Settling In

Bryce and I have boysenberry cobbler to eat this evening, that we got "to go" from the quaint restaurant near Mt. Hood.  Mt. Hood is our new mountain that we live by, here in Portland, Oregon.  It's about an hour and a half away from home, and the plan was to go hiking today.  Well Bryce ended up going hiking; I ended up being seized by fear from the prospect of bears and didn't go more than 2 minutes down the path.  It's been three and a half years since my last hike in bear territory after all, and my fear of bears seems to have increased.

So I had a pleasant three hours in the car napping in the sun with a gorgeous view of Mt. Hood while Bryce hiked on his own. He said the only animals he saw were the two dogs that some hikers were walking.  He also heard a chipmunk.  I wish there was an app for Bear GPS so I knew how close they all were to me.

After a lunch/dinner at this wooden restaurant called the "Zigzag" we met up with friends for kickball.  It was a late 6pm game and it was already getting dark an hour later, when the game finished up.

Home now for boysenberry cobbler and tea.  Bryce wants to know how I'm supposed to heat up my water for my tea as we don't have an electric kettle.  "Microwave," I say, and he jokingly gasps.

Every day we have is touched by New Zealand, in some way or another.

Preparing for our Return

It's been a crazy few years, and an especially strange last 6 months in the household.  We moved out of our apartment in December, thinking that we were soon to be arriving in Vermont, but a job that Bryce had been promised fell through.  The temporary living arrangement we then secured of flatting with 3 others turned semi-permanent; we've been here 5 months now and are leaving the country in another month, via SE Asia.

The topic of conversation between B and I the last year has been-- do we move or stay?  Why?  We've finally decided to move back to the States because we just need a good dose of family and our old friends, as well as that feeling of being home and comfortable.  I know that when I move back and get in the swing of things again, I'll remember the beauty of NZ, how I could take a gorgeous run or drive along the coast whenever I feel like it, and I'll kick myself for moving.  What has reconciled me to moving is knowing that the US isn't better or worse than NZ, it's just different.  We love the two places equally and definitely plan on moving back.  Just how soon is the big ?

NZ: waaaaaaay better than Aus!

Okay Australia has a lot going for it:
you get paid more
hit less by the recession
better shopping
better prices on clothes/food/petrol
culture is pretty similar to America; less of this tall poppy stuff.

However, New Zealand is way way WAY more beautiful. There's more to do and Wellington in particular is a pretty special place because you have a small-community feeling combined with big city bars/museums/events. This beautify and community feel, combined with an almost complete lack of dangerous animals that can kill you, means that NZ is the place for me.

In an effort to convince my loved ones to leave downtrodden America for NZ, let me show how wonderful it is to move to NZ, where it's beautiful almost all the time. (And don't move to Aus where you can't even swim in the ocean for fear of salties (Salt water crocs) and stingers (jelly fish)).


Cathedral Cove in Hahei, NZ


Hahei Beach

Queenstown, NZ

Mt. Ruapehu in the summer, seen from the small airplane Bryce took to fly to Rotorua this week.

Picton, on the South Island of New Zealand.

View of Wellington from Mt. Kaukau



sailing in Wellington

Sheep on the North Island of NZ

The pass to Gisborne on the North Island

Road to Mt. Cook on the South Island of NZ

jaywalking kiwis

I think I figured out why kiwis don't make a huge effort to use the cross walk when crossing the street. I think they think that by using a crosswalk, that is inconveniencing traffic by making them stop, and that just isn't polite. So they'll wait until one lane is clear, walk to the center line, and then stand there in the middle of the road, (sometimes holding their child's hand or pushing a stroller), and wait until the next lane is clear to run across.

I'm in their miiiiinds.

