We Won't be Homeless!

We have an apartment in Wellington! Hip, hip, hooray! Yahoo!!!

J drove over to Wellington yesterday (Friday) and looked at two places. I had spoken to the landlords in advance to ensure that no one had claimed them already, to avoid a repeat of our previous problems. One place looked much worse in person than the pictures had indicated, but one looked even better in real life, and J snapped it right up! Yay!

It is a teeny, tiny flat (hilarious British word for apartment) in Karori, which is just to the west of downtown. It's a 5 minute walk to the bus stop, and then 20 minutes on the bus, which drops J off just 2 minutes from work. Which is amazing, given that our new flat is right up against a big national reserve, so J says when you look out the back door, it's like you're out in the country. The national reserve has mountain biking trails through it that are supposed to be great, so I'm excited to explore those. Also, the house has a beautiful deck that overlooks the reserve, and I'm looking forward to lots of reading out there. Tiny doesn't bother us as long as our furniture fits, and makes it easier to heat, so I think it will be perfect.

While I continued to exercise self-control and keep my housing-related stress to a manageable level this week, it is still a weight off J's and my backs to have the whole thing settled. And it's about time, because we're moving exactly two weeks from today, which is amazingly imminent. But now that we have a place to live, my stress is rapidly giving way to excitement!

I'm going to wait until we move in to show pictures of our flat, but in the meantime, here are two things that made me smile.

This quote is in a beautiful area on the waterfront in Wellington, and it makes me happy. It reminds me of the passionate involvement of children in every aspect of life, which is one of the things I love about them.

J bought me these roses and brought them to me at work the day I drove to Jan's on the way to Wellington. I was inspired to take this picture by how loved I felt, sitting in my cozy, beautiful room at Jan's house, looking at the lovely flowers J had given me. I am a lucky person.

Managing Moving Stress

I'm sorry for the long gap between posts (again). I am being very intentional about the demands I put on myself, and each night this week, by the time I got to the end of my to-do list of moving jobs for the day, I forced myself to admit that writing a post was one too many demands for that day.

I had a busy, but positive weekend in Wellington with Jan. I am so thankful that she came with me, because I would have stressed myself out far more if she hadn't, and besides, it was fun to spend the weekend with her, and two evenings at her house with her and her husband, Brian. I have half a mind to give up on Wellington entirely and move in with them and eat Jan's delicious lasagne every night forever.

However, by the time we were actually in Wellington, two of the houses I wanted to look at were already rented. Three more were eliminated on the trip for various reasons, leaving two that we were very interested in renting. That seemed reasonable to us, but we found out early this week that we were too late for both of them, and they were rented to other people.

This may not sound catastrophic to you, and in retrospect, I understand that it is only a minor setback, but at the time, in my exhausted and pressurized state, it felt cataclysmic. I had put so much pressure on myself to find and claim the right house that weekend that when it didn't happen, I felt like we were out of options. Plus, I was furious that I'd spent every moment of every day for a week looking at and trying to book viewings for apartments, not to mention 9 hours of driving and an entire weekend spent looking, and it all came to absolutely nothing. That is just unfair.

I was also strongly pressuring myself to get my car sold, as we will not need two cars in Wellington. We were also showing our current house to get it rented. I was also in full overload mode at work, trying to get a million things done for the restructuring that has just happened there.

Unsurprisingly, I stressed myself right into total insomnia, followed by a horrible sore throat and general sickliness. Turns out, stress is really bad for your health.

I took a sick day on Tuesday, and decided that I needed to get myself under control. I am usually pretty good at handling stress, so I'm not sure how I let myself snowball into such unreasonable levels of urgency and pressure, but I have stopped now. I just won't let myself do it.

So, here is the current situation:

Wellington rentals are tricky, because new ones are advertised all the time, and there are lots of good options, but they seem to be rented almost instantly by people who apparently drove over and signed a lease immediately after reading the advertisement. Living 4.5 hours away makes it difficult for us to do this, but we're learning. The upside of having gone to Wellington last weekend is that I have a better idea now of what areas we might like, of what to look for in the pictures online, and what questions to ask landlords. Also, Jan is now helping me look online, and has found some great places! So I have now been calling and talking to landlords instead of trying to book a viewing, which allows me to be one of the first people to jump on board.

We still don't have a place to rent, but we have a few applications submitted, and I am managing to feel much more optimistic about the whole situation. I have also managed to finally wrap my head around the fact that if we must, we can stay in a hotel and store our things for a week or so while we work out something once we're in Wellington. That is not a terribly tragic worst-case scenario, as it turns out.

J and I are looking for a few minutes at new listings each night, and then I'm following up with ones we both like. We are not allowing ourselves to spend all night doing this, and (possibly more importantly), I am staying relaxed as we do it, and not stressing about whether or not we'll get any one particular place. There will always be more.

J is continuing to be sweet and supportive. He has been calm throughout this entire process, and has faith that it will all work out for the best. I am not used to him being the optimist in our relationship, but I'm so glad to have him here to keep telling me that it's all okay.

I have sold my car, and our current house is now rented, so I can tick two big things off my to-do list. Yay!

I am talking to each of the 40 parents I currently work with individually, telling them that I'm leaving. I find these conversations horribly stressful, because I feel like I make a commitment to parents to be a consistent, supportive person in their children's lives, and so it feels wrong to leave. However, I am feeling confident that this move is the best thing for J and I, and when I communicate that to parents, they are always happy for me. In addition, it feels so good when parents take this conversations as an opportunity to voice their appreciation for me. I love to be valued in my work (as do we all). A few parents who never seem to pay much attention to the effort I put into my job were particularly sad I was leaving and eager to tell me how much they appreciate me, and that means so much to me!

