New (Zealand, Year, House)

We've moved! Since our University-owned house wasn't going to be available past February, we've been looking for an alternative. This house is cheaper ($300/wk vs. $495/wk) but we have to deal with phone and electricity connections/bills ourselves. Its further from campus (walking takes 25min vs. 8min) and smaller (approx. 1000 sqft vs. 1500 sqft), but newer and not on a busy street and we can get broadband at home (priced per megabyte). Like most houses it has lots of single pane windows, no window screens, no insulation and only a night-store heater. Weather has been warming up, and the lack of mosquitoes means that we open windows and doors during the day.

It belongs to a nice retired man who is moving in with his new wife. He split his original lot, and built this house in his former backyard. The house is immaculate and furnished for retirement with velour upholstered furniture with doilies and ottomans. When Karen and I sit in our matching chairs in the evening, especially over the holidays, it feels like we've fast forwarded twenty years into our retirement home. Of course Abby happily shatters that illusion as she scooters by the window.

Some holiday traditions have changed, no football or really any news about U.S. sports. Cricket, Black Caps vs. Bangladesh, has been the big news here. One of our New Year's resolutions is to figure out cricket (we're punting on rugby).

I guess it's just a guy thing, but I find that I'm interested in the different kinds of cars available here. NZ, like the rest of the world, has much smaller and fuel efficient cars many with diesel options. Pickups (called Utes) are rare and almost every car has a trailer hitch. You see plenty of small sedans pulling boats and campers, which also must weigh less here. You do see the 4WD sport utility trend here. Like the many U.S. SUVs that never leave the highway with extra off road grills, etc.; the most common macho accessory here seems to be the addition of a "snorkel" so that you can ford rivers on your way to work.

If you're interested, here's some links to NZ car options:
Holden (GM, check out the VE ute)
Nissan
Toyota
Mitsubishi (check out the i-car)
Ford (check out the Falcon ute)
Honda (check out the Odyssey)

We're going to a movie and having some champagne for New Years tonight. We hope everyone has a safe and happy new year. Cheers, Bob

Merry Christmas

We returned from our tour of the south island on Christmas Eve. Our tree and home decorations were loaned to us by Jeanette, who has been our guardian angel since the day she met us at our house on the first day. Karen crocheted some nice ornaments and Lily made several beadwork ornaments to help personalize the tree. Check out the photo link to see the festive Christmas decorations.

Days are very long with sunrise at 5:50AM and sunset at 9:15PM. So we went to bed exhausted from our trip at 9:30 under blue skies. Santa arrived and brought a Sylvanian family dollhouse with several animal families and accessories for Abby (see pictures). Abby and Lily had fun furnishing the house and being amazed by the details. For example the vacuum cleaner, which is about 1.5 inches long, has the normal floor sweeper attachment which can be replaced with an upholstery nozzle if needed. Lily got a jade necklace and Cadbury earrings from the chocolate factory. Karen got an Aussie-style hiking hat and I got 3 hiking poles, which I’ll share with Karen and Abby since I can’t figure out a way to look cool and use 3 hiking poles at one time. We miss being close to family this year, but we’re happy to have Lily here and we feel lucky to be on this great adventure. I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday back home. Cheers, Bob

South Island Tour

We spent the 5 days before Christmas touring the south island. Our first stop was Lake Pukaki on our way to Queenstown. We were lucky to get a view of Mt. Cook (NZ’s highest peak) down the lake (see picture). We then drove on to Queenstown, which is probably the adventure tourism capital of the world. They invented bungy jumping here and the town is filled with the normal tourist stuff plus bookings for riding America’s Cup yachts, steamships, jet boats, planes, helicopters, parasails (riding a parachute behind a boat), paragliders (riding a parachute off a mountain with a pilot), gondolas, luge (roll down a concrete path on a wheeled sled), and various other ways to spend large sums of money to scare yourself in a beautiful setting.

While the town itself certainly deserves its tourist reputation, the scenery is so expansive and awe inspiring, that just looking up at the Remarkables (Dimrill Dale in the Lord of the Rings) or out across Lake Wakatipu reminds you why Queenstown is really special. Of course, we think bungy jumping and paragliding are special too. Lily bungy jumped off of Kawarau bridge (see film) repeating her Uncle Mike’s feat during bungy jumping’s first year.

