Birthday Week

October 23, 2007

First, the disappointing news from last week. Last Wednesday, Josh called the Ohakune i-site to check the conditions on the Tongariro Crossing. The lady that Josh spoke to said that the Tongariro Crossing was covered in snow and that we would need to be experienced climbers with ropes and ice crampons for our shoes in order to climb safely.

Needless to say, we were majorly disappointed by the news. I guess we'd thought that all the snow would have melted by the end of October. Now, we aren't sure where to go or what to do. No doubt were in better shape, however, we're upset we can't do what we planned to do.

Onto the birthday/end of work celebrations. Josh gave me my birthday cake a couple of days before my birthday so we could start eating it early as it is so big. We didn't put candles on the cake until my actual birthday on October 20. This was the chocolate cake from New World that we'd been wanting for awhile. The day before Josh bought the cake for me, I'd gone to New World looking for it. However, all the cakes except for one at the bottom of the case were gone. So, I ended up buying cinnamon doughnuts and vanilla ice cream instead. The next day, Josh waited for the bakery to make me the cake we'd been wanting.

This was coming home after my last day of work. Josh surprised me with flowers and a sign. My flowers are so pretty...I LOVE them!

We picked up some Bangkok Thai for dinner and rented some DVDs: High School Musical (we accidentally rented High School Musical the Concert first so we had to go back to Blockbuster to exchange it), Ocean's 13, and Who Killed the Electric Car. It was a great way to celebrate the last day of work. It's crazy to think that we have about 2.5 months of vacation ahead of us.

On my birthday, it was rainy and gray outside. I had leftover Thai food for breakfast before Josh gave me some of my presents. Josh gave me a couple of CDs and a desk calender with quotes. One of the CDs, Brooke Fraser (a Kiwi artist), was a keeper but the other CD and desk calender were on their way back to the shop. But, we had planned on going into town anyway so I could by a lotto ticket for my birthday. They play lotto on tv here every Wednesday and Saturday. Since my birthday was on a Saturday and we always play without actually buying a ticket, I thought it would be fun to play for real. After we returned the things in the mall, I went to buy my lotto ticket. I picked my own numbers after the lady explained to me how to play.

After buying the lotto ticket, we ran by McDonald's for some birthday lunch. We didn't win anything on lotto that night but we decorated my birthday cake with candles to celebrate the right way. There are 2 and 8 candles since we didn't have enough candles in the box (Josh picked out the pink and white candles for me). For the life of me, I could not blow out the candles. It took three tries!

The next day, it was such a nice sunshiny day that we went out to the beach to enjoy the sun and read our books. Josh is re-reading the Left Behind series and I brought the sixth Harry Potter to finish (finally!). The sea was muddy and rough because it has been so windy here. All these people were fishing along the shoreline.

Today was my first day at home since I quit working. Josh and I went through a lot papers that have accumulated since we moved here. We threw away a lot of papers we don't need anymore. We're quickly approaching the end of our time in New Zealand and it is so bizarre to think about.

In the last month or so, I've really begun to question if and how I have changed since living here. I think the biggest thing that Josh and I have hit upon as far as a life lesson goes is this: You can get by without a lot of stuff. You don't need many things or the best things. You might want them, but you don't need them. I think we knew this and lived our life this way before coming to New Zealand, however, it has really sunk in here because people live very modestly here. New Zealanders aren't all about showing off with the biggest car or house.

I'm also thinking about what I'll miss in New Zealand when we leave. It's hard to imagine that we won't come back here for a very long time, if ever. It reminds me of the places I lived when my dad was in the military. I know that the Air Force Base in Okinawa and Alaska still exist today, however, I haven't gone back to see where I grew up.

I think I'll miss the quietness of our lives here (not a gazillion things on the news and celebrity watching), the landscapes, and being close to the beach. I'll miss the ability to catch a flight without having to take my shoes off and go through various forms of "security" check points. I'll miss the popularity of staying in holiday homes instead of hotels. I'll miss everything in Palmerston North being within a 5 minute drive of the house and no traffic. I'll miss not living next to a river and a park within a 5 minute walk of the house. I'll miss hanging our laundry out to dry on a sunny day. New Zealand is just very peaceful.

