April 2020 – Simi's trinkets and treats

In 2017 we got a dog. At the time, we have been living in Korea for almost 4 years and since we had just signed a contract to stay at our then current work place we decided it was time to get a dog. Generally dogs provide a lot of joy and is also a good stress reliever. Research even suggest that people who own pets, are happier than those who don’t. Therefore…. since there’s research involved… we got a dog

Getting the perfect puppy

If you do research about where to get a puppy you’ll come up with a lot of bad reviews about dogs from pet shops. Furthermore, if you walk into some pet shops you can immediately see that some of those dogs are either under fed or already looking sick.

Therefore we decided to get a puppy from an owner who already has his own dogs and is not a dog breeder. We were in luck as my friend heard that we were looking for a dachshund and she saw an advertisement in the local ‘cafe’ about dachshund puppies for sale. Luckily the owner was really particular about giving his puppies to a good home and to us, it meant that he really cares for them.

Because we lived in an apartment we had to crate train her, which really helped her. Even today she still finds her comfort in her little crate although we changed her crate from a plastic one to a cute fluffy little house. She knows that she’s safe there and even though she eats my shoes, I won’t touch her in there. The crate training also helped her a lot when we traveled across Korea and overseas.

In 2009 we had a dream. Our dream was to immigrate to New Zealand. Back then we still haven’t studied, I had just lost my job at the flower shop and we wanted to get away. But getting into New Zealand meant that we had to have qualifications in our professions and experience would be a plus. We set out to get our degrees. I got mine in Education and my husband got his in Accounting (because these were jobs in high demand). By the time we had finished New Zealand didn’t need teachers or accountants any more. We wanted to leave so we applied for teaching jobs in Korea, in November 2014. By December we both had job offers and we got on our flight on the 31st of December and landed in South Korea at 12pm on the 1st of January 2015

Skip forward 4 years to the beginning of January 2019 when my cousin sent me a new report about New Zealand hiring teachers because of the shortage of primary and early childhood teachers. I did my English test and Teacher Registration and 8 months later I arrived on the sunny North Coast of Auckland. Unfortunately my husband had to wait until October before he could join me as we have a a little dog and her permit took a bit longer than expected.

Now let me tell you another thing. Since just after we arrived in Korea we wanted to start a family. We’ve been trying for years to have a little baby but to no avail. We saw doctors and specialist and all they said that it might be stress, so we kept trying hoping that maybe someday we might have less stress. I remember when I told this story to my colleague she said that I should keep faith because there is something in the water at our school because all the cooks always get pregnant. I laughed it off as one does when you’ve been trying for so long…. but still… here I am, sitting and writing this post to you with my little girl kicking in my belly. Shortly after my husband arrived I fell pregnant and we’re expecting our little one to arrive at the end of July 2020

This just goes to show that once 1 little thing in your life changes, everything might change.