J has organized the movers and booked in early enough to get them just when they wanted them, which is awesome. We had a very hard time with that when we moved here, so that's a relief.

I realize that this is not a very exciting "Kiwi Adventures" post, but I like to keep you updated as to what is really going on. I still have more pictures to share from various fun things that we've done that have been missed in the past, and I'll get to them in good time, without stressing myself out.

Painting for Enviroschools Display

This post is going to be short and sweet. I am spending every moment that I'm not at work or asleep trying to find us a place to live in Wellington, where houses and apartments are expensive and often get rented before I have a chance to snap them up. I am traveling to Wellington (4.5 hours away) this weekend to look at as many as I can, and hopefully to nail one down. Getting prepared to make maximum use of this trip is overwhelming and stressful, but I'm convinced that it will be worthwhile. The good news is that while J can't come, my friend Jan has generously offered to come and help me look at places, as well as to host me at her house in Whanganui before and after, so I don't have to do so much driving in one day. Friends make everything so much better!

Anyway, this quick post is just to show you the painting I did for kindergarten over the last few weeks. We wanted a beautiful, colourful display to go behind all our Enviroschools information. For those of you who don't know, Enviroschools is a national initiative in NZ to increase conservation, environmentalism, and sustainability in schools. (Click here to read more about it in my Enviroschools post from last year). My teaching team also discussed that Enviroschools often uses a river as an image for a school/kindergarten's Enviroschools journey. I offered to paint a river background for our display over the school holidays, and so I took home the huge piece of fabric and went to work.

This is a small section of the painting, so you can see some details The swirls are called koru, and they are a central theme of many of our displays around kindergarten. They are like waves, but also like unfolding fern fronds, and are important in Māori culture.

Here is the finished product. Notice the size. It's about 30 feet by 4 feet, and I had thought that it wouldn't take me a million years. What was I thinking? I have never thought that spatial awareness was one of my strengths, but I impressed even myself with my total lack of understanding of how long this would take. Oh well. I got it done, and it is beautiful, if I do say so myself.

Here it is with all of our display items up. I should have taken a "before" picture, so you could see how much the background improves the display. When I showed this picture to J, he said, "You painted for over a week straight only to cover it up?" Which is a fairly good point, based on the picture. But remember, in real life, it is HUGE, and so the gaps between the things are big enough that you can still appreciate the painting.

Anyway, the moral of the story is the while I have no ability to judge sizes realistically, I have made something beautiful that will stay at Puketapu Kindergarten after I leave next month, and I feel wonderful about that contribution.

Our Adventures Are Taking Us to Wellington!

Just in case you were getting bored of the humdrum routine of our year and half in New Plymouth, we've decided to switch things up again and move to Wellington! Tah dah! No boredom for my readers, no way!

As you probably surmised, that is not the reason for our upcoming move (although I do want to save you all from boredom when possible). 

The real reason is: J got an amazing job at the National Headquarters of the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI)!! Yay for J! 

MPI is the branch of government that J has worked for since we moved to NZ, and while he likes the branch, his current job is very high-stress and leaves him exhausted and worried at the end of each day, which is unhelpful in every aspect of life. He has therefore been on the lookout for a promotion to the main office in Wellington, where he could work in the same field, but in a different environment and fill a different role. And it finally happened! In November, J will become MPI's Senior Veterinary Medicines Advisor, and we will move to Wellington!

We will be sad to leave New Plymouth, where we have been happy, but Wellington will be a new and exciting step. We have enjoyed getting to know the people we've met here, but haven't made a lot of really close friends, so it's not as hard to leave as it might have been. Wellington is still just two hours away from Wanganui, where our closest Kiwi friends live, which means we'll still visit regularly. But regardless of other considerations, we're just so excited for J to finally have a job that he can enjoy.

Wellington is an upbeat, active city, and almost every Kiwi we've talked to about it has said that he/she would love to live there, so that's bound to be a good sign. Apparently, the only downside is that it's extremely windy, but we can deal with that.

I went to Wellington for the weekend with some friends, and had an energizing, pleasant time wandering around the waterfront and exploring. It made me even more excited to move there, as I can just imagine all the fun times J and I are going to have delving into all the interesting places there.

Wellington is the capital of NZ (hence J's work being there), and is located on the southern end of the North Island. It's population is a little over 200,000. It is built all around a big harbour, so that it has a long, winding waterfront with beautiful views to the land across. The islands in the middle of the harbour are wildlife sanctuaries, and just to the north-west of the main city is the Kapiti Coast, with Kapiti Island just offshore, both of which are stunningly beautiful.

I know I've posted pictures of Wellington before, but I thought I'd share a couple of my favourites, and some new ones that I took this weekend, so you can see what a beautiful place it is.

This is looking down from Mount Victoria, which is near the centre of the city, and one of the big Lord of the Rings filming locations.

This is one of my favourite areas along the waterfront.

Walk a little ways from there down Oriental Parade, which runs along the waterfront, and you get to this charming little beach.

This round building is the Beehive, which is the Parliament building. It's a few blocks away from the waterfront.

Right across the street from it is this building: Pastoral House is the MPI main office, where J will be working. It is so special for him to work right downtown!

This is looking in the other direction from near the top of Mount Victoria. 

We are so lucky that J's exciting work opportunity is taking us to such and amazing and beautiful place!