I won't miss the weather here. It has seriously been one of the rainiest, grayest periods of my life! I need the sun! I won't miss the cold house without insulation. I won't miss the high prices and limited selection in the grocery stores. I won't miss the high price of going out to eat. I won't miss the high price of gas. Many things are so expensive here in comparison to the states.

Overall, Josh and I have had so many experiences here that are beneficial professionally and personally. We really went out and honored the Rotary commitment by giving over 20 presentations and I still can't believe I worked as an International Student Co-ordinator when that was my goal before moving here! We have traveled much more extensively than we thought we would and still have more travel planned. We're both walking away from the experience feeling like we maximized our time and the opportunity to be here.

I'm not really sad to be leaving because in a way I feel like I've just been on an extended vacation with some work on the side...which is interesting because I'm here on a Working Holiday Visa so it seems like that was really appropriate for me. Some days I think, should we try to stay in New Zealand to live here permanently? But, ultimately there is no real reason for us to remain here.

Rotary Farewell in Wellington

October 14, 2007

Josh and I drove down to Wellington this morning so that we could attend the farewell luncheon for the Rotary Ambassadorial Scholars currently in New Zealand. We left Palmerston North which was crazy windy...gale force winds and drove south with sunny skies the whole way-nice. Josh's directions to the host Rotarian's home were pretty good except for the fact he forgot to write down the specific house number that we were going to. Luckily, we had the Rotarian's phone number so we got the right address sorted and were on our way.

The luncheon was very nice and it was a good chance for all the scholars to say good bye as many are leaving in November. Rather than eating in the house, some of the girls decided to go outside to eat. We wanted to take advantage of the perfect sunny weather. I love the fact that it was like a tea party in the garden. Good food, good company and good weather.

Picnic lunch



Clockwise from left: Jessica, Janell, Elise, and Tara



Josh in the middle of chewing a cookie and trying to smile.



Ike and Josh talking in the parking lot.






After the luncheon, Josh and I headed into downtown Wellington for a visit to the Te Papa Museum. We looked around for an hour and then we drove back to Palmerston North to catch a free show called Elements. The show was about the history of the Manawatu. It was really good with some Maori performances and Japanese drum playing being the highlights.

With only four days of work left for me, our time to do the Tongariro Crossing is getting closer. I'm a little nervous that we aren't ready but I did 14 laps last Monday and yesterday so I have to think it will be a little bit easier than last time. Josh and I are thinking of taking a 3-4 day trip after my birthday to see the Waitomo Caves and then do the Tongariro.

Wish me good luck for my birthday this coming Saturday...I'm going to play the New Zealand lotto and win!

October

October 5, 2007

Josh and I can't believe it's October already. We've just been working, training for the Tongariro Crossing, and planning our trip to Asia. Buying flights within China has been the biggest challenge. We've caught some good hotel deals but Hong Kong is CRAZY expensive. Here's our travel itinerary:

November 4 Sydney, Australia for an 8 hour layover

November 4-7 Bangkok, Thailand

November 7-10 Guilin, China

November 10-15 Beijing, China

November 15-17 Xian, China

November 17-19 Hong Kong

November 19-23 Siem Reap, Cambodia

November 23-27 Phuket, Thailand

November 28 Wellington, New Zealand

November 30 Fayetteville, Arkansas, U.S.A.

Last Friday, our Chinese visas came in the mail. Note the excitement on my face. I love visa stickers! This one has a picture of the Great Wall of China on it. Electronic visas, like the one I have for New Zealand and the one's we got for Australia, aren't as much fun to look at (although they are much easier to obtain).

I've included some pictures of my office and desk space. If you click the picture you'll see the requisite Diet Coke can. No matter where I work in the world, you can trust that there will be a can of Diet Coke within arms reach!

We had a picnic dinner the other night. Since we've had Daylight Savings, the sun is staying out till 7 pm or so. It is so much better! First we tried to eat on the ground but it was wet so we set up stuff on a little table on the porch.

