A Year On

Today is the one year anniversary of the day we arrived (to live) in Wellington. And OMG, it has been the fastest year of our lives so far. We’ve tried both lifestyles now and can officially confirm that life definitely goes faster in the city!

We still feel like we’ve only just arrived here, yet we’ve done so much and achieved so much over the last year. We’ve found a suburb to call home, settled the children into schools, settled ourselves into work, started house hunting, hiked, explored, enjoyed – oh and we got married too!

Our children are growing into proper Kiwi kids and Alfie continues to make us chuckle with his lovely accent. The other night Jake was helping him clean his teeth before bed and all I could hear coming from the bathroom was:

“Aaaaggghhhhh, I’m all weird”

 “Dad! You’re making me weird”

“STOP MAKING ME WEIRD DAD”

Poor Jake was so very confused, but eventually it transpired that he was dripping water all down Alfie as he cleaned his teeth and he wasn’t weird after all, just “wet”.

It was my turn yesterday as Alfie kept claiming that there were “things floating in the ear”. I started to become really concerned and almost made a doctor’s appointment for him. Eventually, with the exasperated face of someone much older, he switched on his posh English accent for me and told me there were things floating in the “AIR”.

With all the recent misunderstandings, he has started to realise that it is in all our interests for him to use a proper South England accent occasionally, and he is becoming nicely bilingual.

Molly however retains an air of mystery about her and speaks in pure English at home. Very very occasionally she’ll say a word with a Kiwi accent and then correct herself quickly in fear of Jake’s mockery (he’s very good at it). I do wonder how she sounds at school though, and whether there may be a strong accent in her which we never get to hear at home...

Anyway, we celebrated today's very important milestone with a family meal out tonight at our local brewery/bar (I’m not sure how to describe it actually. New Zealand doesn’t have a pub culture like the British pub culture, but this local bar would be as close as it gets). Happy Anniversary, Wellington!