Later, Karen parasailed off of the mountain peak and over the lake with her new friend “Mike”. While bungy jumping seems to be of interest to both men and women, the paragliding queue was dominated by women. There may be some deep psychological reason that women are drawn to paragliding, but I think that they are less intimidated by having a 20 something male adventure guide strapped doggy style to their posterior than most men are.

After two nights in Queenstown, we drove to Te Anau (Tee-ann-ow) as the staging area for our Milford Sound trip the next day. We left Te Anau at 6 AM to catch our 9AM boat tour. It was beautiful beyond description. Words or photos simply don’t do it justice, but you can see our photos at the FLKR link.

After our boat trip we drove across the island to Dunedin and stayed at a downtown hotel for a change. We had a truly urban experience with dinner at a sidewalk café and a morning tour of the Cadbury chocolate factory on Christmas Eve. The attraction of touring the chocolate factory should be self evident, but it turned out to be one of those scenes where you end up being sympathetic to the poor person assigned the task of making a factory tour an “attraction”. For example, being asked to surrender your cameras and phones before the tour, gives you the early impression that you are about to see some secret special thing. Anticipation continues to build as the tour guide points to the storage silo across the lot and states that she can’t reveal what the silo contains since it’s the highlight of the tour. Twenty minutes later when you are standing in front of the third wall display that uses big arrows to show how cocoa, milk, and sugar are combined to make chocolate, you understand that they took your camera not to protect trade secrets, but to keep people from Googling lame factory tours, and seeing your photos.

But in the back of your mind, you’re thinking about the silo. After walking up the spiral stair case inside the silo you finally reach the top. The lights are turned down low and a single spotlight shines on a large valve about 20 feet above your head. Kids are moved to the front so that they can see the upcoming event. A button is pushed and a large stream of chocolate comes out of the valve and pours down the center of the silo through a series of buckets. While I’ve never been attracted to chocolate fountains as a gift idea, I always assumed that the attraction was something along the fondue line, where the objective was to think of something novel to stick in the flowing chocolate and then eat it. After seeing the “largest known chocolate waterfall in the southern hemisphere”, I guess there must be something more that attracts folks to flowing chocolate. Since you can’t take photos at the Cadbury factory, the only way to meet this need at home is to buy your own chocolate fountain. It’s another one of those things where you wish you could have been at the meeting where someone suggested “why don’t we dump a ton of chocolate down a silo”, so that you could have heard what the bad ideas were.

Lily's Here

Lily flew in last Thursday, dealing with the Charleston, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Auckland, Christchurch connections like a pro. Her first observations might be influenced by her lack of sleep however. Lily oberved that; "everyone here limps", and that "everything sounds the same" - based on the strange but similar noises that eminate from our washing machine and car. We'll try to get her to expound further on the blog. Of course it was rainy and cold her first few days, but we've had a beautiful weekend. We posted a few more photos of Lily's trip to Sumner Beach, Birdlings Flat, and Akaroa. Plus a bonus photo of decorating our Christmas tree. Cheers, Bob

Kelp in Kaikoura

This video shows Bull Kelp around Kaikoura moving in the tidal surge. Weird but impressive.

The Cost of Mystery Meat and Other Things

We’ve had to make several adjustments while we are here; some mental, some physical, and some financial. Usually they are related. Overall life here is more expensive than we planned. Sometimes it’s hard to tell if it’s just sticker shock and maybe after you do the exchange rate conversion and remember that all prices include taxes (around 12%), it isn’t always so bad. Our timing for exchange rates could have been better, the graph shows $US to $NZ. Low points are good for us and you can see that lately the NZ has almost been at record high levels relative to the dollar.

Since NZ imports a lot of stuff, this is good for them, but it exports a lot of stuff too and the wine industry for example is hurting. When we transfer $US to our bank account here, what shows up in our account here depends on that day’s exchange rate (and fees). The first time we transferred US$5000 we got NZ$6505, then next time we got NZ$6554. So 1 NZ$ costs us about $US.77 depending on the day. This means that when we go shopping we should discount the price we see by 23% to get our $US cost.