It's Warming Up

Sunday, September 23

Another week and it's been great with the warm, sunny weather. The trees at the house are blooming and so are the cherry blossom trees throughout Palmerston North. I turned in my UCOL resignation on September 19 and my last day will be October 19 (the day before my birthday).

Since I had the day off on Friday, September 21, Josh and I had a picnic lunch in the backyard. We drove up to Massey to submit a form for some holiday pay I earned working one of my temp jobs a few months ago. It's probably going to be $8 total of holiday pay but something is better than nothing. As we left Massey, we drove back through the Victoria Esplanade where you can drive through a street lined by cherry blossoms.

After returning from Massey, we drove out to Himitangi Beach in the afternoon. We stopped for some Tip Top ice cream (caramel fudge and chocolate) at the Himitangi Beach Store before driving down to the beach. While I read some guidebooks for our upcoming trip to Asia (Thailand, Cambodia, and China in November), Josh was writing my name in driftwood on the beach.

I was so surprised that Josh had written my name on the beach (and given me a flower too). It was very sweet! We watched the sunset and saw something unique to New Zealand...a vehicle was pulling a guy on a surfboard in the shallow end of the ocean. I think the pictue I took looks like it belongs on the cover of a New Zealand guidebook. What do you think?

On Saturday morning, we met up with Kim and Fleetwood (Fleetwood's another American RAScholar) at 10:45 to check out the Sakura Festival. The Sakura Festival is held at International Pacific College in celebration of the cherry blossom trees. Although IPC is primarily a Japanese school, the Sakura Festival was a celebration of all cultures: Japanese, Indian, Irish, Chinese, Middle Eastern, Thai, etc.

We started the morning by watching different dancing performances. Then, we were off to find some food (stopping along the way to look at stalls selling items). We found some food stalls and I decided on the pad thai noodles and white rice for $5. Josh got curry and rice for $5. We ate our picnic lunch underneath some trees while sitting on the grass. It was such a nice day for a picnic but we'd all forgotten to wear sunsceen since the morning had started off cloudy.

After lunch, we walked around the remaining displays and then returned to the performance stage to watch more dancing. The performances concluded with a dance/parade that went down a street through campus. Our group got split up at this point but thanks to Josh's hieght and the fact he was wearing his "Wild Kiwi" green hat we all found each other once the parade was over.

We left the Sakura festival around 2:00 and drove back to Kim and Fleetwood's house to pick up our car. On the drive back, Kim and Fleetwood mentioned that there was a hangi (traditional Maori way of cooking) that night for Massey's international students and the event only cost $5 per person. We thought that sounded like a good deal so we made plans to meet up at 5:00 that evening.

When Josh and I got home, I was ready for a nap. I hadn't got a lot of sleep the night before and the sun had really zapped me. A couple of hours later we were heading back to Kim and Fleetwood's for the hangi. We literally walked over the river and through the woods to make it from Kim and Fleetwood's flat to the international student building.

It was funny to be the one who was considered international instead of hosting an event for my own international students at UCOL. The food was being prepared when we arrived. Traditionally, a hangi is prepared in the ground, however, we were being served food cooked in a modern hangi machine. The chicken and veggies came out steaming hot.

We played some ice breaker games before dinner was served. The game involved Maori numbers and mock shooting the person standing next to you. The photo is of the final two players involved in an old west style shoot out. I figured if I yelled BANG in Maori (pucko or something like that) loud enough, I would win...and I did!What, no prize though?!? :(

Dinner was served and it was yummy (it reminded us all of Thanksgiving). Of course, by that point we were really hungry though. Even the punch was tasty. We were happy with the $10 dollars total we'd spent for dinner that night. As 7:30 approached, Josh and I headed back to the car without Kim and Fleetwood because one of the only shows we watch regularly was coming on tv. On our way out, we were able to grab two extra meals since they had leftovers. What a great deal: 4 dinners for $10!

