Hello dear readers! I am going to use this blog to pen my thoughts, experience, and everything else that is happening in our new life in New Zealand, instead of World of Wati. There are many I'd like to write about as we've been here since 25th September 2012.
As a start, all is well in Hamilton, the city we are in. It's the fourth largest city in New Zealand with a population of 145,000. We came here, after 12.5 years in Japan (mostly Tokyo), and more than 20 years for my husband. Roy's university back in Tokyo has granted him a year's sabbatical work, and incidentally, Roy has connections with the University of Waikato. It all worked out well for us, it's better and easier to come here as far as the language is concerned, Roy could do some research work with the academics here, on top of us liking it everytime we visited the country.
Before we arrived, we've been studying the city, mainly looking to know what the options are, what it's like living here, over other cities in other countries. Most importantly for us, the quality of education and how easy would it be to enrol in local schools for children from a non-English speaking background. We've heard many times over that education in NZ is very good and that it's a fantastic environment to bring up kids. Another important factor was affordable accommodation. At the time of searching there weren't many properties that met our criteria. We were looking for something big and spacious with at least 5 bedrooms. Most properties advertised went to a maximum of 4. We were lucky to find a property we liked on Trade Me, a website that is similar to Craiglist. It may be daunting to rent a house over the internet without first looking at it, but we managed to get in touch with the owner and he sounded very nice and friendly on the phone. During the process of enquiries, we seemed to create a bond with this Kiwi man and he honestly liked us and believed that we were honest genuine people. He was very keen on renting his house out to us, a 6 bedroom, 1.25 acres, colonial style villa! So we both agreed and hoped that the property really exists when we get there!
After a 10 day stopver in Singapore, we arrived at Auckland Airport, got our rented car, a really nice 4 wheel drive, Toyota Rav4, since we have lots of big luggage, and off we drove to Hamilton. We've been to Hamilton before but that was ages ago, was a very short visit and I couldn't remember very much of it. It was quite an easy 1.5 hour drive to Hamilton, and although we lost our way once, we found the house! We were met by a gated entrance, and we saw some men doing work on the trees that lined the driveway, and a working muddy vehicle nearby. I remember that day being a nice sunny day, for it was the beginning of Spring when we arrived, and the men were in shorts. The weather was a very nice welcome!
My first reaction was amazement at how huge the ground was. The long curvy driveway, cherry blossoms along it in full bloom, the sky was blue, the grass needed cutting, and there, the white house passed in front of our eyes, and the driveway took us to the garage. It was a house I used to be dreaming of having one when I was a child. It is better in reality, as the ground is just enormous for a residential property, especially for the four of us, arriving from Tokyo where houses are typically small, so closely built to each other with hardly any ground or room outside, let alone a sidewalk or pedestrian path. So it was all nothing but just sheer amazement to me. A sight so big it took a while and for me take it in and make up the whole place.
"Oh dear! It's huge!" was Roy's first words when we arrived.
The house was furnished with basic furniture such as a couch, dining table and the owner was nice enough to put 2 children beds plus a king bed. Otherwise, it was rather bare, still is. The floor was dusty downstairs as well as the carpeted floor upstairs, and again, the owner was nice enough to include linens and towels. They also provided a fridge with a freezer, there was an oven, a big proper conventional oven that made me very happy,and a stove that was built in. Everything was working properly and we were quite pleased with what was provided. Luckily there was a hoover, and I spent about an hour just hoovering the whole damn house! I was amazed at myself after an 11 hour long red eye flight and still had the energy to do my first house chore! But it felt so much better to see the wooden floor all cleaned and dusted which made the house appear much nicer than we arrived. Other than spider webs with dead insects caught in them, the house wasn't horribly dirty.
We took our bags in, checkout out all the rooms, saying "wow", "oooh" along the way, walked the ground to get a feel how spacious it was and we just walked a lot in general. It has this spacious deck outside that I believe is used as a barbeque area and alfresco dining. Nice!
The boys enjoyed the spacious living rooms (it has 2), they ran from one end to the other, went in and out of the house enjoying the freedom that they would otherwise not have in Tokyo.
Wilkie was very concerned about when we're going back to Tokyo as he still didn't get that New Zealand is our home for now. He was homesick by the second day to the point of crying. The poor boy missed his friends (but not his school) and his toys especially. It was a delicate time for him, and the best we could do is talk to him in gently and convinced him that his toys are in a big ship (which made his eyes lit up), and will arrive in so many sleeps. After a week, he stopped asking.
Fredi adapted easily as he's still too young to understand, but he does understand that this is not the home he used to live in. As long as mummy is in his sight, he is happy running around the deck, on the grass bare footed without any care in the world.
The boys are now in their second week in school. As with everything new, the boys had been very brave, especially for Wilkie. It's been tough for him to adapt. I'll write more on this later. For now, after almost a month, we are liking and enjoying our new life in New Zealand. This Kiwi life.