My mother has always been a very energetic and enterprising personality. At well over 70 she can still run circles around me.

For the past few years she was not able to travel much, as her husband wasn’t doing well and couldn’t accompany her. He passed away just before last Christmas and now she has decided she wants to see more of the World! She spent five weeks visiting me at the cottage in Manitoba this summer, but has been planning to become a Granny Aupair in New Zealand ever since this Spring.

We had our doubts whether she would be able to get a position there, as her first attempts to find a family down under through a German agency did not look very promising. She was not daunted though. She said she had always been able to do what she set her mind to and she would manage this too. So we placed ads in some online news papers for Auckland and Christchurch and were successful. She had two families that were looking for a nanny come mature au-pair.

New Zealand

To make a long story short mom got her visa for New Zealand and we brought her to the airport this Thursday for a grueling trip to Christchurch via Abu Dhabi and Melbourne. She was to leave Munich at noon and would arrive in Christchurch on Saturday midnight. With a 24 hour layover in Melbourne.

In Christchurch she will be picked up by her family who will then drive with her to Dunedin where they live – and so will my mother for the next 9 months

I sure hope everything works out well!