Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Independence Day

As we're moving into our new place on the 4th of July, we've invited some friends over in the evening to see the flat with the offer of some sort of American-themed dessert. How appropriate that we would gain residential independence (yay, no more flatmates!) on Independence Day. Scouring allrecipes.com for ideas has made me value the 4th of July like I never have before, as meat pies on a rainy winter day just don't compare with parades, summer cookouts, and fireworks. I suppose that's what I get for moving back into the Queen's territory. Any ideas for something incredibly cheap and simple that I can make for about 10 people? What I'd really like to make is a red, white and blue trifle, but in the absence of a trifle bowl (and time) I was thinking about this flag cake instead.

-Rachel

Sunday, June 27, 2010

a new home!

Good news - we found a new apartment and are signing a 12-month lease tomorrow evening! It's a very cute little two-bedroom townhouse in St. Albans, a nice neighborhood just north of the city center. It's close enough that we can still walk to the church and downtown, though it is a tad farther than our current place. The downsides are no dishwasher and no dryer, but it has a washing machine in the unit and we're hoping that our months of living with other people have so reformed our former slovenly dishwashing habits that we'll naturally clean up right after meals anyway. We'll see.

Here's a picture of the living room, looking into the teeny-tiny kitchen (on the left) and the short hallway by the entrance (on the right). The place is very nice and cozy, but this well-taken photo (the owner's) perhaps makes the place look a bit nicer than it actually is :)


Upstairs is a master bedroom of a decent size with built-in closets, which we hadn't found very often in our apartment hunting, which opens up onto a balcony that looks over the small patio area behind the flat (pictured, left). We especially like the tall ceilings, as they make a small place feel larger. On the other side of the stairway is a small bedroom that would work best as an office, and a little bathroom in the middle with green walls and blue countertop in the sink area, which is weird.


If all goes well, we should move in next Sunday or Monday. The big question now is what to do with our belongings - we can borrow a couple of mattresses and some dishes and maybe an old couch from the church, but of course we'd really like to have our stuff to make it feel like home. The problem here is cost - we've just recently discovered just how expensive it is to ship a household of stuff (even a small household like ours) overseas, especially when we'd also need to send one of us back to the U.S. for a couple of weeks to sift through the boxes and figure out what to send and what to store.

We're a bit overwhelmed lately, but we've committed to this grand faith experiment by deciding to stay in New Zealand and look forward to discovering the creative and miraculous ways that things will work out in the end. I shared briefly during our church service this evening on how our most difficult experiences are also the best opportunities for faith and character development, so I suppose I'm now finding out if I actually believe that :)

If you want to see more details of our place, you can check out the TradeMe listing, though it will probably get removed soon by the owner.

So make your plans to come visit - we'll put you up in our place!

-Rachel

Friday, June 25, 2010

first steps

Having sent off our fingerprints to the FBI for our police checks this afternoon, we finally feel as if we're moving forward, though excruciatingly slowly. The local police station offers fingerprinting for free, but as they only make it available between 9:30 and 11 am, it's been difficult to find a time to stop in. We showed up on Tuesday morning and were directed down to the basement Watch House, where the wood paneling showed evidence of unruly persons who marked their presence with crude drawings and carvings, but we were turned away as we didn't realize that we would need our passports for the fingerprinting. This morning (maybe they were better staffed?) our request was taken care of upstairs in the office by an efficient gentleman who commented knowledgeably on the birthplaces listed in our passports.

Other exciting news this week is my success in getting a short-term job during the upcoming school holidays as a kids activity assistant. New Zealand subscribes to the year-round education system, which (if I understand it correctly) means that they get a 2-week break 3 times during the year, plus a longer (4-6 weeks, maybe?) break around Christmastime, so this is their winter break. The program I'll be working for, Outaskool, runs after-school programs during the year in addition to these all-day holiday programs, and it seems to be very well managed by professional and friendly staff. I'll be working up at the Rangiora location (about a 45-min drive bus ride north of the city), but 3 days a week we'll head back into the city for field trips to the children's ballet, the Air Force Museum, the School of Gymnastics, and other fun places. The job is only for 2 weeks, but hopefully it'll be a step in the right direction, and I'll be able to enjoy the pleasant company of 2 friends who work for Outaskool as well. I'll let you know how it goes!

