Busy bee...

After travelling little bit less than a year, it makes sense that reality hits you. Luckily I have been there before (twice!) so I know how realities feels like(quite soft to be honest).

Sure thing, I miss the travelling, I miss the different cultures, I miss my absolute freedom to wander off whenever I feel like it. But do I want to be a traveller non-stop? No way. And no better place to 'settle down' than New Zealand!


So, busy bee as I am, I'm all organised already. Bank account, IRD number and my precious (yes, I got one too) green mountain which was lend to me by David who I met in Peru. House search was funny: it can take you several months to find a place in the Netherlands, and here it took me a week...I had a look at a few places. One was nice, but the tenants were a bit racial... They were complaining about foreigners, so I looked at the guy thinking 'I'm a foreigner' and then he quickly said he meant 'Asians'. As you can imagine the decision to NOT take that house was easypeasy. So thanks to Patrick who did some pre-arrival search for places to life, I have a nice room in an absolutely luxurious house (2 bathrooms, dishwasher...) with 2 guys, Matt and Hamish. Both lovely and I made them 'stamppot': I guessed that was the only proper way to introduce them to my Dutch side. I also bought a bed via Internet for 100 dollars and I still cannot believe how nice the bed is.

And work...Well, that's the reason it took me 3 weeks to write something on my blog. Since it's my first time ever of being unemployed, I dived into job ads in papers and Internet. My friend Jill, who is looking for a job as well, and I are having serious meetings about 'How to get a Canadian and a Dutch a proper cool job' and we send each other job ads (Thank God we are not in the same area!). And thanks to Patrick's friend Julie I have one killer NZ proof-resume.



I started writing cover letters and ringing people. Result: nice chats with friendly people on the phone who all wanted to have my resume, some interesting applications are still 'in the air' (fingers crossed) and at the moment I am working at a contact centre for a telecom company. Answering the phone, talking to customers and helping them sort out their stuff. And you know me: I like it! I think every job has its challenging aspects and within this position I get more acquaint with customer services in English. So far I had one angry(ish) customer who wasn't angry any more after we finished the talk. I don't know whether it was my 'telecom' expertise (I can hear you think 'Maaike, do you know anything about telecom?' Answer is no...) or my 'cute' accent: main thing is that it worked. And how much fun is it to help out a 75 year old lady to work out what the cheapest way is for her to ring her daughter in Australia and her son in the UK? Seriously, I like it!

The only down side is that I have to work on Saturday too. So while the people of the good life enjoyed hiking outside the city, I was working. And writing cover letters...But I'm not complaining; I'm actually happy to work again, yay!

The added pictures are from previous weekend: mountainbiking and hiking with Hannah, Warrick and Patrick...