State Highway 1 is the longest and most significant highway in New Zealand – it runs the length of the country from Cape Reinga in the north to Bluff in the south. You can drive the whole way but of course will have to put your car on the ferry to get from the North…
One of the things I had to figure out when I moved to New Zealand was mail. I still have credit and debt in the US, retirement accounts, etc. that I have to manage from here. This is the electronic age, so most of my bills are now fully online but there are some things…
It’s no secret that the US tax system is difficult and confusing – the US has exceptions and exemptions and all kinds of tax breaks that make filing your taxes almost like an Easter egg hunt looking for tax breaks. I have used TurboTax to file my taxes online for years. I like the ease…
My mother-in-law asked me today if I ever get homesick. I do, but I’ve had family visit me here and it hasn’t been a big issue. When I went to the American store a few weeks ago I realized how much I miss some of the typical American foods though. It was fun to sit on…
One of my coworkers has three hens and they produce a couple of eggs a day on average. He and his wife can’t eat them all so he brings the overflow to work. And they sit in a carton on the table by his desk, completely ambivalent to the presence of a refrigerator or not.
And the results are in for 2016! Auckland once again is in the top ten most liveable cities in the world, sharing the top 10 with cities in Austria, Australia, Canada, Finland and Germany. And in September, National Geographic posted the happiest countries in the world and NZ was number 8!
Kiwi English and American English aren’t that different — they are just as similar I think as British English would be. But no NZ blog would be complete without touching on some of the colorful language differences that make NZ special.
I like to consider myself a woman of the world — I love travel, road trips, new foods, new cultures, and new experiences. And part of being a person of the world means adapting to places you go to.
Keeping up with a blog a day is hard! Especially after happy hour. So I turn today to Jeff Turin for inspiration. Jeff, like me, is from the U.S. but now calls New Zealand home. He arrived in New Zealand with his wife and kids in 2010 and shared some of his initial blog posts with…
We finished moving over the weekend — the new apartment couldn’t be much more central to Auckland since we are now right across the street from the train station and the ferry terminal is just a block away. Unfortunately, the new place doesn’t have a carpark (parking garage) so we have to park our car…