I arrived in New Zealand on Friday morning, feeling about as good as can be expected after a 29 hour flight. Air New Zealand gets my vote for making the journey bearable, although they couldn't do anything about the soulless transit lounge at LAX.
Things have been going pretty smoothly so far. Some of my new team came out to the airport to meet me and to take me into the city to the apartment they are putting me up in for the first couple of weeks. The city was bathed sunshine for the whole first weekend and I spent a lot of time wandering around getting a feel for the place and staving off jet lag.
It still hasn't really sunk in that I'm going to be living here for the next year. At the moment it just feels I'm here on holiday, albeit having seriously over-packed. I guess it will start to feel more real when I begin work next Monday. Until then I'll enjoy having no responsibilities and getting to know Welly.
I've been in to my new office - the Ministry of Education - twice since I arrived to meet the team I'm working with and sit down for an initial chat with my manager. It seems a really friendly atmosphere and from the little I know about my role it should be interesting work.
I'm setting up this blog as a place to share some highlights of the year ahead with my friends and family and to save their inboxes from long 'time of my life' emails. It remains to be seen how often, if at all, I'm going to remember to post here. I expect I'll also post about other things as and when they catch my attention.
Such a good idea to set up a blog, Rich. I'm looking forward to keeping up, and fully expecting to be pretty envious.
ReplyDeleteLovely to have a team who'd come to meet you, glad you're not directly affected by the earthquake, slightly jealous of general blue-ness apparent in sea and sky...
Thanks Rose, if it helps deal with the envy it's been a lot less sunny over the last week than when I first got here :-)
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