It is a massive challenge. We have been here year. After being able to grocery shop at midnight if I wanted to and doing all my Christmas shopping online, jumping on a train to nip up to a museum with the kids on a wet day or getting the bus to pizza express we now have to organise everything much more carefully.
There are 5 of us and one car. If someone wants to do something we all have to go or someone goes and the others have to stay at home. My eldest goes to Whangarei once a month for a gaming day, so I tend to do a big shop and take the other two boys for lots of fun activites.
I have to be much more organised - the chemist is open 5 days a week 9-5. There are not many shops in my town a 4 square (like a Spar), chemist, butcher, organic shop, gift shop,newsagent, hair dresser (rarely open), doctors, library (pay to be a member, very limited selection) and 3 estate agents (to be fair one of these also sells hay, strawberries, huge wooden tables, guinea pigs and whatever else is around).
This sounds like I am obsessed with shopping - I am not, I loathe shopping, I love in a way not having lots of shops near, and I realised reading in bed with ds3 tonight that we have hardly any advertising hoardings anywhere, which is refreshing.
My class come to school with stories about sheep/cows/ horses etc - they have a different outlook on lots of things - we have had drought here and when I say that I don't want it to rain on a trip they look at me like I am mad - they want rain at any price (loads very recently so all good again).
The village where my school is is on tank water - huge concrete tanks sunk in the ground that collect the rain water - if you are lucky it gets filtered, although I drink it straight from the tap in my room.
Shoes are hardly worn - at the petrol gargae the other morning one worker was saying she was in trouble with her boss as she wasn't wearing any. My class all take theirs off when they get into class (if they are waring any) and if they do have any if is usually jandals (flip flops) or gum boots (wellies)
In the winter our nearest swimming pool is 50 mins away. in the summer it is 2 mins away - school outdoor pool $50 for the whole summer for the whole family.
Big events in the school year have been: Pet and Show Day (bring calves and lambs plus home baking) and the Posuum Purge. We had the Speaker of the House of Parliment judge our animals - not bad for a school of 43 children!
Fundraising at school is hard: everyone needs money: 2 schools, St John's Ambulance (who are who comes when you dial 111), playcentre, Plunket (under 6's health care), sports teams etc. There is quite a small community and only a finite amount of money that we are all chasing after. On paper it looks like a rich area - there are 2 private schools here as well as the primary and secondary school. But one of the private ones is for Exclusive Brethern only. Most of them are very well off, with big houses and there are a lot in our town. There are friendly if you meet them - smile and nod, but are very, well exculsive! So the active community espcially the 'state' schools are much less well off that it appears at first.
We are not moving again so I am determined to enjoy myself and so far so good. There are lots of positives, but it is very different. It is strange sometime realising that something I take for granted no one has even heard off. I wanted treasury tags at school - it transpires no one in NZ has heard of them or none of the stationers I asked anyway!
Anyway that may not have made much sense but I quite enjoyed getting off my chest!