Long overdue

Blog


So hello readers of the blog, 2 apologies. First sorry that it's been an age since the last blog. Secondly you're stuck with me, Dan, for the moment instead of Sarah's unique perspective on all things kiwi.

When we last blogged we were en route north to where we are now based. It's been a bit of a shock after living in a such a small community as Greymouth to find we are having to work harder and longer hours and as such have had less time to blog.

We are now in Tauranga which is on the east coast of the North Island and is the 6th largest city in New Zealand. (OK it's not huge in UK terms, a similar size population to Colchester) But 24 time bigger than Greymouth. We were put up in a self catering unit for 5 days by the hospital whilst we looked for a more permanent lodging.  The unit was about 20 mins drive to the area we had decided to live so this meant several days of traipsing around estate agents and houses/flats whilst having only the overfilled car and a run of ever more familiar coffee shops to go to between viewings. It was fairly exhausting but I did manage to fill a loyalty card to get free coffees!

Why did we look at so many you ask? Well as great as New Zealand is they have a lot to learn from the British about houses and heating. The vast majority are either cold, damp or both and the kiwi reaction is "put on a jumper." They literally do not have central heating anywhere and you are lucky to get a heat pump or a plug in heater. Being british and cold we set to find the one flat in NZ that is well insulated, dry and has a heater. And we found it. Part of a tower block by the beach of Mount Maunganui we found a flat that has shared walls on 5 of 6 directions as well as a gas heater and electric blankets. Actually its really nice and even has glimpses of the sea. Now I have mentioned that they have to learn from the brits about heating but Brits need to learn from Kiwis about rentals. Having seen this flat we decided then and there it was the one but were concerned we had less than 24 hours left at our temporary accommodation. If this was the UK the estate agent would now write to our employer, previous landlord, banks, grandparent, parents, cousins and past teachers and ask them fill pages of forms and pay them lots of money before we could move in. Not here...we had the keys and were inside within 1 and a half hours of seeing the place having done all the paperwork required. And thats it. No questioned asked.

Work is very different to greymouth. Sarah is working in an inpatient psychiatric unit with highlights so far of a patient escaping onto the roof on her first day and another setting fire to their bed and therefore necessitating evacuating all the patients a few days later. She has many stories but I think is finding it quite tough emotionally and might even be missing real medicine.

I on the other hand have joined a large Emergency Department which invariably has a 4 hour wait before most people are seen and have in that time, either left, fallen asleep or worse. It's not that bad really but round the clock shifts and many more weekends has reduced the time we have together.

We are getting stuck into a fairly new Church called Shoreline which has been great, lots of friendly people, and great bible teaching. All in all we are doing well. That's all for now Dan

Ps. Got a new camera so some pretty nice shots to follow!

Actually since writing this ( and before putting on the web) we went back to the UK for Matt and Lydia's wedding and saw many of you who are reading it. So most of this is old news and anyway Sarah appears to be writing again so worry not.. More blogs to come