___________________

This whole issue of jaywalking is a big one for me. Wellington is dealing with many pedestrian injuries/deaths lately and are grasping at straws trying to figure out what to do about it. They've lowered the speed limit to 30 kms (That is 18mph people!) They have started a small advertizing campaign about safe crossing. They considered erecting barriers along the footpath, but data from Europe show that pedestrians jump over those barriers, making crossing in front of cars even more dangerous. Next, the city is hiring a psychologist to help relate to the pedestrians.

Police in Wellington do not ticket jaywalkers.

I've mentioned to acquaintances that giving out jaywalking tickets would solve the problem. I've received various responses:

• Guffaw!! (askance smile to neighboring non American)
• Seems a little Big Brother doesn't it?
• Wellington can't make a city law for the police to enforce, as the police are national (well okay that makes sense then).
• The police have better things to do than to hand out tickets to pedestrians!
• The police department and city do not have the money to employ officers to hand out tickets. (The local newspaper, the Dominion Post, reported in July 2011: "The Dominion Post counted 336 people crossing against the traffic signals at the intersection of Willis St, Willeston St and Lambton Quay between 1pm and 1.30pm on Wednesday." ) (dude, they generate revenue k?)
  

There is something seriously wacky going on with the Wellington pedestrian for sure. I've made it my personal mission to honk some sense into any idiot who strays across my path when I have a green light. Yeah I see your snotty look you brat. But now you're deaf. ha ha!

Routeburn Track and Milford Sound

American Birthday

Some things never change, like me celebrating my birthday for almost a week. I feel pretty spoiled. Today heaps of Happy Birthday messages came in, reminding me that today was my true birthday because that's the time zone I was born in.

Mom wrote me yesterday, saying that she's been reading my notes here and that I write like Harlan Coben. I've never read him before. I googled him and there was actually a video clip of his upcoming book: http://www.harlancoben.com/

Jacquelyn, my only American colleague, arrived to work with the best lemon bars ever. They're pretty much my favorite dessert, although I think I say that about several desserts. I might have strongly hinted to her that they were my fav. The sorority I was in for all of 11 weeks sometimes served them and I would sneak as many as possible.

E-mails have been going back and forth between my friends and me, figuring out the details for lawn bowling. Summer is here! We're going to do the Island Bay lawn bowls again. Pretty excited for handles of beers in the sun! Hoping the weather is as good this year as least year.

Tomorrow night we're off to the bird sanctuary again to see Sirocco the head-mating kakapo. It's a rare bird that bonded with humans too much while being treated for a respiratory infection, and is now helpful in fund raising. And it mates with human's heads.

Bird Sanctuary (Zealandia)

Today we visited the bird sanctuary in Karori. We were here for the first time when we first moved here, in August 2009. We really enjoyed our visit today. There's a new cafe and visitor's centre now which are pretty nice.

We saw a bunch of cute geckos hanging out together in a terrarium. Not sure if they're native.

They have these amazing birds there, called the takahe. There's only a little over 100 left in New Zealand. They were once thought to be extinct, but around the 1940's this guy, sure that the takahe were still around because of sporadic reports of sightings, would spend this weekends and holidays tramping around the fjordland in the South Island looking for the bird. I can just imagine how excited he was to find the bird, they are really cool. This one is pretty old (18 or so, they're expected to live until around age 21).
They just walk around part of the park like pheasants. They look quite a bit like my other favourite NZ blue bird, the pukeko.


I can almost imagine how that "discoverer" of the Takahe felt. There is a bird called the "fan tail" that I thought was extinct, but I was confusing it with another bird, the huia, which is extinct. I was in a bathroom at a campground almost two years ago with my friend Erin when a fantail flew in. I got so excited, thinking, "I must tell everyone! They're alive!" But happily the the flitty pretty birds are alive and well all over, although still not too terribly common to see.

Our whole goal today was to hike from the bottom of the park, in Karori, to the wind turbine, in Brooklyn. Goal met!

