Marriage with Luggage

When Rick and I got married, we should have changed our last name to Procrastinator.

We're 2 weeks out from moving out of our 3 bedroom flat in Auckland. It looks the same as it did a few weeks after we moved in. In other words... we've hardly packed/ sold a thing.

Auckland is in desperate need of housing, Martin (our landlord) had 800 views on TradeMe within about 24 hours! We were lucky enough that the landlord trusted us, as we led the prospective tenants through our house for viewings. Our pick of the bunch was Alison, she took particular interest in our furniture. After meeting with her, I sent a rather biased email to Martin stating she was our favourite because she wanted our goods!

That was as of an hour ago. I just had a meeting with the new tenant... and she stuck to her word and we sold her a package deal for one thousand clams (metaphorical clams):

• Fridge/ Freezer
• Single Bed
• Dining Room Table
• Microwave (sorry work, we couldn't justify storing it!)
• Sewing Table
• Vacuum Cleaner
• Home Phone
• Office Chair
• Ironing Board
• 2x couches (they are pretty mud couches)
• Bed side shelves
• Wok
• Pots and Pans

I am undecided on who got the better deal here, but that's a whole lot less hassle and time spent selling it.. so I'm pretty happy!

Also... we sent away our Working Holiday Visa applications for the Netherlands on Tuesday... I was very hesitant in surrendering our precious shiny Passports! Hopefully it wont take too long to get our visa pages de-virginised!

Anyway, back to the TradeMe listings...

xx Jaz

More Travel Insurance Drama

I have just spent the last 90 minutes reading various policy wordings, still researching travel insurance. This is becoming the biggest stress for me, as it's been almost 2 months since we booked our flights. This means in the unfortunate event our flights get cancelled then we lose all our money.

Various companies such as Southern Cross Insurance and World Nomads do not cover for "the carrying out of any work, trade or profession". Well this is a bit ridiculous when we intend to work in exchange for accomodation.

We're planning to do this exchange through an amazing site we found called HelpX. Now it's slightly ironic as on their Insurance page they plug World Nomads for their recommended travel insurer. 
Back the truck up... didn't I just say World Nomads do not cover any work? 

Just slightly ironic.

4 weeks left in Auckland, and in our humble abode. It's getting rather serious now!
Anyway, Back to the policy wordings...


xx Jaz

Travel Insurance, Visa's, Money and necessitating the use of ropes

From the title you may wonder what the heck necessitating the use of ropes is.. well that was our same question a couple of nights ago as we were reading the lengthy policy wording for Southen Cross Travel Insurance. 

We had nearly decided on Southen Cross for our travel insurer but on reading the fine print it turns out we are not covered for the following:

• Extreme Sports
• hunting
• parachuting
• rodeo
• competitive downhill snowboarding
• bungy jumping
• mountaineering or rock climbing necessitating of the use of ropes

...and that is just a small portion of the long list. We could have worked around these exclusions, but then Jaz read "Any work (including volunteer work) undertaken, that involves manual activities or work". As we are planning to do mostly volunteering and HelpXchange to get around Europe, this is not really an exclusion that we can cope with!

So it's back to the drawing board with researching Travel Insurance fine print!

The next hurdle seems to be Visa's. We've just heard back from the Dutch Embassy that Jaz is unable to get her Dutch Passport, they seem to have pretty strict rules on dual passports.

Now we have to look at other ways of getting income and being able to settle in Europe. Without a EU passport, our other options that we know about are Working Holiday Visa's and volunteering in exchange for accomodation/ caretaking. We're thinking of trying for a Spanish 1 year Working Holiday Visa; where we can work for 6 months within a year. After that we'll look into a Working Holiday Visa for the Czech Republic as we can apply for it in either Paris or Berlin. Normally you have to be in your home country to apply, but we found the CR doesn't have this requirement! Yay!

Money... ahhhh! After our years of savings being halved into Euro's, we're freaking out. We're selling everything we can bear to part with and saving as much as we can until we leave. We're now researching the most economical way to take money over, whether it be Credit card/ Debit Card/ Travel Card or CashPassport.

