Brilliant News! (Kiwi Translation: Good News)

We received our second piece of mail today from New Zealand. It was from the New Zealand Qualifications Assessment - basically the people who get to determine if I have enough teaching education and experience to be a teacher in New Zealand.

They have approved me to teach "senior years" in New Zealand - this would be equivalent to our grade 7 to 12. In their school system they have "elementary" and "senior" schools. With this first step complete - I will now finish up my teaching license application to mail out later this week.

  The document that allows me to apply for a NZ teaching license. Now that I have seen it, I have to send it back to NZ with my teaching license application and a few other papers.

I needed a few documents that had already traveled to New Zealand back from my primary assessment, for the teaching license.  By the end of it, these few teaching documents may travel more kilometres than Mark and I together.

Step 1: Apply to NZQA and have my qualifications assessed (COMPLETED)

Step 2: Apply for a NZ teaching license based on outcome of Step 1 (Application Started)

Step 3: Apply for a work visa (Application Started)

  Step 4: Apply for jobs (Looking, but still too early to apply)

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Mark and myself filling out forms on a Monday night. Here you see the medical forms, visa forms and licensing forms

An interesting fact from the forms - all forms must be filled out in black pen with cap locks or they are considered void.

On Mark's end - his thesis from his Masters has been sent off to Fredericton for binding and we are awaiting some letters from UNB to send off to University of Auckland with regards to his scholarship.

We have started to plan our summer - who we will visit when. We have started to look at how much of the summer we will need to work and how  much of it we can dedicate to spending time with family and friends. We are hoping to visit Cape Breton in July for a week and we have plans to head to Ocean Park for a week in August before we fly out. As we figure out dates, we will send them around to family and friends in the area.

Mary-Ellen and Mark

Ouch ! Another Paper Cut

 
So much has happened since our last blog post it will be a mental gymnastics event to remember it all.....here goes the tumbling and twirling.



NZQA - Two weeks ago, I received an email from NZQA (remember, these are the people who need to say that I have enough teaching hours/credits and licences to be equivalent to a New Zealand teacher). Their email was not the one everyone wants to receive after 6 weeks of waiting...they were short some paper work. Not the end of the world, especially since I had the required paper work at home. It was all stuff to do with my practicum hours, and my evaluations.



I got the email last Friday, and at the paper work all scanned/emailed off by Saturday afternoon. Crisis Adverted. Today, I went to check the status of my application, and it was "closed". All of the paper work has been sent back to me, along with my results. I emailed NZ to find out if there was a way to find out the outcome other than waiting for the paperwork but unfortunately as it is a legal document.....I must await its arrival.



Visa Applications - With a few phone calls to the New Zealand Embassy (here in Canada), we figured out that our best option is a family visa. It allows me to go to New Zealand with Mark as his spouse, and to work but I don't have to work to stay in the country. That being said, I want to work and to continue to teach but if it takes a while to find a job/get settled I will not be asked to leave the country.



Looking into the applications, we need to ensure that our passports are up to date 6 months after we plan on being in New Zealand. This meant that although our passports were valid for another two years, they had to be updated.



Passports - Our passports had to be redone as we had printed off/started visa applications. This means that last week on his day off Mark drove up to Fredericton with our current passports and submitted them to be redone along with all the necessary paper work. Now we are awaiting their arrival to finish all the visa work.  I am a little sad as I much prefered my old passport photo to the new one. The old one was taken mid summer with a nice tan. The new one is winter pasty and to add to the humiliation I was taking the bus that day and it was raining. My curly hair was all over the place.



Continued Sorting - All of our materialistic things have now been given away or donated. Tonight we finished sorting our books into those we want to keep/store and those we are going to donate to the local library. As of tonight, all that remains to sort is paper work and documents.  The next step will be to properly pack all the rubermaids we have with stuff we want to ship to New Zealand.



Plane Tickets - Tonight the plane tickets were booked ... it looks like we fly out from Saint John in August to Montreal. From Montreal to Toronto and then from Toronto to Tokyo and finally Tokyo to Auckland. With the time changes, the added day and delays at airports we have yet to calculate when we will actually arrive in Auckland.

We have also done some other things like decided to take a few weeks off work before we go to spend some time with all our friends and family. We are hoping to take 3-4 weeks depending on our funds. We will be attending the annual "Wilcox Ocean Park", schedule a visit to Cape Breton for a week and spend a few days with our friends near and far.

I especially want to coach at Synchro Camp this summer before I go as the nearest synchronized swimming club is over an hour away from where we are planning on living. Perhaps I will take a judging course before I head off to try and keep myself in the sport while I am away.

Mary-Ellen and Mark