July 2012

One of the best things about moving to a foreign country is getting to leave that country…to go on vacation. If you move to Europe you can always take cheap flights to Rome, Berlin, London, and Madrid. If you move to the Pacific you’ll be a short plane ride from world class island resorts and all of Asia. In your travels you’ll probably find out about wonderful vacation spots you never knew existed.

We recently took a week break from the dreary New Zealand winter to explore Rarotonga, the capital of the Cook Islands. Here’s a few pictures to inspire you to get your butt to the Pacific and start soaking up the sun.

Makai side

Mauka side

Captain Travis

Before Happy Hour Activity

Last Night in Paradise

Happy Hour 2

I win

One of many Beautiful Beaches

Scaring the Fish

I’m not in NZ anymore

3 Girls, 10,000 Drinks

Always nice to the Camera Man

Moving Day Again

I have to say I am a pro at moving. In October Travis and I moved from Austin to a crappy Auckland hostel.  A week later we moved to a very expensive but empty apartment in the city.  Within a month the apartment was sold. So we moved into a college student dump outside of the city.  Our sub-lease quickly ran out there.  Then we moved ten minutes away into a lovely little house with some not so lovely roommates.  Now just a short 4 weeks in, we are moving to Manukau City (just south of Auckland) on Friday.

Both Travis and I have high hopes for the new place.  We will be living with an older couple and a few random roommates.  The old man is trying to start Fish N Chips Friday lunch (that’s what they call dinner here).  Travis and I both gave him our full support.  When we went to look at the room there was an Argentinean couple camping in the backyard for a few nights.  I didn’t get the story behind their plight since they didn’t speak much English, but they joined everyone for fish n chips none the less. There is a maid that comes once a week, and two very friendly, and most importantly clean cats call the house home.

The new place also has the benefit of being a 5 minute commute to work for both Travis and I.   Because I have to cross a big bridge to get to work it looks like I will be getting to take the car to work most days while Travis bus/bikes to work.  But I’m not a cruel person, I anticipate we will be switching off who gets the car and who takes the bus/bike once winter sets in.

We hope everyone is doing well.

Amber and Travis

Finally, I have a job!

I was hired on as a long term relief/substitute teacher at a local Auckland high school.  After meeting the staff I am very excited.  I will be teaching two classes of year 9 English, and three year 10 social studies.  School starts Tuesday, so as usual I have to get everything together last minute.

January 2010

If the start of the year has any insight to what the other 11 months will entail we are in for a boring and poor year. Travis has been working full time at Fishpond. He is still learning the ropes but is happy that he no longer is the whipping boy for every over paid employee who can’t figure out how to turn on a computer.

I’ve been doing everything possible to keep myself from going crazy with boredom. The school year doesn’t start until Feb. 8, and there is a lack of people calling begging for me to come in for a job interview. I’ve spent some of the time sending out emails to surrounding schools hoping to get on the relief teaching lists. I’ve had limited success with this approach. Next week I am going to go to each school that didn’t respond to me and hand in my CV in person (24 schools).

Financially, we are staying afloat, but camping, movies and everything else we want to do other than going to the library are not going to happen until I start bringing in a paycheck. I spend my days making a list of how I’m going to use my paychecks; register car and get the warranty of fitness test, buy a bed (our blowup mattress has a hole in it), pay for our residency visa (went through but we can’t get our passports stamped until we pay the fee), and increase our Internet bandwidth. The list goes on, but as long as I can work most days of the week, making $200+ a day we should be living comfortably again.

The reason the bed has a hole.

The one good thing to happen this month is I had my phone interview with London for our Skilled Migrant Residency Visa. I started this process almost a year ago to the day. The interview was the final stage of our application for permanent residency. It turned out to be very short and easy. Most of the questions were about if I was prepared to move to NZ, so we skipped all of them. There were a few questions like how the world recession has affected the Auckland housing market,

that I bullsh*ted, but most of it was easy. A few hours after the interview (that took place at 11pm Friday night) I received an email that we had been granted residency. This same email asked for a final processing fee of 250 British Pounds, that’s almost $500NZ. So while we are now allowed to become residence we have to wait until we have to funds to become residence. Go figure.

We moved to a new flat shortly after the new year. At first I was excited as the flatmates seemed cool, and the place was a definite step up then from our Mt. Eden mold pit. After a few weeks both Travis and I are looking forward for an excuse to

move. Between the retarded kid living next door screaming all day, (yeah, he’s actually retarded. Travis asked our flat mates if there was a donkey in the neighbor’s backyard. Oops.) and the train 10 yards from the house there is never a quiet moment. Plus, the people are not that nice. I just got told today that it was our week to clean the house. Really… am I twelve? The only rooms we use are the kitchen (and I, like a nice person clean this EACH time I use it), and our bedroom, which is coincidentally the only room that we don’t need to clean. Lame.