All that, along with reading Lonely Planet guides and blogs at any spare moment! Any thoughts or comments about our worries would be choice!

-Rick and Jaz

June First Baby !!!

It's official.. Rick and Jaz will be leaving New Zealand June 1st.

Rick's first ever Passport

It was saturday evening when I (Rick) jumped into bed only to find a jet black, very shiny, very offical looking New Zealand passport sitting on my bedside table. It may suprise you but this is my FIRST ever passport.. as I have never left little old New Zealand.  So I was very excited.


Sunday was the day that we had been looking forward to for months.. it was time to book the tickets !!  A huge step for us in this adventure. 

So off to STA Travel we went, a little scared, a little worried and alot excited.  We plan to spend a month in South East Asia, then go onto Europe. 


We fly out of Auckland Airport at 12:45pm Wednesday June 1st  to Frankfurt via Bangkok.  We got a great deal on flights, however our bank account are now looking a bit sad.  It was all a tad overwhelming.

Its such a mixed bag of feelings, selling everything and going to the other side of the world with no return date in sight.  Sick feelings aside, we are so excited to be finally locking things in. 

On that note we have also secured 2 weeks English teaching in Spain, with VaughanTown  near Madrid.  We will be teaching at two consecutive "English Camps" where Spaniard's come for a six day conversational english retreat.  It is the first thing we have confirmed and it is very exciting to know that we will be in Spain in September.

Quietly freakin out,

Rick 

P.S:  Ricks posts will appear in this green colour and Jasmines will be in purple.. 

Baby Macros Close-ups

The gorgeous child Jake is the first of many for my friends Dave and Christina..

I took the chance sitting next to him feeding for some extreme closeups..

Click on image to enlarge

I finally asked..She said yes!!!

June 12 2010, 13 of us meet in Taupo to celebrate my 25th Birthday. However there was something else on the agenda, an elaborate suprise proposal for Jasmine my girlfriend of 14 months!!!

It had been in planning for months..saving for the ring coming from London, which had to be ordered 6 weeks in advance. I had organised a friend to "courier" it back on the sneaky and the timing was pretty tight.. the ring got to her hotel 30mins before she left for NZ..and I picked it up on the day we left for taupo.

The best part was that Jasmine knew nothing about the events that were about to unfold. Thanks to my good freinds Toby and Olivia who played along beautifully.

Jasmine actually thought she was part of a plan to take me on my "birthday" experience tricking me into having my first ever flight on a plane. Trouble is this had all been planned ahead of time by me and they were in on the whole deal.. ahahah

Via email I hired a Float/Sea Plane from Lake Taupo which flew over Huka Falls and then over the Lake to where we were staying at Five Mile Bay.. which the crew(Ange, Logan, Sharon, Luke, Kev, Jordan, Phoebe and Mel..you guys rock!!!!) made a huge sign about 5mtrs high and 30 long on the beach with rolls of paper and sand, saying "Marry me Jas".

Not really a question..more a statement. I wanted our mates involved, the jumped and waved as we flew over head like true Flight controllers..

Not only that but I had organised the Pilot to land the plane on the water right by the sign in front of the bach where, after carrying jasmine onto the beach (like a princess,in my good shoes, because she had her nice boots on..)we had a picnic of delicous treats put together by Chef Luke and sous chefs Mel and Kev.

All and all it was a fantastic day, I was just glad that the weather held out, and that I could relax finally after so much sneaking around and plotting. AND SHE SAID YES!!!!

As a reward for your awesomeness you get to watch it all unfold.. enjoy.. but please don't put the link up on facebook as we want to try and keep it private as possible. Feel free to forward people the link to this blog.. www.kenrickrhys.blogspot.com

Husky Puppy

I went to Piha Beach the other day and on the way back went to a little waterfall. It was awesome and freezing. As we were leaving a little Husky Puppy came along with its owner.. took two frames and this is one of them..




F.stop : f/7.1
Exposure Time : 1/500 sec
ISO speed : ISO-800
Exposure bias : -1.3 step
Focal Length : 210mm

Click on image to enlarge