After spending a month happily in London, my husband got a new project in the Kiwi land. Off we went to Auckland, excited and nervous to start our new life from scratch in a new country. I knew it was going to be tough for us as we were unprepared for this challenge (it was all decided in a week that we had little time except for packing).
We landed Auckland at midnight and managed to book a room in hotel. The first dawn was beautiful ( considering our room had a terrific view of a rose garden with a backdrop of sea). We were dumbstruck by the nature's beauty!!!
It was soon time for my husband to get back to work and I had a tough job to find a new house. First few weeks, I literally roamed all through the streets of Auckland with a pocket map in my hand and asking every passersby if they had a house to rent!!( I know it sounds absurd and no wonder I got cold stares from many). During this search I learnt a lot about kiwis..
- Kiwis are wonderful and cheerful people. They always wear a smile on their face and greet you even if you are a stranger.
- Kiwis love their burgers and pizzas and everything and anything has bacon in them( we being veges had hard time to search from the menu and we mostly ended up with just a toasted bread!).
- They are extermly punctual. (If it is 5:00 then its 5:00, not a minute late not a minute early)
- New Zealand is a very expensive place to live and everything is sky high, especially houses.
- Most houses are studio type apartments (your bedroom,living room, dining table and kitchen are in one single room!!!). At first I thought it was studios!!!
- From any part of the city you can have a great view of the sea!! We are in the central Auckland, and its basically a hill and an island!
- Last but not the least, finding house is very tough ( make it as very very!!).
We had very tough time in finding house given the fact that we need to check the availability of house and agents number to fix appointment through online portals (No, we can't ask passersby for rental house after all!!) and we had no internet facility!!!! (Our hotel provided 15 minutes free internet per day), so that means I had 15 minutes to search all I needed for a day (that is so very crazy!!!).
Time was flying and it was soon a week and we still lived in the hotel, with no clue of what will happen next and where we will go. Our money was draining and we couldn't afford such a costly hotel for another week and striving on bread-jam was making us sick and weak. We longed for a proper food.We thought probably it was a bad idea to have moved here. Our hopes were fading as one by one, agents were rejecting our application forms.
They say everything happens for the good and probably this too was for a reason. It was during this struggle, we found strength in each other. We gave support whenever the other person felt down. We stood together in our struggle and started understanding each other and felt how much we both are meant to be together. We felt like we were made for each other and how thankful we were to our parents for finding the right person.
It took 3 weeks, 16 application forms, several sleepless nights and 3000$ to find our new house. I bet its one of the beautiful house and awesome sea view, our house is just next to the harbour!!!And probably our struggle was worth all the pain..
Its friday night and as I wait for my husband to come home, I write this blog with peace. Life now seems to be much better. These little barriers made us realise how perfect we were for each other so thank you kiwi land for giving the perfect start for young couple to get knowing each other.
... And they lived happily ever after☺
