The Old Introduce Yourself - Now Closed

:) Hello Everyone,
after secretly indulging in the priceless info on the forum for months now, I finally feel worthy of having enough to say /offer and joining in!

I am a 38 year old teacher from Billingham, Teesside - married to Deb for 12 years with two children - Dan (16) and Caitlin (10).
We have friends in Wellington who moved to NZ from Singapore about a year ago.

At first, we were just going to visit for a 3 week holiday, but the more we thought about it, researched, listened to the tales of travellers and residents etc., we decided to 'just go for it!'. The reactions I get when I tell people this are highly amusing - we're either brilliantly mad, brave or lucky b#~!**$! No-one's said we're stupid yet (except us on occassion!).

Anyway, in July of last year we began the quest, submitting our EOI at the end of August 2005. We were selected from the pool with 135 points on the 14th of Sept' and invited to apply for Permanent Residency.

The 'fun' duly started, with EOI Registration (?108), Residence Application Fee / Skilled Migrant Category (?585), Police Checks (?20), Medicals (?685), NZ Teachers Council Application Fee (?41), NZ Qualifications Authority (?173 + ?20 for University certified transcript), postage so far (?45) (Running Total = ?1632). Still to come Migrant Levies (?450 - hopefully!) and the cost of getting us and all our worldly goods to NZ. God I hope we're accepted. On the other hand, I'd have only spent it on Beer and watching Sunderland!

Our Application was received by NZIS on the 16th of January 2006. They duly thanked us and said there was a four month waiting list for those without job offers for a case worker to go through our application.

This time has been spent researching and job hunting via friends, books, magazines, TV and the Internet.

Low and behold, today - 3 months and 5 days on I received a call from London from our caseworker to arrange an interview. (Friday May 19th - 9.00am). Now it seems really real. I hope they've got 5 hours to spend in order for me to tell them everything I've learnt about the country, it's people, schools, residential areas, salaries, geography, wildlife, jobs, recreation, wines and beers etc etc. I'm just bursting to get it out of my system and impress them enough to accept us!

So, in a nutshell that's us. Loads more to say / contribute - but I reckon by now most of you will have had enough. So, thanks again for all the advice and the warmth the comarardery of this forum brings with it.

Belly & Family.
;D 8-) ::) ;)

Why'd ya wait so long to introduce yourself Belly! lol

In any case, you are very welcome to the forum and we hope you have lots more to contribute. Congrats on getting this far by the way - sounds like you're chomping at the bit to get here and live the life!

You've made a good choice and I hope we can offer you some helpful advice now you've plucked up the courage to make yourself known :icon_wink:

Looking forward to more postings from you :icon_biggrin:

Welcome to the M2NZ family of Kiwi wannabes and fledglings, Belly. It sounds like you'll be there before you know it. Best of luck.

Hi Belly, :006:

Let me just add my warm welcome. It's good that you've been enjoying the forum and, no doubt, you will also have a lot to contribute now as a valued member.

I was born in Billingham in the days when it came under County Durham. Brings back a few memories hearing the name again.

Good luck to you in your quest for a new life down under.

Hi,
Thought I'd join in the forum, myself and my family are planning on going to NZ around August, our EOI has been submitted, I have a job offer with Auckland District Health Board.

This site has been helpful, got loads of info, although at the mo I'm going nuts because Ican't get my head round the whole school thing!! I've got an idea of where we want to go but its just knowing that the schools are good, all three of my children will be in different schools (very helpful!!!!!!!!)

anyway droned on enough for now,

loadsa luv and good luck to all who are going XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Welcome to the site, Babycatcher. Now it's your turn to tell how you got your user name - midwifing, perhaps? Tot juggling? Pablum-smuggling sting operations?

Hi Babycatcher, :006:

you sound almost sorted. Have you already registered your kids at schools or are you still looking?
Either way, this link may help you out: -

www.tki.org.nz/e/schools/

It allows you to search for schools in different areas. They are initially graded by a decile rating 1 - 10. 10 being the best.

I hope this is useful.

Belly :icon_biggrin:

OK here goes, the name... yes I'm a midwife or madwife depending on who you talk to!.

I may sound sorted but really I'm not, thanks for link I will have a look. I haven't registered the kids at schools yet coz although we've got an idea of where we want to live until we get out there and have a look we can't be sure. My boys want us to get a place with land so they can have a motorcross track in the backgarden, oh and a pool, and a horse, they don't want much!!
We are going to NZ 'blind' having never been there, some people think we're completely mad but most think we're very lucky, I'd go with the first one though!

We've had a quote for medicals, ?365 each adult and ?150 for the kids, but I think I'll phone around.

We've had a quote from PSS on moving, that was about 3,500 which we didn't think was bad. But we've got to sort out the cat too.

I think my heads going to explode now!!!!!

Hi Babycatcher,

Have you looked on the Master Website which is a sticky on the Making the Move category? There's quite a few education-related links on there, which may be of help.

Hehe MB would love to live next door to you with a motorcross track. I'm sure she'd love to explain her passion for motorised transports

Welcome to the forum Babycatcher, and indeed Belly (good luck next season with your promotion quest btw) I'm Steve, the resident wind-up merchant in case you haven't noticed.