Gas is about US$5/gal. Some things we are used to are hard to find and expensive. For example tortillas (to make burritos) cost about NZ$1.20 each, and bagels about NZ$1.30 each. When you apply our exchange rate, that’s about US$.92 and US$1.00 each. Looking online at the Lowe’s Food Store in Holly Springs I can buy 5 bagels for US$1.79 or US$.36 each. I can get tortillas 10 for US$1.55 or US$.15 each. We’ve tried to adjust our eating habits. Of course we’re used to eating burritos as a way to save money. The Mexican food section is really small with only the “Old El Paso” Brand. I read the refried bean label and found out they are bulk shipped to Australia and then repackaged. That’s one freighter that I don’t want to hit a reef. Imagine an Exxon Valdez cleanup of refried beans.

The Asian food section, however, is bigger than home. We’ve been having Pad Thai and Green Curry (beef or chicken). We’re using stir frying as a way to make cheap meat edible. Comparing meat prices, lamb loin chips are US$6.99/lb in NZ, US$11.99/lb in the US. Ground beef is US$3.44/lb in NZ, US$2.99/lb in the US. Boneless chicken thighs are US$6.63/lb in NZ, US$2.79/lb in the US. Meat prices made us think about going more vegetarian, but going vegetarian in a country where potatoes, cabbage, and broccoli take up most of the produce section isn’t going to happen.

The lamb meat section is about the same size as the chicken, pork and beef sections of the grocery store. Given that they have 40 million sheep in this country (about the size of Colorado) and we haven’t seen a chicken or pig farm, it’s sort of surprising. We’ve had rack of lamb. Though it makes perfect sense when you think about it, it was sort of surprising to find out that “lamb” is really baby sheep, so these are little pieces of meat with tiny little ribs sticking up. I roasted the lamb and I’m ashamed to say that it was pretty good.

Karen even thought it was OK and she’s very susceptible to not being able to eat food if she can visualize it as an animal. Chicken nuggets in the shape of stars are OK, in the shape of chickens not OK. This means for example if we get a fish filet from the local “fish and chips” and the filet just happens to come out of the fryer in the shape of a fish, I’ll try to break it in half before Karen sees it. I can also use this power for evil, like the time we went to one of Ted Turner’s restaurants that serves buffalo and beef. Karen wanted a hamburger made of beef (you have to tell them this, or you get buffalo). While we were waiting for the order, I mentioned that I wasn’t sure that the waitress heard her specify beef. Karen couldn’t make herself even try the burger to guess which one it was, so I got two burgers that day. I wasn’t sure what it was either, but this doesn’t seem to bother me as much.

To try to save money I look for bargains. For example one day I saw minced (ground) beef patties a good deal cheaper that minced beef. So I bought them and some hamburger buns (buns/bagels are not pre-split). When we had them that night, it tasted weird. I then looked at the ingredients and meat was the first of several ingredients. The fillers and spices gave the meat a sort of vinegary taste. By the way, food labels here are not nearly as informative as in the states.

Despite this experience, I noticed that pre-made meat loaf was also a lot cheaper than minced beef and tried it. It looked nice, was covered in grated cheese with little tomato slices. It had no cooking directions and the ingredient list was ominous. All it said was "ingredient list available from butchery". Anyway, after cooking it for 60 minutes at 180 degrees C (350 f), it looked great. Until I cut it that is. When I first saw the pink, I thought I had undercooked it. But as it turns out, this thing started pink and I think would stay pink even if you set it on fire (see picture). And it did taste sort of flammable with that same vinegary taste and mysterious little red flecks.

We ate about half of it and the next day we were confronted with mystery meat loaf leftovers. We don’t discard leftovers as casually as we used to. Karen and I were having lunch at home and decided to try mystery meat loaf Panini. So I used my George Forearm Grill (this is where you put the Panini in one frying pan, and squish it with another frying pan using your forearm to exert just the right amount of pressure). It turns out this was pretty good. I think it works this way for me; I have a mental picture (looks, smell, taste) of what meat loaf is supposed to be like. I don’t really have one for Panini. With the mystery meat hidden and squished in a Panini roll, my mind was free to consume without question.

