1. Bring with you your US driver's license. If it has an issue date greater than two years ago, great. If not, go to the Sec. of State office and ask for a driving record. It costs $7 and will give a 4 year history of your driving. This is important. This gets you out of a test!! I read this on a blog somewhere before leaving (thank you said blogger wherever you are!) and am so glad we did it. From my understanding if you can prove you've had a license for more than two years you can get a NZ driver's license within 1 year of arrival, without any testing. They have an agreement with the US. This worked for me. The tricky bit was I had asked to renew my driver's license early in the States. It was set to expire later this year. Obviously I couldn't renew in person and I did NOT want to lose my beloved F-endorsement and ever, ever have to take that blasted test again. So, I got a new license a few months early. Just looking at it the NZ officials thought I had only had a license since April. I assured them I'd had a license much longer but the Sec. of State form convinced them. If your Sec. of State could stamp it that'd be great, because they kept asking me if mine was an original copy. It was, although it looked like any computer printout.
2. I wish I'd brought more pens, clothespins, envelopes, small office items (glue sticks, hole puncher), bandaids, Tylenol, Motrin, small tools, Tupperware, books, and shower gel. These items are mostly easy to replace but spendy. I could have pretty easily filled cracks in suitcases with many of them and not have noticed it weight wise. Nothing major, almost all replaced already. And two amazing packages from home helped stock us back up, too! Thank you!!
3. I wish I'd brought less clothes, cables, and hmm. We were pretty scared of buying new clothes/shoes in NZ because of the high prices reputation. I've been encouraged after scouring a few op shops (secondhand stores). Adult clothing is very similar in price secondhand to the States secondhand. Children's clothing seems decent secondhand. One thing I will very much miss is the Mom 2 Mom sales in the States. They are such a blessing for getting a children's wardrobe at a great price in a morning! Haven't discovered the equivalent of that yet in NZ but hope to! Electronics also seem to be reasonable and easily accessible here. A few cables are good, but no reason to go overboard.
4. Driving is an adjustment on the left but nothing to stress out about. There are many markings at intersections with sweet little arrows pointing which way to go. Having been exposed to it before definitely helped. Riding with someone else driving for awhile helped as well. Practicing my blinker when no one was looking - big help.
5. Round-a-bouts are fun. Double round-a-bouts make my brain hurt.
6. Cell phone coverage is cheap as. Really better than I could have imagined. My smartphone is $19/mo with no contract through 2 Degrees. That seems great to me. They even have $9 plans.
7. Internet is better than we expected yet slow. It is an adjustment. We're grateful to have it. It is also reasonable for us, around $65/mo. NZ two years ago was known for terrible Internet. I'm not sure what the reputation is now.
8. Trying to grocery shop by comparing prices is maddening. I'm still working on this one. The lead grocery for savings Pak n' Save, shares a few sale prices but the rest are to be found in store. The prices change dramatically week to week, which is a huge adjustment for me. I had a pretty good idea of prices at all the stores I shopped in the States and they would only change with sale ads for the most part. Very different here. I think Pak n' Save is the king of confusing groceries. Ai yi yi. One week I walked in to "Sale Bananas $.89/kg!" Sweet, I got quite a few to freeze but didn't go overboard. One or two weeks later, "Sale Bananas $2.49/kg!" What!?! Silly prices make my head spin!
9. Meat pies and savouries are very common and very good. Buying a muffin at a bakery will likely be $2-$3 a piece. Muffins or flaky pies often have cheese or meat/veges in them and are called savouries. Yum-o to this baking fan!
10. Tomatoes are not easy to grow down here by Invercargill because of not enough heat units. Therefore they are expensive. Many people have tunnel houses (greenhouses) and grow them. Neat! Many people also seem to have raised garden beds. I do not know why. My guess is many things are smaller down here (housing, yards, vehicles) and equipment is expensive ($1000 tiller)? Jonathan's not too keen on raised beds but we're going to give it a shot. At least they'll look cute :). And I'm sure we'll never have weeds...
11. Chickens are called chooks.
12. Pumpkins are not orange on the outside, rather white.
13. Pumpkins are often eaten as a vege, roasted. Vegetables are often referred to as veges. Pumpkin seems very popular (it is fall here...). I'm not sure if pumpkin is in baked goods? I had a strange look the other day when I mentioned having it in bread commonly in the States.
