Saturday, after many delays and much nail-biting tension! We had hoped that our permanent residence (PR) application would be through in time for him to enter the country as a resident. But the delay with regard to that is the 'bad' part of this post. :-(

When we realized that PR would not be timeously forthcoming, we looked for the best Plan B. This ended up being an application for an urgent visitor visa, but we made it more difficult by asking that they waive the requirements for 'proof of onward travel' and 'proof of funds to support himself while in NZ'. This obviously because he was coming out with the intention of staying for good, and because he would be living at home with us. The London dept of the INZ turned up trumps and provided him with exactly this, within three days of the request being made! We had included tons of info and documentation to back these requests up, and had also referred them to our case officer (CO) here in Wellington. However, due to uncertainties around timing, we ended up having to postpone his flight a second time and so he finally flew into Wellington Airport last Saturday at 3.30 pm.

What an amazing moment that was. Right up to the minute he walked through the arrivals gate, I was still sure that something would go wrong ... that he'd been given the wrong visa, lost his passport, missed a connecting flight, been stolen by white slave traders in Hong Kong .. you name it and I imagined it! The fact that he was uncontactable by mobile phone throughout the trip didn't help either. But all of that fell away in an instant when I caught sight of his dear face in the midst of the crowd. More tears, but this time they were simply tears of joy.

This last week has been one of those Welly Specials in terms of the weather. Wind, rain, sleet, clouds ... and then to top it off, we got hit by a storm described by the Met Services as 'the largest storm on the planet' and 'a storm the size of Australia'! For the last 36 hours, the country as a whole has been pounded by winds gusting up to 150km in spots, sudden vicious thunderstorms with something like 2000 lightning strikes, heavy rains leading to flooding, mini-tornados ripping houses apart, and storm surges of six to nine metres off the West Coast. Here in Welly we are reasonably well protected, but still had a LOT of wind and rain.

The bad thing is the ridiculously long time it is taking our PR application to be approved. We submitted our Expression Of Interest in July 2009. It was accepted and within a few weeks, we received our Invitation to Apply. We submitted this in early January 2010 along with a couple of thousand pieces of paper as supporting documentation. Our CO made contact at the end of February. In March, she asked for more information which we supplied. In early June, they asked for more evidence to prove that Matt is in fact still a dependent child, and more importantly still dependent on me (and not his dad) seeing as I am the principle applicant for PR. I provided them with everything I could by the 22nd June deadline. Then this last stretch of waiting started and it has proven more stressful than anything else up to now. Despite being in contact with the CO (who says she has no problems at all with the application) and despite the London office taking a look at the application (and on that basis granting Matt his one-way entry visitor visa), and despite my sending multiple emails and eventually a letter of complaint, we are Still Waiting for approval.

Without PR, we cannot do things like apply for university places as domestic students or apply for bank loans for housing. The not-knowing is becoming very very stressful ... and this is before we even get to the point of making decisions regarding those university applications, especially in terms of figuring out how to pay for everything - another trick of fate appeared earlier this year in the form of a change in student loan policy. Used to be you could get your PR and immediately be eligible to apply for a no-interest, government-sponsored student loan for tuition fees. Not any more, though. Now, new residents have to be resident for TWO YEARS before being allowed to access the loan system known as StudyLink.

But one grumble at a time. Today I am happy to have Matt here, happy that Livi made it safely back from her awesome skiing trip to Mt Ruapehu, and happy to simply be alive and well and living in beautiful New Zealand!

I will update - soon!

I am appalled that it's been almost a year since I last updated this blog. Bad me! I got distracted by life and work and bloomin' FaceBook, which I used to hate! :-( But that aside, it's been an awesome and busy year .. so, herewith a solemn promise:

New Update To Follow Very Soon! With pictures and stories and all sorts of lovely things - and it'll be done in time to welcome The Boy to Wellington. Roll on September 4th!!

Down South!

At long last, we managed a trip outside Wellington - and it was well worth the wait. Our time was brief and South Island is BIG, so in four days we covered over fifteen hundred kilometers, using three shuttles, two flights, a ferry crossing, a train trip and a nine-hour bus ride! It was insanely fast but absolutely fabulous!