The trail back to the entrance of the park was along a high, wire bird sanctuary fence. (The fence is built to keep rodents and possums out) It was over grown and difficult to avoid the sticker bushes. Apparently it is unusual to see people on the trail we were on, because people on the trail on the other side of the fence, in Brooklyn, kept giving us funny looks. Finally an older woman stopped us and asked if we were lost. :-)

On the way back to the carpark we got a sighting of a kaka.

We even got to see a tuatara.

And a baby tuatara. (It's hypothesized that tuataras were around at the same time as the dinosaurs, and stayed with New Zealand when it broke away from Australia).

Tinsel- advanced vocabulary education

Learning some advanced vocabulary, working on my PhD in Kiwi.

My friend Anna and I are organizing the "Christmas-do" for our office (the holiday party, which is completely and totally okay to call a "Christmas" party, even though we work for a government agency for a country of heaps of atheists and agnostics.) But I digress.

Anna was discussing decorating the function room of the Indian restaurant we'll be having the party in, and saying she "might put some tinsel on the back of everyone's chair." At this point I felt the familiar-- hey, that doesn't add up. hmm. Might "tinsel" be used differently here? I had to make my Julie Confused face, say, "um, i don't know if that's the best idea, maybe we think tinsel is something different?" "why?" "Oh, you know, my idea of tinsel--- that would sorta stick to people's backs." "Huh. Well tinsel is silvery and kinda thready." "Huh, that's my 'tinsel' too. Okay, maybe we do think it is the same thing. ha ha never mind."

Anna sent me an e-mail later with a picture labelled "tinsel" which helped really clarify everything:

Ohhhhh.
I showed her a picture of "American" tinsel (which was surprisingly difficult to google image btw)-- she said she had never really used that before.

Pumpkin Pie

Today I made pumpkin pie, with no crust. Bryce was aghast.

It turned out great, I always thought crust was a waste of calories anyway. Real whip cream helps too. (I will trade crust calories for whipped cream calories any day).




Freeeeeezing and raining today! Just last week we were having drinks in the sun. What happened, agh!

Blogs are tricky

I would love to update this blog more often, but I feel funny about putting people's names or pictures on here. I'm getting long past the point on my New Zealand adventure where this feels like a little vacation, like I should after over 2 years. I do feel like this is home and the things that occupy my mind are slightly deeper than the cool blue pukeko I saw on the way home. Not like I didn't have deep thoughts before of course, but I don't have much to share in regards to what has charmed me lately.

I'm proud of putting blog entries in as much as I have though--I have a journal too though that's been sorely neglected for months. Such a pain to hand write things out. Dear Prudence advises against private journals because someone will read it after you're gone-- so where's the release?? Maybe time to ignore Ms. Prudie.

Well here's my assessment of NZ-related situation, suitable for reading by wider internet viewing audience.

I am grateful for opportunity to move here, and get residency. I had no idea I'd meet so many wonderful people. I had hoped I would grow into a better person as a result of this experience and I know for sure that I'm more thoughtful. I hope to live here later, but for now I find the idea of living in the States a little exotic. As opposed to a post I made this time last year, now I'm ready to settle down in a permanent place. With a garden, dog, and puppies. Bonus points for a lemon tree. Who knows what kind of crazy ideas I'll have this time next year.

I will take this time to document that at approximately 2:30 PM 2/10/11, Bryce promised me that one day we can have a home with a lemon tree that will be so full that lemons will be on the ground. (We passed a lemon tree on someone's front yard, on the way to a party at Josien's, that made me jealous. Who could take a lemon tree for granted so much that they would just let the lemons rot on the ground???)

Baking

Today I made Highlander Biscuits, nom nom nom nom


From my kiwi cookbook that Josien and Marc gave me for my birthday last year---


On a completely separate note, orcas were found in the harbour again today! And again we weren't there to see it, agh! So close!

Mountain Biking

We went mountain biking early this morning, finally. Bryce has been itching to go for awhile. I went despite the fact that I had only ridden a bike once in the last 10 years, and 10 years ago when I did go mountain biking on Crystal Mt I got a sweet cut on my knee that I still have a scar for.