-Rachel

Monday, June 21, 2010

complications

Having delved more deeply this week into the dark, remote corners of New Zealand immigration policy, we have been spending sleepless nights wondering if our timeline is going to work out like it needs to for us to stay in the country. Here's the short of it:

Our current visas expire on August 20th. The work permits we are applying for take up to 1 month to process, and require us to submit a police check from the FBI, medical and chest x-ray exams, and college transcripts, in addition to all of the other paperwork regarding our background and the jobs we'd like to take here. The police checks take up to 3 months to receive. See the problem? 3 months police checks + 1 month visa processing =  4 months. We're already over our timeline by 2 months.

We met with an immigration adviser today, who as a Sunday school teacher at an Anglican church was particularly sympathetic to our situation and offered some advice without charge. We left encouraged, but also more aware that the immigration process is extremely nuanced and in many ways subjective. Unfortunately, it looks like we can't move forward in our planning as quickly as we'd like: there are a few jobs at the University of Canterbury that are closing this week that I would have definitely applied for (one of them was exactly what I was doing at NCU, only with much better pay), but they won't even look at applicants without a work visa so I guess it will have to pass me by. :(

-Rachel

Friday, June 18, 2010

two mini-victories

Today I wrote a very satisfying letter to my boss/landlord. It went like this:

Dear (Boss/Landlord Name),


As we are approaching the end of the employment term as discussed upon my hire in March of this year, I would like to inform you that my last day of employment with (Company Name) will be Friday, July 2.

Please allow this letter to also serve as notice that Bryan and I will be moving out of the flat no later than Saturday, July 10. As we paid the upcoming week’s rent on 17 July and have put down a deposit of two weeks’ rent, we expect that the only remaining payments will be the internet and electricity bills for June plus an estimate for internet and electricity costs during the first third of the month of July, both of which will be deposited to your account no later than Friday, July 9.

Please feel free to contact me with any questions or concerns. Thank you for the opportunity to develop my skills through my employment at (Company Name) these last few months. I wish you the best in your future business.

Sincerely,

Rachel


It felt wonderfully freeing. I don't yet have a job to replace this one, and we don't yet have a new flat to move into, and we don't yet have the work permit that will allow us to stay here beyond August, but we're going to move ahead as if we do.

-Rachel

Monday, June 14, 2010

why we'd like to stay in new zealand.

It probably doesn't come as a surprise to most of you to hear that we'd like to extend our stay in New Zealand if possible; many of you even predicted it before we left. We've come to realize that there will be a painful separation either way - if we move away from the U.S. for a few years like we're keen to do, we'll miss friends and family, but if we move away from New Zealand, we'll miss friends who have become like family during the short time that we've been in Christchurch and we'll miss this incredible country that we've come to view as a home.

As we've considered our options over the last couple of months, we've decided not to limit our career options by requiring a return to Minneapolis, where the ministry jobs (we're looking for a children's or family pastor role) are usually quickly snatched up at the beginning of each summer by the graduates of three major local Christian universities. So if we're not moving back to the U.S. to be near friends and family anyway, what's to keep us from staying here in New Zealand, where we've already invested so much energy into our church community and have begun to build the new family ministries program over the last few months?

Not that wanting to stay here means that we will be able to - there are plenty of factors that will ultimately decide this, not the least of which is our visa status. At the moment we're on a work-holiday visa, which allows us to work and live here for a one-year period, which ends on August 20 of this year. This visa is non-renewable, so we'll need to find another way to stick around. Our primary options are a temporary work visa, which can be issued for a period of 1-3 years if we have a full-time job offer (we don't yet have any prospects), or residency, which we'd probably ultimately be approved for, but this process is expensive and reportedly extremely time-consuming. There's also a work-to-residency visa, which falls somewhere in between these two. We'll keep you updated - this will probably turn into an (attempted) immigration blog over the next month or so as we sort things out.

-Rachel

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

sushi day

i love travelling to new places, but i also love spending enough time in one place that i begin to develop patterns, favorite places, a routine. one such developing tradition is tuesday sushi lunch, when the sushi of the day at the nearby japanese chain restaurant is avocado and salmon, a great bargain at just $4.90 for 8. today, a particularly chilly almost-winter day in christchurch, they were giving away miso soup free with any order, so i took the opportunity to try something new and accepted the small cup, if only to keep my hands warm for the short walk to the church after work. while there was nothing outrageously awful about it, there also wasn't much to recommend it, and the slight fishy taste (i've since learned that it's made with sardines) grew uncomfortably distinct as I continued to sip, so the majority of the soup found itself inside an obliging wastebasket. today the sunny banks of the avon looked especially welcoming, so i sat down in this little spot to eat and be content. beautiful.

-rachel