Saturday morning - we took the bus into town, then caught the shuttle out to the early morning Interislander ferry over to the South Island. The ferry is huge, can accomodate over 1500 people and has about six decks, several restaurants, a movie theatre, viewing decks and vast garages.


Initially, the slight side-to-side motion of the boat surprised us, but we soon got used to that. Livi, being a teenager with a healthy appetite, soon wanted breakfast but unfortunately, half way into the meal the ferry reached an area known as the Karori Rip, leading into the Cook Straits - where two currents meet, greet and clash! Wild heaving followed, both on the part of the boat and many people around us .. including my darling daughter. Poor things ... but once we were over the Strait and heading down Tory Strait and Queen Charlotte Sound, things improved. We saw salmon farms, dolphins frolicking, and awesomely beautiful scenery! At the end of the three-hour trip, we landed at Picton.

Picton is a wee one-horse town describing itself as the GateWay To The South Island. We had an hour and a half wait there for the train, so we went walkabout, which took all of about twenty minutes! The most interesting thing was the Souvenier Shop / Cinema / Aquarium / Dairy - an all-in-one establishment on the tiny waterfront. Neither of us had ever heard of any of the movies currently playing!

From Picton, we took the TranzCoastal train down to Christchurch. It was a fairly comfortable five hour trip - there was a young Chilean student opposite us, spending a year in New Zealand and attending school in some little rural town in the middle of North Island. A lot of the scenery reminded us of various South African locations .. like Paarl and Stellenbosch mainly. The most dramatic scenery was at Kaikoura, normally famed for whale-watching, where most unusually, snow-capped mountains, palm trees and white beaches nestled close together.


One cool thing we found on this trip are the Shuttles - the NZ version of the SA minibus taxi! Usually seating up to a dozen passengers, they are always waiting outside train stations and airports and you can catch a ride anywhere. $5.00 from the station to the backpackers - via several other drop-off points and a detour to find an ATM so I could have cash to pay the $5.00. Very silent, but very helpful driver!!

We spent a night at Dorset House Backpackers in ChCh, then left very early the next morning for Queenstown - the Adventure Capital of New Zealand! The flight was smooth and quick, and awesome! We crossed the Southern Alps then flew down Lake Wakatipu and into Queenstown.

Ah, Queenstown!! I fell in love with the place almost instantaneously! There is just something about this creative, vibey little town, nestled amidst a ring of snow-capped mountains and around a deep blue lake ... we caught a shuttle into town, and dropped our stuff at the backpackers lodge, a nice-enough place with a great view of the lake (actually, there is almost nowhere that doesn't have a lake and mountain view!).

From there, we walked into town, then found our way up to the Skyline Gondola and Luge. Apart from the ski-fields and the Shotover Jet, this has to be one of the top (ha ha!) attractions.

Walking into Queenstown from Bumbles Backpackers

Central Queenstown

Then we rode The Luge! Up-up-up on the chairlift and down again at top speed!




(I have now tried to load a stunning picture of QT from the top of the mountain three times, with no success, so am giving up!! Follow the earlier link to QT itself and you'll see some beautiful pictures of the town and surrounding areas!)

The next morning, we caught a bus (NakedBus dot Com) back to ChCh. Nine hours on the road in rather dismal and gloomy weather. It's a no-frills bus which stops at tiny little towns deep in the southern countryside for tea and toilet breaks .. like this delightful place - Merino Country Cafe!


Riding through the mountains was a lot like the mountainous area outside Worcester in the Cape. Later, though, the landscape flattened out and became almost arid ... then we hit the lake region (apparently most of those huge lakes are man-made to supply water to the farms). We reached ChCh at dusk and in the rain! Didn't have a clue where the backpackers was, but happily there was in i-Site not far off who directed us. Being the tough Welly girls we now are, we hoofed it thru wind and rain for twenty minutes and found it quite easily - ChCh is a very English kind of town, neatly laid out and very flat. Hot showers and supper were very welcome!

The next day we had the morning in ChCh and we did a mini tourist trail thru the central area, looking at the famous Cathedral, gardens and lots of shops!! Then it was off to the airport and an early afternoon flight back to Welly.


