Christchurch

My thoughts are with everyone in Christchurch and the surrounding area at the moment. It doesn't seem fair as they are only just recovering from the last earthquake. It is heartlifting to read the stories of people reaching out to others either through rescue attempts or by sharing their homes.

My family have asked if it has changed my mind about wanting to go and the answer is no - there are risks to living anywhere. I lived in London when 7/7 happened and know that you just get on with life as best you can after such terrible events. I am not sure whether it has affected my other half's view as I think he is unsure about the move anyway. We are going to a emigration exhibition in London in a week or so and have decided that we would save the discussion and hopefully decision until after then. So it's fingers crossed for me

the photo

The photo above is of the road to Paradise from Queenstown taken when we were on holiday in New Zealand in 2005. If you look closely in the trees on the left you will see a cow! The cow was walking in the road so we had to go very slowly then it decided to hide in the trees while we drove past.

pros and cons

I have been thinking about the pros and cons of making the move to New Zealand and thought it would be helpful to write it down. I imagine as we move through this process I will have more to add.

Pros:

• better quality of life
• get to spend more time together as a family than we do now
• shorter commute to work
• get to spend more time outside
• better childhood for the kids
• less consumerist society
• an adventure

Cons:

• will miss seeing family and friends - in particular the children not seeing their grandparents and cousins as often as they do now
• potentially higher cost of living
• cost of getting out there (= no savings left)
• potentially negative impact of careers

telling the folks

We told our parents of our tentative plans at the weekend which went better than expected. I was expecting them to be unhappy particularly as it would mean not seeing their grandchildren every week but they were actually quite supportive. For my parents it wasn't the first time I have mentioned wanting to emigrate and they had considered it back when I was little. What the process did do was make me think about why I want to do this. I am not unhappy as such with my life - have a fantastic hubby, two lovely kids, live in a 5 bed detached house in a small town, am surrounded by my family who help out lots. But (there always has to be a but) I do wonder if I could be happier as most days I feel like I am just marking time rather than really living. I know that is in part to the monotony of having small children and I do miss the challenges of my job.

In many ways things wouldn't be much different in New Zealand and probably would be harder with not having family nearby to help out but I think I would feel happier in myself. I least want to give it a try and see how it feels. I know I would miss everyone and I do worry about the impact on the children moving away from all that they know. It is just such an emotional rollercoaster at the moment - one minute I am convinced it is the best thing to do and then the next I come crashing down. Perhaps I will feel better about it when we get the process started and submit the EOI. Need to sort passports out for the little ones though before I can do that.

planning

I have been spending rather too much time on the internet researching all things NZ. So far I have:

• checked our points allocation with immigration - enough for automatic selection :)
• looked at salaries and worked out our cost of living out there - should make enough to cover expenses and a little bit for extras :)
• booked tickets for a immigration event in London in a few weeks
• looked into different areas - thinking Wellington at the moment
• done lots of reading especially blogs of people who have already done it

Trying to resist the lure of the internet today as have other things to do - must get on with life now as opposed to dreaming about the life that could be

start of the journey....

well this could be the start of something... we have decided to look into emigrating to New Zealand. I plan to use this blog to document the ups and downs of the process so hopefully we can look back on it if/when we get out there.

Why are we thinking of emigrating? I suppose it's because that while we are happy and comfortable in our life in the UK we feel we could be enjoying life more. We are a fairly typical family - 2 children little girl (3 years) and a baby boy (3 months), modern estate house in a small town in the Midlands, husband works in IT and I am currently a 'stay-at-home' Mum. We used to live in London but moved up here to be close to family when we started our own little family but we don't really feel 'at home' here. I feel like we are always waiting for something to happen something that will improve the status quo.

I know my husband isn't happy in his job and he has a fairly hellish commute so we don't get a great deal of time to spend as a family. I can't see a way back to work for me that doesn't involve some serious childcare choices - I know that would be true in NZ too but hopefully wouldn't need to travel as far for a good job. So maybe moving to NZ would give us more time as a family, a better work/home balance and a better quality of life.

Since making the decision to look into it at the weekend I have been hitting the internet sites and can spend hours on the expat forums, looking at NZ property and job searching. The thought of going out there has me more excited and energised than I have been for a long time - similar to the excitement I felt when I found out I was pregnant. We are planning to go to a Australia/New Zealand emigration exhibition in a few weeks and will make a decision then.