It’s been a while since I blogged last, 238 days to be precise 😳

This post is going to be a bit different to my usual ones. I’m going to fill it with what I’ve been up to for the last 18 months or so, when I arrived in New Zealand.

Back at the end of November 2017, my family and I flew out of the UK, travelled for 24 hours and finally landed in Christchurch, New Zealand to start a new chapter of our lives.

We spent a few weeks travelling around the South Island before travelling up to the far North for Christmas, which of course we had to do Kiwi style with a BBQ.

After Christmas, we travelled south to Auckland to collect our dog who we shipped over from the UK to join us - she was very relieved to see us! New Year was spent with some family friends on the Coromandel which was absolutely stunning.

We then spent a few weeks travelling all the way back down south to our new home in Dunedin, exploring lots of places along the way. In Lyttelton (just outside Christchurch), I found my favourite pudding of all time.

When we finally arrived in Dunedin, we spent a couple of weeks finding our feet. I reached out to HIVE Dunedin and we started up a Code Club for local kids, which was a huge success.

[//]# (instagram Bj9muE2hBfO)

I also did some voluntary project-based teaching for some local kids (8 & 10) which was great fun. I was able to teach them HTML, JS, CSS, some Python and some basic electronics in about 20 sessions. I found it very rewarding to see their progress and I was very impressed with their quick grasp of the fundamentals of compsci.

It was around this time that I landed my first ‘real’ job. I now work as a Junior Web Developer for a software company over in Queenstown. I am really enjoying working there and everyone has been extremely supportive of me. We work within the snowsports industry, which is perfect for me as I have developed a love for snowboarding since living in NZ. Unfortunately, I fell hard and damaged my shoulder so I had to take it easy for the rest of the season.

I’ve been making sure to take time away from screens though!

I’ve been doing lots of camping, tramping, photography, sailing and 4x4ing amongst other things. Here’s a few photos.

New Year 2018/19 was spent sailing around the Abel Tasman!

In Jan 2019, we made the move from Dunedin to Cromwell for work and school reasons. I much prefer the lifestyle in Central Otago, it’s much closer to the ski fields and the scenery is outstanding.

Lately, I’ve also been doing some iOS development… so stay tuned to hear about something quite exciting 🚀

To conclude…

I am loving life out here in NZ, I much prefer the environment to anywhere else I’ve lived and all the Kiwis are super friendly. I would love to spend some time in Wellington and Auckland to get a feel for the developer community up there, I’ve heard it’s second to none.

My goals for the rest of this year include improving my iOS skills, doubling-down on C# for work and exploring as much of this beautiful country as possible. I would also really like to improve my photography and potentially get back into video and short films 🎬

Oh. And I’ll try not to make it 238 days until the next post…