That’s the skinny for now. Travis is going to purchase a web camera and microphone so we can talk to people back home

for free on Skype. Since we only have 5GB a month bandwidth we can’t use the video chat, but being able to chat with friends and family will be nice.

Miss everyone.

Amber and Travis

Travis has a Job!

Travis found a job. It is just a minimum wage gig, but it should be enough for us to be self-sufficient here until I get a job or start subbing in Feb.

Move Successful!

We had to move out of our 10th floor downtown apartment because it had been sold. While the apartment was big for a city apartment we were both looking forward to moving some place quiet and most importantly, furnished.

During our new home hunting we fell in love with the Mt. Eden area. It is just south of the city and still close enough to take the bus into. The neighborhoods are full of old English homes and flowering bushes. Plus, it’s easier to drive around.

We were able to get a room in a little four bedroom home. All of the roommates are AUT students and went home for the reminder of the lease (which ends in mid January). This is great news, because we don’t have to deal with a house full of roommates, but we do get a house full of their stuff: everything from a bed to a crock pot (our diets will greatly improve) to lawn furniture.

The house is in foul shape though. As I look at the paint falling off the ceiling or put my slippers on so I don’t have to touch the old carpeting that’s haphazardly covering the floor I wonder about the beautiful rental we have in Austin. If only we could put houses on boats and take them with us.

My goal upon moving in was to take a bath. We haven’t had a bath since we left Austin almost two months ago. My first clue that this was going to be an event was the heap of dead bugs that lined the base of the tub. I guess college students are not into baths in NZ. After I cleaned out the bugs I attempted to turn on the hot water, this proved to be beyond my ability. Then I couldn’t get the cold water to turn off at all. At this point Travis saved the day with some cooking spray. He was able to loosen both knobs enough for me to turn the water on and off. After this adventure the bath was great. It had a slanted back that made laying down extremely comfortable, and for once the tub was just my height (slightly shorter then any American both I’ve been in).

Travis’s shower experience wasn’t as grand. The shower floor is metal, and therefore freezing in the morning. The whole house in general is 10 degrees colder than outside. I’m glad we are only staying here for the summer.

This is how you turn on the oven

The most irking feature of the house has to be the dozen or so Twilight posters that adorn the walls. Travis gets to look at a 4×3 ft. poster of Edward as he works from his computer.

The house may be rundown, but it has some class: arched doorways, rooms in strange places, random Asian plants in the yard. I’ve taken a picture of the switch that turns on the oven. It took me quit awhile to figure this out, but like everything else in this house it’s interesting if nothing else.

I will not be complaining since we are going to be sharing a four bedroom house with one other person for $160 NZ a week. In other news Travis had an interview at the university for a lab tech position today. It went well, unfortunately they will not be hiring until Feb. so he’s got a while to wait before he hears if he got the position or not. I’ve been filling out as many teaching applications as I can find. There are about 8-15 social studies jobs posted. So far I haven’t been called in for any interviews. As it gets closer to summer break, and the end of NZ school year, I’m hoping there are fewer teachers vying for the positions. I’ve decided that social studies teaching is so cool that there will never be a shortage of teachers anywhere, ever.

Amber and Travis’s Great Adventures Update:

We have officially been in NZ for a month. It seems like home already even without furniture. We are in job-hunting mode. With our working holiday visas we are now eligible to work any non-professional jobs we like. For me that means subbing, T. has sworn he doesn’t want to do IT, but has yet to choose an alternative field.

We are looking for a new place to live and a car this week. The place we are renting now is great, but it was sold two weeks after we moved in, plus its $300 a week, which is more then we can handle at this point. Since we will have a car soon we are looking at Auckland’s suburbs. There seem to be a ton of rooms for rent for $100-150 a week. The challenge will be finding a house that will allow a couple. Most of these places are 4-6 bedroom homes, so renting to a couple is less then desirable. When we were renting out rooms in Austin I never considered couples. What goes around comes around I guess.

Our weakest link at this point is our property in Austin. Not only has one side not been rented, but the manager is still asking us for money to fix things. Today it was the back doors that need to be replaced and a possibility of mold in side B. If this was a used car that I had bought I’d feel cheated finding out that everything was broken, but since it’s a house I just get sad. So for the last two months we have been paying for repairs and the entire mortgage, and it’s eating through our savings quickly. We are not in the red yet, but we will definitely be spending a good chunk of time this year building up some savings. Good thing we are going to be in NZ awhile, vacations can wait.

Emotionally T. and I are surviving. Since we are hording money, but still without work or transportation we are around each other 24/7. Some days are worse than others, but considering all the stuff hanging over our heads right now I’d say we are doing really well. We’ve gone to some meetup groups, and met some good people. The people here are really friendly compared to Austin.