Well, blogger is being a pain and refusing to co-operate, so I'm going to stop there for now. I'll refer you to my Flickr photostream where I posted about forty other pics from the trip, so for more, go here: :-)) The trip was too short by far, but one thing I know already is that I would love, love, LOVE to settle in QT one day. :-))) It is so my kind of town!!

Five weeks without a post ...

... my bad. And all I have to say is that today, Wellington is living up to its reputation of delivering four seasons in one day!

Woke up round 3am with the house shaking - not from an earthquake, but from the gale force winds and the wild squalls of rain battering down hard on us! Yet five hours later, the bay was calm, peaceful early morning sunlight glinting off roof tops and windows, and only the faintest of breezes.

It's now just gone 1pm and the temp is a balmy 17 C - which is definitely the highest it's been in months and months. But the breeze is picking up and clouds are looming in the east and accuweather.com promises rain again by 5pm. In fact, here's the icon they're using for today:



Cute, huh? And totally Wellington! I absolutely LOVE this city - and it's people - and it's possibilities - and our life here!!

I'll do a more constructive post this weekend, promise! ;-)

Southern Walkway

Today the weather was absolutely beautiful, for the first time in ages and ages. Clear skies, almost no wind at all and lots of slightly warm sunshine! Seeing as I had a day off and Liv was back at school after a lazy two-week vacation, it was definitely time for a Proper Walk!

Seeing as we live just below Mt Albert, the obvious choice was the Southern Walkway - a route that runs from Oriental Bay in the city all the way all down(not really down, more like up-and-down-and up-and-down again) to Island Bay on the far south coast.

Enlarge the map and you'll see Kilbirnie about half way down.

So with sandwiches, water and warm woolies in a backpack, I set off around 1.30pm. The whole walkway is around 11km, but I hit the path just after the Mt Vic lookout point and went from there all the way down to Island Bay. With lots of photostops, and a lunch break, and one detour down a horrid, muddy wrong turn, it only took me about two hours. The views were sensational and despite being able to see the city sprawl and hear the distant hum of traffic and aircraft, it really felt as if I was quite far out in the country at times ...



Looking back toward Kilbirnie - the edge of Kilbirnie Park can be seen at the bottom of the picture and you can see just how big our 'bay' really is!


Then on towards the Mt Albert section - recognize the 'LOTR' look of the place - where the hobbits have to "get off the road, quick!" and the Black Rider comes sniffing, sniffing ...?


This is above the Melrose / Berhampore section of the walkway - I missed a lot of photos in the section before this because I got talking to a friendly American who was out with his two dogs. We went past quite a lot of places that I'll need to go back to again soon ... but it was nice having company for part of the way!



From the lookout above Island Bay, I could see the Interislander far out at sea and far above and beyond it, almost hidden by the haze, are the snow-capped peaks of the South Island - and that is definitely on the cards for my next expedition - a day trip on the ferry over to Picton / Nelson on South Island.



Looking back towards Miramar from the same lookout point.



Finally arrived at Houghton Bay, where three intrepid young men were about to plunge into the icy oceans with their surfboards - squealing like little girls, they were, but in they went! And at this stage, the wind chill had turned my fingers white from cold, so how they managed it, I have no idea!


The the last stretch along the ocean towards Island Bay itself - and along the way I spotted a very original house: it is perched on a few spikes, it seems - the homeowners had just ridden their small funicular up the rail to the front porch, but I was too late to get a picture of that!

And then back home on the next available bus! :-)

The streets of downtown Wellington

In the middle of the city there's a place where it seems all the emo kids, skateboarders and other youthful types hang out, kicking footballs about and scaring old ladies (I'm not really up on the demographics or politics of it ...) Lately, there's been a big To Do about it because despite much protest and campaigning, the City Council voted to turn it from a pedestrian mall into a bus lane!

The video below is an emo ode to the demise of Manners Mall, but the reason I'm sharing it here is because it gives my far-flung family and friends a chance to see what it's like on the streets of Wellington - you'll see the famous Go Wellington buses, Lambton Quay and various other bits and pieces. It's also pretty funny in places, so hoping you enjoy it!!



Happy Sunday!