25/7/2013

Most of my close friends and family know that I have a huge passion for New Zealand. I’ve travelled around the North and South Islands on three different occasions but it was during my second trip there in 2009 that I realised that I had totally fallen in love with the place. It was then that I thought to myself “God, I’d love to live here”, like a lot of people who visit New Zealand do. I went back there in January last year to explore the country even more and applied for four jobs while I was there. I had no luck with them unfortunately but decided after that trip that I would just “go for it” – save the money to go back within a year and do my best to find a job there and get a work visa.

Many people ask me “what is it about the country that you love so much?” There are so many things. The New Zealand people are really friendly. I love the Kiwi accent –  the way they pronounce their “e”s like “i”s. I find the Maori culture and language very interesting and would love to learn Maori. There is an endless amount of things to do there: winetasting, whale watching, bungy jumping, skiing, hiking, stargazing tours, helicopter flights over glaciers, bone carving workshops etc.

I love the creativity of the people, which really inspires me. There are so many excellent crafts people there, not to mention Weta Workshop, who are geniuses at what they do. The weather isn’t too hot or cold. It’s very green like Ireland. There are practically no poisonous animals there compared to Australia. I find it fascinating too that the country sits on top of two tectonic plates, causing earthquakes, volcanoes and geothermal areas. I’ll be writing more about this in the following blogs. New Zealand has a huge draw for me and the feeling goes deep. I don’t want to ignore that and so I’m going to do my best to achieve my dream of living/working there. I know it would mean not seeing family and friends in Europe and that would be hard but with technology these days, there are ways of keeping in contact with friends and family.

Just briefly I’ll mention that I’m looking for a job preferably in the tourism industry. Working as a Visitor Host for some of the museums such the Te Papa Museum in Wellington would be great. My dream job though would be working in a tourist office. Why? I’ll talk more about that in the next blog.

My flight is booked for the 4^th September, so that gives me six weeks, from yesterday, before I leave for New Zealand. I will be writing a regular blog over the following weeks about my preparations for the trip and will continue it while I’m there. The blogs will be on my facebook  and Google+ page and also on twitter.