New adventure for family

Hi. I'm Patrick Stegeman. I'm originally from Holland, and I live in Christchurch, New Zealand

It started-- Well, quite a while ago, actually. My sister and my brother-in-law.  We were talking about immigration.  And actually, a couple of years later…  they moved to New Zealand

So, in the start of 2012, I applied for some jobs here.  And, my brother-in-law, he said, you know, Kiwis STAT is a recruiting company and you are a recruiter - so he mentioned it to the General Manager ...  and he sent me an e-mail saying, hey I would like to have a phone interview with you.  And based on that phone interview I got a job offer

And then, yeah with the job offer we could start the whole process for immigration.

I want to speed up the process, if it was possible. That's why we hired someone to help us.

The view from the children was … so they were really really keen to move, but we told them that, well, when we move you really say goodbye to your friends, and to family - but still they ah, they were so keen to go.

Esther too, yes, she was sometimes a bit worried because it is a big step, of course. We both had, sometimes our emotions, you know - with leaving, especially the friends and the family over there, but yeah - we have Skype.

That took us half a year, and yes, in December, 14th of December we arrived here, but yeah it took a bit, yeah to, to finally find a good place.

When our children started school here, we thought, oh, you know, they don't really speak good English. They made friends without even speaking English. They just, well, I don't know how they did it, but they talked what they knew, and, and just pointed at things.

They like, especially, just the country - It's only half an hour or 20 minutes to [Sumner?] or New Brighton to the beach. So, yeah, we like it really really much.

I think Esther is quite happy.  She is good friends with my sister, so that's good, [chuckles] that helps a lot, and for Esther's sister. She came down here, actually, in October, together with Esther's dad.  So that was, that was really good.  And my dad came down here in January. They're planning to come every year, so [chuckles]