Come ye, come ye, NZ-o-philes

Today we went to a “New Zealand meet”. A what?? A gathering of New Zealand addicts, if you wish. On the Internet there are several forums and news groups dedicated to New Zealand, like http://move2nz.com/. A lot of participants of these forums are thinking about migrating to NZ, are in the process of migrating to NZ, or already have migrated to NZ.

A lot can be learnt from exchanging information with each other about how to build a life over there, what kind of documents you need to satisfy the NZ Immigration Service etc. After reading all the posts from everybody it can be nice to meet face to face as well. Enter the NZ meet. Today the Dutch groups organised a meeting, which we attended just seven days before our actual planned departure.

The meeting place was located at Sonsbeek Mansion in the city of Arnhem. Arnhem is pretty close to Wijchen (where we were staying), but there were also people present from the far side of the Netherlands (which, The Netherlands being about the size of Conneticut, isn’t that impressive for our American friends, but for the Dutch, it is)! The mansion was situated within a very beautiful park, and the hall in which we had the meet was very nice too.

I must say it is a lot of fun to be able to just talk about NZ the whole day without people dozing off on me. Today I have learnt some new stuff about looking for jobs in NZ, and I have met a few people I didn’t meet met yet at previous “NZ meets”. We also met some people who are planning to move to the city of Christchurch, just like we are. It would be fun meeting them all in NZ after everyone has finished migrating, to see how everybody is doing.