Postponed....

Again I am going to have to postpone detailed blog posts until later. Currently, I am trying to type on my cousin's laptop with fake nails on. It is not easy. Ahem, blog posts...I won't be able to post really because tomorrow is the wedding (hence the fake nails) so I will be busy all day, Sunday I will be packing and cleaning and doing laundry and I don't think I will have access to a computer and Monday I fly back. So you probably won't hear from me again until I am back in the states.

A Trip Within a Trip

Just so y'all know, I am leaving today (Thursday) to go to Auckland for a few days. We leave sometime this morning, drive for three hours, spend the night at Dahvede's aunt's house, tomorrow, we spend all day in Auckland, seeing the sights, shopping, etc. and stay at Dahv's aunt's again. Saturday, we leave Auckland and travel back down to Tauranga through Coromandel and see Cathedral Cove (as see in Prince Caspian), and other beautiful sights. So if you don't hear from me, that's why. :]

Driving

Yesterday (Monday) afternoon, Havalah took me driving. In New Zealand, you are allowed to drive with a foreign license for one year if you are over 18. Driving is one thing I really wanted to learn for two reasons. One: so I could help during the wedding running errands and stuff and two: so I could boast about it later. :]


Havalah pulled out of Matt and Susie's driveway for me because it is tricky and narrow. She had to back out and turn around in a very tiny space. A lot neighborhoods have driveways to houses and then a driveway next to that that leads to a house behind the first one, and some even branch off to even more houses. And keep in mind that all these driveways are only wide enough for one car at a time. Nice and confusing and safe. :-P


This one house Hav, Dahv and I babysat at, you drove down a driveway on a pretty steep hill that only paved where the tires went, it leveled out and we took a left (the driveway also continued straight) and drove about fifty feet to the house. There was one parking space straight ahead that was occupied so we had to to the right down an even steeper hill than before and park about a half a car's length down. On the hill. Facing down. In a car older and probably worse than Max. (Max is my 19 year old Dodge Dynasty) That was a trip and a half.

Anyways, driving. Havalah backed out and turned around for me. At the end of the driveway, I took over. When you first sit down, it's a little confusing. The shift is on your left which bothered me some because I am very much right handed and can't do a whole lot with my left. The wipers are on the left and the blinkers on the right. Which makes for fun when trying to turn. Both of them are also flip up and down, you don't turn it or anything for like wipers.

Pulling out onto the road was easy because we're in a small, quiet neighborhood and no one was coming. I did have a little difficulty staying in the middle of the road because my perspective was way off and a couple times Havie had to say something to keep from ending up in the ditch. I was able to kind of get into a groove pretty quickly and being on the other side of the road didn't phase me much. I did not enjoy roundabouts, however. In The States, roundabouts (or traffic circles) go counter-clockwise (or anti-clockwise), in New Zealand, roundabouts go clockwise. Also, I have only had to deal with small, one-lane roundabouts without traffic lights. Here, traffic circles are EVERYWHERE and there is this tricky little setup (that NO ONE likes, btw) between Mt&S's house where Havie and I are staying and Mk&J's house where we can frequently be found, where there are two roundabouts right next to each other that they sort of connected and added traffic lights to. Confusing and annoying! Havalah didn't take me through that one, thankfully! I did go through one roundabout that had two lanes, you enter through either but only exit through the left one so it's nice and confusing. Also, you are technically supposed to indicate right to enter and left to exit. 8-O

Once, I practiced in quiet neighborhoods for a little bit, I went a little bit into town, just to the edge really. I was able to practice diagonal parking to the left and pulling out of said left-handed diagonal parking space.

I almost drove solo this afternoon. I was complaining because I was hungry and there wasn't much to eat. It was like 3:30-4, I hadn't eaten lunch and my breakfast was a toasted cheese and a glass of milk at like 10:30-11. Havalah offered to let me borrow Walter (her car) and drive three minutes down the road to New World the grocery store to wander around and get some food. However, we had company coming over and I didn't really want to leave the house and not be available to help clean. As it was, Havie and I left an hour or so later to pick up Dahvede and we stopped at New World anyways.

