Bodily Adventures

Kia Ora! Here I am once again apologizing for taking so long to post. I have a good excuse this time - Brad and I were asked to speak in church this past Sunday so last week all my spare time went to preparing my talk. Hopefully you will forgive me for neglecting my blog! But I'm back, ready to pick up where I left you....  All right, so now we had a job offer. The next step was to apply for a visa. Just because we had a job offer didn't mean we'd get to live in New Zealand. They are pretty strict with who they let in and it is not a simple nor cheap process. The visa we applied for cost $3000 USD and if they don't approve you there is no refund, you're just out $3000, but we felt it was worth the investment.  So, what all does it entail? Let me tell you. 1. You must have a job offer from an accredited employer. Many companies in New Zealand are not accredited (Microsoft wasn't accredited but supposedly was working towards being accredited). And, remember, your ...

 Oops! I know I said the next post would be about obtaining a visa to New Zealand, but before we could even apply for a visa we had to have a job offer in the country, so I am going to chat about that first. I think the very day that I told Brad I was on board with moving the family to New Zealand he started applying for jobs here. Any job that he might remotely qualify for he applied for. We received so many "I'm sorry, but no" replies. Mostly because we were not in the country. For a company in New Zealand to offer a job to a non-citizen they have to go through a bit of a process. First, they have to be approved by the government to even offer jobs to non-citizens/residents, and many companies simply don't get that approval. Second, they have to prove to the government that they tried to fill the position with residents but were unable to. Also, your job position has to be on a government approved list, so certain jobs here you can't even consider hiring a non-r...

 You may be wondering what on earth let the Bodily Family to New Zealand? Let's get into that. There is a bit of disagreement as to when the idea of living in New Zealand first occurred to Brad. I thought he had talked about the idea of living in New Zealand years ago. Like when Ryan was just a little boy. Not seriously, mind you, just kind of like, how cool would it be to live in New Zealand? And we talked about how we had heard you had to have a million dollars in savings or something to even apply to live there. So, who knows if that ever actually happened or not (though I visualize this conversation happening in Mom & Dad Bodily's kitchen in their house on Howard - does anyone else remember this by any chance?). Anyways, whether that was the first seedling of feelings for living in NZ or not, a few years back, I believe sometime in 2020, Brad saw a wallpaper on his computer and something about it appealed to him enough for him to find out the picture was taken in New Ze...

  Well, actually it also changed 100 days before that. On March 12, 2024, (our 25 th wedding anniversary) Brad moved to New Zealand. By himself. Without me. Without our children. It was a temporary separation. 100 days to be exact. The kids and I would join him mid-June, as soon as school was out (and James had graduated). I’ll make another post about the adventure leading to that day as well as the adventures during those 100 days of separation, but suffice it to say, we’re glad to be together again. And we are together again in New Zealand. Not because we don’t love America, not because we don’t love Idaho or our friends and family there and definitely not because we don’t love the amazing charter schools where our children attended. But, for some reason, we felt a strong pull to take this step and see what it is like to live in a completely different country, a different hemisphere even! And to give our children this experience and know that they can do things that people...