Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Good evening and welcome to Swannanoa, in deepest flattest Canterbury. It is amazing to think that only just over a week has gone since we left the UK; we seem to have busied ourselves quite quickly after a slow and chilly start. All our flights were good, although the 2 hour stopover in Singapore was not enough and it took us several days to really feel human again. In fact our walks out around the countryside the first few days here were feeble and we turned back after 30 minutes on our first go. However we did see some sheep, cows, several Aussie flights en route to the airport and an amazing collection of vivid red toadstools with white spots! Also everyone in their cars waved at us as they drove past (just before they left a trail of dust in our faces!), a lovely country tradition which we have now joined in with ? the waving that is, not the dust. The household here consists of my sister Sara, her partner Ish, UK born and now frequent flyer cat named Susie, 4 chickens all called Rita (my mum for those not in the know), a cockerel named Robin (need I explain that one) and 3 girl sheep named Nyssa, Lorna and Aphrodite. The first 2 were orphans who Ish bottle fed and Aphrodite kind of broke in one day. The chickens need letting out in the morning and have some food thrown in their general direction and the sheep need no maintenance whatsoever, they kind of follow each other round the paddock just as you would expect! Ish occasionally catches a bird for our inspection and they are very soft ? Robin is quite a prized catch as he is quite fast allegedly?..The property is on 5 acres of land and is a 3 bed bungalow and garages, hen house, a well, very long paddock (which Rich has plans to turn into 2 par 3s), big veggie patch, orchard, walnut trees etcetc. The house is only really heated by a wood burning stove in the lounge so our evening activities centre around keeping it stoked. We also incorporate pinecone collection into our walks. The scenery around this area is as I said very flat, and the view to the west and south is of the Southern Alps mountain range. You can generally see the mountains all the time but on particularly clear days you can see all the snow on top of them and they are pretty stunning. We have also had very clear nights and the stars out here are plentiful, plus we seem to constantly have awesome sunsets (running out of superlatives already - we're having to brainstorm here as I write!). When the opportunity arises we are going to have a spin out over Arthur's Pass which is a road across the mountains to a town called Greymouth. We saw the town last time we were here but didn't take that route. We've been advised to go sooner rather than later as the snow may close the road down. As I said, the first few days were written off with getting over the tiredness, and it wasn't until Saturday that we went out for the first time. We had a drive to two local towns Kaiapoi and Rangiora where we shopped and did errands. We quite liked the look at Rangiora, lots of tree lined streets and a nice ambience about it. We plan to go and have a proper hoot in due course. Getting into town gave us the opportunity to pick up the Christchurch Press, the local paper which lists jobs on Saturday. I spent quite some time with my pink hi-lighter pen and found 8 jobs which I could do?..I am going to start re-doing my cv according to a NZ book Sara has lent me and will shortly be sending this and covering letters off. I am also going to call a few of the more exciting ones just to chat about whether they would be open to my application bearing in mind I don?t have the visa. Yesterday, Monday we went into Christchurch (which I am now going to start calling chch as it?s very rare that I can spell it on the first, second or third attempt of typing!). We spent pretty much the whole day talking to people in the information centre, getting a hire car booked, trying to establish where we could get free wireless connection (which transpired out be nowhere and was a disappointing result), and then finding the library and discovering they have free wireless connection on trial only to find out that my firewall won't let me on (any ideas Tom or Adam?). We feel like detectives and it's exhausting! Plus the sun was beating down all day and we are sunburnt - I love the NZ winter! Last night we went to a pub in chch called the Twisted Hop which is a microbrewery. Sara had met her friend Lorna there and as it was Lorna's birthday we had a few drinks and a bite to eat. It was great to see Lorna, Tom and Joe again having stayed with for some time on our trip last year. Today we went back into town and collected our hire car which we have booked for the week. We have also booked into a hostel in chch starting from Monday 14th. It is a hostel designed for long stay people who like us are job hunting or working out here so we were really pleased to get a room. It's lovely staying with Sara and Ish but it's a good 40 minute drive into town and we need to be more flexible and available. If anyone wants to look at the hostel its web address is www.kiwihouse.co.nz . Once in our car we were able to drive out to a Vodafone shop to buy a new phone which is now charging up. I also spoke to one of the two employment consultants who I am in touch with here in chch and I shall be speaking to them again tomorrow to organise a meetup. There is a website that Ish has told us about set up by migrants who help people like us with all sorts of stuff involved in settling in. They have a coffee morning on Thursday so we?ll be going in chch for that as well. So it's busy, loads to do but trying to balance things out with the odd game of scrabble and read of a book. We feel positive, there are so many options to try and Lorna has also suggested a town in the north island which has loads of jobs so we may head up there to check that out at some point. Everything takes quite a bit longer here so we're really pleased we've given ourselves bags of time and then the pressure isn?t quite so heavy. I'm sure I'll think of loads more things to say as soon as I finish this, but I shall sign off for now and go and help with the wiping up. Dancing with the stars is on in 10 minutes and Brendan Cole is on??the rest of the TV is rubbish; however Top Gear was on Sunday night which brought tears to our eyes once again!�
Ps�� Debra never got round to wiping up and I am also glad that The Arsenal ruined Chelski?s title hopes, even if it went to Man U, it was the lesser of two evils.
- comments