Our house - in the middle of our street!

So we just thought we'd show you a pic of the house we're renting. Ian took a trip up to Island Bay to take a photo. As you can see, it looks pretty nice.

It's a 3-bed detached with double garage. Two bedrooms are downstairs and the master is upstairs with the living areas. The main reason for this is that sun is an important factor in heating homes over here. Every room in the house has a north-facing window so gets all-day sun, but the upstairs is much sunnier. So they put the master upstairs. There is a Jack-and-Jill bathroom up there too (the one where the shower head comes up the Ian's chin!). Downstairs the bedrooms share another bathroom plus lots of storage space.

He's also taken this photo of the view that's just about 100m from our front door. Just to give you some idea of what we've got in store.

Also check out some of the other photos he's taken from a different angle this time. It's turning out to be a cracking Spring with a dry, warm summer in store. But the weather forecasters here are about as good as the UK...

We've found a house

Although it might not seem like a big deal, we've found a longer-term rental to coincide with our container arriving in NZ. Our plan had always been to stay in a central short-term apartment as we didn't have any stuff with us and then explore a little to figure out where we wanted to live longer term.

Without a car, we've not been able to explore as much as we'd like. We decided that the location of Ian's work would dictate where we went. For a while we thought we'd be focusing on Petone, when Ian got a job in Lower Hutt.

But he gave that job up so we were a bit in limbo again. Well, very soon after leaving his last job, he's been offered one doing what he's done a lot of - aircraft refueller at the airport! At the moment he's due to start on 15th November for training and induction, but he's now got another interview with Airport Operations! So anyway, at least we know now that he's going to be working at the airport!

So we were able to focus our minds on areas a little. We decided to jump on the bus to Miramar and Seatoun (pronounced sea-toon) to have a look around. One thing that we noticed was that all the parks had "no dogs" signs on them. So we were struggling to find places we could take Maddy (when she arrives).

Although the area was nice, the apparent dog "unfriendliness" was a big downfall. So we decided to widen our search area. We also decided to hire a car for the weekend to get around with greater ease. So, we dutifully set up some house viewings in Karori, Island Bay (x2) and Plimmerton. All very different areas in very different parts of the region!

The second house we saw was in Island Bay. We established a nice rapport with the landlady and were having a laugh. Things seemed to be going well until she mentioned she didn't want "kids or animals". Our hearts sank as it was a really nice house. As we prepared to leave we mentioned how we were interested in the house but she wouldn't be interested in us, as we have a dog. All of a sudden this wasn't such an issue, there were offers to put a dog door in the garage and finish the fencing off to give us a secure place for her to go. It wasn't a done deal as we still had others to see, but we had a good feeling. The house is right next door to a dog friendly reserve and there is a dog friendly beach at the bottom of the hill (a 3-minute drive or about a 5-10-minute walk). Serendipity?

We visited the last two houses on our list (the first in Karori was a complete no go-er - it was awful!) but both were tiny, if lovely houses. We didn't even mention Maddy to these.

And so we told Vicki, the landlady, we were most interested in the house, she responded that we were her preferred tenants out of everyone they'd seen, but we decided to go back on the Sunday to have a more practical viewing. At this viewing we met Bruce, the landlord, and all seemed to go just as well. Bruce is a (short) plumber and this is evident in the height of the showers! The en suite doesn't even reach Ian's chin! :-D so they're going to put a monsoon/rain head shower in to rectify that. And so the deal was done. And we move in on 4th December.

So that's the major milestone, but what else have we been up to? Well, whilst having a wander around Miramar, we stumbled upon Weta Cave, the retail and mini museum related to Weta. This is a movie/TV special effects company that brought us Lord of the Rings, King Kong, Avatar, District 9 and will be bringing us The Hobbit as well. A fascinating place, a behind-the-scenes video shows you how it all works. The only photos we have include "Flat Stanley" so you'll have to put up with them!

We also continued our winning streak since arriving. Annalie won a Twitter competition for two free tickets to see the local football team, the Wellington Phoenix. They're the only NZ professional side, but it's not quite the standard we're used to! It was honestly like watching Sunday league at times! The Phoenix ended a winning streak while we were there so we're obviously bad luck for footy teams at the "Cake Tin"! Maybe we'll give football a miss down here!

We also both won t-shirts of Rico - Air New Zealand's new mascot who's becoming a social media icon! Click here to learn more about him and see some of his videos - parental guidance recommended!!