This expectation thing affects dairy and beef products the most. My sense is that the milk, cheese, and beef have more of a grassy taste here. I imagine it’s healthier than the feedlot steroid/hormone enhanced stuff I’m used to. Unfortunately, it’s not what I’m used to so I don’t drink as much milk here. That’s OK, it costs more (US$5.99/gal vs. US$3.99/gal) and the biggest size you can buy is 2 liters. We used to buy 2 gallons at a time, but now 2 liters lasts a week. This grassy smell is also in the air. Christchurch is a pretty big city in the middle of a large farming region. So if the wind is right it all smells like pasture or pasture animals. It’s a million times better than being down wind of a pig farm in NC, but still gets your attention.

Ice cream and yogurt are big. The big ice cream company is Tip Top, and one of their best sellers is the Jelly Tip Trumpet which is advertised on TV by a guy in a Speedo. Ice cream flavors are different; I had an orange chocolate chip scoop the other day. Potato chips come in some fun flavors too, like chicken or lamb. Beer costs about the same and seems to be good. Cheap wine here is worse than cheap wine at home.

Actually the whole grocery store experience is different. Most malls have a grocery store. The grocery store only opens to the inside of the mall, so after buying your groceries, you’re pushing your trolley down the mall to get to the parking lot. Our local mall (Riccarton) is the second biggest in NZ, it would be about fourth biggest in the Raleigh area. The mall includes a Kmart and a Border’s books. There’s an Office Depot, but most of the big box stores are local. We bought a really small chilly bin (ice chest) for NZ$55 at “The Warehouse”. There are lots of new jingles rolling around in our heads and Abby is very good at singing the appropriate jingle as we pass stores in the car.

Cheers,
Bob

It's not the cold, it's the lack of heat

Several of you have heard me whine about how cold it is here. But it's not the outside temperature that is so cold, it's the INSIDE temperature. Our house has 3 teeny wall heaters, no insulation and single glazed windows. It is not a new house, but it's not old either. Central heat and air are considered luxuries. Most Kiwis are accustomed to having frost on the inside of their windows all winter.

When we started looking for a new house, we were astonished by the number of homes that had ONLY WOOD HEAT. They advertise a fireplace as a "log burner". One house we looked at had a "nightstore heater", which we had heard of elsewhere. So, of course, we googled it. Turns out, its just an electric heater that runs only at night when electricity is cheap (er). Bob also found a site that had done some analyses of the most efficient heating systems for homes of different types in different areas. Of the 10 scenarios across the country, only one left the heat on all the time, and only a few were for insulated homes.

The typical scenario was a family in a 30 year old house with no insulation who heated ONE ROOM in the morning before work and ONE ROOM in the evening. Are these people nuts or what? Electricity is 20c/KWH during the day and 12c/KWH at night. I don't have any idea how this compares, but I think I'll look. Really, living here in the winter sounds more like camping!

New car and new food

We finally bought a car. A 1992 Subaru Legacy Wagon with 180 kms, no AC, a failing CV joint, and an owners manual and service record in Japanese. You can see pictures of it in the slide show to the right. Many used cars are imported to NZ from Japan (imported AFTER being used in Japan), so a strange notice appears in the ads—“NZ new”. Bob just replaced the fuse for the taillights—good thing Japanese uses the same numbers we do because all the other labels were in Japanese!

We thought we were getting a pretty cheap car until one of the staff here at the university told us that $500 was a cheap car. Apparently, at the start of each term they have a Canterbury 500, where everyone who has purchased a car for $500 or less joins in a pub crawl across the South Island. We will not be able to participate.

Last weekend we took the new car to Akaroa, a town on the Banks Peninsula an hour south of Chch. It was first settled by the French, and is proud of that heritage. Of course, it was only French for one year, and no one lived there during that year! It seems that a French settler liked the area and bought land from the local Maori (rhymes with now-ree) chief. He then left to get some friends and family, intending to return the following year. Unfortunately for him, that was also the same year the Treaty of Waitangi was signed between the British Empire and the Maori in the North Island, ceding rights to most of NZ, including the Banks Peninsula, to the English. I don’t know exactly how this worked when the tribe here didn’t sign that treaty…but it’s their history. The French settlers settled there anyway, and named some streets Rue de Whatever and put some wrought iron over some windows. It’s pretty and we got to watch a fireman’s competition in the local park. We counted it as a work day. We ate at French styled ‘Bistro’, but the overwhelming smell was the Fish and Chips joint next door.

