After submitting our application for citizenship, we have received a confirmation letter in three short weeks: "The Minister of Internal Affairs has approved your application for the grant of New Zealand Citizenship."
We will become New Zealand citizens after we attend a public citizenship ceremony and take the oath or affirmation of allegiance. In Nelson, this is an 90-minute approx meeting/ceremony that we attend, after which we get a tree to plant and a certificate.
Then we can apply for a passport.
Bring it on! Very exciting.
Happy holidays to you all.
08 December 2011
16 October 2011
Applying for citizenship ... and goodbye
So, the moment has come. We've paid our dues here, lived and worked for five years (more than actually) and paid our taxes and we get to apply to become citizens. Nelson City will give us each a tree to plant.
I say that tongue in cheek as we've looked forward to this for five long years. We always knew we would apply to be citizens, but I'm looking forward to the actual process and to going through the ceremony and getting our passport.
The process really begins with paperwork. There's about a 10 page application that's pretty straightforward, as long as you aren't a terrorist, and you have to supply your original passport (including ones that expired within the time frame you've lived here), birth certificate, and marriage documents.
And you pay money. Nearly $500 per person. More if you need your documents translated into English, if from a foreign country.
You can ship your materials off in the mail and it takes apparently 4 or so months to process, or you can walk them into an appointment with the Department of Internal Affairs in one of the major centres. There they will review them and do what they need, and then hand them back to you most likely. So if you need your passport for travel, you can have it back.
We will fly to Wellington next month and lodge our application. I'm not sure how long it takes if you choose this process versus mailing everything, but we will soon find out. After we are approved, we go to a citizenship ceremony locally (actually for Don and I who work at the city council, it's just upstairs from our offices), we're sworn in, and we get a baby tree to plant.
All very exciting!!
And now to the 'goodbye' part. This blog has really run its course. Over the last five years we've received so many emails from people from all over the world following our story and asking questions. Now that we're at the end of the immigration journey, the blog is going to come to an end as well. We've been far too busy living our lives and enjoying our new home, writing about it seems to have taken low priority. And now there are others to follow who have come more recently than us.
We will concentrate on finally moving the prior years of blog entries to this site (you'll notice some pages are empty still, argh, we've been busy!) and then we'll leave it up with our contact details. People will still find us and are welcome to ask questions - we'll be around. But I find that I have less and less to say as I integrate more into the kiwi culture. And that's a good thing. Now we're off to living life!
I'll post one last time when our citizenship is finalised just to close the circle.
A HUGE thanks to the hundreds of people who have communicated with us over the years, it's been incredible reaching people in so many places all around the world. I hope some of you have lived the dream and made the jump. For those of you who haven't, you only live once and live without regret! As we said early on in our adventure, live the day.
Angela and Don
I say that tongue in cheek as we've looked forward to this for five long years. We always knew we would apply to be citizens, but I'm looking forward to the actual process and to going through the ceremony and getting our passport.
The process really begins with paperwork. There's about a 10 page application that's pretty straightforward, as long as you aren't a terrorist, and you have to supply your original passport (including ones that expired within the time frame you've lived here), birth certificate, and marriage documents.
And you pay money. Nearly $500 per person. More if you need your documents translated into English, if from a foreign country.
You can ship your materials off in the mail and it takes apparently 4 or so months to process, or you can walk them into an appointment with the Department of Internal Affairs in one of the major centres. There they will review them and do what they need, and then hand them back to you most likely. So if you need your passport for travel, you can have it back.
We will fly to Wellington next month and lodge our application. I'm not sure how long it takes if you choose this process versus mailing everything, but we will soon find out. After we are approved, we go to a citizenship ceremony locally (actually for Don and I who work at the city council, it's just upstairs from our offices), we're sworn in, and we get a baby tree to plant.
All very exciting!!
And now to the 'goodbye' part. This blog has really run its course. Over the last five years we've received so many emails from people from all over the world following our story and asking questions. Now that we're at the end of the immigration journey, the blog is going to come to an end as well. We've been far too busy living our lives and enjoying our new home, writing about it seems to have taken low priority. And now there are others to follow who have come more recently than us.
We will concentrate on finally moving the prior years of blog entries to this site (you'll notice some pages are empty still, argh, we've been busy!) and then we'll leave it up with our contact details. People will still find us and are welcome to ask questions - we'll be around. But I find that I have less and less to say as I integrate more into the kiwi culture. And that's a good thing. Now we're off to living life!
I'll post one last time when our citizenship is finalised just to close the circle.
A HUGE thanks to the hundreds of people who have communicated with us over the years, it's been incredible reaching people in so many places all around the world. I hope some of you have lived the dream and made the jump. For those of you who haven't, you only live once and live without regret! As we said early on in our adventure, live the day.
Angela and Don
02 October 2011
Hobnobbing with the famous
Because Rugby World Cup is such a major worldwide sporting event - surely you Americans must know all about every single match result right as it happens, eh? - you'll appreciate that I was able to hobnob with the rich and famous ... err, well probably just the famous rugby players on the teams we hosted here in Nelson: Italy, Russia, Australia and the USA. OK, maybe in some countries they are famous, but I'm pretty sure in the US the American team isn't all that famous either.
EITHER way ... I was able to have a moment to get my picture taken with captain Todd Clever (gotta cut that hair) and helped farewell the entire team from Nelson. I have to say that they were by far the nicest team we dealt with, so polite and appreciative. It was a real pleasure to meet them not just for me but also for the rest of our team working on the tournament.
Don and I went to the match to be rowdy Americans cheering for the home team USA Eagles and we were as loud as possible. Got a text from a colleague about 5 minutes into the broadcast - Don had been on TV!! As it happens we recorded the game and there was indeed a glimpse of his smiley face all painted in red, white and blue so I took a pic with my phone of our TV :)
As fans, we stayed in the stadium after the game to thank the Americans, who were going home the next day having not made the quarter final cut, and they shook each and every person's hand, it was a really great showing for the USA, they impressed a lot of people.
Nelson hosted its last RWC match yesterday, phew, the drama is finally over. I can get back to real life now.
Next up on the blog, we are applying for citizenship. The end to our five-ish year journey to become permanent New Zealanders.
EITHER way ... I was able to have a moment to get my picture taken with captain Todd Clever (gotta cut that hair) and helped farewell the entire team from Nelson. I have to say that they were by far the nicest team we dealt with, so polite and appreciative. It was a real pleasure to meet them not just for me but also for the rest of our team working on the tournament.
Don and I went to the match to be rowdy Americans cheering for the home team USA Eagles and we were as loud as possible. Got a text from a colleague about 5 minutes into the broadcast - Don had been on TV!! As it happens we recorded the game and there was indeed a glimpse of his smiley face all painted in red, white and blue so I took a pic with my phone of our TV :)As fans, we stayed in the stadium after the game to thank the Americans, who were going home the next day having not made the quarter final cut, and they shook each and every person's hand, it was a really great showing for the USA, they impressed a lot of people.
Nelson hosted its last RWC match yesterday, phew, the drama is finally over. I can get back to real life now.
Next up on the blog, we are applying for citizenship. The end to our five-ish year journey to become permanent New Zealanders.
22 September 2011
Rugby World Cup fever in Nelson
I've been busy. Here's a bit of what I've been doing. This was on Tuesday, what an exciting day to be in Nelson. And the culmination of three years of my life. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/
It's almost over!!
It's almost over!!
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