Hello from the land of the long white cloud!

It’s hard to believe that it is more than a month since we left Gosport and the RN and Army behind. Si and I went to see all the relatives all over the country for a rather emotional Christmas and New Year before flying out over a week ago to LA for a few days. On Tuesday we will have been here a week!

It’s a strange place, familiar but not, it seems to be a mixture of Englishness with similar housing/shops like Oz. On driving from the airport at 7am local, you get the feeling that it’s a leafy suburban area, with lots of bungalow type houses, hardly any traffic and the smell of clean air. I had to ask Simon what the funny smell was once we walked out the airport into the Canterbury air – “fresh air” he replied!

We are currently accommodated within the inner city whilst I undertake my sports training course, courtesy of pusser. It’s a ten minute walk into the city, not quite a city by UK standards, more like a town with sprawling outskirts. Within a ten minute drive, we are over the hills into the Lyttelton area, with a massive natural harbour and windey roads, with blink and you miss it towns. Further south, out to where Simon will be starting work with the Kiwi army is masses of farm land, with vineyards and empty spaces. Go north east and you then hit the deserted beaches, with splatterings of people out surfing in the sea.

Surprisingly, we feel rather settled in such a short time. But I’m sure this will change slightly once we both start work and the British wages stop. The Kiwi’s are an incredibly friendly bunch. They say hello when walking down the street, offer advice and are more than happy to help. Setting up a bank account was painless compared to Britain and rather refreshing. I’ve never seen as much people playing sport. Whether mountain biking on some of the mountain tracks whilst we are driving around, to spotting at least 4 cricket teams yesterday playing on the local parks around here. Got to say it but the Kiwi’s seem to be sport mad.

We now have a car, a 4WD beast, which we would never have considered buying in the UK or probably could not afford to run. Here they are ten a penny. The car dealer was actually friendly, seeing as normally they are just above estate agents on the food chain! Offered to let us take the car home for the night before we bought it to try it out – no deposit paid, no contact details given. Do not think this would have happened in the UK!

So it’s still early day’s yet. The TV is crap, in a week I don’t think I’ve watched anything yet. Only Sky news for the Brit news, Si is happy as all the premiership football matches are shown on a Sunday. I miss British radio though, for those who worked with me know how much I hate commercial radio. Cannot wait until we get our house and get broadband, so we can catch up with R1 & R2! But hey, we did not move out here to live indoors all the time

So below are a mixture of some pics that we have taken over the last few days, so that you all back in the UK can get a feel of how things are over here.

Take care all.

Lots of love Tracey & Simon