Outward bound

Hello my name is Morganne. I’m originally from France and now I’m living in Rotorua, New Zealand.

I guess I first thought of moving to New Zealand in 2008 when I did an internship in Taupo to finish my studies.  I’m a big fan of volcanoes so I was looking for an internship in geothermal and volcanoes, so New Zealand was a really good place.

So I went back to France and worked 3 years in France , and I met JC, so one of my friends now, but he talked about Mighty River Power and how they were advertising for a job - So I applied for it and I hadn’t heard about it for 3 months something like that, but then they contacted me in September and I said oh are you happy to come over, and I said oh, oh yeah ...!

So I was really well treated by Mighty River Power. When I first arrived in New Zealand, I arrived in the Rotorua Airport, and Mighty River Power arranged for a car to be there for me for 1 month and they arranged for my accommodation for 1 month too.  They’re used to having migrants coming into the company so they have these programme I guess for migrants … and we have all bosses with us too so it’s really open, there’s not much hierarchy – we know who is the boss but discussions are really easy.

So there was a lady saying if you feel homesick just try and connect as much as you can with other people.  For me music is a big part of my life - I'm a musician and I did music in France, so and just one day I was just hiking through town just to do some groceries and I heard some bagpipe playing.   

I just went and talked to these people and they were really open saying yeah, yeah yeah - you are a beginner? - yeah yeah? - fine, just come and try. 

..and, yeah - so now I have the full bag pipe with me and I’m still working on my technique  but I can play with the band, I can connect with them, go with them to some competitions around the North Island and South Island.

And I was also curious about the Maori part of Rotorua, so one good way of learning that was to do some sport with them, and a colleague introduced to Waka Ama and so I just joined the Waka Ama Club on the Rotoiti Lake.  

For this sport you need to be all in synch, you connect with people really strongly because you have to be altogether to make it work, so when we there is a race they all the families of everyone coming in and having a sausage sizzle and having a chat, a laugh, and share stories …

Yeah so coming, even though I had the experience back in 2011 about how it was to work here maybe one of the hard things was the keeping the link with the family and the friends. 

If you are out of sight people sometimes forget you a little bit, so it’s about letting go some relationship because, that's just the distance is making that happening, and we feel quite at home here too but so your heart in between 2 countries … but I think now open a new world a little bit so, I think we are going to stay a bit longer in New Zealand. Yeah.