Welcome to the big city

Well… there we are, in our new room, next to a busy street in a crowded city. VROOOAAAA.... Bam bam bam bam… another beat box comes racing past. Someone tell me why again did we come to NZ? Or house in Holland was situated considerably more quiet than this one. Oh well, this will not be the end destination of our journey to NZ… we hope :-)

The room by itself wasn’t that bad, though. In the room there were already standing a bed, a couch, a table and a TV. Of course, in Emma’s opinion they were totally in the wrong place, so we started to re-arrange them all. I must say that the result indeed is an improvement, and the room looks pretty nice now, actually. Our flatmates, a Japanese girl and a Korean girl, are very nice people as well, and we are starting to make good contact with them.

The only thing we really have to get used to is having just one room for the two of us. With sleeping hours as different as Emma’s and mine, that can be really inconvenient. The one who is trying to sleep is being disturbed all the time, and the one who is awake cannot do what he wants to do because someone else is sleeping in the same room. So we are going to have to come up with a creative solution to that.

A first week in a new city is filled up mostly by checking out the place, and finding out at what times the shops are open. There is not a law here that regulates the times shops can be open, therefore they can be open whenever they want. And so they are. While one shop closes at 4:30 PM, another closes at 8 PM, and some of them are even open 24/7. However, we also already at 4:45 PM have stood on the doorstep of a closed MEGA store, of which you would think it would close pretty late. I can really not discover any logic in the times shops are open here, but on the other hand that makes it fun too… never a dull moment :-)

Due to all the turmoil one would almost forget we still are looking for a job as well. Emma already had had two more interviews (Monday they will call her back), I however am having considerably more trouble getting businesses to be interested in me. It is eating away my motivation a bit, however most of the jobs are not even advertised, you need a social network to be aware of outstanding vacancies. A good social network is therefore essential, and that is exactly the reason why we are now living here in Christchurch.

All in all there hasn’t been much time for the laid-back lifestyle of NZ, although on our wedding anniversary we did have a nice walk in a forest outside of ChCh, after which we drove around a bit having a very nice view of the snow-capped mountains. All this just a 15 minutes drive away from our room. Oh and to top it all off, the library is free here! For Emma, who devours books for a hobby, heaven really has become a place on earth now. So for the time being we are really enjoying ourselves here!