The year is coming to an end soon, and we are thinking it is time for a new adventure. In January the four of us will be going to New Zealand for a few months – really exciting! It’s something we’ve been talking about for a long time, and now the time is there.

What, where, when

We will be going to Auckland on the North Island, where we rented a house from January until June on the North Shore (8 Kawerau Avenue, Devonport). Apparently, it’s a quite nice neighbourhood, close to the water, and only a 10 minute ferry ride away from the city centre. That’s where I will go to the office. I will be visiting the University of Auckland Business School to work together with prof. Snejina Michailova, whose research is really close to mine, so that’s very exciting! Søren has gotten permission to ‘work from home’ from New Zealand – which actually is nice for his colleagues because it means he can take the calls during the Danish night, since that’s when we will be awake anyway in New Zealand. And, very exciting, the kids will go to school in New Zealand for three months!

Let the Harry Potter experience begin…

It will certainly be a new experience for the kids, to join a different school system. It’s also been quite interesting (and slightly stressful) for us to figure everything out. The school for Birk was easy, he will be going to Belmont Intermediate School, which is a school that only has two years – and Birk will be joining Year 8. We don’t know yet what his teaching schedule will look like, apart from the school day starting at 8.45 and ending at 15.00, and it’s a twenty minute walk away. He has also already been allocated to one of the four Houses, namely Tiri house, which house colour is yellow. The houses compete for house points in ‘categories which reflect all aspects of school life’, and they compete against each other in sports on Wednesday afternoon. And there are Head Boys and Head Girls. A fun thing also scheduled for Year 8 is a 4 day camp at Waipu Cove!

2700 boys

But especially the school for Linus was a challenge. He has to go to a high school, and then it turned out that the local high school is completely full… The next possible school, about 20 minutes by school bus, is Catholic, and they only accept 5% of non-Catholic boys in the school, and they also did not have any places left. So, we had to go even further afield (30 minutes by school bus), and found Westlake Boys High School, which was happy to take him as an international student. It means we have to pay quite some fees (about 6.000 NZD per three months – it makes you appreciate free schooling in Denmark more!!), but also that he will be part of a group of about 100 international students, who are taken well care off – that’s a nice thought too. Last week Linus had a short interview with the school, which was very nice, also to get a bit of an idea of what awaits him. It will be quite the experience for him, going from the small school he is currently at – with 20 students in total in his year – to a school with 2700 teenage boys (and about 500 in his year). Westlake Girls High School with a similar number of students is nextdoor ?.

Next step – figuring out school uniforms and what else they need!

PS Our house in Slagelse is still available from 22nd of January until the 1st of March - so if anyone fancies spending their winter holiday here (we are only 55 minutes by train from Copenhagen), then do let me know!