New Zealand: Our New Life in Paraparaumu

Well, we have successfully made it to Middle Earth!! We are living in a little town outside of Wellington called Paraparaumu. Life is great and we love it!The pictures are better than anything I would be able to tell you so...enjoy!!

This is the first thing we saw when we got through customs at the Aukland airport. Yay!!! We really are in Middle Earth!

But apparently you don't want to mess with Middle Earth....

Here is a larger than life (like it takes up the whole ceiling) Smeagol!!!

Hopefully he stays focused on the fish. It was so cool to see that in person (it was at the Wellington airport, Aukland is at the top of the North Island and Wellington is on the south). Here's a map.

If I were more tech savy I would have added a WE ARE HERE star in Wellington, but hopefully you can find it. 

Getting all of our luggage and us into the much smaller cars of New Zealand was the challenge...but we did it! It did take us just as long to get them out as getting them in though.

And here is a view from nearby (ish)

We love it!!!!

And here is some interesting street art Ramzi found while he was in town for meetings. We are both excited to get to know the area better and meet all the interesting people that make up New Zealand.

I have never seen such a yellow and perfect flower. We saw this on one of our walks and decided we should go hiking to see more beautiful things on the weekend. 

Here was part of the trial on our first New Zealand hike.

The view halfway to the top.

The final view! We can't wait to hike all over the place and see even more beauty! (note: they call hiking 'tramping'....I will probably do a blog soon on the different words they use here)

This is the beach not ten minutes from where we're living in Paraparumu!!

And there I am posing for the panoramic. It's not a swimming beach (too cold) but definitely worth walking around. 

Selfie with Kapiti island in the back!

The craziest part is probably driving on the other side of the road. But I am happy to report we have both driven a fair amount and are pretty used to it. It's still weird though.

And here's Ramzi to prove we have both successfully navigated the opposite side of the road. 

And that about sums up our first week down under in Paraparaumu, NZ. This was the sunset a couple nights ago. We are happy and healthy and blessed to be here. We can't wait to get to work and leave a part of our hearts here as well.