(Posted on Tuesday August 25, 2009 at 10:10 PM)

Catching up

Last Sunday, was my first week at church (we skipped the first week because we were all wiped. I got in Thursday, we drove 4 1/2 hours to New Plymouth, spent the night, got up early to do a Marine Reach booth, left around 12:30-1 to drive about 5-6 hours to get Havie to work, Saturday Dahv and Hav had an all day conference forty-five minutes away) so needless to say, we were EXHAUSTED that first Sunday. Church was good. Pastor Mike de Vetter preached on stealing. It was a very good sermon, very convicting. Sunday afternoon, we wandered around downtown Tauranga, did a little window shopping. Hav was gonna take me to one of her favorite stores but they were closed on Sunday, a fair amount of stuff was. Dahvede showed me a little shop that was closed but were selling a replica of Aragorn's sword that was in the window.

My Uncle Mike flew back from Fiji on Monday. It was good to see him again. He said it was a little weird to see me in NZ. :-P

Havalah finished work on Wednesday. Thursday night I accidentally broke one of the nose pads off my glasses. Friday morning we went to the church to work on wedding stuff. We brain stormed about where decorations would go, where the tables would go, how the tables would be set, how many people we could fit at each table, etc. We went into a few stores downtown. We went to the shop that is selling Aragorn's sword and it is pretty cool. It was packed with stuff from floor to ceiling you don't even know where to start looking! We checked a store downtown about fixing my nose pad but they wanted to charge me $8 for a pair of nose pads and we were planning on going to Bayfair (THE mall around here) on Friday where Dahvede said there was a shop that would do it for free so I toughed it out another day and then got them fixed at Bayfair. Bayfair was pretty nice. It's way bigger than Steeple Gate. It is probably the biggest mall I have been in We wandered around there for a little bit, got my glasses fixed, they replaced both nose pads which is good because the other one was looking icky.

On Thursday Havalah, Dahvede and I did a lot of Oshee sitting. Matt and Susie were busy and all over the place so we babysat her quite a bit. She is a little ham! When Susie left at one point she just dissolved into a puddle of tears (I never really understood that term until now, lol) and at one point she sat there pouting at the mirror and we couldn't figure out what she was doing but then I realized, she was practicing her pathetic faces until she found the best one and then went up to Havie with that look on her face, mumbled something, buried her face in Hav's lap and cried. It was so pathetic and hilarious at the same time! When she was practicing, we distracted her a couple times back we kept laughing at her and her faces!

On Saturday, after dinner, Havie and I went to a Ladies Night thing. My aunt had bought tickets for herself and a neighbor but the neighbor didn't feel comfortable bringing her 3 week old baby out in the cold so Jeannie gave me and Hav the tickets. It was good, a little awkward then ended up being magnified by the fact that we were late. Havie thought it was at 7:30 so just after 7 Havie asked for the tickets and I noticed that it said 7, so we flew out the door, and Susie was headed out to so we left the dishes for the guys. Anyways, the Ladies Night was nice, the speaker talked about inner beauty and being comfortable with who you are and not trying to change or feel like you HAVE to look a certain way. It was a good talk and then they served us a cheesecake like dessert. Later that night, Hav, Dahv, Susie and I shared a bottle of wine and we watched Mission: Impossible 2 but it kept messing up because we Josiah started to play it with the VCR on the US setting and Suz switched it to PAL but it was pretty fuzzy at first (think adjust the tracking like CRAZY), then it got better and then half-way through it started messing up again to the point where we stopped it. Matt came home a few minutes later with the All Blacks score (Rugby team).

Sunday morning, we got up early and watched the Marine Reach ship come in. It was pretty cool but freezing cold because we were right there on the wharf by the water. We had to wait about fifteen minutes before the ship docked and then we had to wait until customs cleared them before we could go on. It was pretty neat. Really small though. After we got on the ship and said hi to a few people and looked around a bit, we booked it to church and were about 5-10 minutes late.

