, who has been very encouraging of my writing endeavors and supportive to reach out to this community again. So here I go, welcome to the new me!
I am Queenie, a proud Cebuana engineer, who is currently trying her fate in the land of the long white clouds - New Zealand. I guess now by all means, I shall adopt the pen name, "Kiwinie" from now on (pun makes sense?) to make these series of posts memorable for you and me.
These past two years have been instrumental for me to figure out my pathways in life, and I can't wait to share them with you on this platform. Also, as you can easily figure out, my future posts will most likely be about this beautiful country, my travels, and generally the life I'll be building here.
So, what brought me to New Zealand?
As a fan of the Amazing race, I remember that one moment in Season 30 where the contestants witnessed the stunning view of the overlooking Letna Park in Prague. That was one of the many times I encouraged myself to reach that far too.
At this point in my life, I am very fortunate to get a chance to rudder my own fate. I am currently pursuing further studies in New Zealand to acquire proper qualifications and land a good job after. I chose New Zealand because I believe this is the safest place for me to start a new life as a migrant. The peaceful ambiance is a plus factor as this will help me focus on my career and my life goals in general. Well, on top of those, anyone can be easily be bewitched by its natural beauty.
In one of my future contents, I'll share the steps I took to get all the way here and answer the common processing questions getting abroad.
How is the NZ life so far?
The weather is crazy!
First and foremost, the weather here is the most impossible to read. Even Ka Ernie Baron and Kuya Kim will have headaches reading the charts. I have seen the extremes of the Philippine weather from typhoons to biting summer heat, but New Zealand is more sporadic than one can imagine. One can experience a sunny morning, drizzling by the afternoon, and get super cold by the evening. That's all one can get in a season only.
Nonetheless, I can't help but enjoy the good days still.
Body clock woes
When I arrived here in February this year, the time difference was 5 hours from the Philippines. So if I follow my body clock back home, it should be understandable that I am still up by 4 am here. In my first days, I still found myself video calling my family at 3 in the morning trying to squeeze up updates within the day.
However, one amazing thing I found out around that period is that the sunset around 8:30 in the evening. How cool is that? Imagine having longer days in months which means you could essentially do more things! I remember I still got time to jog around 8 in the evening just enough to see my tracks.
The Taste of Independent living
Admit it, living with parents and siblings most of your life, you can't help but wonder how life would progress should you decide to live independently. Well, for sure, I'm not the best person to heed advice from, but for me, this is the biggest commitment in my life so far. It's honestly tedious to wake up at least 2 hours ahead of school to prepare breakfast, think about what you'll eat the next days, or adjust budgets to make ends meet. These may sound unpleasant, but I can't deny that I'm having the best time of my life as an adult as well.
Living independently also means going to the groceries on my own and picking ingredients for my meal plans myself. Oh how I gush every time I see greens on stalls and my fridge.
"It's not always rainbows and butterflies."
I cannot claim that I'm living my ideal NZ dream so far as, along with other international students, I was caught midway by the global pandemic. I was fortunate to be part of the last batch of international students to enter the country before the borders tightened.
In my six months here in the country, the third portion of those was consumed by the lockdown. Yes, that meant heaps of online classes and assessments in most days, which made me almost forget that I'm living in my dream country.
Being an international student also puts tremendous pressure on me, juggling both my studies and part-time jobs to sustain my living here. Apart from these, fighting off mental battles brought about my homesickness, and the paranoia of the virus put an additional burden on me. I have even bought an expensive mobile plan to be able to reach out my family and friends back home.
"I can be anything I want."
I got this wisdom from my classmate while we were introducing ourselves. His rationale was since we are all starting a new life here, we must be optimistic in achieving anything that we envisioned to be. Indeed, this rings sense as this allows us to start on a clean slate and remove all the presumptions in the capabilities.
Albeit hard, life must go on. Going through all of these hardships makes me think otherwise that I should be making the most out of everything in my dream country. Who can stop me? Well, the pandemic, obviously, but theoretically, there should be none!
I am meeting a lot of new people, reaching beautiful places (mostly for free), and, most importantly, surprising myself from time to time with small discoveries. Little victories still come a long way for me.
All of these must be more than a handful for you now, but keep reading on my posts as I share glimpses of my simple living here in my new world. Kia Ora!
