20 posts tagged “new zealand”

This is the longest time between posts since I started blogging here in late 2006.  Back then I was newly-married and had just moved to Costa Rica.  Travis and I were on a kind of extended honeymoon.  We explored by day (when Travis wasn't working) and went out by night - the typical expat thing.  I miscarried and we went on a consolatory vacation to the Dominican Republic where I was charmed to have one of the local guides talk about "Sir Francis Drake, the English pirate."  In my anglo-centric history lessons, he appeared a great explorer.

Things are very different now.  We live in my home town in our very own house.  I've barely even left town, let alone the country since we got here.  I'm travelled out for the moment, although I'm still collecting places to go (Norway, Jordan, Tunisia, Greece, back to France and Spain...)  It's Saturday night and instead of going out I'm sitting in my dining room listening to spring rain hit the window.  I'm someone's mother, which still surprises and delights me after almost two years. 

Life is unexpected, but good.

Here are a few things that have appeared everywhere we've lived.  While the continuity is reassuring, there are some things I would have been happy to leave in the northern hemisphere. 

• The Late Show with David Letterman
• Fisher Price toy phones.  This was one item I was glad to find again because Petra loves her phone.  We're on our second one already.  The first one was no match for baby drool.
• French Jam
• Corona Beer with a slice of lime.  Also a good thing.
  
• Nickelback.  You can run but you can't hide from the behemoth that is Nickelback.  They're all over the radio in Costa Rica, Canada, and New Zealand (and everywhere else as well no doubt - Travis heard a girl asking for their new CD in a mall in Pretoria).  Their latest song is rather icky.  It's the one with the chorus that features the line - "Cause you look so much cuter with something in your mouth..." What is that about?  

I've been collecting phrases and New Zealandisms since we've been home.  Here are a few of the things I've spotted while driving around the town.

There's a big petrol-head (or bogan) thing here and the slogans you see on some cars show it off in all its crass glory.

• Seen on a car license plate today: "ur momma's a matr1s"  complete with correct punctuation.
  
• Spotted scrawled in the dirt on the back window of a very grubby SUV: "I wish my girlfriend was this dirty"
• And my favourite - seen many years ago on a banner in the back window of a car full of guys who had obviously come up to the big smoke for the weekend: "Dip me in honey and throw me to the lesbians"  Seems they were a bit hazy about what a lesbian actually is.
  

And a couple of good ads.

• On the sign of a drive-thru carwash: "You'll be dirty if you don't."  Dirty means angry or annoyed in NZ as well as not clean.
• On the back window of a bus: "Bugger off for bugger all."  Bugger is just the best all-purpose word.  In this case "bugger off" means "go away (on holiday)" and "bugger all" means "not much (money)".

Winter has arrived with a flourish, bringing snow and ice to the higher areas of the country.

We're too close to the sea for such dramatic weather, but we woke up on Wednesday to flurries of hail which settled briefly in our yard.

Travis and I went down to the immigration office this afternoon with our pile of papers.  The woman behind the desk read Travis's information and listened carefully to our rather garbled explanation of what we want to do.  She told us not to bother applying for an extension to Travis's visitor's permit but to go straight to the work permit.  What about the criminal record check we asked - that takes a long time and Travis's current visa is about to expire.  "Oh, I'll waive that for now," she said.  "Just get one done in time for your application for permanent residence."  We said "really, truly?  Thank you."  "Well we try to be facilitative and help you through the process," was her reply.

My god!  Since when is it the job of a bureaucracy to ease you through the labyrinth?  Canadian and Costa Rican immigration officials certainly didn't see their role that way.  The Canadian process is opaque, deliberately so I think, expensive, and long.  And you'd be foolhardy to even think about trying to become a permanent resident of Costa Rica without first hiring a lawyer to shepherd the application all around the town, stand in queues for you, and make sure that your file doesn't get lost.

In New Zealand though, in my limited experience, people who work in government departments are friendly and helpful and do their best to keep you on the right track.  It's such a pleasure to be able to get things done without stress or hassle.

Every time you move countries, you're forced through a whole new round of immigration bureaucracy.  I'm fine in New Zealand, but Travis and Petra are a bit more precarious. 

We're currently trying to renew Petra's Canadian passport and make sure that her application for Canadian citizenship makes it to us here in Dunedin instead of disappearing into the Canadian Consulate in Costa Rica. 

We also have New Zealand permit applications for both Travis and Petra to deal with.  Travis has paid exorbitant sums of money for a medical and he needs to go to the local police station to get finger printed for a criminal record check.  We need translations of Petra's Spanish language birth certificate and proof that we're a real family with real money.  We've all had multiple passport photos taken in which we look like shifty criminal types.  Travis has filled in a 14 page form (and that's just for a temporary visitor's permit), declaring, among other things, that he has not committed warcrimes or crimes against humanity. 

Keeping up with all the bits of paper and making sure we've given immigration everything they could possibly want from us and then some is a pain in the butt.  I'll be very glad when our form-filling days are behind us.

We moved into our house on Boxing Day.  We haven't unpacked yet and we've got the bare minimum of furniture - a bed, a sofa, dining table and chairs, computer desk and chair.  And the house is so big that I'm not quite sure where to go in it yet - I find myself loitering in corners.  But it's wonderful and exciting and strange to have such a fabulous house for our very own.  I can't quite believe that it's really ours, that I get to garden and choose paint, and scheme schemes about kitchen renovations.

We spent today loitering around arranging things in a desultory kind of way.  Travis got me a great Christmas present this year - a Canon Powershot SX110.  I haven't figured out to fly it yet, but I took a few pictures this evening.  It was a beautiful summer day here and the view from our deck and lounge showed to advantage.

I've just bought one-way plane tickets from San Jose to Vancouver and Vancouver to Dunedin.  We're really doing it - emigrating to New Zealand.  I'm a bit nervous about the whole thing, but excited as well.

We're leaving here in mid-September, spending a month in Vancouver (I got a really good monthly rate for our accommodation - we're staying in an apartment right on Denman Street, in our old neighbourhood), then flying to New Zealand in mid-October.

We're taking the long way round because we need to deal with all the stuff we left behind when we moved to San Jose, and we want to spend some time with friends before we disappear off to the other side of the world.   I'm also planning to visit all my old haunts to say goodbye - sentimental type that I am.  Flying's gotten so horribly expensive that we might not get back to Canada any time soon, so I plan to soak up as much of the Vancouver experience as I can while we're there.

A question for the New Zealanders among us:

I've recently decided to move back to New Zealand after almost a decade living abroad in Canada and Costa Rica.  And I wonder how much New Zealand has changed socially, culturally, economically since I left.  What differences (large and small) will I notice after 10 years away?

My New Zealand is frozen back in January 1999.  When I left, Jenny Shipley was the prime minister, 91 octane petrol was 80 cents a litre, and the average house cost about 50% less than it does now.  My home town, Dunedin, was a fairly sleepy, but funky, place with some good restaurants and great clothing stores and a good (although declining) live music scene.  It was a safe enough place that I could accidentally leave my back door not only unlocked but wide-open for a whole day with no ill-effects. 

I've heard that going home is in some ways more of a culture shock than moving away.  When you emigrate, you expect everything to be strange, but when you go home you expect to be home which makes any unfamiliarity harder to deal with.  After such a long time away I think it's likely that I'm in for some surprises.  What do you think?