Today, the big event was that I jogged/walked enough laps to cover the distance of the Tongariro Crossing!!! AWESOME! I did my 14 laps or 17.5 kms in 2 hours and 2 minutes. I'm not worried about the time at this point, just getting my body used to covering the distance without shutting down! I was really happy to reach the goal that we need to reach for the Tongariro and we still have a month left before we plan to do the crossing. We'll throw more stair climbs into the mix too. We're up to 10 reps in the Tower Building when we go there.

Other than that, it's trip planning for Asia (a very budget trip...as in $25 hotel rooms, budget) and getting ready to move back to Arkansas. We depart New Zealand for the states on November 30. We'll split a week and a half at my mom's and Branson before visiting Mexico from December 11-19. We're returning to our favorite resort for the third time: Excellence Riviera Cancun and we're so excited about 8 days of eating, drinking, and relaxing before getting back into the working world. We'll spend Christmas and New Year's with Josh's family in Cabot and then head back to Fayetteville to figure out where we're going to live! Never a dull moment!

24 hours in Wellington

Saturday, September 15, 2007

Josh and I drove down to Wellington yesterday and returned today. We caught Jessica's music recital (our first ever recital) and spent time catching up. We had soooo much fun and soooo many laughs. We left Palmerston North around 2:30 in the afternoon, I was eating a microwavable Watties chicken curry with rice meal (they're so good and were on sale last week at Pak N Save so I'd bought 10!) It rained so hard all the way down to Wellington.

We made it to Jess and Ike's apartment just before 5...on time! We met Ike since Jess had already left for the recital. We met up with Jess and Ike's neighbors, a young Danish couple, and literally crossed the street and walked up a hill to the university (a 7 minute walk at most).

As we entered the recital hall, we saw someone handing out programs. It was Elise, another American Rotary scholar studying in Wellington although she too has her Ph.D. We said hi and found some seats to watch the performance. The majority of the songs were in French or Spanish and were opera. I kept waiting for Jess, who kinda looks like Emmy Rossum, to start singing songs from Phantom of the Opera.

After the performance, we stopped by the apartment so Jess could change and we could figure out where we wanted to go for dinner. We decided on a place called the Loaded Hog which has a lot of everything and a place that Ike and Jess had a 30% off coupon for out of a Wellington discount book.

We found easy parking not too far away from the restaurant considering it was close to 7 on Saturday night. When we entered the building and started looking around for seats, the entire place was PACKED...and the building was HUGE! Eventually, we spotted two empty tables that could be pushed together, however, we still needed five chairs. Josh and Ike went around and rounded us up the right number of chairs and we moved on to what to eat for dinner.

Josh ordered a burger and I had a chicken/bacon (really ham) salad. The food was so good and Josh really liked his hamburger because it tasted like meatloaf! We hung out for so long we were hungry again as we left the restaurant (well, it did take a long time to split the bill as it's not a common practice here).

We headed across town to Strawberry Fare for dessert. I thought Josh and I would each get our own dessert, however, the brownie at $10.50 had nuts in it and all the other desserts were around $15.00. I opted for a mochachino and Josh got the brownie which we said if it didn't have many nuts in it, I would help him eat. When the food came out, it looked great: wonderful presentation. We had some big laughs over dessert, one of which was over the fact that they didn't have artificial sweetener in packets here so I had to take this huge bottle of liquid artificial sweetener to put in my coffee...nothing subtle about that!

After figuring out how to split the bill again, we dropped Elise off at her apartment before returning to Jess and Ike's for the night. They recently upgraded to a futon instead of the homemade "couch" (boards and cushions) that they'd purchased online when they first arrived in New Zealand. Jess told a funny story about how the Salvation Army wouldn't even take the "couch" back to their business to sell, but they did throw it away for her!

The futon was super comfortable because it had two pads whereas the one Josh and I have in the states is not comfy at all. We got really good sleep and only woke up the next morning when Ike left the house around 9 to meet up with some guys from church for a breakfast. The three of us, Jess, Josh, and I had breakfast at the house (a great spread of cereal, fruit, toast, juice and coffee) and looked at photos on the laptops until Ike returned around 11:30.