14. Swedes are rutabagas - very popular. Silver Beet is something like swiss chard. Kumara is sweet potatoes. Capsacums are peppers. Yams are really small bumpy yam like things. Kiwifruit are kiwi. Beetroot is red beets. Leeks are massive - maybe I never noticed this in the States but here they are sold looking like a small baseball bat. All of these are very popular produce.
15. Sweet as, cheap as, cute as, easy as, good as gold, Bob's your uncle, good on ya....Kiwis sure seem to like these fun sayings!
16. In the alphabet Z really is pronounced "Zed." I subconsciously did not believe my husband about this for the last couple years until shortly before we moved here. I thought he was just having fun teaching our boys zed in the alphabet to remind them of New Zealand. Sigh, I'm so ignorant and scatterbrained sometimes - yikes! He was serious. I totally missed the bus on that one.
17. Opening a bank account here is not necessarily simple if you are from the States. The hardest part for us was they all insisted on having mail in our name before opening an account. And it had to be mail from a business or government office. Having a visa stamp meant zilch. We finally were able to open an account after Jonathan's boss called in to verify his address and employment. The tax ID office on the other hand (IRD number - you have to have one if working) was moooooore than happy to give Jonathan a number without proof of address. Go figure.
18. Exchange a little money in the airport so you have some to get you by until figuring out which bank has the best rate of exchange. We rushed through, didn't do this, and tried to get by on $7 in NZ coins I last minute had stuffed in my pocket before leaving the States from our last time here. That proved a little stressful as not everywhere accepts a credit/debit card. Unnecessary stress. Oops!!
19. First week set-up stuff takes way longer than expected. Pack food, plan for the long haul. The kids and I waited 3 hours one day and 1.5 hours the next on Jonathan setting up bank accounts. Peanut butter and nutella were are friends.
20. New Zealand has nutella. Just in case anyone was concerned.
21. For rural folk. It's fairly common to see big water tanks next to houses. If this is the case your tap water probably comes from it, and it is filled from roof run-off of rain. A filter is a good purchase. We were behind the eight ball on that one. Our gut flora is glorious I'm sure.
22. Basements and 2-story houses aren't very common from what we've seen.
23. People will ask you a lot if you're staying warm. Houses tend to shy on warmth if they are older without tight doors/insulation. Wood stoves are very common. There are techniques to learn for making these thrive. We're working hard at getting proficient on this one. 3am gets a wee bit chilly!!! Some stoves have coal or heat pumps. Ours doesn't. Tonight we're all sleeping in the living room while Jonathan is at a conference. He's the main fire guy!
24. Drying clothes outside or on a rack inside/outside is very common. Some folk have dryers, others not.
25. Dairy and tourism are the main industry from my understanding. Neither are cheap. Most dairy is dried and exported. I thought milk and yogurt would be super cheap when we came two years ago. Not so. One cool thing you can find in the store here is pasteurized, non-homogenized milk. A new friend from church gave us some. I thought that was neat and definitely tasted better than normal store milk. Just have to remember to shake it up ;) (or not and enjoy some killer oatmeal with that cream...mmmmm......).
26. Having a new phone number is embarrassingly hard to remember. As are bank account numbers and tax IRD numbers, etc. Keeping an arrival notebook really helped. Keeping stuff in two notebooks quickly caused CHAOS!
27. Cell phone numbers here can be different lengths. This caused me so much confusion and stress and consternation for about a week before I finally got over it and stopped trying to look it up just to make sure I wasn't missing something.
28. The brand "Kiwi Maps" are very good and would have been awesome to have upon arrival. I've seen them at a petrol station and a friend from church clued us in to pick them up at a paper store like Warehouse Stationary.
29. Post offices are not in every town. I'm still trying to figure out where our closest one is to get some stamps to mail stuff to the States. They're not called post offices either, but Post Shops or something like that. And you can do other things at them besides get your mail! Like getting a tax IRD number. Seems quite efficient. Now if only I could find ours.
30. Pharmacies are often called Chemists.
Many thanks to Andrew Shupe, Ruth Vdb and the Curries for helping us figure some of this out!
Sounds like you are pros at being Kiwis now! I understand the raisegarden keeps the soil temp higher...a definite bonus down there. I'm sorry I didn' know how complicated so much of that could be! Maybe its better you didn't know or you, ay have chickened out on coming. :-) Enjoy your further discoveries.
ReplyDeleteRuth vdB
Ha Ruth! The furthest from pros - really just stumbling along hoping this might help someone. :) Thanks for clueing me in on raised beds. That makes sense now. Good to know!
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