Happy New Year!!!

Hello everyone,

I am writing to you from 30,000 feet up in the sky, over the Tasman Sea, on our way to Christchurch, NZ. I am so excited! If I could only pick one place in the world that I want to see, it would be New Zealand. And if I had to pick a place, sight unseen, to move to, it would be New Zealand. And here I go! This feels like a dream come true and I’m not even there yet.

This entry isn't going to contain pictures because I am being charged by the minute to post this blog and the pictures seem to take forever to download. Pictures to come, I promise.

So while I’m just sitting here with Mark and the kids in the 3 seats on the other side of the aisle from me, I thought I’d catch you up on a few things that I’ve been wanting to write about. So sit back with another cuppa tea and have a read.

One thing I wanted to write about in some more detail was our house. Another is the birds and their noises. And then there are a few funny little things I don’t want to forget that I know I will before long.

So let’s start with the funny little things. The first is that Mark locked us out of the house within minutes of our arrival. Fortunately for us, Mark has a background of delinquency that occasionally pays off when there is a real need to break into a home. We got back in and promptly buried a key in the front garden. The way their door locks work—shut the door and it’s locked—it is bound to happen again soon.

We woke up on our first morning in our new home and walked out the front door to find 2 spider webs, each the size of a small wall hanging, draped between the bushes on either side of the sidewalk coming off the front porch. Mark almost walked through one of them. Planted smack dab in the middle of each were these big spiders--hearty, fat spiders, not the sinewy kind, the beefy kind. I blew on one and it moved. It was creepy and fascinating at the same time. Jordan declared one of them our new pet. Though it abandons its web during the day for errand-running, I assume, the spider always returns to its web in the evening when we check on it. When you see a web like that, you don’t mess with it. You just never know where the weaver of that web may be lurking. This spider doesn’t yet have a name but I’ll be very interested to see if it is still there in 18 days when we return.

Driving is a bizarre experience. Because I tried, but failed, to imagine what it would be like before we got here, I know I won’t be able to accurately describe to you what it is like—you really just have to try it. It’s like an amusement park ride without someone monitoring it to make sure it is safe. I have driven everyday, sometimes alone, sometimes with my whole family in the car, sometimes with a map, sometimes by memory. On most outings I’ve gotten lost at least once. (It doesn’t help that there isn’t a straight road in all of Newcastle and most roads don’t go through.) I haven’t hit anyone yet but I imagine I’m about to when I see someone coming at me on the right side of the road as I sometimes forget that I’m on the left now. I have turned on the windshield wipers countless times as their turn signals are on the right side of the steering wheel, not the left. Mark laughs at me every time I do that. Still. I was aghast one day when I was walking up to our car in the parking lot and saw a very young child in the driver’s seat of another car. Until I realized that he was just in the passenger seat. But I’m getting the hang of it. Sometimes I make a turn so smoothly and confidently that I feel like I’m in the driving-on-the-left-side-of-the-road zone. But then moments later, I look out the window and up to my right for the rear view mirror, which is now on my left, and I remember that the moments when everything clicks are still just random luck. The funniest feeling was when I woke up this morning to go for a run and I got in the car and thought, “Jesus, they are STILL doing this driving on the left side of the road thing? Aren’t we over this yet?”

Another silly little thing that Mark wanted to make sure I wrote down was about him killing the power to the entire house the other night. Several times. He was working hard with the electricity issue—converting and adapting and setting up a “charging station” for our various and sundry electrical appliances. And then everything went black. Luckily, the fuse box is placed in such an obvious place on the front porch that we’ve all hit our heads on it at least once so far, that we knew where to go to flip the switch and turn it back on again. And then he blew it several more times before he got it all figured out. That is not the first nor will it be the last time I felt like a member of the Griswald family. But now we have our computers, our external hard drives and our charging station all set up for the year. As long as it doesn’t burn the house down while we’re gone.

One morning this week, as I was pulling out of the driveway, I noticed a woman and her little dog sitting on the curb by the driveway. I asked if everything was okay and she told me that her dog seems to have hurt her leg. I asked if she’d like a ride home so the dog wouldn’t have to walk and she accepted. She lived about 2 minutes up the road. Later that afternoon, we came home to a card on the front porch. She had written me a thank you note for driving her home, let me know that her dog was okay, just had a bite (probably from one of our pet monster spiders) and she left her phone number in case I needed anything.

I was touched, of course, by her gratitude for such a little thing but more profound to me was the fact that she lived a pace of life that allowed her to handwrite a thank you note and deliver it by the house. If I were in her shoes in my life in Lakewood, a dog with a bitten paw would have put such a wrench in my daily plans that I would have been playing catch up the rest of my day just from that unexpected turn of events. There’s no way I’d have been able to find the time to write a note and deliver it back by someone’s house. I really notice a different pace here. And a different value system. There’s an innocence here—which I’ve heard people say about Australia but had no expectation that it would be this palpable. You can see it in the unassuming clothing, the lack of cell-phone usage while driving or out in public at all, and the graciousness. You can see it in the little town centers—there are no chain stores and most of the stores seem utilitarian in purpose rather than for luxury or even convenience. In one town center you might see a dry cleaner, restaurant, bike store, hardware store, carpet store and newsagent. The whole city seems to be middle class with a few pockets of upper class but regardless, all the houses are relatively small. There are very few SUVs or even mini-vans. It is just so, I don’t know, easy? America seems so over-the-top to me. There’s never an end to what we can buy to adorn our homes, our bodies, our streets. But here, the focus seems to be more on enjoying the people and the environment. And I have one word about all that: Ahhh. I am looking forward to getting to know the people to see if my first impression is accurate. I’ll let you know.

