Not much to say

Hi Everybody,

I have a feeling I don't have much to say, but we'll see how we go. First of all here is a picture of this cool moth that was hanging around our living room. Sorry the picture is out of focus, it was taken with my phone:

I have sad news about the moth though, as it is actually dead now :( I haven't buried it or anything but I've thought about it. It's still pretty now though.

Secondly Darren and I went for a nice walk through the fields yesterday evening. And we saw lots of rabbits, and a whole lot of rabbit holes and took some pictures to remember the experience. One thing I've noticed that is different here is there are often tons and tons of jet streams in the sky, which is evidenced by these photos.






In the background of this one is our hotel. There were pictures of me and Darren, not just me but I don't look good in the ones he's in therefore they don't get published! Hehe.

Today we went and picked up the new car, it's still good. We got some seat covers with it too which I think are pretty cool, Darren thinks they're lame but that's ok. The important thing is they'll protect the seats so the car will still look pretty good when we come to sell it when we leave! The family we bought it from were really nice, and they had a couple of nice wee dogs. I think I'm going to miss having animal friends over here.

We also went shopping again today and there was this really cute wee market right in the middle of town. There's a big market here on Saturdays which I'll go to one week soon, but this was just a wee small one. With a few nice food stalls, and stalls that had huge arrays of cheeses, or sausages, or lollies or nuts. It was great! Darren doesn't love markets like I do though so he was very patient keeping me company while I checked it out.

Ok well I've managed to say something. Whether it was interesting or not who knows but there we go anyway!

Lots of love,
Mindy

New Car!

Hello Everyone!

Well we're getting there. We found a car to buy today which is great we're just going to pick it up and pay for it tomorrow. It was hawrd to know what to pay for something but I think we got a reasonable deal, and the car seems to run quite nicely and is in real good condition. It's a wee silver peugeot:



So that was a really positive move forward. Then we went to the bank to try and get some money to pay for it. What a stupid nightmare. The standard welcome to the bank letter informs you that you will receive your cards in the mail within 7 days but in the meantime if you want to withdraw money you show up with your sort code account number and passport and the staff will be happy to help. Well they may well have been happy to help but they certainly weren't going to give us any money. We each had multiple forms of id, our account details, our phone banking details plenty of money in the account. We sat patitently and waited for over an hour while they ran around. We finally got told we were just about to get the money when they finally came out and said they couldn't give it us. Actually stupidly first they said we can't give it to you with only one form of ID, so we gave them another then they still said no.

So we had to get the money out of visa which is extremely expensive because you have to pay a 5 pound conversion fee, and we had to do 8 transaction which is a lot of fees. Blah. Oh well it can't be helped.

Getting insurance on the other hand was real easy! Thank goodness!

Then after all that we went to robot wars. It was interesting, quite fun to watch but I don't think I'd need to go too often.

I can't wait to pick up the car tomorrow! I'll be able to drive myself to the supermarket! Woo hoo!

Ok lots of love to everyone!

Mindy

Cows and Swans

Ok another post from me!

At this stage Darren is doing so much better than me at writing blogs and uploading about 10,000 photos. The reason for this is he is hogging the computer. Soon our computer should arrive, though I’m definitely not holding my breathe as so far they’ve sent me one set of forms to fill out which I duely did and sent them back in the mail, then today they inform me they’ve received my forms (yay!) but there’s another bunch that will also need to be filled out. Joy. Anyway when that all gets sorted out we will eventually have a computer each! The way it should be.

Anyway if you are on Darren’s bebo friends list then definitely check out his page for more interesting tales and pictures. Unfortunately his page is private so you’ll have to convince him to add you as a friend if you’re not already on his list.

Ok I’ve wasted quite a bit of my blogging time talking about that rubbish. Today is my second day at work. It’s been good. Everyone is so nice and friendly and the work should be interesting. Challenging, but good. Plus they have a cool free drinks machine here (doesn’t quite beat the free coke and choccy biccies at Jade Christchurch but it’s still good) that has yummy hot chocolates. I haven’t tried anything else because I still don’t drink tea or coffee. I don’t think I ever will. Tea is alright. But coffee just doesn’t taste nice.

In rabbit hole news the rabbit hole is definitely just that, a rabbit hole. It’s not a fox hole as originally suspected (well I was hoping!) as there were rabbit dropping around it this morning. It’s funny how it gets smaller and bigger again.

Darren is looking at apartments for us to rent today. I hope he finds something good and not too dear. I also hope it doesn’t matter that we haven’t quite got our bank account sorted out yet. It would be so great to move in this weekend, or at least to know we were moving the weekend after. As I really want to head down to London one weekend very soon. We saw none of it as we passed through last time and there’s so much to see, let alone people to see, like Andrew, Sarah and Danielle. But I won’t book tickets until we know what’s happening with the house.

As soon as we get the house we can also start thinking about when to go over to Amsterdam and then go and visit Susannah in Lieden. So much exciting stuff coming up, all waiting for us to get a house! I’m actually excited about buying some mugs. Well just one. I mug for me to use at work. I’ve never ever bought a mug before, everyone has always just given me mugs. I’ve been given so many mugs, lovely ones, but it really does take away the excitement of getting to choose your own mug.

