Starting to feel at home

Since most working people in NZ only have 15 days off, virtually no long weekend passes by without the average Kiwi packing his bags and going sightseeing. Fortunately long weekends are abundant here in NZ, for example Good Friday is a bank holiday too (in Holland it is just another working day with a funny name), so the Easter weekend always lasts four days. Those extra free days can be put to good use without having to drive for ages... The advantage of living in NZ is that you can go on vacation to NZ without leaving the country :-)

I think we ourselves will use this Easter weekend to go sightseeing too, because apart from a few day trips (all well documented on this web log) and family visits to Ashburton we didn't really yet make much use of the privilege of living in this beautiful country. We have been busy looking for houses, for jobs, working, doing the groceries, eating, sleeping, etc. Both of us working full-time (Emma even for 42.5 hours a week) there's not that much of free time left. I even asked myself at one stage if life here really was that much different from Holland, and if we really were happier here. In Holland we were pretty happy as it was, and we were living in a nice quiet and green street.

The NZ-penny is starting to drop though. Emma has a blast at work and I myself am starting to enjoy myself too. The stress of looking for a job has started to fade away and the next few months we can just relax and enjoy ourselves here in our rented house near the river. Christchurch itself is growing on us and it is starting to become our home.

As everything is slowly falling into place now, we can allow ourselves to go on a long weekend too. We will be going to the west coast, Emma hasn't been there yet, and for me it has been 10 years ago. So we will have lots of fun I think. Let's hope it doesn't rain all the time, because the west coast is famous for its wet weather :-)