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!