NZ also celebrates Bonfire Night - although there's no bonfires! Just fireworks. With the natural harbour that is Wellington, there are many good vantage points. We decided to stick to the Waterfront though. We met our friends Vanessa and Dave (we mentioned Vanessa from the SPCA previously - we've had a couple of nights out with them) and stayed at the pub until 5 minutes to go. Unfortunately a bad Southerly storm was starting and it was freezing stood out on the exposed wharf for the 12.5 minutes of the event! But it was a good display, even coming from the home of fireworks displays! Then it was back to the pub!!

We've also celebrated our first birthday out here! Ian's birthday present was finding our rental house! It wasn't the greatest way to spend a birthday, but it was an important achievement for our new life here and the next step towards settling down. We finished the day with dinner in a bar watching a rugby league international (Kiwis vs Kangeroos - NZ vs Australia) and then Vanessa and Dave joined us after a trip to the theatre. We ended up in The Library lounge - an interesting place with much "retro" furniture that makes the place smell like your grandparent's front room! The sofas were that old that they ate you! Getting up out of them was a challenge in itself!

Our move has been somewhat vindicated as well. OK, not exactly, but Lonely Planet has declared Wellington is the fourth best place to visit in 2011. And it is also, apparently, the coolest little capital in the world. So do you think we made a good choice? Although we will admit that it was more fate than intention that brought us to Wellington!

We'll leave you with a picture of Island Bay - just a few minutes from where we will be living.

It's been a month already!

Would you believe we've been in Wellington over a month already? No, neither can we. It certainly feels like it's been longer. That's probably because we're waiting for our container to arrive and for Maddy to start her journey too. So we've got things we want to happen, but we have to be patient.

So what have we learnt in our first month? Well:

- People purposefully walk on the left-hand side of the pavement. On busy streets it can be quite hard to cut across to go into a shop or office!

- People are also very reluctant to move out of your way if they're approaching from the opposite direction to you.

- Anything is an excuse for coffee and any spare shop or bit of pavement is an excuse for a coffee vendor (yes, there are plenty of mobile trailers parked up all over the place!). It's almost like the coffee is the equivalent of the ice cream van over here!

- Wellington is very hilly - as Ian found out to his cost on his first job.

- There are some extremely friendly people around who are very trusting (more on that later).

- Don't always believe what you read in the paper - compared to the UK or USA it's probably been blown out of all proportion.

- Football is rubbish. But you can't beat the quality of the rugby.

- The wind is actually bearable, but who knows what winter will bring!

- Don't believe any of the weather reports - they're worse than the UK!

- Don't bother unpacking any decent crockery or glasses coz they'll all fall off and break at the first sign of an earthquake!

- Weekend TV is rubbish. Unless you're really into rugby!

- We love Anzac Cookies!

- The Sunday farmers' market is by far the cheapest place to buy fruit and veg, fish and lamb.

We've also learned that people from Middleton were in New Zealand a long time ago, and apparently were quite significant as well!

Well, this is just a small snapshot of probably the more extreme things we've learned. You'll have to come and find the rest out for yourselves ;-) Well, they are saying the number of British tourists is down, so anyone fancy helping to reverse that trend? ;-)

This weekend was our first bank holiday weekend since arriving. It was Labour Day - which is something to do with celebrating workers! Why don't they have that in the UK??!

As we are still without four wheels, we decided to venture out on the public transport again. This time we decided to hit the Wairarapa Valley - a prominent winemaking area, about an hour's train ride outside Welly to Featherston, and then a short bus ride to Martinborough. Pinot Noir is the name of the game here, but there's also a good selection of Sav (Sauvignon Blanc), Chardonnay and other reds, such as Merlot, Cabernet, Syrah etc.

The town's "tourist information" - or I-site - rented us bicycles for a couple of hours, although many of the wineries are within walking distance from the town centre. But as we were on a strict timetable to catch the bus/train back, we opted for the faster form of transport!

With very quiet roads, it's a really easy trip to do. And most of the wineries are fully expecting you to wander in, sample a bit and then bugger off again. Some don't even charge! For those that do, they won't charge you if you buy some. We did buy one bottle of Sav at Tirohana, where we also stopped for a lovely spot of lunch overlooking the vineyards. It's a very pretty area with a lot of good wine! You can see some of the pics through the Picassa gallery link on the right hand side.

On the train on the ride back to Welly, we ended up sat across from a lady originally from London but who now lives in the Wairarapa with her Kiwi partner. As we believed the train would be stopping outside Welly and replaced by a bus, Louise offered us a lift with her partner who was picking her up and driving them back into town. Now, in the UK you might question getting into a car with two strangers! But over here, we thought nothing of it and Louise was very hospitable and has even invited us to stay with her any time we want to escape the city!

