Easter Weekend

It's very strange getting used to the seasons here. No more chicks and daffodils at Easter - instead the beginning of Autumn with a definite chill in the air and the trees beginning to turn red and gold. Although it's nice to be able to pig out on Easter Eggs without worrying that you need to be in a bikini in 3 months time!!

There is even a smattering of snow on the distant mountains - a good sign for a good ski season to come.

This Easter weekend we were due to visit the West Coast - staying over in Punakaika near Pancake Rocks. However, we ended up at the vets on Saturday morning as Summer had hurt her claw and was limping and in pain. Sooo, we couldn't leave as early as we needed and ended up staying at home over Easter.

However, we did go for a drive on Sunday - we headed west out of Christchurch towards the mountains and after a few random turns ended up in the village of Lake Coleridge. What a find! It was like we had driven to Austria. In just 1hr 15 mins!

We zipped down a gravel track and arrived at a remote area of the lakeside. Summer enjoyed chasing sticks into the clear, cold lake and we just sat and listened to the deafening silence.



It's moments like this that we love in NZ - after the usual schedule of work and life it takes just a short drive to remind ourselves of why we made the huge decision to come here.

We now have Permanent Residency in NZ!!

One week after submitting our ITA we received a letter from the NZ Immigration Service confirming that we are being granted Permanent Residency.

That means that we can stay in NZ indefinitely and can leave and return to the country as residents. This is what we have been aiming for since June 2004. All in all, from submitting our initial Expression of Interest in late July, to being selected from the Pool in August and receiving our lovely PR stickers in our passports took just 8 months.

That's it, all done and dusted. If we want to go for citizenship we need to live here for 5 years before applying. We think it would be neat to have two passports as we can go for dual nationality and keep our British passports!