Time to give you a new update about the three of us in New Zealand. Finally.....

First of all: Cassy is not a virgin anymore: he mated Aiofe, an Auckland bitch, four weeks ago and she seems to be pregnant. She is steeling and eating bananas (which she otherwise doesn’t like). Let’s wait and see how many puppies there are coming up.

We are in close contact with Aiofe's owner, Ann Osborne. We met her when she came ‘down under’ for the mating and also last Friday, when she was in Wellington for a nursing conference.

Some weeks ago, we sent in our Expression of Interest (EoI) with the New Zealand Immigration Services (NZIS). This is the first step to apply for permanent residency. After our EoI had been picked from the pool, there were some questions that we had to answer. Cilia claimed points for working in a future growth area (ICT), but it turned out that (IT sections of) governmental departments never can be a future growth area. This wasn’t mentioned on the internet pages of the NZIS. So points were rejected. But, fortunately, Cilia (and Guus as well) mis-interpreted some other question about her work experience. We answered: between 4 and 6 years. But Cilia has a work history over 25 years, so that gave the necessary needed extra points.

It was a hard time waiting for the outcome of the first assessment by the NZIS. But Friday 13 May, Cilia had a feeling to look at the internet site of the NZIS about the progress of our EoI. To our happiness we saw that our EoI has been declared SUCCESSFUL! We immediately opened a bottle of champagne to celebrate!

On Saturday the postie brought us a big bundle of papers to complete within four months. The NZIS needs all certificates and diploma’s in English (translated by an official organisation), accompanied by an assessment by the NZ Qualification Authority. And Cilia needs to have another medical examination, because the ‘old’ one had a validity of only three months. Allright, we have to spend lots of money again, but we really want to become new Kiwi’s.

In the mean time, Cilia really enjoys her job at Statistics New Zealand. Her colleagues are wonderful and very friendly. Being a project coordinator in the Netherlands (providing service to project managers), her job is now advisor to programme and project managers. This contains quality checks on the projects, maintaining the procedures and templates according to the governmental standards, advising the project managers how to use these and giving presentations about the Programme Management Office and details about project management (e.g., risk management, change management). Cilia loves the challenges. The first weeks were very tiring: talking, reading and listening in English all day. But now it's going smoothly. She’s getting more and more compliments about her English.

Talking about English: one part to be able to apply for our Permanent Residency, was having an exam on our knowledge of the English language. We were interviewed for 15 minutes and tested regarding our listening, reading and writing in English for 3 hours. Fortunately, we both passed this exam successfully.

Next week Guus will have interviews for three different jobs. The economic situation in New Zealand seems to be improving, after a long time. We’ll have to wait some more time to know what the results of the interviews will be. But to be honest with you: we are still very hopeful that one day (and that will be very soon) Guus will have a job as well.

And as soon Guus has a job, we’ll plan to move to another house. This one is big enough for the three of us. But as soon as family and/or friends are coming down (at Christmas time for instance), it is too small. Any volunteers available to help us with our moving?