Tomorrow, I'll post about my driving experience today. :-D

PICTURES!

Okay, here's the moment you've all been waiting for! I have pictures to post! WOOHOO! Unfortunately, I can't post very many at a time so what I did was make collages of photos. That way, I can post multiple pictures but not take up a lot of their internet.



I know, it's not very big. Those pictures were taken on the way to and back from, New Plymouth. Any water that you see in those photos is the Tasman Sea. So pretty. :] And most, if not all, of those pictures were taken from a moving vehicle.



This group of photos is rather random. Some of driving on the wrong side of the road. Some of Havie and Dahvede and one of Josiah. A few food pics, etc.

Comments

Sorry about that. It was just brought to my attention that you couldn't comment. The layout that I was using wasn't that great and didn't link the comment link so no one could comment. Not even me. I have switched to my old layout and as of a few minutes ago, comments are working.

Differences

Yesterday and today I haven't done a whole lot just basic bumming and stuff but I was taken up to the top of a mountain yesterday afternoon so I could look out over Tauranga. If you wanna sound like a tourist, pronounce "Tauranga" how it is spelled and how I was pronoucing it, "ta(or tour)-rang-ga". If you wanna sound Kiwi it is more like "tao-rung-ga." If you want a bit of a taste of how I'm doing in New Zealand, google NZ and try pronouncing city names. Yeah, I'm lost too.
I don't have any pictures beyond the ones I took the first two days because the batteries in my camera died and the ones I brought along with me are crap. And I don't have any money yet to buy new ones.

Bathrooms are quite different in New Zealand. For one thing they are "toilets" not "bathrooms." You do not go to the bathroom, you go to the toilet. For another thing, I'm not sure if this is standard but in every place except one, the toilet is actually in a separate room from the sink, bathtub, shower. The room is like your average public bathroom stall just twice as long. And the toilets don't have a lever you push, they have two buttons. I believe one is for like a half/water saving flush and the other is a full flush.

Mullets are everywhere. My Aunt and Uncle's neighbor just had a friend over who was rocking a massive mullet and Magnum P.I. mustache. And it is totally okay here. I would scream that the 80's are over but I dress 80's sometimes so I have given up my say in that matter.

Peanut butter is not eaten here. Reese's can barely be found. When you want something to put on toast it is either jam or Marmite which is a yeast spread that tastes like soy sauce. I tried it once back in the states when my cousins brought it over. I will possibly try some on toast because my cousin Cate raves about it. That is as long as she makes it. :-P

Coffee. You can't get real coffee here. You can buy lattes and mochas but not plain old coffee. Except for instant. Matt and Susie were lucky enough to find a drip coffee maker and if they look hard enough, they can find real coffee grounds but it is difficult.

No Verizon! :-(

They drive on the wrong side of the road. And they go through traffic circles (roundabouts) clockwise. That really messed me up. The driving on the other side of the road, okay I could deal with but clockwise through roundabouts: freaked me out. Havalah is probably going to teach me how to drive over here. Apparently because I am over 18, I can drive here with my NH license for a year. So she will probably teach me so that if something happens and I have to drive to the store or get my self from my cousin's to my aunt and uncle's, I can.

There are cows and sheep everywhere! It is really cool actually. There are big and little farms all over the place. Even when you're in the city or near the city, it is not uncommon to see fields of sheep or cows or both.

No Walmart. Just Warehouse which is smaller.

Grocery stores. The cheapest place is Pak-N-Save. It is like Sam's Club in its setup. Cement floors, pallets all over the place, etc. But you buy regular quantities like at Shaws.

