As a family we spent a wonderful and precious year down in Southland’s Invercargill, New Zealand. The children loved school (and their school uniforms) and picked up the new language amazingly quickly and soon had many friends.
To come to New Zealand with our two children age 11 and 13 for a year, was a wonderful experience indeed. Having had bad experiences with another recruitment agency we luckily met Kristin from Accent Health Recruitment online. Kristen made it possible for us to work and live in an English speaking country for the very first time.
Prior to this Kristin perfectly organised the most suitable school for the children, accommodation, travel arrangements, etc. She took great care of all the necessary paperwork including the recognition of the Austrian “Facharzt”-title by the National Medical Council or application of the visa, so that bureaucracy was not a real pain for us.
We actually received instructions how to bring the necessary visa forms into a specific order!
Despite having been here during one of the most disastrous years in New Zealand’s history (the big snow last spring with collapse of several rooves and the local stadium and killing thousands of lambs on the local farms, the horrible sequence of earthquakes that hit Christchurch - the capital of the South Island, the many tornados that hit the North Island, the Pike river mine disaster, Tsunami-warning after the horrific earthquake in Japan and an ash cloud interrupting air transport that came over from Chile and turned up on a weekly basis circulating around the southern hemisphere) we always felt safe and sound.
The adaptation to a different health system and foreign language was a smooth landing due to the natural amazing friendliness of the Kiwis.
As a family we spent a wonderful and precious year down in Southland’s Invercargill, last exit to Antarctica, and enjoyed a quiet rural lifestyle in the most southern city of New Zealand.
Kristin made it possible for us to go on extensive summer holidays (in January!) in order to explore both the North and South Island. There were heaps of opportunities to go for trips to Australia or the nearby city of Queenstown or the pristine landscape of the Sounds of Fjordland. The children loved school (and their school uniforms) and picked up the new language amazingly quickly and soon had many friends. Of course we enjoyed most that after work remained plenty of time for the family and to maintain old and new hobbies like meeting friends, travelling, hiking, cooking, fishing (Robert effectively had the rare opportunity to catch a brown trout of 5 kg!), paintballing, cycling etc. Surprisingly weekends down here feel one day longer than back home!
We would never like to miss our Southland experience and will always keep it in our hearts and recommend it most warmly to everybody - but if you come here don’t forget a warm jacket :-) X
