22 February. For the rest of my life that date will mean one thing: the anniversary of the earthquake that changed our lives, our neighbours, and our city. Forever.

Since that day one year ago, a lot has happened. People have grieved the loss of loved ones, homes, businesses, and the general feeling of safety. People have picked up the pieces, shoveled out the sludge, and slowly put their lives back together - 2 or 3 times for some of us. And everyone I know has made changes within themselves, living more generous, more appreciative, more intentional lives. They do it for themselves, for their families, and for the ones who never got the chance.

To say that we’ve been changed by this experience is almost cliche at this point. But that doesn’t make it less true. I have friends who lived through the San Francisco earthquake in 1989. They were only children at the time, but they tell me that even now they’ll jump at the sound of the bass-rumble from a large truck as it drives by. I guess there are some events in life that leave their mark on the people who survive them. Childbirth is one. The sudden loss of a loved one is another. And for us, the experience of an entire city coming together to endure the shock and trauma of a devastating earthquake is one that will always be part of us - a new loop in the fingerprint of our lives, swooping low but quietly, gradually, beginning to lift up again.

Fig. 1: Picking up the red rubbish bin.

Fig. 2: Dumping the bin using the mechanical arm.

I really do! One of the things that Nate and I love most about living in Christchurch is the brilliant rubbish (trash) collection system. Here is a basic breakdown of how it works:

• The City Council gives every residence 3 different wheelie bins: a red one for rubbish, a yellow one for recycling, and a green one for organics (food scraps, grass clippings, etc.)

• Every week, two of the bins are collected - the green bin (so it doesn’t get too smelly) and either the red bin or yellow bin (they rotate) - by colour-coordinating trucks, which take them to different processing centres around the city. The trucks operate using a mechanical arm (see Fig. 2) that is designed to pick up the bins (which is why everyone gets identical ones).

• Because it pays to use the recycling and organic bins (i.e., each house only has a small red bin to fill with trash for every two weeks, and it costs to dump extra trash at a local dump), EVERYONE does it! This means that the amount of rubbish that is being recycled/composted is about 2-3 times the amount that is going into landfills.

Genius.

No update yet on immigration - we think they’ve made a decision on our letter (the one that begs them not to deport us), but they will only notify us by mail, so we have to wait for a few more days to find out what they’ve decided.

Eep, eep…

Immigration. Ask any expat and they’ll tell you that it’s one of the major headaches of living abroad. There’s the applying, the waiting, the approval, the expiration, the reapplying, the waiting…you get the idea. So this year we are applying for a New Zealand Residence visa. If we get it, it means we can live in NZ as long as we want, whenever we want. It also means we would have similar rights to citizens…voting, mortgage financing, tax paying, medical benefits, the right to study/work wherever and whenever we choose.

Sounds good, right? Yeah, sure, it SOUNDS good, until one actually starts the process. Then one realizes that the department of Immigration New Zealand actually exists primarily to make one’s life a living NIGHTMARE!!

In NZ, you can’t just apply for Residence. First, you have to file an Expression of Interest (which comes with a hefty fee…well into the triple digits). If your EOI is approved, you are now permitted to apply for Residence. But if you thought your mortgage application was complicated, oh boy, this one takes the cake. There are medical tests, x-rays, letters of referral from friends/coworkers, more application fees (now we’re talkin’ quadruple digits, folks), FBI background checks from the U.S. (which, you may have guessed, don’t process quickly), bank statements, etc., etc., ETCETERA!

But you think to yourself, “Hey, I’ll only have to do this once, right? It must be worth it!” Really, self, must it?

So today we heard back from said department of Immigration New Zealand. They’ve had our application for about 5 months now. But they weren’t giving us an answer, oh no. They were calling to let us know that we have officially overstayed our welcome in NZ, because we didn’t apply for a Temporary Work Visa to keep us legal while they process our Residence Application. See, we were under the impression, partially due to some inexplicably ambiguous wording in an email we received from them, and partially due to some good-ol’-fashioned wishful thinking, that as long as we had lodged our Residence Application before our Work Visa expired, we were golden. “No further action required” were their exact words, I believe. Huh.

So now we find ourselves in a bit of a precarious position. We have been advised to send a letter to the aforementioned department of Immigration New Zealand, explaining the misunderstanding and begging them not to deport us. (Did I mention that this letter must be accompanied by $300 per person? Argh!) Then if they decide, out of the goodness of their government hearts, not to deport us, we must apply for Temporary Work/Visitors Visas to once again become non-citizens in good standing. Only then will they resume processing our Residence Application (double argh!!). Did I mention that said Temporary Visa Applications will come with - you guessed it! - even more fees?!?!

[deep sigh.] C’est terrible. Will we get deported? That sounds expensive, so I hope not. At this point, though, it seems anything is possible…