Food here has been interesting. The dairy tastes different, but is cheaper. Our refrigerator has a butter keeper (with a soft, medium, firm button) and a butter dish for a WHOLE pound of butter. Ice cream is everywhere. We tried out the fish and chips. You can get 2 ‘fish’ and a scoop for less than 4 bucks and get enough fried food to last a lifetime. If it can be deep fried, you can get it at a fish and chips takeaway. And then you get a plain paper wrapped bundle to take home. The paper does soak up some of the grease. Spring rolls, hot dogs (blech), ‘meat’ patties (don’t try these either) are all batter dipped and fried golden greasy. The fish and chips are good. Greasy and WAY TOO SALTY but good. Cabbage is good and cheap, as are many other vegetables, including some things we didn’t know we liked, like courgettes (zucchini) and capsicum (bell peppers). And then there’s the horse floats! (Just kidding, horse floats are horse TRAILERS).

We have finally figured out three important lessons about eating out in NZ. First, when you are finished ordering, they will almost always say “Eat-in or takeaway?” It’s nice to not feel so stupid every time we order coffee. The second lesson is that they don’t bring the check to your table. At our first restaurant we waited and waited and waited. Then waited some more. Finally, we asked, and we were told to just go to the counter and tell them our table number or what we ate and pay there. Tips in restaurants are not common. The third lesson is about that coffee. Here you order a long black, a short black or a flat white. I just wanted a cup of coffee!! As they also had cappuccino and latte on the menu, we couldn’t figure out what these items were. Again, we finally asked. A short black is an espresso in a small cup. Straight, as it were. A long black is a watered down espresso in a bigger cup. A flat white, well, we think it’s a café au lait, but I like this one best.

Flybys or Flybuys

[November 13]
Well we've been here almost a week and things are finally settling down. This is Abby's second day of school and she's adjusted really well. She's the popular new American girl in the class and she's even OK with their decidedly unglamorous school uniforms. We're in our "flat" near campus. Its really close to campus and Abby's school, but with the weak dollar, it and everything else is more expensive than we expected.

Internet access is weird here, even at the University. We've had to put some cash into our university accounts to pay for internet access and paper for printing. Any access outside the University is charged to your account and international access (like checking NCSU email) costs even more. We've borrowed a TV and its amazing how many U.S. shows are available. This is "free" airwave TV, but includes cable standards like SpongeBob, the Office, etc. Abby's happy. TV also is full of world championships in sports we've never heard of, like "netball". Seems to be like the old girls playground basketball in the U.S. where there were offensive players on one side of the court and defensive players on the other.

Radio seems to be dominated by either U.S. rock or gardening talk shows. Language is generally not a problem, but there are some things we don't quite get. The kids at school didn't know what "jelly" was when Abby described her sandwich; I guess everything is "jam". When I bought Abby's school uniform last night, the clerk asked me if I had any "fly-bys". I said no, but checked my zipper just in case I was causing an international incident. I still don't know what she meant.

So far I'm the designated wrong way driver in our rental car. It took me two days to figure out how to look to my left to see the rear view mirror. Shifting gears (even just from R to D) with my left hand looks takes some real effort, especially since we have to back directly out of our driveway into a busy street. I won't tell you how many times I've casually tried to look like I meant to get into the passenger side to drive. My current strategy is to pretend that I always unlock Karen's door to the car before going over to the "driver's" side. I just act like that's the way we do things in the U.S. and I can't believe that they don't open their wives' door first here in this primitive country. Of course this works better when Karen is actually with me.

It's spring here (see Abby picture attached) and we're going to "the show" this PM: http://www.theshow.co.nz/2007-show/ I guess it’s like the state fair. We arrived when the spring weather here is a bit cooler than the fall weather we left. Its generally in the 50's or 60's during the day and pretty cool at night (30's to 40's). We actually had hail yesterday. By Christmas it's supposed to be consistently warm.

[November 15]
As part of my sabbatical research and by popular demand, I've pursued what the clerk meant which she asked me if I had any “flybys”. At first I thought this must mean flier like you get by junk mail. But then we saw the word on windows around town and that didn't make sense.

