We Are Migrating to New Zealand

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We Are Migrating To New Zealand

Well I’ve mentioned it a number of times here recently but my family is planning to go and live in New Zealand. I grew up and got my education in New Zealand, many of my family members live there including my parents and siblings and of course my daughter Sylvia was also born in NZ.

Whilst moving to NZ is something we have talked about for the past seven years, it wasn’t until January 2020 that we decided it was something we definitely wanted to do. We love living in the UK and there are some things in England that I love way more than I do in New Zealand.

In fact, the grass is not greener on the other side. The UK has it’s pros and cons and so does New Zealand. For example, food is way more expensive in New Zealand and so is the cost of housing and renting. The UK has a much better range of clothing and has better shops and supermarkets with much more variety. Both NZ and the UK have a good medical system but in NZ you pay for doctors visits, however some medications in the UK are subsidised.

New Zealand is warmer and has hotter weather, (which I don’t like) I love winter and autumn and I certainly don’t like the mosquitos in Summer. I prefer cold air and snow! However I personally like the New Zealand beaches better and the the beautiful places you can visit in NZ. There is good and bad to both countries and the two locations are worlds apart. Migrating to New Zealand is both exciting and scary all at the same time.

Living With Family in New Zealand

At the end of the day, the main reason John, Sylvia and I want to move to New Zealand is so we can live close to my parents. I’ve been in the UK almost 11 years and I’ve really missed my Mum and Dad as well as my brothers and sisters. In fact I don’t want to be apart from them for the rest of my life and we want Sylvia to grow up around family.

We do have some extended family members in the UK, however we don’t live close enough to one another to visit regular and with my chronic health conditions I really do need family support.

We are migrating to New Zealand in February and we will be living in Auckland with my parents. It’s going to be a big change but a good one and a great way to give my daughter the support she needs during her teenage years.

I’m looking forward to spending time with my Mum and cooking together when I am well enough! We are taking our Instant Pots with us that is for sure!

Preparing to Migrate to New Zealand

Preparing to move to New Zealand has not been easy. In fact, not long after we made the decision, the pandemic hit and we went into lock down. This made simple tasks such as getting passports, visas and preparing our dogs medically almost impossible.

Despite this we made lists of everything we needed to do and we have worked on it over the past 10 months. Casper has had all his injections and is ready for his pet passport. We got our passports, and police records, John underwent medical testing, we had covid tests and applied for a New Zealand residency visa.

All these tasks took time and effort and have been quite stressful and expensive, however we’ve done most of the paperwork. However due to lockdowns and quarantine rules John’s Visa won’t be completed for 13 months.

Moving to New Zealand During Quarantine

Whilst New Zealand has strict entry rules and quarantine rules in place, John is eligible to apply for a critical purpose visa, which is a temporary visa to enter New Zealand whilst we wait for his Residency to be processed.

We can only apply for the visa six to ten weeks before our flights so we have to wait until December to make this application. We have however booked our flights and had a quote for shipping our more precious belongings and items.

The most precious of all is Casper our dog who we will be migrating to New Zealand. he will be flying with Singapore Airlines in the pet courier services and will be quarantined in New Zealand for 10 days.

We fly with Emirates and once we arrive in New Zealand, we will be in quarantine for two weeks in a hotel of the governments choosing! We have to register for quarantine in two weeks time.

Working in New Zealand

Once we arrive in New Zealand, we will be transferring our blogging and media business over to New Zealand. We will set up and continue to blog, share recipes, share our life and fantastic crafts. I’ll have to rebuild networks and build new relationships in the NZ blogging world but it’s something I’m prepared to do to be able to live with my family.

We have a dream of one day building our own little space with a kitchen studio area for creating recipes in the Instant Pot and a dream to get a second Bichon dog one day. These are goals for our future.

Shipping Belongings to New Zealand

The last thing to do is to prepare and sort and decide what we will take with us to New Zealand and what we will leave behind. We had a quote from a shipping company and have been saving like crazy so we can take personal items, family photos, and our most precious things.

We will however be selling furniture, toys, our cooker and other household items. We have plenty of clothes to sell, toys and more. We are not taking bikes, or our bbq, or trampoline. In fact, we are selling almost 3/4 of the things we own however being in teir 3 lockdown is not going to make this an easy task.

I’d like to sell as much as I can so we can cover the cost of shipping the items we want to take. We are packing one box per day and are slowly working through the house.. It’s a mammoth task and not easy when I am so unwell but we are working towards our goals and we will get there eventually.

Angela Milnes