On Sunday there was the weekly trip to the farmers' market for the shopping, then we decided to visit the Te Papa Museum for their "Earth Rocks" exhibit. We'd visited Te Papa last year when we stayed in Welly, but we'd not been since arriving this time. Most of the museum is free as well, and there's loads to explore. We should probably spend more time there.

Anyway, Earth Rocks was an educational and interactive exhibit aimed at getting you prepared for a disaster. With the earthquakes that have been occurring in the Christchurch region for the last six weeks, disaster preparedness has been pushed up everyone's agenda. As NZ newbies though, it seemed like the ideal opportunity to go and learn about how we should get prepared once we're in our own place. It was a bit of an eye-opener, especially seeing the scale of tsunami waves that have hit the region in the past!

The SPCA were also there to talk about how you can help prepare for the care of your pets in the event of a disaster. A real consideration that we just take forgranted in other parts of the world where you don't live on a fault line and have to consider such eventualities as a quake or tsunami. We got talking to one of the girls who works in Marketing for the SPCA and it turns out she is originally from Macclesfield! She's only been here a year but Ian is heading down to the charity on Tuesday to do some volunteering, so meeting Vanessa was useful!

There were also displays from the local rescue teams, Fire service and helicopter ambulance - Life Flight. We entered a couple of competitions to win "survival kits" to keep us going for the first couple of days, should disaster strike - touch wood we'll remain safe and stable for many years to come. But it certainly brings home to you the different concerns over here in comparison to your concerns in the other countries that you've lived.

You may be wondering why Ian is planning to volunteer at the SPCA when he started a job last week. Well, the job he got, advertised as a driver, turned out to be more of a labourer-who-can-drive job. It wasn't what he expected so he decided not to pursue it. He's going to get back in touch with the BP guys at the airport and do some volunteering in the meantime. It will keep him occupied and also doing something useful that can go on his CV.

And talking of competitions, we've booked to go to Hong Kong at Easter :-) The competition was related to the release of Air NZ's new safety video - see it below!

Although we'd seen it on the internet, we were travelling to Welly on the first day it was used so we were some of the first to see it for real :-) And the other video below gives you an idea of what we're missing by not being able to see the ABs!

How's that for a great start to our time here?! A free holiday to kick it all off!

We're back to being DINKs

Yep, that's right. We're back to being DINKs again (that's Double Income No Kids for the uninitiated!). Ian has started work so we're both gainfully employed for the first time in over two and a half years. It's a bit of a shock to Ian's system but he's been looking forward to getting back to work. He had an interesting first day though. As he was doing his induction, two of his colleagues had a fist fight and one walked out! So that was a great start! It meant his induction was cut short though and out on the road he had to be.

Do we have to remove the NK though when Maddy arrives? ;-)

Speaking of which, we've now got all the paperwork required for her import so it's now just a case of three visits to the vet in CT (thank you so much Suzanne - love ya!) and then she can start her long trip to NZ.

We've also been getting into supporting the sport in our new homeland with a trip to our local stadium to watch the "All Whites" - the football alternative to the All Blacks. Although nowhere near as good! The national team is made up of quite a few players from the English leagues, plus some who play in the local "Australasian league" and a few others. One player isn't even playing club football! I'll leave you to guess at the quality of the football. There are a couple of pics in the online photo album (scroll down to the Picasa link on the right).

At the weekend we managed to get ourselves to a local animal sanctuary - Zealandia - mainly because they had a free locals weekend. It has an indoor exhibition that is very educational about evolution, extinction and the effect of Man on the natural world. An eye-opener. You can also walk through the valley to see some of the birds and animals that are part of a major conservation project. However, it was p*ssing it down when we went - if it hadn't been free, I don't think we would have gone. We hoped that the rain would subside over lunch but no such luck. We have a 2-for-1 voucher in the Entertainment Book so we'll save that for a sunny day.

Whilst we've been wondering what our first adventure in NZ is going to be, Annalie only went and won an Air New Zealand competition! They rang her on the 18th October to tell her that she'd won a prize of flights, hotel and tickets to watch the All Blacks vs the Wallabies in Hong Kong! Only problem was that we'd had to leave on the 28th at the latest as the match is the 30th. We wouldn't get back until lunchtime on the 1st, when Annalie has a big client launch as 11am that day. Bummer!! Thankfully Air NZ has been REALLY understanding (after all, they did admit they'd left it a bit late to let the winner know!). They've offered us the flights to Hong Kong and hotel anyway, any time between now and July. We just don't get to see the All Blacks. They could have just told us to get lost but they haven't. So we just have to decide when we're going. We're thinking Easter Weekend to make the most of having two bank holidays anyway! :-D

And finally, here's the thing the mothers (and TC) probably don't want to see. As we're living in a central apartment buildling, we have no car parking (without having to fork out $$ for it). Ian doesn't work in town so we had to come up with an alternative form of transport.