We decided we'd go out for lunch with Elise so we picked a spot called Sweet Mother's Kitchen, drove down to Elise's apartment, and tried to find parking which wasn't quite as easy as the night before. Sweet Mother's Kitchen is a mix of Cajun and Mexican types of food. The place was crowded inside and out so that was a good sign. We found two tables outside that we pushed together.

The menu was divided into items they sold on weekdays/weekends and times of day. The chicken salad that I wanted wasn't on the weekend menu but I asked the waiter if they could make it anyway and he said yes...SCORE! Josh ordered a spinach and feta quesadilla. When the waiter asked what we wanted to drink, I asked if they had free refills on their "fizzy drinks" (soda in New Zealand speak). The waiter, not a native Kiwi based on his accent, looked so confused! He said no, there weren't free refills and where is this place you can get free refills? We all said, "AMERICA!" which I thought was pretty funny. Although you don't typically get free refills on soda in NZ, I still thought it was worth checking out.

The food was really good again today so we were happy. After eating, we returned to the apartment and parked Jess and Ike's car on top of Salamanca Street and began to walk down the hill to their apartment. Josh noted as we walked along that many of the cars were missing mirrors on the left-hand (sidewalk) side of the street. That's when I noticed OUR CAR WAS MISSING ITS LEFT SIDE MIRROR!

Apparently, this is a common type of vandalism on Salamanca Street. My blood didn't boil in anger but I was pretty upset. What can you do though? I thought it must have been a cosmic trade off of sorts because when we left Jess and Ike's apartment to go to lunch, I'd been really worried that we left the laptop out and Jess and Ike's laptop was out in open view too in the living room of their apartment. I really didn't want someone to steal the laptop because it has all of our photos on it. I've been especially on edge of laptop theft since many of my UCOL students have had laptops stolen from their flats. So, anyway, the laptop was still there but we were one car mirror less than when we had arrived in Wellington. I know in the scheme of life this is a very, very minor thing but it is irksome due to the fact that we were planning to sell the car in a few months' time. Bugger!

Elise had to return to her apartment because she had some event later that evening. We'll see her again the first weekend in October when she'll stay with us in Palmerston North after a opera she's performing at in Whanganui. After Elise left, the four of us chatted for awhile before Josh and I decided to hit the road back to Palmerston North. We'll most likely see Jess and Ike again in mid-October at the Rotary farewell get together in Wellington.

The drive back to Palmerston North was a lot faster since it wasn't a heavy downpour like yesterday. It amazed me to drive past the same landscapes that 24 hours ago had been covered by gray clouds and buckets of water. Blue skies, green grass and a bright yellow sun are much better to look at to me. When we got back to Palmerston North, we were a little sleepy since although we got good sleep the night before, we didn't get to sleep in quite as much as we wanted to. We easily fell asleep and took a 2 hour nap even though our landlord neighbor is constantly using what we refer to as the "bone saw."

Have I told you about this bone saw?!? Our landlord likes to do woodworking stuff and by "likes" I mean he's addicted to building things at least 12 hours a day EVERY DAY! He has a detached garage that he has turned into his woodworking shop. Problem is, it's right next to our bedroom/house. The bone saw usage was occasional at first, however, now it's just a constant buzzing that Josh and I hear.

The bone saw cranks up early in the morning and runs late into the evening...I can't imagine what their electricity bill must be like. Granted, of all our neighbor noise issues: the New Mexican "Humpsalot" couple who were constantly amorous at 3 am, the Fayetteville roomies who lived downstairs who had ridiculously loud parties, or the screaming Fayetteville family who lived on the other side of our master bedroom, this noise complaint is the most manageable...although sometimes I think my brain is going numb from the sound.

In other news, Josh and I had the article on Americans' views of rugby published in the local paper. I can't find a link online yet but if I do, I'll post it. We're going to write another article about the difference between American and Kiwi culture. Also, I'm going to miss tea with the mayor tomorrow because I'm going out of town for work. Josh will have to fill me in on all the details. That's all for now.