Working Life

After spending Christmas with Aunt Janette and Uncle Alistair, we had to face reality and find jobs. Auckland is the place to be if you want a job in chemistry, and since we were hoping to get our careers set up and aim for our residency visas, that was our plan.

In January Stuart got a job with Argenta, an Animal Health Company, and we moved down to Beachlands, a little beach town outside of Auckland. We totally landed on our feet, getting ourselves a cosy little studio flat below the house of our landlords. They were the nicest couple we could ask for. They spent the majority of time away in their motorhome (MASSIVE by the way, more like a bus!), and when at home they would invite us up for lunch and home made desert. Alison even made me a pot of soup when I was ill with a cold. The flat was small, but to us, coming from a campervan, it was a mansion!!

And what made it perfect, was it had the beach at the bottom of our hill, and since I was still out of work, my days were spent sitting on the beach, reading in the sun, total bliss!!

We also made a little addition to keep 'wee midge' company. A little VW Polo. When registered it was stated as purple, which suited me perfectly, but in reality it looked more like blue lol

In March I was eventually employed, also by Argenta. I was on the same shifts as Stuart, 6am – 2:30pm, which meant we were always home together to spend the summer afternoons at the beach. I made some awesome friends. Our biggest thing in common.....food!! :-) Any time spent outside of work involved trying out different restaurants, totally my kind of people lol