Batty

That's true - to a certain extent. There are lots of things that I find good here that I also found in Ireland but not for the last 10 years or so. I was out of step slightly with the 'new' Ireland (probably because I'd been away for most of its development) so I'm much more comfortable here. And yes, 3 hours talking about houses, gardens and/or woodburners would be a bit much I'm at a loss as to how you'd keep THAT conversation going Now, if you wanted to talk about making curtains??????? Looking intently at the material isn't going to do it methinks

sky

Interesting read .. I suppose folk come here for dif reasons, I think I was in a state of shock for about a year. You def have to be adaptable to get by here and tough I think

Lenny the Lion

Good to see you back Sky.........I used to think you was a right old whinger when I was back in the UK but I think differently now. Mind you, you was a bit hard on us screws

sky

Awww I wasn't trying to be, honestly, I just was telling you the truth (my truth of course) I honestly don't want to see folk struggle like we did, but now we're coming out the other side I'm thinking for us it may have been worth the trauma ... fingers crossed

Batty

Hiya Sky Nice to see you and I'm looking forward to seeing the pics Good luck.

K9s

Sky I hated the posts you done when I was back in the UK but now I am here I can understand why you said what you said

K9

livewire

It's lovely to see you guys starting to understand where Sky was coming from .

Quite a few people have tried to post about the downsides of NZ life and have often been dismissed as doom and gloom merchants, or that they're just being negative.

I know it's not easy to read the bad news when your gearing yourself up for the most important move of your life, but people mostly do try to be as honest and informative as they can.

If you stick it out it comes right in the end, might take a year or two to get established and settled but it's worth it

Lenny the Lion

3 months not enough then

livewire

lol! ....well....considering we found out we'd made a mistake sometime between getting off the plane and arriving at the hotel and we would've turned round and gone back at the drop of a hat....3 months seems like a decent amount of time in comparison.

The other half was looking round for another job before the jet lag had worn off. If he hadn't found one we were going to return after 6 months (were going to stay for the NZ summer and a bit of grockling ) because:

1. his first job was so cr@p
2. we couldn't have made ends meet in Auckland

He just got lucky that he found one in NZ inside a few months. It's so important to get the job right, if you haven't got that it's really hard making a go of it; how long you last for really can depend on what resources you have to hand more than anything else.

RodandEm

damn, well if i wasn't pannicking a bit yesterday about whether we are making the right move after reading most of this thread i'm even worse !!!

i have no job skills as it were, but emma is a primary school teacher. so we were hoping on that seeing us through the low wages...

must continue doing research but i'm getting a bad feeling about all this and thats before we've even applied !!!

thing is i've waited years for a move like this, and seriously would be lost if we decided against it because it has been on the horizon for so long.

Spacecake799

I no what you mean about reading negative things. I'm scared every day, what started as a fun idea has really snowballed. We can't apply for PR without a job offer and my husbands microsoft exams are'nt recognised by NZQA so were just taking the plunge, selling our house and arriving. Lifes to short and you can always return but its got to be worth a go on the off chance everything goes great.