Sorry Mum(s)!

A year ago today...

We realised today that it was this Sunday, one year ago, that we actually visited Wellington on our trip to NZ last year. It's amazing how time flies! But at the same time, it feels like it took ages to get here as well.

When we came to Wellington last year, we spent less than 24 hours here and did't really think much of it. I think our opinion is changing! Welly is vibrant and is small enough to be able to reach pretty much everything that is going on. It's a funky little city - and we use the term "city" very loosely!

It's a nice place to live. We just need to figure out where we are actually going to live!

Nearly three weeks in

So, we've been here nearly three weeks now and what has happened?

As you know, we've got some short-term digs that will keep us going until our container arrives and we've moved in. It's certainly not palatial and reminds us of either living in uni halls of residence or in RAF accommodation! Still, it's cheap and central. Figuring out where to put everything was a challenge!

We've got our IRD numbers - like our Social Security or National Insurance numbers - so that we get taxed correctly.

Annalie has received her first pay check. NZ is very similar to the USA in that you get paid every two weeks, although it's the 15th of the month and last day in the US. It does make for easier budgeting though.

Ian has also found a job. It's not ideal but it's getting him started. He's going to be driving for a scaffolding firm out in Lower Hutt. He starts as soon as he gets his licence. Now, we can drive recreationally on our UK or US licences for a year. But for work, Ian has to get a NZ licence.

The great thing is that, unlike the US, we can automatically convert all categories of our UK licences. The only difference is that Ian must take a theory test and have a medical in order to have his truck licences transferred. It is easier said than done though as some of the NZ road rules are a bit stupid. Check out the right hand turn rule - although the government have finally agreed to change this. Although they've decided to wait until AFTER the huge influx of tourists that will come to NZ next year for the Rugby World Cup!

We've also been looking at transportation options. Being so central, we don't have parking available, certainly not free anyway. So there's no point in getting a car. But Ian was never going to end up with a job in the CBD so we had to think of options to enable him to get around. At this stage it looks like a bike is the best bet, so we've been taking a look at some with a view to it being a "hand me down" to Annalie a bit later in the day.

We've also experienced our first earthquake. Well, Annalie has because Ian didn't feel it! It was a 6.4 quake around 60kms north of White Island, which is quite a way from Wellington, but it was pretty deep at 280kms below the surface, therefore you will feel it more and further away.

We've developed a Sunday morning routine of visiting the local farmers market on the waterfront in Wellington. All the fresh and in season fruit and veg at a fraction of the supermarket prices. I wish I knew what it all was and how to use it!

A nice surprise last weekend was a fishing boat selling fresh fish straight out of the sea. The great thing is you pick your fish, pay by weight and it gets filletted and gutted for you there and then. The best way to buy fish. Annalie is just a bit disappointed that Ian doesn't eat it as there's no point buying for one!

We've also been grabbing a few bargains lately. Annalie had the Entertainment Book recommended to her. It cost $66 in total but has hundreds of vouchers in it for various restaurants and activities in and around Wellington, so we'll be saving plenty. We've already used it for a free main at Wagamama and a free coffee, so we've saved around $24 already and we've only had the book a day. We have until June 2011 to make the most of it. I think we'll do that!

There's also loads of websites, such as Grab One, Groupy and 1-Day Deals to get some great bargains. We've already had $6 hot dogs for $2, a $10 coffee voucher for $4, a $95 facial for $35 (that was for Annalie of course!) and we've been tempted by others.

One thing stopping us is the NZ bank card system. With your current account, you get an EFTPOS card. It works just like a debit card in that the money comes straight from your account. The difference is that you can only use it in person so you can't buy things on the web with it. To do that you need a Visa debit card, which is more what we're familiar with, or a credit card. So why haven't we sorted out such cards? They all have service fees attached - unlike the UK or US. So it's one of those things that we've put off but will no doubt have to get soon and bite the bullet.

It's the small things that get you sometimes!

Look what's been sleeping in our bed...

...well, not exactly.

We're currently without t'interweb at home so Annalie is sneaking this one in at work! We'll update you properly shortly.

But we just thought this would interest you - look what's been found just off Wellington Harbour!