My thoughts on moving to NZ

When I first got off the plane, I felt like I was still on it, like everything was still vibrating. After long wait we took a bus to a quarantine hotel that we would be staying in for 2 weeks. It was pretty boring there, and we could only take 45min walk around the car park every other day. I even had to take three whole covid tests in time being there. After 2 weeks we got to Auckland marina, and I was happy.

After that we quickly drove to the airport not to miss our plane to Dunedin. We finally got on our plane and stayed on there for around 1.5 hours before arriving in Dunedin. When we got to Dunedin Airport we took this strange bus only for us, that would take us to the hotel house (Air B&B) we would be staying in for a month. Once we got there, I was mad because I missed my friends in England.

After around two weeks I found out that my cat went missing. My grandfather was supposed to look after her for around a month, but he lost my cat, and he was extremely careless. Luckily some people from an animal shelter found her and contacted my mum. I agreed to never talk to my grandad again.

Later on, we decided to finally start looking at houses. The first house we sought was recommended by my mum’s friend Krzysiek, and it was near the beach. We didn’t take it as it was too far from dad’s work. The second house we saw my parents really liked and we ended up rent it. The third house I really liked but my parents said it was way too small, another house was very good but way too expensive. We ended up renting the second house. We started living in that house and I hated it because it didn’t have wi-fi for around a week. We finally sorted the wi-fi, but we were sleeping on air mattresses in living room for a long time while we were waiting for our stuff to arrive.

The school life in Dunedin was very good and fun, but for some reason I wasn’t really learning much. Also, for some strange reason they bumped me up a year. I was supposed to be in year 5! But ended up in year 6! I made lots of friends in my class, but for some reason I never had many friends from other classes. The bullies there were out of control, and they would be physical to people. One time they took my brothers shoes and threw them into the air!

At the new house I took the smallest and most warm room, but weirdly enough around 8 pm there would be a knocking type sound and it wouldn’t stop until the morning. I tried to find where the sound was coming from, but I just couldn’t find it. I just told myself it was the heater but during the summer when it was too hot for the heater, I decided to turn it off, but the sound was still going on. I finally got used to it since there was no hope searching for the source of it anymore.

As the months passed, we visited multiple towns and cities in New Zealand. A particular place called Queenstown caught my parent’s eye, and they decided to move AGAIN! I was mad at them, and sad that I have to leave my friends again. We spent a few weeks driving back and forth from Dunedin to Queenstown moving stuff, and then the time finally came to move there. Before we moved, I noticed that my cat wouldn’t put one of her paws down, and I kept trying to tell my parents, but they wouldn’t listen! Obviously! Few days after we moved in my mum started to notice it too, and when she lifted my cat’s paw, she saw that it was very pegged up. We took her to the vet, and they squeezed out a lot of yellow puss which was so disgusting, so I didn’t look.

I settled in pretty easy to Queenstown except for the fact that we have to get hiking a lot. My school is brand new and literally just built, meaning everyone were new. I made a couple of friends. Being my age there are bullies, but there are also kind people. Work is quite hard at this school and I’m actually learning something. I hope I never have to move again, I love my friends.

 Matylda The Hurricane