I was on the Ipad training course again today, and my interest was flailing. The students that I am teaching will be way lower than the ability that this course is pitched at. Don’t get me wrong, I am amazed what apps are out there, and if I had this technology at my fingertips when I was a kid I would have been ecstatic!! I had to rely on pen, paper and memory!! Nowadays they can effortlessly make interactive notebooks and all sots of things!!
I decided that they wouldn’t miss me for an hour, and I needed to find a house more than I needed to find some more educational apps, so I sneaked out for a bit to look at some more. I found out later that the rest of the staff from my school escaped at lunchtime to the pub and never came back!! Charming!! Anyway, here’s our new house!! I do hope that Mark likes it, because he has put 100% faith in my choice of place, and has seen some of the horrors that I have been sending him!! Let me tell you something that I learned: taking the portion of the mortgage at home that I paid and converting it into a house here in NZ doesn’t work: looking at rent equivalent of the half of the mortgage that I was paying in the UK will NOT get me an equivalent house here in New Zealand!! Doh!!
The threshold seems to be around $250. For that kind of price you seem to get a student shack, I seriously underestimated the amount of students here: after all this is the CITY of the south I guess, even though it feels like a small town to me!!
If you want a decent house, in a decent area, you need to be willing to pay around $280 – $300 here in Invercargill, from what I have seen. My faith was restored today, when I saw this house:
Welcome to our new home!! I do hope that Mark likes it!! They asked would I give references from my previous Landlord !! That was probably when I was around 19 years old!! Never mind, my new boss(es) gave me a good reference, and my charm pants worked because they accepted me a matter of hours later.
I am so excited!! I move in on 17 May – well, perhaps it will be WE, who knows, only time will tell!! I even know the next door neighbour – she works at my school!!
Melanie Magowan 