I went for a walk outside today at lunchtime because the weather was beautiful. I walked down to the lake, and looked out across at the building Darren was looking today at renting an apartment in. Here’s a photo of the lake and building I took with my phone camera:

And here's another picture of the lake with some swans in it, they are the tiny distant white dots.

The lake is a big man made lake, and the area of housing and businesses and shops around it is called lakeside. This is where the EWS office is, so if we rent in Lakeside then than would be fantastic as it would mean I could walk to work and we could get by with one car. The downside is it’s a pretty nice part of town to live in and therefore more expensive than other places. It’s not too bad compared to NZ rental prices but there’s the temptation to live somewhere cheaper and pocket more pounds. I think we’ll end up saving more by only running one car though, so that’s how I’ll justify it to myself.

To finish this post so I can go start looking at how other people's lives have been going on bebo etc here is a picture of the cows (bulls?) that are in the paddock next to the apartment. I think I'm right Kirsty, calling this one a paddock?



Lots of love,
Mindy

york

Hello Everyone!

Finally a chance for me to do some decent writing as there have been computer turn issues between me and Darren, mhere I graciously step back and let him have the computer since he can’t have it while I’m at work this week and he’ll therefore be quite bored and have not much to do.

Right now I’m sitting on a patch of grass outside the Jade office in York waiting for Darren to come pick me up. This could conceivably be a very long wait for two reasons:

1) I rang Darren to get him to come and he didn’t answer so I texted him (on a borrowed phone I no longer have access to)… so it could be some time before he even sees the message.

2) He may be lost as he is off exploring York and has no maps.

3) He may have found a shop that sells Do Who toys and this would therefore put me lower down on his priorities.

All this is ok because for the moment it’s not raining and it means I can write this! I’m just worried about work people from the office I’ve just left driving past and thinking I’m weird for sitting waiting outside and javing not got in touch with Darren proper;y. Oh well I’ll live.

So the flight and trip here was absolutely fine. I watched Shrek the 3rdw The Bridge to Tarabithia and Blades of Glory, as well as the entire season two of Extras. It was a reasonably stressful time through to get the train at Kings Cross with lots of lugging of very heavy luggage and gettting on and off the underground but it all went smoothly and a very tired Mindy and Darren checked into the hotel on Friday night at around 6pm.

The hotel was lovely. We splashed out and had a meal there, probably the most expensive meal I’ve ever had really at 14 pounds. And it was grilled chicken annd chips. But there was a lot of it, and they bought us free apetisers. I didn’;t want to look uncivilised by not eating it, even though it was prawns and they are the one thing I don’t normally eat. So I ate it and it wasn’t bad. It was actually kinda nice. They also bought us free bread and dipping oil with our main.

Saturday the first hiccup of the trip when we got a ride out to the airport to get our rental car but I didn’t have my credit card on me to pick it up. So after a bit of a wait we caught a taxi back to the hotel and got it and went back out again. Then we were back on track.

I think our first stop was Frenchgate mall which was a reasonably big mall. Though probably about the same as Northloands or Riccarton, with some bigger shops though, and all the main UK clothing shops etc, like Next and Topshop. And there was a Marks and Spencer across the road.

We then drove to my work to see where it was and drove around a housing area nearby called Lakeside. It’s a sort of posh area but we think we’ll try and get a place there anyway. The rent’s not too bad even when you do convert it to NZ dollars… which Darren does with everything. He’ll probably stop soon enough though. Ok Darren’s here to pick me up that didn’t take too long! So I’ll try and write again soon.

Love Mindy

Photos

Hi, here are some photos from along the way and also of our cottage, our home for the next two weeks :)

Darren at Auckland airport, already tired and only just started!

Ahh that's better, having some champagne in Air NZ business premier class.

The outside of our cottage, with Darren in the window.

Bedroom

View from bedroom

Gate to the next door paddock

Probably a rabbit hole, but I like pretending it's a fox hole.

Ok there's a bit of a competition for computer time between me and Darren at the moment so I'm keeping this short.

Love to all,
Mindy

Here!

Hi Everyone,

Just a very quick post because we're about to go to breakfast. It's Saturday morning after our first night's sleep in our new home Doncaster. Though we're just in a hotel at the moment.

The trip was long, and not without incident, right from our first plane to Auckland everything was delayed. The most exciting of which being the fact that we couldn't land when we got to Heathrow due to this: engine problems We still managed to get to the train on time. Though it was such a job carrying our bags around train stations etc, they were extremely heavy due to the fact that they contained our entire life!

The flights were brilliant, business class rocks. :)

Um the weather is HOT here. Muggier than Christchurch, I was really hot last night. SO we are getting a little nice weather before winter. It's a beautiful clear blue sky day today so we're not believing anything we were told about England being gray hehe.

We're just about to go pick up the rental car now, after breakfast. Then we'll probably realise the traffic rules aren't quite the same as NZ (flashing orange lights after the red means go I think!).

Ok love to all,

Mindy