[alan&moyra]

Hi Amanda

Welcome, we did sort of the same thing as you, we came we saw we liked we moved ...........

But we only came for 4 days on our honeymoon and that made our minds up even is such a short time.

We decided on Christchurch, mainly because my wife had a job offer here, we booked a hotel for 2 weeks and managed to find decent rental housing, and nursery care for our daughter in that time. I even managed to get a job 3 weeks after arriving.

Hard to say the bset way of spending your look see trip, I would just cover as much as you can and gather as much info as possible, this place is great but you cant beat the gut feeling you have yourself.

PS
be wary of the advisors, they will get no special treatment from NZIS and they (NZIS) list the costs on their web site, so anything over and above is the profit for the consultants.
We did out own forms, yes they are a pain and lengthy but using sites like this you can get most of your questions answered.

Good luck

Alan