It's a Drama Podcast

If you have always dreamt of living in New Zealand, are under 30 years old and have a bit of dosh saved up (enough to get you back to your own country) you can spend a year working in New Zealand by getting yourself a year-long working Visa.

That way you can see how you like it.

This week's podcast episode features Adam, a twenty-something chappy from the UK is doing just that.

After being persuaded by his mate to leave Thailand and come to New Zealand to work on a fairground, he got himself a year-long working visa and headed down under.

In the ten years that we have spent living in New Zealand, my family and I have never been glamping.

Not once.

Let's face it. It's not the sort of thing you want to do with two kids, is it?

But. With the kids now old enough to make their own beans on toast, Brian and I decided that it was time to check out what this New Zealand glamping craze was all about.

Get us a little bit of hippy outdoorsy fun.

And while we were there - glamping in New Zealand - we made a podcast episode for you. And wrote a post.

After all, what else would a husband and wife do when they find themselves alone without their kids for the first time in nineteen years??

This week's podcast is brought to you by me (Liz) and my husband Brian.

It is brought to you with love. And with wine and with sushi.

This is a different kind of podcast format from any other that we've done in the past (and, I won't lie, it was slightly scarier).

Brain and I will talk about what's on top for us right now. As parents. As husband and wife. As friends.

What share we are loving, what are we struggling with, and how we are dealing with both.

I wish I'd read a post or listened to a Podcast like this when we were looking to move to New Zealand ten years ago.

At least then I would have been prepared. I could have packed a hot water bottle and a sun hat and some hankies.

But I didn't.

Instead, I got to the other side of the world and blubbed for six months about how my family never returned my calls and that the bathroom in the house that we were renting was cold and smelly and damp.

New Zealand. Is there any better place?

I'm not a doom and gloomer. No sir. Not me.

My family and I have been living in New Zealand for almost a decade. We love it. New Zealand is one of the most beautiful places on earth and raising my kids in New Zealand was the best decision we ever made.

Last week I received this email.

"Hi. I am thinking of moving to New Zealand with my family but I am concerned that as we are moving from the UK, my eldest son (who is 12) will be bored. Could you give me any advice?"

I have two kids, a boy age 18 (note to oneself, must stop calling him a kid) and a daughter who is 15.

We have been living in New Zealand for almost eleven years. We emigrated from the UK for a better way of life.

And yes.

We found it.

If you had to pick just a few, which would you say were the most beautiful places in the World to visit?

This is a question that our family hears a lot when we tell how we spent twelve months travelling the world together (two adults and two teenagers) on a budget.

We visited thirty-three countries in total - all of them magnificent but some being crowned more beautiful than others.

This is part two of a podcast that my son (Sonny) and I made. We couldn't fit every beautiful place in the world into one post so we decided to treat you to two smaller bite-sized portions!

Which were the most beautiful places on earth?

This is the question that everyone asks you when you tell them that you spent twelve months travelling the world with your teenagers.

That, and did they miss their friends?

This week, Sonny (my 18-year-old son) and I made a podcast episode that talked about our favourite places around the world and why they were considered by us to be deemed beautiful.

What is a tiny house and why would a twenty-six-year-old girl want to invest all of her savings and live in one in New Zealand?

Because she can and they're cool.

That's why.

Could you live in a tiny house?

In this week's podcast, Sonny and I get to chat with Laura.

Laura is a twenty-six-year-old graphic designer from New Zealand who, for the past few years, has been living frugally so that she can save every cent that she makes to invest into building herself a tiny home in the North of New Zealand.

Think of a tiny house as a mini version of what you're living in now.

With a lot less clutter and stuff.

In New Zealand, the average house size is 205m², while in America, the square footage for a typical home is 2400ft² (223m²).

The size of a tiny house?

You can expect anywhere between 100 to 400ft²

(approx 10 - 40m²).

Kids playing video games is so new thing.

Even I, who, according to my kids is a dinosaur who knows nothing - used to play Pacman and space invaders.

So why are parents becoming more and more anxious and stressed out over the fact that their kids are spending more time on the screen and less time interacting with the people around them?

I am a parent of two kids. My son is almost nineteen (when do we stop calling them kids?!) going on ten, and my daughter is fifteen going on twenty-three.

I homeschooled my kids for the past nine years.

Our homeschooling schedule had written into it that Friday was a no lesson day, which meant that on this day my kids got to stay at home with their grandma while I met up with friends for some 'me' time.

Every Friday morning, when my kids were nine and twelve, I would meet up with two friends, both of whom had boys of a similar age to mine.

And every week, without fail, we would all sit and cry to each other about the same thing.

The amount of time our kids were spending playing video games.

Why do you need a homeschooling schedule? Because without one you will spend your days wandering from one project to another. Feeling extremely busy but accomplishing very little, if anything, at all.

How strict does the home-schooling schedule need to be?

Strict enough to keep everyone happy but not too strict that you become a slave to the schedule.

Home-schooling isn't easy. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying.

And how can it be? As parents, we already have a million things to sort out. Running a house is a job in itself. And let's not forget those parents that have to home-school and work full time.

But home-schooling shouldn't be stressful either. And neither will it be if you create the right kind of homeschooling schedule for your family.