Now I can see why mountain biking could be fun. I could see that even through the rather intense fear I had on the twisty, dippy, narrow single track with a steep drop off. Some parts were wider and flatter and I could see how this could be fun exercise. But mostly during the one hour (rated 1/2 hour) ride, all I was trying to do was to get through it. The route was circular and you can't reverse directions so once you're on it you just have to keep going. Walking my bike was definitely an option I took up but it was so freakin slow and having the dad with the little girl on the attached hitch-like bike rattle past me was a little embarrassing. That little girl is going to be the biggest adrenaline junky. She was about 4 years old and went down the trail on the bike behind her dad going, whoa whoa hoa wo wo wo! Sigh! Big smile.

Here's a picture of a nice tame section of trail. The scary parts of the trail were too scary to think about stopping to take pictures. (That is I was scared I would fall off my bike if I unfurled my fingers from the handlebars).

Got some bruises and a sore butt but actually I can imagine going back mountain biking, maybe on the nice, wide, rail trail up north in Upper Hutt.

New Fav Song: Gotye

Okay the video looks a bit scary but I definitely recommend downloading the song on itunes, Gotye's Somebody That I Used to Know
(Aus and Kiwi singers):

Sunday mornings

Sunday mornings I usually go with Bryce or Anna on a short walk to the market by Te Papa. Buying flowers for my foyer is one of the highlights of my week. (The other one being pouring myself a glass of wine in the staffroom Friday at 4:30 after tearing myself away from the computer).

Flowers are usually so expensive at the supermarket and florists, but I got these purple flowers for $10 NZD at the market.

Usually Bryce and I buy crepes from the real and true French dude at the Crepes a Go Go stand at the indoor Market-- This morning we decided to forgo the frenchies for some home made ones. While we're in NZ we're making an effort to buy all the foods that taste best here: honey, beef, kiwifruit, scallops-- so naturally we try and have kiwifruit filled crepes at home. Kiwifruit costs about 10 cents each; can't beat that.

The rest of the day I usually spend trying to get Bryce to go to a museum while he tries to get me to walk to the snowboarding store with him. In the end we get so lazy with skyping and internet-ing that the least lazy one will go a few doors down for take-away Vietnamese (go #37!) for dinner. (That is usually Bryce.)

And that's our Sunday.

On Passwords and Keeping Current & Warm

Creating usernames and passwords for everything is so annoying isn't it? I counted; I have 20 different accounts. Ug. I wish there was a work around. The worst is when I have to put in a password to read research articles-- jeez seriously please let ANYONE read research articles; don't we want a more educated, well-read world?

https://www.hanen.org/special-pages/login.aspx?ReturnUrl=%2fMyHanen%2fHome.aspx

In other news, I'm actually reading research articles! Go keeping current! What motivates me is the older ladies in my office who recommend "chewing" as a way to improve speech.**

**(Please note, chewing in no way helps you talk better).



A friend of mine and I took a walk to a waterfront bar, the FoxGlove, last week, for a "working lunch." We sat outside, ordered the yummiest nibbles, and even read and discussed research articles. It was sunny and amazing. Winters in Wellington are great for these type of days, and make me forget the Antarctic winds. The weather was so cold one night last weekend that there was a power cut due to overload at the power station.

The Tree of Life Sucks!!!!

Saw "The Tree of Life" at the Wellington Film Festival tonight. There wasn't much to like about it except for the female lead's gorgeous vintage "day" dresses. Other than that, it was pure crap.

• TOO LONG
• Hardly any story line.
• There were DINOSAURS in it. Dinosaurs that stepped on each other's heads and then decided not to eat each other.
• Little flames of God that talked, throughout the movie. Does that sound like a movie you want to see?
• When the mother prayed to God about why her son died (btw we have no idea the circumstances of his death), there is about 20 minutes of pictures of space, "evolution" like dinosaurs with fins crawling onto a beach, and volcanoes.
• the movie has no ending. It just ends.
• Sean Penn is in the movie and it's not quite clear why.

