Hello all... for those of you who are not familiar here's a recap:

My wife is a Primary School Teacher... we've wanted to move to New Zealand since coming here in 2005 on our honeymoon... we've had two kids in that time... despite applying for loads of teaching positions in NZ from the UK, my wife was passed over every time for someone already in NZ... so, she resigned... we put our house on the market (still not sold)... sold everything that wasn't going with us... put everything else in to storage... I handed over control of my business to my business partner in the UK... and all four of us jumped on a plane to NZ with a view to her finding a job during the 6 month VISA that us UK visitors get.

We landed in Auckland around September 15th, we bought a car and set off south... staying in a range of holiday parks and hotels, then with friends for a week. Then we set off again, we bought a tent and continued the tour of holiday parks... all the time we've been travelling south and my wife has attended a number of interviews and applied for somewhere over 40 jobs in total!

The whole thing started to get us down, with her continuing to be passed over for "local" people and the doubts as to whether it would ever "work" for us, had well and truly started to embed themselves in our minds... add to that the fact that despite my UK salary, NZ is far more expensive (in terms of general living costs) than we ever expected and the future was looking dim to say the least.

Then, shortly after landing on the South Island, my wife was called back to the North Island for two interviews... so she left me and the boys in the house we rented for four weeks just outside of Havelock (we got tired of travelling around so much and craved a "base" with solid walls!)... and I'm chuffed to announce that she landed the job at the first interview she went to!

The job starts in the new term after xmas... so now starts the mad rush to get everything in to place... we need to find a place to rent (we'd rather rent for the first 12 months rather than commit to buying something so soon) in/near Masterton, but have to choose an area relevant to the catchment area of the school we may like the boys to go to... but have no knowledge of any of the schools....

Other friends a little north of Masterton have offered to put us up for a short while whilst we try to find somewhere to rent.... but there actually appears to be very few rental properties available so god knows how long that will take!

We've re-submitted the EOI with the job offer detailed and am pleased to say that this was "selected" on Wednesday... so we're now waiting for the ITA to land, but in the meantime NZ Immigration have advised us that they could potentially turn a work permit application around within as little as 10 days, so she's off to have her medicals done tomorrow (actually, looking at the time, it's today now) so we can then get the work permit applied for and once granted (presumably much quicker than the Skilled Migrant Residency application) we can then ship our UK belongings across here.

In the meantime, there's the very real prospect that we could either be back in the tent at christmas or, may well have found a house to rent, but not actually have anything to furnish it with other than our camping stuff... I reckon come-what-may it's going to be a very "different" christmas this year!

All in all things are progressing but we still feel there's a mountain to climb!

Fingers crossed everything will continue to progress and we'll get there in the end!

Wow what an inspirational story, and how brave are you all, such a big gamble but it look like it could all work out.

Wish your wife all the best for the meds and forth-coming job, please keep us updated as to your progress.
Best regards

Congrats. Sounds like things are coming together.

Nice uplifting thread for a change, everything keeps going well for you and wishing you all the best in your new life

That's great news - let us know how you get on with finding a rental and Christmas! At least if you still have to camp the weather will be nice!

I am very , very pleased to read this from you.
Let's hope it is the end of the search and you now have a place to be settled in.
Hope you and your family having a lovely Christmas

Thanks! She had the meds done today and has to go back to collect them in a week... the doc suggested he didn't think she'd have anything to worry about so all will be well.

Also, after getting lost in the post at the first attempt, the wife's job offer details arrived today from the school so she'll be sending back the acceptance form and all requested ID tomorrow and then in theory it won't be too long at all before we can really get the ball moving in terms of her Work Permit whilst the EOI/ITA is simmering away in the background.

Ha... being in a tent at Christmas would be different sure, but as you suggest, at least the weather could well be on our side... still... we're really hoping we'll pull something out of the bag in terms of a house etc and have something remotely home-like at christmas... even if that means finding a holiday rental for the christmas period... although I suspect we may have left it a little too late to find something decent (and at a reasonable price) in that respect. Time will tell!

Here's hoping! I emailed one of the schools in the area that (from reading stuff online etc) we liked the look of... I wanted to check on catchment areas and so on, so we have a better idea where to look for property etc... the Principal has replied very positively and invited us to the school to discuss things further once we arrive in the area later this month.

That's really great as it's another step in the right direction but it's concerning us at the moment that there actually seems to be very little in terms of rental properties in/around the Masterton area whilst the ones that are available are possibly unlikely to be within that specific school catchment area.

I've tried all the more obvious routes of looking for a rental property (realestate.co.nz, trademe.co.nz and so on) but if anybody has any further suggestions they'd be greatly received!

Really pleased it's all coming together for you. Congratulations to your wife's on landing the job. Only think I would suggest re rentals is to go and visit the real estate offices locally in person, sometimes the agents know of likely places that are up and coming or know of someone who might be able to help out - NZ really seems to be a place where little is achieved unless done in person and it's who you know not what you know. Face to face contact always seems to work best.

Have you tried finding out the local paper for MAsterton? Good luck

fab news and really brave thing to do with children!! very best wishes 2 you!

Hi there.. we did similar!! We submitted our ITA with medicals etc on Sep 2nd and flew out to NZ the next day and arrived on 6mth tourist visas with 2 under 2s and got a campervan. We drove around looking for where we fancied and after just a couple of weeks found Mt Maunganui in BOP. Rented a furnished batch and contacted teaching agencies. Hubby landed a job at local high school but similar to you, to start in new school yr so we had to eek out our limited funds, ha ha. Anyway, we had our residency by Dec 4th and we are loving life here!! Sometimes u just gotta go for it!!!

I love reading these...gives us all a bit of hope So how is hubby finding the teaching job?

Ha - I am the hubby.... it's the wife who's the teacher

She's settling in ok... plenty of differences (to teaching in the UK) which are interesting and exciting etc, but plenty too which are frustrating etc.. however that was always going to be the case!

I've not been back to this thread for a while so perhaps I should update it to say that shortly after posting about finding a rental, through pure word of mouth we found out about a house that was just about to be advertised to let.... we went to look at it the day after and immediately told them we'd have it.

It's a lovely old house (although will probably cold in the winter) set on 5 acres of land which is simply... erm... "acres" of land for our two young kids to run around in.

We're still having a bit of a bumpy road in terms of settling in and whether we're stopping here ling term or going back to the UK, but so far as the house and the immediate living environment is concerned, we're almost as happy as we can be!

Thanks for the update thedtb, I know you're the hubby, I was actually asking Victoria-Wayne
But whilst you're on, what differences does your wife find then, good and bad ?