British Expats - Numpty's finally update

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Numpty's finally update

Apologizes first, that this update has taken so long to post. I got it already to post yesterday then BE went down for us over here. We have been here a whole days and life has been a complete whirl…..wonderful and exciting but still a tad mental.

The flight wasn’t actually too bad via LA. After the negative posts about the holding pen and immigration in LA we were dreading it but it was fine and before we knew it we were back on the flight, ready to watch the array of 420 hours of entertainment including 80 movies. Bearing in mind my last few flights had been via Ryanair, the seating in economy felt luxurious with all the leg room. I think Air New Zealand are brill. We didn’t have to pay for anything which in my book always makes me happy!

We landed at 7am and collecting bags and going through customs was a breeze. They are really serious about the possible biohazards coming into the country and there were security with sniffer dogs all over the place. I quickly chucked the lovely red apples from the LA stopover in the bin. Our bags then had to go through xray checks again. I was a tad concerned about the extra fags, tobacco and tea bags in the suitcases but no worries. We walked out of the airport to sunshine and light and it felt so good although we were completely knackered.

We had hell of a palaver getting the puggies, but no-one’s fault really. We had to wait until 8.40am to be picked up by our hire car company which was about a 15min drive away. We used A2B and they were great. The car is a big old thing but drives lovely and only $32 a day. By the time we got the car and returned to the airport, customs were getting concerned that we hadn’t picked the dogs up and were ringing around. We paid one desk $78, then somewhere else off the airport site, then back to the cargo centre to another desk and pay $34, then a bit of a wait to pick the pugs up. They were fine but very confused and we finally got onto the road to our new life about 11am. Make sure you have lots of water for them and something to put it in!

The drive south (Pacific Highway) was gorgeous. Having done lots of research on sim cards etc, we knew that we wanted to purchase 2 degree cards (9cents to text international) but everywhere we stopped along the way was sold out. We finally got them in Whakatane which is where we have come to live. The cards are $2 which is then credited and we purchased $50 top ups each. Easy peasy. Too tired to use them like, but at least it was sorted.

We stopped at a beach (not far from Am loolah’s area) and just couldn’t resist getting the puggies out to run. OMG…….a beautiful stretch of beach with white sand. As the puggies chased away all the cute birds on the beach, we sat on the sand and tried to take it all in. It was stunning. By this time it was about 3pm and there wasn’t a soul in site. The whole beach was ours.

We stopped at some shops not far from the hospital and saw a Pack n Save (NZ speak is Peck n Save). I’ve heard someone say it 4 times now and I still don’t recognize what they are saying. The lingo is gonna take me longer to get my head around than OH or DD, who just kill themselves laughing when I don’t understand. Anyway that was the least of my concerns that night. We popped into the supermarket which can only be described as a downtown area of Whakatane. Called the Kopeo. The name is actually much longer that this but its all I can pronounce at the moment. Not knowing Whakkers we thought this was the hub of the town and there were loads of people with no shoes on in the store. Kids and adults, that is. Some were wearing only white socks which must be because they get cold feet or something, and I would imagine that they just end up chucking the socks away, coz they ain’t ever gonna be white again! A bit later, just before the shop closed, OH we had to pop back to the shop and there were folk getting out of their cars with Pj’s on and going into the store. No slippers…obviously.
Later that night as we fell into bed, I said to hubby that the drive down had been wonderful but that I wasn’t sure about Whakatane itself. It seemed a bit limited on the shop front and in all a bit on the scruffy side. He agreed and we fell asleep for 12 hours.

The next day we had a pre-arranged appointment at the Bank and to our complete relief found the rest of the town. Phew! The migrant banking advisor was wonderful (Yorkshire lass been here 8 years) and before we knew it we had Eftpos cards and the rest to all come in the post. When I went up to the counter with my new eftpos card, the teller said “Did she give you a peg”? Oh ******* hell….here we go again…after she repeated herself a third time, I knew I was never gonna get what she was asking me. She then pointed to a piggybank…”Oh a pig” I said…extremely relieved that that particular situation was over. She was so lovely and welcoming and seemed genuinely delighted that we had picked her town to live in. She then started talking about a wush list…..but I soon picked up she was talking about a wishlist…phew

More later…..incidentally we have purchased a dongle (Numptyhead laughs in the face of technology!) so in order to save on download stuff I write offline then post. When we have our proper rental place we will get full broadband.

Since I wrote this yesterday, we have arranged a house rental overlooking the sea and we have just bought an Izuzu Bighorn. Biggest bloody thing in the world but OH has fallen in love. We move into the house on the 27th Nov. We are so very happy xx