Blog

Today we did some more house hunting and may have found a suitable house after viewing about 8 inside and the outsides of a few more. We are going to look at the school that we would be in the zone for tomorrow and then make a decision on the house. This evening we decided to take an evening stroll from our posh holiday home to our potential new house. We parked up in Albany village and visited the library and then walked over this back way. It was rather nice and there were lots of unfamiliar bird noises, but raining, like the whole of the rest of the day.

We then did the walk from potential new house to potential new school and saw these signs on the floor.

Here is the sort of river thing that runs along the back of the house.

jet lag is a funny fellow.  this morning he woke us all up around 3am.  jane and kezia beat him down and eventually got back to sleep, but esther and i failed to get any more sleep.  as a result we’re all really tired which should hopefully mean we’ll get enough sleep tonight and be back on track tomorrow …

anyway, today:  well first up we went to the local mall to buy some food.  we enjoyed kmart but did all our food shopping in the New World supermarket.  jane and i both felt a little dirty after our visit as this supermarket is rather upmarket and sells loads of english products, like Wispa bars, and traditional british ales.  all at prices to reflect their scarcity value.  but nevertheless there was something disappointing about being able to go to a local supermarket on the other side of the world and be able to buy the same shopping as back in blighty.

the main news of today however is that we’ve starting our house hunt.  we visited 4 today in the area we’d hoped to live, but only one got anywhere near our possibles list.  If all else fails, that will do, but it’s unlikely to be our first choice.  We’ve got a full day of house hunting in a slightly different area tomorrow and we’ve got high hopes of narrowing ourselves down to a couples of places by the end of the day.  We’ll see.

And so that’s it really.  a pretty functional day.  but once again ending with everyone exhausted.

Oh, and i replaced a UK plug with a kiwi one on a multi-socket extension lead which i think is the way men initiate themselves in to other cultures.  Forget our residency permits, it’s that small task which has proved we’re serious about becoming long term kiwis !

apologies for the lack of pictures.  they weren’t allowed in the mall and i didn’t take any whilst we were out on manoeuvres looking at houses.  i’ll try harder tomorrow.

so, a quick recap on the last couple of days.  Our flight from Heathrow to Los Angeles was fine, although we were delayed for an hour on the plane due to some technical palaver.  that got sorted and off we went.

we were in business class which was lovely.

this is las vegas out the window as we made our approach to LA

After a short (and some might say pointless) trip round emigration and back at LA, we got back on the same plane and headed Auckland-wards

due to the timing, length and direction of travel, sunday seemed to last 36 hours or more, and monday only lasted a few short hours (possibly up to 8, but i didn’t track every time zone we went over).

It was also dark most of the journey, and i spent much of the 12 hour second flight laying on the flat business class bed looking out the window at passing stars.  As i lay there for hour upon hour drinking coke and grazing on chocolate muffins i realised that this was the ideal i’d been trying to perfect since being a teenager.  the fact we were travelling on a plane made it even betterer.

anyway, the next time we saw the sun was as it rose over New Zealand as we arrived.  Kezia took the pictures below.

we were met from the airport by a lovely taxi man who drove us to our ‘holiday’ accommodation in Albany.  we’ll be here until the 2nd November (which coincidentally is the date I start my new job).  We arrived and then we all slept for 3 hours solid.

Then a chap from a car lot in town picked us up and took us to get our hire ‘car’.  he had originally planned to give us a small three door car, but upgraded us to this mum-bus when he found out we’d got kids.  he gave us a very good price for the rental as I think he hopes we’ll end up buying our 2 cars from him within the next fortnight.

we drove home in the beast and went for a little explore round our gated community which is very nice (albeit with Stepford Wife, The Prisoner overtones), and the (younger) girls went in to the freezing outdoor pool.  They lasted 10 minutes which was good going.

As i write (8.15pm NZ time) everyone’s asleep upstairs again.  And, as i’m typing this through droopy eyelids) i should too.

tomorrow afternoon will be our first session of house hunting before a full day of touring properties on thursday.

jane will give an update/tour of our holiday house at some point.

it’s so great to be back in NZ.  Although we were only here for 10 days or so at Easter, it does feel a bit like a home coming.  which is very strange)

will write more later …

Here we are at Los Angeles Airport at 4.55am British time. We have enjoyed the luxury of Business Class and so far only one of us has been sick!!

We are now waiting in the Business Class Lounge bit at LA waiting for the next flight to Auckland. We’re not even half way yet.

(photo by Tony)

it’s funny that airports have gates.  you would have thought they’d do little to keep aeroplanes out as they could just fly over the top.  anyway, we’re off to our gate now, so ta ta for now.

Here are the girls with our friend Ian after church.

When we got back we had time for a quick round of racing demon. Kezia won.

Here are the lovely Pooch and Party just before we left.

esther and kezia were given these fantastic hoodies as a leaving present from all their friends at school.  esther has already declared hers will become her new ‘horsey jumper’ which was/is her current favourite piece of clothing (despite it being too small for her).  Their new hoodies are perfect and have plenty of growing room, so i suspect they are going to be their clothing of choice from now on !

we had a lovely day of seeing friends yesterday.  we had a great walk/geocache with the newells (above)

during the day we also had a lovely breakfast with our vicar and family, ian and carolyn (and a surprise appearance from their incredibly smiley grandson) and Stephens.

it was lovely to be able to spend time with all of them – apologies for the last two photos being a bit duff (and no photos of Ian and Carolyn).  Camera-work has been a bit lacking of late !