(posted on Sunday August 9th at 5:25 pm)

Phew...catching up

Hello everyone! I have now been in New Zealand just shy of 48 hours, about 44 hours or so. I left New Hampshire Tuesday evening (EST) and flew on my first plane ride to LA. My first thoughts on flying: THE MOST BORING THING E-V-E-R. And American domestic flights suck. I did, however, have a window seat for my first flight and that helped a lot. Before I left, I was really nervous about flying. I hate heights and the thought of getting onto a giant bus with wings and entrusting in to keep me alive at 30,000 feet was not high on my priority list. :-P Because of my apprehension, I got a prescription from my doctor for a tranquilizer that I did not end up needing. Praise God! All through the flights I was very chill and mellow which I attribute to divine intervention.

The 6 hour flight from Boston to LA was not my favorite flight (American domestic with American Airlines, *gag*) and because of it, I was really not looking forward to my 14 hour flight from LA to Sydney. Fortunately, however, Quantas is a very nice airline and international flights are even better! I felt like I was in business class the whole time. I had a very nice seat in the center next to the aisle and the seat next to me was technically free but the little boy two seats over kept seat hopping from his to the empty one. BOS to LAX I felt like I was on a greyhound bus. There were tv screens fastened to the ceiling and everyone was packed in. LAX to SYD was amazing. There was tons more space, I got my own tv screen that was in my armrest and my tray was in the other. We were given two meals, dinner and breakfast. There were several movies that we could choose from, I ended up watching Casanova, My Life In Ruins and Star Trek (for the 4^th time :-D). Quantas also gave us awesome little goodie bags with cookies, candy and a bottle of water and a little baggie with socks, a lanyard, and sleeping mask. I have decided that whenever I have to fly, I will always fly international. No more domestic. ;-)

Sydney was nice. I didn’t get to really see anything except what little I could see from the plane while landing and taking off and the airport. Some people would say that technically I wasn’t in Australia because I was only in the airport and that is “international territory” but I still say I was there. ;-) I could have changed some money and gone through the gift shops but I didn’t have a very long layover and the woman in line at the money changing kiosk seemed to be having some trouble. I almost wish I had at least changed some money so I could have Australian money to show off but life goes on. :-P

The flight from Sydney to Auckland was a lot like the flight to LA. Same type of plane and greyhound bus feeling but they were much nicer and fed us even though it was only a two and a half hour flight. Oh, btw, airplane food is nasty. The only “airplane food” that I actually liked was from Boston to LA. They didn’t give us a meal for a SIX hour flight, we had to pay for a meal (cheapskates) but I was starving so I got a rather nice chicken caeser salad. The rest of the food, however, was gross.

The most nerve wracking thing was probably going through immigration and customs in New Zealand. I had to fill out a little questionnaire on the plane that asked me if I was bringing in any food or if I had recently been on a farm, etc. Immigration was actually easier than I thought, I didn’t have a phone number or address for where I was staying so I just gave them my cousins’ names and the city. Customs was worse because they saw something through x-ray in both of my checked bags that they stopped and asked me about but it was nothing and they never searched them. Not that I had anything to hide, I was just worried that they would say I had to declare some random thing that I had forgotten about but there was nothing.

Once I got through customs and everything, I was free to leave the airport, I just about ran out of there in my relief to just be out of there and away from airports for a whole month! Havie and Dahvede were waiting for me and informed me that the trip they had emailed me about just before I left and that I had not responded about was indeed taking place and we were jetting from the airport. Oh goody, I just spent approximately 24 hours traveling and was in desperate need of a shower and now I have a 6 hour car ride from Auckland down to New Plymouth to someone’s house that neither Havie nor Dahvede had met to spend the night and then Vede had a booth at a youth rally-type thing the next morning. I am glad I went, however, because through my jetlag (18 hours, yippy), I was able to see more of NZ than I perhaps would have. We drove down the west coast of NZ and I was able to see the Tasman Sea from something other than a plane. The country is absolutely beautiful. Parts of it reminded me of the mid-west but much more hilly. I have some pictures that I took but I am currently at my cousin’s alone and their internet thing is weird so I wanna make sure that I don’t kill it. They only have a certain amount of gigs of download each month on their internet and I don’t mean like downloading pictures and such, every time you load a site, there is a certain amount of download that goes on and they have a limited amount each month. I just want to make sure that I won’t be using all of their download space posting pictures on my blog.

