Hello

So another week passed. Time is going very fast now. The technololgical problems of the laptop seem to be improved but as I can't get a wireless connection in Timaru at the moment I'm relying on the one pc on the campsite. However today we've found an internet cafe in town which will allow us to stay online once we move to our house in 2 weeks.

I've now completed my second week at work and it's very enjoyable. I'm starting to feel like I'm contributing now rather than just asking questions all the time. It's nice getting these first few weeks out of the way and actually know what i'm doing. I should be going up to the big smoke of chch next week for a training course on the graphics design software they use called adobe indesign, It's really technical but my experiences using publisher to do the TT Mardle certainly have helped - I even took a copy of the Mardle into my interview to show what I could do, so Norfolk TT is spreading far and wide!

Last weekend was bank hols - the celebration of the Queens birthday would you believe. It's the last bank hols before the winter sets in - some areas of the southland below us have started to get snow but we haven't had any yet. Last year Timaru had its worst snowfall for 50 years and i can already tell its one of those events that will go down in folklore around these parts especially as most people had no heat for a week. Note to self - get wood burning fire in new house!!

We've tracked down the local swimming pool and bought ourselves 20 swim tickets as a commitment! It's lovely, very quiet. The first day we went we were the only people in the lanes section; the second time we had to share it with about 6 others - started to feel a bit crowded haha. It's so safe here that you just leave your stuff on the bench in the changing room rather than lockers, how refreshing eh?

Wednesday we headed down to chch for the afternoon (very understanding employers!) to see an immigration lawyer about our residency visa application. To cut a long and dull story short he had concerns that my degree didn't directly relate to my job title, so we're going to work with him to get the application through. With any luck the expression of interest will go in in the next week and be selected by immgration when they next select on 20th June, so watch this space. We took advantage of being in chch to hook up with Andrea and Agustin, our Argentinian friends we met at the Japanese hostel. We had beers and chips and caught up which was fab. They're both working now in chch but have plans to travel round the country later in the year.

At the end of the week we met up with Leah (fom the employment agency who got me the job) and her fiance Richard. It's nice to do Friday night beers, but not the same without Emma and Alice :-)

Over the weekend we've just been doing errands really, and today we went to look at another car. I think this one i will go for - a 1998 starlet. As most places are not open at the weekend Rich is going to check it out for me tomorrow so hopefully by next weekend I will be the proud owner of my first ever car. Just need to start thinking of names now.

Well that's it for now. It's about 5pm and it's getting dark and chilly and my fingers are starting to freeze up.

Please keep your news coming...especially from those of you who haven't emailed us since we left the country. Shame on you!!! You don't have to email through the blog, just use my normal email address. Take care. Love Deb and Rich xx