Meeting new friends: Ex-pats get together

As I mentioned in the previous post, we’re continuing to socialize and meet new people. Many have come via the Ex-Pats In New Zealand yahoo group, a very worthwhile list to be on if you are considering moving or have moved to Aotearoa.

I’ve been on the list for 1 1/2 years. There are close to 800 members with something like 80% ‘keen on moving to NZ’ and the remaining 20% who ‘have up and moved’. Most of us 20% are clustered in the three major cities: Auckland, Wellington, and Christchurch. A handful of us are here in Christchurch but not many have had the opportunity to meet.

So, always in search of a good party, I decided to rally and offer to host a pot luck gathering at our place. Planned well in advance, we had an excellent turn out of 20+ people, several of whom had only just gotten off the plane days before. Most were Americans, one was German, one South African, and we had two kiwi husbands here. All were quite fascinating in their own right with amazing stories of their journey that brought them to NZ. Two of the couples (the ones with kiwi husbands) had met via the internet. We had a wide breadth of professions (IT, airline pilot, counselor, photographer & writer, students, realtors, documentary filmmaker, horse breeders) and interests (astrology, home brew and spirit making, gymnastics) to name but a few.

I have to give a shout out to Dennis, a fellow west coastian, who also keeps a very interesting blog called Samadisoft. Here’s Dennis’ review of the party.

All in all, a really fun & succesful day.