Then I looked it up on Google. When I posted: "flyby definition" it sent me to http://sohos.wordpress.com/ where it listed this definition:

FLY BY Definition: The act of scouting out a bathroom before pooping. Walk in, check for other poopers. If there are others in the bathroom, leave and come back again. Be careful not to become a FREQUENT FLYER. People may become suspicious if they catch you constantly going into the bathroom.

Of course I couldn't believe that a clerk would ask me this question, but if she did I certainly wasn't sure whether I should admit to a stranger how may flybys I've done. I tried a different spelling and limited the search to New Zealand and found the link below. It's sortof like green stamps.

I'll let you know as my research progresses. Cheers, Bob

Settling In

Abby is enrolled in school (they spell enroll here with only ONE L) just 2 blocks away. It's like school in the 60's. Open campus, parents in and out of classrooms, administration consists of 3 staff (principal, administrator, and counselor). There is no school district or board, only the federal (limited) rules. Each school is basically a charter school run by a local parents/teacher advisory council. They all wear uniforms, and Abby looks really cute in hers! They have to wear sunhats every time they go outside-they are quite concerned about skin cancer.

Today it is still cool, but sunny, and we are going to the Royal New Zealand Show this afternoon. This is both the provincial and national agricultural show. We expect to see hundreds of kinds of sheep. As far as we can tell, it is a lot like the State Fair, but we'll know more tomorrow.

The people here have been so helpful and kind, and we are very grateful to all of them, but especially to Jeanette Allen at the Forestry School at UC. She has helped us get settled and even found a TV and radio for us to borrow. We actually watched the news this morning and found out that the weather will be...cold. Really cold in Invercargill, pretty cold in Christchurch, and just cool in the North Island. They, however, are supposed to have 130 km winds up there, so maybe cold isn't so bad. We've had sleet today, and some rain and wind of our own.

One of our first cultural and social experiences has been dealing with rubbish. Chch has a pretty cool system of rubbish collection-they charge you a hefty price for each trash bag (which has 'Christchurch Council' written on it in large letters) and they ONLY pick up these bags. So, on Monday night we ventured out in our wrong-hand drive car on these wrong-hand drive roads to find a supermarket that had these special bags.

We finally found the right aisle; only the entire shelf was empty. There was a woman nearby stocking shelves, and she came over and joined us as we stared intently at the empty wire shelf which was labeled "Official Christchurch Rubbish".

"You're looking for the rubbish bags are you?" she asked, as we all continued to look at the empty shelf.

She bent down to get a better look at the empty shelf.

"Um, well, we..." she stood up and looked at us, then back at the shelf.

"I don't know when we'll we getting any more in". Not that it would have mattered to us anyway, as rubbish day is Tuesday and it was Monday evening.

All of us, me, Bob, Abby and the clerk were still standing in a semi-circle around the empty rubbish bag shelf, staring at it. Maybe hoping one would appear if we stared hard enough.

"Well, um..." She bent down to check the empty shelf one more time. The shelf remained empty.

"You could maybe find some at Countdown? It's just across the way there?"

Then she stood looking at us apologetically, as though she were personally responsible for us coming to the store too late to get our rubbish bags.

This type of extra-solicitousness is pretty common here. It seems the Kiwi do not like to disappoint their customers or clients. They are also much chattier than Americans. Even in a business context (such as opening a bank account) there is more conversation, and although it may not be more personal than what we're used to, there seems to be MORE of it. At any rate, it could also be that these kindly clerks are expecting US to end the conversation and move on, and we don't know how they do that here. Yet.

This is in contrast to the no eye contact with strangers on the sidewalk phenomenon. When walking, if you pass someone you don't already know, you look away. Down or to the side, but no eye contact is made. At first this was very disconcerting, as we are used to nodding or even smiling when we encounter another walker, but we are getting used to this as well.

To finish the rubbish bag story, we braved the wrong-ways again to get to the other supermarket. (Aside: shopping carts were labeled as 'trolleys' at the first market, but 'trundlers' at the second.) Alas, they too were out of official rubbish bags. Lesson learned: buy your official rubbish bags before the evening before rubbish day.

Karen.

