A little bit of a misperception...

Today on the radio this DJ said something along the lines of,
"So it's Four-Twenty Day in the States right now. It's like a holiday! That's right, in the States you get to take the day off work to smoke weed!"

Gym Membership and Take-out Pizza

Bryce got a killer deal texted to him-- $10 a week for the gym, and the first month is free. I met him at the train station to sign up (the gym is at the train station which is awesome).

Since we were so healthy by getting a gym membership we decided to reward ourselves by going to our favorite pizza place, Hell Pizza. Mmmm.


We normally get the Limbo but settled on the Purgatory Pizza this time ;-)

Tuis

Tui (pronounced "two-ee") birds are one of our favorite things about New Zealand. They sing as I can ready for work in the morning, and they sing as I make dinner. There's tons of them around our house, which is a little unusual. They have two voice boxes, so they sing and make cool clicking sounds. Their sound is really distinct.

Here's a tui singing by our house:



They have a white ball of fluff on their neck, so they're really easy to spot. They have the funniest flying pattern too, they flap their wings a few time and then stop, so that their bodies swoop downwards. It looks like they're zig-zagging along as they fly through the air.

pumpkin madness

I've been making pumpkin bread a lot lately. It's called "pumpkin cake" by coworkers to get around the idea of pumpkin being used as a sweet instead of as a savory. It is well liked and earlier this week a group of coworkers literally cheered when they saw me bring it in to the staff room one morning. One of my friends at work left a giant pumpkin on my desk chair yesterday that she picked up at the supermarket-- a hint, I think, to make more pumpkin bread. Our kaitakawaenga (Maori liaison) noticed it still sitting at my desk today and said, "Hey aren't you going to do anything with this?" Meaning: aren't you going to make something to eat with this? I gestured to my colored markers nearby and said, "Well I'm going to decorate it right away!" The strangest expression passed over his face. A little while later I showed off my painted new jack-o-lantern to him and others. I got a lot of befuddled looks and comments for 1) decorating a pumpkin and 2) decorating a pumpkin and it's not even Halloween. (When handed a pumpkin, what do Americans do? Decorate it, of course!) The kaitakawaenga gave me a hard time for being so silly with my pumpkin but then later came by my desk and said, "You know what would would make that pumpkin look really cool? A knife stabbed in the top or something." "Great idea!" I enthusiastically told him. I knew he'd come around.

Later that day, I showed off my new decoration to another co-worker. As an aside, she told me that to the Maori, playing with your food is taboo. Whoops! Well, for we Americans, pumpkins aren't really even considered a food (our pumpkin comes from a can) so maybe we can have a loophole?

I know, that's terribly ethnocentric of me to think that way. So, Mr. Pumpkin is now in a bag and his comment on his top, "Don't eat me!!" hidden forever.

Incomplete list of things to love about NZ

1. the birds, the birds, the birds (especially pukekos!)

2. gorgeous scenery and beaches.

3. clear night skies; the Milky Way and touchable stars.

4. NO BEARS (or cougars)

5. friendly people who are always telling you that the weather can change in an instant and be sure to wear your sunscreen and a hat because our sun is very harsh here.
6. The harsh sun is saving me several hundred dollars in hair coloring fees. (Whoo hoo!)

7. Taking the train to work along the harbour and watching for whales.
8. There are supposedly penguins here, and orcas sometimes come into the harbour.

9. Cute lambs.

10. Sophisticated "we aren't the center of the world/we know a little bit about the world around us and actually physically travel there" attitude.

Mt. Taranaki

After work on Friday we drove to Stratford-- a 6 hour drive (normally 4 hours; traffic and a nice long dinner at cafe slowed us down a bit). On Saturday we started our hike up Mt. Taranaki with the objective to climb as high as we could.

Getting to the top is very do-able (for most). Mt. Taranaki is probably the steepest mountain I've ever been on. When trails in New Zealand encounter a steep area, they goes straight up the hill instead of "switchbacking" (going back and forth) up the mountain. Along with the steep slope of the trail, loose rock (called "scree") near the top of Taranaki made it really difficult to walk up and down. Part of the mountain was so steep that steps going straight up were installed-- there must have been 500 steps in a row to walk up-- with no hand rail. Walking down I had to work hard to quell hysterics and force myself to only look one step ahead of me. I really had no idea that I was afraid of heights until I moved to New Zealand.

Bryce could have made it to the top, but I had to make us stop because climbing on the scree was so difficult. I waited at a pretty (and steep) vantage point to watch a glider and the views for about 40 minutes, while Bryce climbed even higher. It was a gorgeous day.

Mt. Taranaki is even beautiful when viewed up close-- really close.

Near the base of the mountain. Some parts of NZ are so gorgeous I spontaneously start humming the Jurassic Park theme song.

Hiking in NZ is wonderful-- no wild animals to be scared of! There are wild boars I suppose, but it's hard to wrap my mind around the fact that there's wild pigs out there.

You can easily see in this picture where the boundary for the park lies. In the distance Mt. Ruapehu (where we ski) can be seen.

NZ fun facts

My cousin Matt just asked me for some fun facts for his son Sean to present at school about NZ. Here's what I came up with:

1) People here say different words. They say "rubbish" instead of "garbage" and "shop" instead of "store" and they call McDonalds "Mackers". They say "carpark" instead of "parking lot," "boot" instead of "trunk," "mate" instead of "friend."

2) The steering wheels are on the right side of the car and everyone drives on the left side of the road.


3) there are 4 million people and 44 million sheep


4) They eat a lot of pumpkin here. They make pumpkin soup, pumpkin ravioli, and even pumpkin lasagna. (But no pumpkin pie).


5) The main sports are rugby, cricket, and netball. The most popular sports team is the rugby team called the All Blacks. They do a native ritual dance called a "hangi" before every game to make the other team scared of them.

6) There are Chinook salmon here (I think it was a gift from the Native Americans?) and there are orca whales here too.

7) there are NO squirrels, raccoons, bears, cougars, or skunks in NZ. Hedgehogs are never pets here, they are pests that carry diseases and that cars run over ;-)

8) The native people here are called the Maori. They arrived on the islands around 800 years ago. They hunted a giant bird (bigger than an ostrich) called the Moa to extinction. (That's Bryce holding a Moa bone in a cave on the South Island).


9) The national bird is called the "kiwi." Kiwis have no wings and are really fat. They have giant eggs. Kiwis are nocturnal so Julie has never seen one :-( Julie thinks that kiwis, like penguins, are part of a giant NZ conspiracy and don't really exist. Possums and dogs that were brought to the islands by immigrants are killing the kiwis because the kiwis can't run away fast enough.

10) New Zealanders like to call themselves "Kiwis."