A few weeks short of our first month....

It turned out the charges from the shipping company were never included from the Swedish side.  I did find an old email when I was first corresponding with the Swedish side and it was clearly stated.  It's just too bad they didn't clearly state it on the invoice when I was paying.  Our belongings passed inspection and was released last Wednesday to the shipping company on this side (Conroy).  I had hoped they would have delivered to us by last Friday, but nope, they said possibly this coming Thursday.  They will call us the day before. 

I'm hoping the days fly back at the job I'm at now.  We're very lucky to have such a nice neighbour who has been great to talk to and offers all sorts of advice.  She has a wonderful sense of humour as well and we get along great.  She drove us to Taupo last weekend to show us around with her cute little son (who is also in the same daycare I'm working at, but he is on the baby side while I work with the 3-5 year olds, technically the 2 1/2 - 4 year olds).  We spent the day in Taupo and since it was a 3 day weekend for us here last weekend we drove ourselves to Palmerston North on the Monday to see John's school.  Most things were closed, but it was nice to be able to see where he will be going to school.  We ate lunch and had a quick look around the mall, bought John a new wedding band as somewhere in the move he lost his.

I suppose I'm somewhat getting used to the cold, but not enjoying it one bit.  I think I'm too spoiled by the indoor warmth in Sweden that until we can get our final destination to be close to that I'm going to complain of the cold until then.  Being outside though is lovely, especially when the sun is out as it gets so hot!  Most of the evenings we go over to our neighbour, sit there having tea and a chat and then by the time we get home it's bed time under our electric throw which my lovely colleague loaned us until we get what we need.

In our garden we're growing all sorts of vegetables left by the previous owner of this house and some things we've planted ourselves.  We have already had rubbarb, lettuce, strawberries and chives.  We have now planted parsley, lettuce, corriandor and beans.  Our kind neighbour grows three sorts of lettuce, silverbeat, parsley and tomatoes which aren't doing so well.  We are then sharing with each other which is great. 

We've been meaning to get around to meeting our neighbour on the other side of us, but he never seems to be home (though we did see his car and dog there today).  Also, we've simply been enjoying our time with the one neighbour who is home in the evenings and her little boy so we've not gotten around to putting more of an effort.

Now I'm off to find some kind of dessert to make!

Just a few pictures from Taupo....

Here at last...

Well we arrived at the airport with our luggage we were told we were allowed 30 kilos!  To think that we had called every place we could think of to see if we were allowed more and the answer was no and then to arrive and we were told we were allowed 30 kilos.  On the good side that meant we took everything heavy from our carry-on and packed it into our bags along with our jackets and snowsuits so it made our carry-ons much more pleasureable.

We first travelled to Hong Kong where we got free wifi which was really nice since we could check facebook and update our status.  The time there went pretty quick even though there was a delay.  Finally we arrived in Auckland and it wasn't as scary with immigration as I imagined.  It seemed it was fruit they were after rather than everything else we had read on the list.  The dogs kept smelling people's bags and they were asking those people if they had fruit in them.  The people we saw had already eaten the fruit out of their bags.  We were warned in Hong Kong that my bag didn't make it onto the plane from Sweden so I should be ready to fill in a report in Auckland.  I was so sad because I was the one who needed to begin work and had all the important things in my bag.  Then when we arrived in Auckland, it turned out to be John's bag!  Sad to say, but I was relieved haha.  They gave him 130 New Zealand dollars as we said how are we going to manage. On top of that the bag did arrive 2 days later so that worked out fine.

We arrived in Waiouru and as exciting as it was, it was also scary for me.  The house we are renting is very old, lets in drafts and I'm learning extremely quickly how to light a fireplace and keep it lit.  A co-worker loaned me an electric blanket which is my life-saver as of today.  It works and I don't care now about the fireplace so I think I'll have to get myself one of these.  I'm worried also about John having to study so far away.  He rented a nice room from a very nice couple and I went with him to see it. We'll just have to make it work while I'm fullfilling immigrations requirements about the job I am going to be doing for the next three months.  Everyone is very nice, and my colleagues at the new job are kind too.  It's just different than what I'm used to doing and being somewhere with no shops is strange.

I received an email today from the shipping company on this side to ask for money before shipping our belongings!  That was a shock and big disappointment because on the Swedish side we were told it covers delivery door to door.  Right now I've written an email back to the company and included the Swedish company in the correspondence and hope it gets settled as we need our things.  Otherwise, I plan to pay the bill and do a complaint on the Swedish company if they won't cover the cost.  Hopefully it gets settled because it was a big bit of money they want and right now we're trying to get a budget going after buying all our appliances and really don't want to fork out 1300 New Zealand dollars for something we already thought we paid.

John is just loving New Zealand and is so excited.  The scenary is beautiful and I know once we get settled where we can be together on weekdays too and I'm settled in a job that is along my line of things, I can relax then and enjoy it even more.  We do have a beautiful garden and we spent a whole day out in it last weekend and got sunburnt.  Lesson learnt - sunscreen needed!

The 1st picture is me on our 2nd evening with a fire going although it's summer.  The 2nd picture shows a beautiful rainbow after tons of rain on our first week in New Zealand and believe it or not the 3rd picture is the view from our backdoor or actually window in our kitchen.  It's amazing to see this!