Grocery store, Akaroa

This has been the longest day ever, because we were wide awake at 2am. However, there's no negative connotation meant to saying it's been the longest day; it's been a fabulous day. This morning we took advantage of the empty early Saturday morning streets by driving on the left hand side of the road (we're careful not to say the "wrong" side) to the grocery store. The meat section was my personal favorite-- so many different types of sausages! The weird flat fish! I picked up a huge bag of "savories" (meat filled pastries); I devoured 1 or 2 as soon as I got home. Afterwards I decided to check to make sure that the meat was cooked (it was). Lunch: kiwi, nutella and jam sandwich. Ryan, Roy, and Tammie all skyped with us-- that really helped to make us feel that we're not alone out here.

Then off we drove to Akaroa, an area that was a sunken volcano that is now a gorgeous bay. It looks like Napa. I am in heaven here. I can honestly say that this place is more beautiful than wine country; can you believe that? Oh and it's wayyyy less expensive. The drive out and back to Akaroa was worth the stress of driving on the wrong, errr, left side of the road. Bryce did all the driving but I can tell you that it's a bit scary sitting up front on the left hand side of the car with no steering wheel-- at one point I had such an adrenaline rush of fear (no fault of Bryce's, the car just went a different way than I thought it should) that my fingers hurt for minutes afterwards as if I had been electrocuted.



After almost a year of living with the bare necessities, it feels so luxurious to have furniture. We don't really mind too much that we don't have a spaghetti spoon to stir our noodles, that there's no plug in the bathroom, that the fridge is 1/3 of the size we're used to, and that there's no clothes dryer. It's like we've been training for this. :-) We're happy with the luxurious: heated towel rack, coffee press, internet, and heated mattress pad. The cold is something that we've been fighting here-- I can't understand why home owners here don't all replace their drafty windows with more energy efficient ones; all the heat pumped into a room lurks away the second the radiator's turned off. There's 2 extra doors in this house to help divide up the cottage so that part of it can be heated at a time. Oh, and speaking of doors,the handles are so high! Not good for hobbits.