Kiwi Kountry

The first indication that we were headed someplace really different was when we boarded the aeroplane behind a guy wearing a UtiliKilt. Yep, Carhart’s for the Down Under folks. The first indication that we were headed someplace not really different was when we noticed that the most common restaurant in Christchurch was McDonalds. Although the Kiwi Burger on the menu was a little odd (add a couple beets and a fried egg to a quarter pounder and you have a Kiwi Burger).

It’s cold here. And those teeny wall heaters in our house work really hard to keep it…just cool inside rather than downright frigid. Gardens and landscaping are beautiful in Christchurch, with lots of azaleas and rhododendron in bloom. Campus architecture, however, makes NC State look progressive. Where State looks like overgrown elementary schools, UC looks like overgrown concrete warehouses with mansard roofs.

We’re still struggling with the lack of internet access and electrical connections, but we do have cell phones and phone card to use on our UC landline here at the house, so we are not completely isolated. We’re still reachable by our usual emails, but we will be checking only every couple of days until we figure out the system here.

Love from NZ,
Karen, Bob and Abby

Departure...sort of

We finally left Raleigh, and have made it as far as the foreign country of "Alabama". We got here in time to celebrate Halloween here in the Halloween Capital of the South, Anniston. Bob's mom 'carried' us to a friends house for dinner and then some wild trick or treating on Glenwood Terrace, where we got to see the Headless Horseman, the cow-doing-a-handstand (I'll leave the details to your imagination), and hundreds of trick or treaters. (Note that carried is Alabamanian for 'drove'.) I'm not sure we've recovered from that night, but we had a great time. Next foreign country, California!

All Blacks

No, this isn't a civil rights issue. The All Blacks are New Zealands professional rugby team. Unfortunately, they lost to France in the world cup before I had a chance to figure out what rugby was all about. I saw a few minutes of the game while sitting outside a French cafe (guess which side they were on?) in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Pretty cool. Too bad the TV was so small and the game moved so quickly or I might even have seen what a rugby ball looks like. NZ was all bent out of shape because they weren't allowed to wear all black--they lost the coin toss with France and had to wear silver instead. Assuming the World Cup is the end of the season, I wonder when it starts? The stuff I know about rugby is...well, if you read this post you know everything I do!

Where we'll be in Christchurch

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Note that this address is written 1/29 Clyde Road, Christchurch 8041, New Zealand, just in case you want to write us. We should be at this address from November 9 until...January or February.

Where we will be in New Zealand

Another season, another adventure

Well, it's (almost) a sure thing, we are going to New Zealand. We have flights from LAX to Christchurch and return. We have our visas (Bob and Karen have work visas, Abby has a student visa). We have our (still empty) luggage. And we might even have a pet/house sitter!

We will be staying in Christchurch, in a house owned by the University of Canterbury (hence the blog address). They call it a flat. We would call it a duplex. We've had some interesting revelations as we explore living in NZ. High speed internet access is sold by 1) speed and 2) volume. Cell phones are pretty expensive and cover less than half the country. Cars are tiny, but pretty inexpensive. Car insurance is not required. Flat rentals are by the WEEK. It just might be colder in Christchurch in summer (Dec-Feb) than it will be here in North Carolina in winter (Dec-Feb). Of course, what should we expect from an island that has PENGUINS on it and is the home of Operation Deep Freeze, an Antarctic preservation group. Oh, and the natives in NZ are not May-or-e, they are Ma-ow-ree, where the Ma-ow is a dipthong. I've already been popped on hold. The bank forms we sent in are signed 'Yours faithfully,". They have only a few NZ TV stations, and most of them reputed to be somewhat dull. Of course, there are only 4 million people in the whole county. And a vacation home is a bach. Oh yeah! And Qantas (I know this is Australian, but that is the airline we are taking to Auckland) doesn't have a U because...it stands for Queensland and Northern Territories Airline Service.

The Visa operation was pretty easy, all things considered. While I never got an real person at the NZ Embassy in DC, I was able to call the New Zealand Immigration Service in Wellington, NZ, talk to someone, get an answer, and an offer to hold on the line while I filled out the forms if I wanted him to! We were told it might take as long as FIFTEEN work days to get a work visa, so we gave ourselves 25 work days and worried. Of course, in less than a week we had all 3 visas returned.