Making friends isn’t easy. We have been lonely for a while. Pepi is the only one that had some social life through Ultimate. We are bugging our next-door neighbors all the time and they have become sort of like our extended family. They are our go-to’s for everything we need. They helped supply our Airbnb with all the small kitchen appliances needed for baking. They are our social outlet and we love spending time with them.
Pepi and I took a sewing class and bought ourselves a sewing machine which we then used only a handful of times. Still, it was fun and Pepi learned a lot (and she made herself a couple of fun tops).
We are all in love with the main local library where we spend a lot of our time. Nina and I found our “Pokemon dealer” and got back into earning Pokemon cards in exchange for walked miles. 1 mile = $1.
We have been walking a lot because we now have a nice collection of very rare Pokemon cards that we were paying at times $20NZD per card (not a package).
September is springtime in the southern hemisphere and Christchurch is gorgeous, with greenery and flowers everywhere, a gorgeous clear river, and the most amazing skies.
I thought I should get kids back in school since the classes in the US were starting online. The tricky part was that during this time of the year, the time difference between Christchurch and Seattle is 5 hours. This meant that we were getting up at 3am for the first few weeks of school. It is no fun to push Maki to get up that early day after day.
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Reflective note written in December of 2022: This was probably my biggest mistake made during our travels. It was not necessary to get the kids back in school at that time and I let my fears get the best of me. But then again, it’s easy to see that now but it wasn’t so clear then. That time between Sept and December was probably when Maksim and I had the toughest time together. Getting up early for school was totally unreasonable and then staying online, engaged, and then pushing him to do all sorts of other school work was not good for our relationship. I didn’t really figure all that out until January.
During those first few months there, I approached 13 different schools to try to get Maki enrolled in an NZ school but that was such an impossible ordeal.
New Zealanders are sticklers to the rules and even under special circumstances of covid times, there was no wiggle room for situations like ours. It took me until January to influence the Ministry of Education to change the definition of a domestic student to align with the immigration policy that was put in place for people like us (stuck in the country longer due to covid). Maki started school in NZ (and Petra followed) in January once kids like ours were included in the definition of a domestic student (otherwise, it would have cost us $1000/month/kid for the kids to go to school there as international students).
Maki made a friend Matai at the skatepark during that time and his mom Olivia was my godsend. Olivia kept inviting us to all sorts of family outings and their family were the first Kiwi friends we made in Christchurch (in addition to our neighbors and Ultimate folks). Later on, Maki joined Matai in activities of the local surf lifesaving club and that also helped expand our social circle.
Pepi was playing violin with the UC Christchurch Youth Orchestra and that was great. She had her first concert that month (and looked gorgeous for it).
This was also when Pedja started taking a few hours per day to study for technical interviews for job hunting he was planning to start towards the end of the year.
While he and Pepi were busy with their stuff, the boys and I explored the city, enjoying flowers and greenery everywhere.
We lived only a few blocks from the main city park and spent a lot of time there. One good idea I had was to teach Maki to read and follow a map. I created a scavenger hunt around City Central that had triple benefits – he learned to read the city map, we got to walk tons (and Nina earned his Pokemon $) and we learned a lot about the city itself.
Overall, as I’m going through these photos now, I’m feeling super nostalgic about our time there. Pedja was looking for some photos a couple of days ago and said the same.
We both miss NZ and get nostalgic about our time in Christchurch.
Refresh Journey 