This 2.5 hour movie is not worth your time or money, it wasn't worth ours! I wish I could delete it from my brain. What a pretentious load of crap!

Penthouse Cinema Ginger Loaf

My friend Tash introduced me to the wonders of the ginger loaf at the Penthouse Cinema in Brooklyn. Pairing it with lemonade is divine! We are lucky enough to get their recipe from last week's newspaper; we're baking it tomorrow.

Penthouse Cinema Ginger Loaf
(makes 3 loaves)

Grease and line loaf tins. Preheat oven to 160C.
4 cups flour
2 cups brown sugar
1 tsp baking soda
2 tsp baking powder
4 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp mixed spice (Do you know what this is??)
1 tsp ground nutmeg
2 tsp ground cinnamon
850g golden syrup
250g butter, roughly diced
4 eggs, lightly beaten
2 cups milk

Bake 60 mins and cool in tins overnight.

Electric blankets

When Bryce and I moved here we learned about the wonders of what we called "bed warmers." Put both sides of the bed on maximum #3 about 45 minutes before bed --- heaven! Especially in that first month we lived in the poorly insulated little house in Christchurch-- 33 degrees F many days. It was over a year before we learned that these pads-- placed under mattress pads, were called "electric blankets," not "bed warmers." We've had them in our Normandale house, our Makara house, and most hotels we've stayed at-- but never in hostels.

We made a mistake on Sunday. Huge sale on electric blankets-- $14 instead of the usual $99. We forgot to pick it up. AAGH! Cold sheets! Night after night!

Vintage Ski Poster

While in Pahia over the summer in January, I found a great postcard of a vintage poster about skiing the Tongariro. I gave it to Bryce when I saw him in the States; and he found out that we could get the picture printed to poster size if we buy rights through the National Library. We did that for $20, and today Bryce got an "A1" sized poster printed. Can't wait to frame and hang this one.

Living in town!

ahhh, a big sigh of relief from Bryce and I as we finally relax in a mostly clean and mostly okay-smelling home after 8 days of cleaning. We're feeling at home now in this great flat (in an old Engineers' office building that it around 100 yrs old). It's got high ceilings and an old-fashioned lift-- you know, the kind that you have to open two sliding doors to get in to. The kitchen is huge and we're really enjoying eating from a dining room table for the first time in almost three years.

Last night was our anniversary; the walk to the restaurant we went to took literally three minutes. Our place is in a great location; near the fun and the water, and several good friends who will keep me busy while Bryce is away snowboarding on the weekends.

Today we had a quick visit w/ J and M and their growing baby, and then on the way home I skyped mom on Bryce's iphone-- I talked with her while pointing the camera towards the views so she could take in our drive home. We talked for about an hour as we drove South along the Tasman Sea and into the city of Wellington. I told her we'd have to go so we could shop Brisco's for a duvet cover, but she asked to come along. I didn't realize she was serious at first, but she was, so to Bryce's mild embarrassment and amusement I took her along, after making her promise to be quiet (she was on speaker). She ended up helping us pick out a great duvet cover, which felt so great and comfy to have my designer mum along for the trip! Unfortunately we were a bit distracted with talking to her and shopping that we got the wrong size insert. Bummmmmmmer, especially since the sale is over today. Brisco's ALWAYS has a sale; in fact everyone pretty much knows not to go there until there is a sale. We got a duvet cover that goes for $70, for $15 with the discounts.

We are so pleased to look around and see our boxes unpacked, and the ugly red suede sofa covered, and the scented candles going (we rented a furnished flat). We're only in this apt for 6 months but we plan to make the most of it. We are not looking forward to finding a place around xmas but I'm trying not to think about it. A cocktail party is in the very near future!