Two Americans emigrate to New Zealand from Colorado,
USA.
We share our Kiwi immigration story and talk about
our new life in Nelson, New Zealand
Hi! Welcome to our web site, formerly a blog. We are Angela Ricker and Don Bartkowiak. We spent the past 13 years living in Westminster, Colorado and in 2006 decided to pack up, sell half our household, and move to Nelson, New Zealand.
After an amazing month in January 2005 on holiday traveling all over the North and South Islands, we realized New Zealand was the place we wanted to be, not just visit. Our blog joins our journey as we start to pack up our lives in Colorado in summer 2006 to the present as we settle and live in Nelson, Top of the South, New Zealand.
The web site is intended to be a record of our life change: we gave up an American lifestyle--high-powered jobs and big paychecks, new cars and disposable income--for a laid back Kiwi existence to allow us more time for leisure, reading, learning new hobbies (Angela, painting / Don, photography or cooking) and practicing existing ones (knitting, in the wool capital of the world!) as well as traveling all over an amazing country that has just about every adventure one would want.
Angela was formerly the Executive Director of a wonderful nonprofit organisation in Colorado, Sense of Security. Don spent more than six years working at Abacus, formerly a division of Doubleclick.
Currently Angela works at the Nelson City Council managing their many websites and working in public communications. Don was a recruitment consultant for Advanced Personnel until January 2008 when he decided to join Angela at Council as an analyst for the city's infrastructural assets division -- and now they work together nearly every day!
We brought one of our beloved cats with us to New Zealand through an arduous pet immigration process. Olivia "Livvy" is here with us now and has adjusted extremely well.
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She does not miss our other baby, Porter, in the least. But his parents miss him terribly and get regular updates and "meeeoooowwwwwww"s on Skype as he is in residence with grandma and grandpa where he has adjusted to life quite well. He is now a Santa Fe kitty, as you can see from his pose on the red bench.
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Feel free to read our blog, tour through photos of destinations across New Zealand, read about our recommendations about travelling in New Zealand (and beyond), and look through our personal pages. You can also comment and ask us specific questions about the immigration process: we emigrated as Skilled Migrants.
It's great to know you are reading along. LIVE THE DAY!
**All photographs taken by either Angela Ricker or Don Bartkowiak unless otherwise noted
