May 2006 - The Story so far . . .

May 2006

So here I am, sitting by the fire, kids in bed, Andy away on a training course, catching up on some LONG OVERDUE correspondence. What’s so unusual about that? Well I’m writing you from Bucklands Beach, a South-Eastern suburb of Auckland, the wood burning fire is the only means of keeping the house warm, and Andy is on his way back from Sydney! Slightly different from our lives back in Winsford, our home for nearly 11 years. Living in Cheshire has started to feel like a life-time ago though.

After 2 years of planning, a lot of patience and a strong belief that our turn would eventually come, we finally arrived in Auckland on the 13th of March. There the four of us were, 5 suitcases and a number of holdalls, no house, no car, no jobs, no schools etc – it felt very surreal. And after the long-haul flight from Singapore (where we’d spent a lovely week by the pool/beach) Andy & I were briefly overcome by the reality of it all. Only 2 months on from that day, things have moved on so much, that that day seems a long time ago.

We’d pre-booked a motel for a couple of weeks, which was run by some English migrants who have been here for 9 years. During these 2 weeks we managed to buy a car (nice Vauxhall Zafira), enroll Lianne into a wonderful school, start Amy at a nursery for a couple of days a week and then more importantly find ourselves a place to call home for the next 10 months. The final piece of the ‘jigsaw’ fell into place, when Andy secured himself an IT Project Management role for a large international company (head office in Sydney), where he started this week. To say we’ve been busy is an understatement!

The area we’re living in couldn’t be more different from Cheshire: – We’re on a small peninsula known as Bucklands Beach, 3 minutes walk to the nearest beach with views in the distance on one side (across the water) of Auckland city centre (famous Sky Tower landmark) and Mount Rangitoto volcano (only around 350 years old/new) on the other. You can imagine the sunsets we’re treated to each day . . . The beach has still not lost its appeal either, not sure if it ever will! We’re renting a comfortable 3 bedroomed house for till the end of January, as such giving ourselves some time to see if this area, and indeed Auckland, is for us and take our time looking around for a house we would like to call home.

Lianne is starting to feel more settled at school, which with 452 pupils is ‘slightly’ larger than she was used to at Delamere school’s 68 pupils! It’s a wonderful school though, with a strong a strong Environmental agenda. (http://www.pigeon-mountain.school.nz/ ). The curriculum and ways of teaching seem to differ quite a bit (also they have PE / fitness every day, which Lianne is greatly enjoying). She’s enjoying the ‘kiwi-habit’ of walking barefoot at school! Although the last couple of weeks she’s decided it’s started getting a bit too cold for that, so long socks and shoes have made an appearance. She is greatly missing her friends from the UK though, and is a bit hesitant in making new friendships too quickly. She turned 7 a couple of weeks ago, which we celebrated with some class-mates of her. A great time was had by all, yet on the way back home she went all quiet and when questioned confessed she’d wished that Grace (best friend in the UK) could have been there . . . Moments like that easily bring tears to my eyes, as I too am missing my friends dearly.

Amy is starting to settle down too. She attends a day nursery 2 days a week, and performs a little drama every time I take her. With her too it’s the difference in number of children (42 opposed to 8 in the UK) and the unfamiliarity of their ways of doing things that has rocked her confidence a bit. I know she has a great time there though, so will persevere for a while longer. To create a bit of a balance, and as a means for both Amy and me to make new friends, we also attend a playcentre together for 2 mornings a week. The location couldn’t be more perfect, at the end of our road, and we’re both loving it. It’s a unique New Zealand concept where parents/caregivers can take their pre-school (up to age 5) children, and stay with them for the sessions. The children are encouraged to play and do what they want, in 16 available play areas. The little naturally love it:- painting, gluing, play dough, carpentry, sand, water, dress up, dolls, blocks, inside / outside etc etc you get the picture. It’s great for the adults too, the other day I had my first attempt at making play dough – thoroughly enjoyed mixing all the ingredients. Whilst there, parents are required to follow a number of courses related to playcentre philosophy, including also some basic Maori, which if you pass will be recognised diplomas for further education.

Eight months after leaving Accenture / Barclays Andy started his new role this week, so the jury’s out on job-satisfaction etc. He started with a week long trip to the company’s Australasia head office in Sydney (allright for some!). I’ll write more about this in my next update. We’ve been so fortunate that we were able to share and equally participate in this big emigration adventure. How unique that we’ve been able to do this all together, it’s going to be very strange for both of us, him being back at work.

So that leaves me. Well apart from needing to VERY quickly become an expert in the art of lighting fires (and keeping them burning!), I’m loving the house and location. It’s just so beautiful around here, hard to believe that this isn’t even the country side yet – there is an area as big at Britain waiting to be explored (with only 4 million other people). I’m starting to get used to the different names for things in shops and supermarkets (am missing my uncomplicated trips down the aisles of Asda!), am able to drive around the area without needing to refer to a map, local road and area names that were unpronounceable 2 months ago now sound quite familiar, basically I feel that we’re slowly getting back to some sort of routine.

All in all we’re doing fine so far. The one thing that is missing is you guys, our dear friends & ex-colleagues! We’ve found some cheap international phone cards, which charge only around 2p a minute for calls anywhere in the world, however with the time difference it’s not always easy to catch people at reasonable times. It would be so great to walk around the corner for a cup of tea at one of my dear friends’ houses, or pick up the phone at any time of day to have a natter with one of you. But hey, we’ve still got e-mails and webcams and we live in hope that some of you will make the journey over here at some point – you’re all more than welcome!!
I’ll leave it there, before I bore you all too much. If you’d like to ‘see’ where we’re at, we’ve got an online photo album (which I update regularly): http://s11.photobucket.com/albums/a192/BEMMaas/ with password: Bucklands. Hope you enjoy it.

When you have a minute, it would be great to hear from you, and I promise I WILL reply (though on occasions it may take a little while).

Here’s wishing you all the best and a wonderful summer!

Babette

Bucklands Beach,
Auckland
New Zealand.

e-mail: babette_maas@hotmail.com or andy_edwards65@hotmail.com