Welcome Home

We've considered New Zealand our home, basically since we set foot on her soil way back in 2006, and on Monday 1 October 2012, we made it official.  David, James and I are now officially citizens of New Zealand, with all the rights and responsibilities that come with it..though we've basically had those all along as we've had permanent residency from the start.

It's been a challenging 6.7 years..in that time we've had redundancies, moved houses more times that I care to count, met some wonderful people, and a couple of times it's even looked like we'd have to abandon our dream and head back to England.  Through it all though, we've managed to remain in the place we call home, through the good and the not so good.

We've been contemplating the citizenship for a while, ever since 2010 when we came the closest we ever have to having to go back to England.  We put it off, once things had settled, mainly because of money....that thing we never really seem to have enough of.  In the end, to secure our future, we decided to bite the bullet, and as the famous Nike slogan says, "just do it".

So off we marched a few months ago and turned in our paperwork..then the wait began.  In July, the letters we'd been waiting for arrived, it was our official notice that we had been granted New Zealand Citizenship.  In that letter, there's the usual formalities like what to do if our address changes, and to advise that we would receive our date for the Ceremony when it was arranged.  What a wait it was, though in the giant scheme of things, I suppose just over two months wasn't all that long to wait.

So ceremony day came, and I wasn't at my best.  The night before, I had landed myself in A&E, and then after hours Drs, having an issue with my left eye.  Still not sure quite what happened, but it looked like I'd be going as a pirate as late as Monday afternoon. Thankfully after resting for the vast majority of the day, I managed to get the patch off and my eye open without pain.  Dinner was a bit of a rushed affair, seeing as we had to be at Wellington Town Hall at 5:00pm  for a 6:00 start, just when we are usually sitting down to dinner.  Let's just say we were 'late'.  LOL

We swing by to pick up my good friend, who is going to entertain our little kiwi (Alex) for us, and get there about 5:30, to find what seemed like a million people already there..ooops!  So we hand over our letters and are led to our seats; luckily there are 2 free seats in the front row of the 'spectator section' for Jaki and Alex, who was the official photographer for this event.  There is a programme for the evening, which is laid out in the folders located on our chairs.  Turns out that they hold a ceremony EVERY month, and each one has about 100 people who will swear their allegiance to New Zealand.  One one side of the room they put the people taking the Affirmation of Allegiance (non-religious) and on the other, the ones taking the Oath of Allegiance (religious).  After you have taken the Affirmation, or the Oath, you are called up to receive your certificate and a brief 'chat' with, in our case, the Deputy Mayor.  After the certificates are presented, a letter of Congratulations from the Minister of Internal Affairs is read, closing remarks are made, we sing the National Anthem, the Official Party exits and that concludes the ceremony.  All up, it takes about an hour.

So it's now 7pm, and though there are light refreshments available, Alex has had enough, and so we head for home.  On our way out, we grab a couple of totara tree saplings, a symbol of our new life in New Zealand, as citizens.