Things we learned this week:
• You must flag down a bus, or it will not stop.
• Fireworks are acceptable fun at all times of the day, in the city or out.
• Every Sunday at the racetrack there is a huge used car fair. Around 3,000 people bring their car to be sold.
• Homeless people talk to much, and much to loud. At least he knows he’s an alcoholic, that’s the first step right?
• Having your groceries delivered is the greatest service ever. Having to haul the groceries takes all the joy out of food.
• New Zealand does not use checks at all. Everything is transferred between peoples’ accounts. This is going to make working with our Wells Fargo bank very difficult.
• The greatest crime in the world is washing your passport. Even though it looks fine, just a little worn, people of all occupations will chastise you for it.

That’s all for now. I keep on telling myself that this move is supposed to be hard otherwise everyone would do it. We can only go up from here, I hope.

Miss everyone.

Amber and Travis

Top 10 things that Kiwi’s want in the mail:

1. Money.
2. A1 sauce.
3. Degree deodorant solid. Not sure what the excuse for not having decent deodorant is, but it better be good.
4. Reeses pieces,
5. And Twizzlers, sniffle.
6. Fashionable ties for work interviews.
7. Cookies, preferably a cookie made with/of chocolate.
8. More cookies, lots and lots of cookies.
9. Fajita seasoning.
10. Captain Morgan’s Original Spiced Rum.

week 2

We have quickly settled into our apartment. We got a queen size blowup mattress, it takes up one of our two bedrooms. The other bedroom has been made into a ghetto-fabulous office, complete with a camping chair, desk (aka upside down suitcase) and an empty box as a mouse table. Really, the place is one big room with some sliding doors sectioning parts of it off.
We got a really good deal on the place because the owner is trying to sell it. That means Asians will randomly stop by and look at the place. If they’ve never seen American underwear, they have now.
Our days have been spent sleeping in late, playing the Warlords: Battlecry 3 on Travis’s laptop, exploring the city, setting up a bank account and internet access, getting a membership at a video rental store, getting a library card, applying for temporary work permits, riding the bus to the grocery store, shopping for work clothes and drinking espresso. Travis went to one job interview. It went well, but people seem hesitant to hire him because they don’t want to deal with immigration paperwork when they can just hire somebody local without the hassle. We also went to a Diwali festival. It’s some Indian holiday. And by “festival” I mean “ 3 rows of tents all selling the same Henna tattoos, spicy food, and gold chains.

week 1

Our first full day was spent finding food and getting an idea where we were. The cab driver that dropped us off the first day told us that the last ten days had been cold and rainy, something that continued for several days. Therefore, randomly walking around neighborhoods searching for a grocery store (or dairy as they call it here) was less than uplifting.
After stopping several times for a warm cup of cappuccino (Travis quickly realized asking for a simple black coffee won’t get you anywhere) we found a dairy, the place we will spend most our income. I was expecting high prices after living in Hawai’i. I understand most stuff has to be shipped in, but it still hurt to go through the isles. Travis was crushed at the price of beer and cigarettes. I guess Kiwi’s are big on sin taxes here. The tax on alcohol is proportional to the amount of liquor in it, so spirits cost several small children, and the hope for finding a cheep, high-alcohol content beer like we all did in college is never going to happen. We were also stumped at the deli. I asked for one gram of ham, the lady just stared at me. It turns one slice of ham is 100 grams, who knew.
Day two was spent in a café stealing their wireless Internet. I applied for all the teaching jobs I could find and Travis looked for places to live. We found a few that were pretty far away from the city, but we figured there are buses. It was a few hours after we set up to see some rooms for rent in the boonies that I was told the busses were on strike, go figure. Flash back to my first week in Hawaii. Plus, later that day I had a meeting with a teachers’ placement agency and the guy told us we should get a place in town, good advice but who’s going to pay the rent?
The next few days were consumed with looking for a place to live. We were paid up in the hostel until Saturday morning, and had little desire to extend our stay. I wanted to shower in a bathroom, not a kitchen. We walked FOREVER to look at several places, just outside the city. It was getting very clear that “cheap” was not an option. Either we lived in a hostel situation with no privacy, or we anteed up and got a studio in the city. You pay rent by the week here, that’s so you don’t get cheaper rent during the longer months. I wish I thought of that.
As the week wore on Travis and I were both getting pretty stressed out. We had met no one to talk to, our dreams of cheep living had been crushed, and while I hope we didn’t smell we defiantly didn’t feel clean. Our last day in the hostel we finally found a place to live. It is only temporary, the owner is trying to sell the place, but it was really big for what we are paying for it. In other words is bigger then 10 x10ft. and we moved in that night. I showered.