There are other inhabitants of this new land that intrigue me just as much as the people because of the racket they make. I’ve found the bugs’ and birds’ noises to be, at times, deafening. And I’m perpetually frustrated by the fact that I can’t see any of them. I can hear them but I have no idea where they are or what they look like. There’s the bird that sounds like the noise you get when you blow up a meteor on that archaic video game, Asteroids. There’s the bird that sounds like a lion-taming whip being cracked, I swear. There’s the bird that sounds like a combination of chalk screeching on the chalkboard and a soft bell. And then there are the insects. Their electric buzzing feels imminent, like they are about to fly right into my ears. Just hearing them makes me feel like I should duck and run for cover from, THE BUGS. But they don’t attack. They don’t even show themselves. I will feel a deep sense of accomplishment the day I spot any of the owners of these noises. I did see one little bird this morning, though I know it doesn’t make any of those noises. It was precious--the size of a tiny sparrow, all brown except for the bright red cap on its head and matching beak. Adorable and regal at the same time.

Our house. We live in a wonderful little place. It is surrounded on the outside by lush, tropical feeling vegetation. Seems like they didn’t move much out of the way when they slid these homes in between the bushes and trees. The house is long, going back from the front door like a row house. The kids sleep in the first two bedrooms on the left, Gabe’s just big enough for his queen bed, wardrobe (most of these homes don’t have closets) and a dresser and Jordan’s just big enough for a twin bed and desk. Prue decorated Jordan’s room before she knew anything about her because that room is typically Prue’s office and she knew that we’d want to turn it into a bedroom during our stay. We walked into this adorable little girl’s room covered in butterflies. Spot on, she was.

To the right is a formal living room/dining room. Prue clearly didn’t decorate that room with young children in mind so we have set up our computers on the dining room table and have put yellow police tape around the rest of the room, protecting the white couches and glass sculptures.

If you keep walking toward the back of the house, you will hit the bathroom on the left past the kids’ rooms. The bathrooms in Australia tend to be split in two with the toilet and a sink separate from the shower, bathtub and other sinks. The toilets all have 2 buttons on them, one for half flush and one for full flush. It is a water-saving technique and I’ll let you figure out what gets semi-flushed and what gets the full treatment. Prue did a remodel and addition on her house in the recent past and it seems that the bathroom got a facelift and upgrade. The bathtub has Jacuzzi jets which we are all happy about though the kids are the only ones to try them out so far. Sigh.

Oh, I forgot to say that before you walk into the bathroom, there is a closet on the left hiding the washer/dryer. The washer takes about an hour or more to run and the dryer will go on and on forever and “doesn’t like to be left alone,” according to Prue so we only run it when we’re home. Many people still hang their clothes on the line outside which we will probably do as well oftentimes.

Continuing on, on the left past the bathroom is our bedroom. Nothing special there except that because it is part of the addition, it has a closet. That’s a bonus.

Right outside our bedroom is the family room which is the last room at the back of the house so if you make a u-turn at the family room and stay in the left lane there, you will come to the kitchen which runs long and thin between the family room and formal living room. It seems to have been upgraded as well with new appliances, a gas stove which I like and, though it isn’t big, she has fit every kitchen tool a cook of my caliber could want. I am very impressed with how she’s stocked and organized her drawers and cabinets. Her fridge, on the other hand, could use a cleaning out. The Australians seem to like their sauces (think “barbie”) and she’s got some that scare me. Of course, she is probably saying the same thing about some of the items she’ll find in our fridge and pantry.

The back deck of the house is a wonderful place to spend time though meditation or quiet reflection is out of the question, what with wild rumpus out there. Prue said there are possums living in the trees in the backyard and that she sees them from time to time. Yeah.

Okay, so I had to shut the computer down for landing and we landed. Happy New Year! We made it through customs and were being driven in a van to our hotel in downtown Christchurch when the clock struck twelve. At least the clocks here. Where you are, it is only December 31^st at 4:00am. I think that’s right. Anyway, I can tell you that 2008 looks fabulous so far and you should definitely plan to show up for it. In case you were debating.

We trucked our poor exhausted children through the center of Cathedral Square with suitcases and backpacks because the roads were all blocked off and our van couldn’t get us to the door of our hotel. As soon as we got upstairs to our very spacious room, the kids fell into bed and are sound asleep. We are here, we are tired and we are happy. We’ll talk to you more another day.

Love, Nancy