On the way to New Plymouth, we stopped in a little town and had dinner at a local pub. Havie and I had chicken tender burgers and Dahvede had some burger with cheese and egg that looked good except for the really runny yoke. The food was good but different. When we got to Gary’s house (I think that’s what his name was :-P) he and his wife were very nice and offered us tea, coffee or something else that I don’t remember the name of. We all had the nameless drink which was good. It reminded me of liquid brownies. I enjoyed it but Havie said it wasn’t the best.

The drive from New Plymouth to Tauranga where my cousin’s house is was only about 4 hours. We stopped at a Burger King in NP for lunch which was weird for me. The Burger King was decorated in a very American 50’s style, like a 50’s diner. It was strange for me to be in New Zealand and to be eating very American food in a very American diner with a giant Elvis looking down at me.

Oh, before I forget, the rally-type thing we were at, Havie and I didn’t do a whole lot, we helped set up but left at one point to bum around town and get munchies. However, NZ teen styles vs. American teen styles….girls are pretty much the same. Lots of skinny jeans and leggings with the pin straight hair and strange dye jobs. The guys, however, oh gosh. For guys, the 80’s never left. Mullets are not only okay but “in.” Rattails are also “in.” Every other guy had either a mullet or a rattail or both. The ones who didn’t, had major bed-head but carefully styled bed-head. They had obviously taken lots of time to style their hair so that it looked like they had gone to bed with wet hair with product in it and had a restless night. Oh, and the mullets, half of them were bleached. Not the whole head, just the mullet part. I wanted to line up all the guys and go through with a pair of scissors and give them all decent haircuts.

The ride from NP to Tauranga was pretty uneventful. I got quite a few pictures from the car but it’s a little difficult to take decent pictures from a vehicle moving at about 100 km/h. When we got to Matt and Susie’s house, the first thing I heard was Susie greeting me and then little 4(?) year old Oceana saying, “Dowfy’s here. Dowfy’s here!” What a cutie. I had only met her once before but she was very happy to see me though she insisted that I couldn’t stay in Havalah’s room because it was hers. I talked to them for about an hour before deciding to go to bed. I lay in bed for 20-30 minutes but I couldn’t sleep. My body was perfectly willing to stay there forever but my mind was wide awake and wondering what was going on in the world. I got up and Matt and Susie had left to get some stuff done for immigration and then go on to some town for the weekend. Dahvede very graciously let me use his laptop to check my email but I didn’t want to take too long (I have already spent a hour or so writing all this) so I let him have it back after a half hour or so during which time I spoke to my cousin Cate on the phone and got to catch up for a little bit. She lives with her husband on the South Island so I won’t get to see her until just before the wedding but it was nice to talk for a bit.

After checking email I was even more awake than before so I watched Dahvede play xbox for a bit then played Wii. Oh man, I love Wii. I think I hurt my arm playing baseball though. LOL! I know, it’s all in the wrist but I totally get into games like this and so am accident prone. It is a very good thing they have a wrist strap in the wiimote. I also tried Wiifit and my Wiifit age is apparently 76. I didn’t think I was THAT out of shape :-P. I got up just before 9 this morning and was all alone. Matt and Susie are gone for the weekend and Havie and Dahvede are at a conference all day. So I am hanging here for a bit then probably calling my aunt to hang out at her house with my cousin Josiah. Although, I rather like being able to just bum and do my own thing for a while.

I believe I will finish up this post right here. I have tons more stuff to write about though, never fear. God bless all! Love and miss everyone.

(edit: posted on Saturday August 8th, 2009 at 12:30 pm New Zealand time)

Packing Update

I was planning on packing or at least starting my packing last week but I got delayed by Soulfest and a lack of luggage. My gramma didn't get the luggage I was going to borrow from her until Friday or Saturday and I was expecting it Wednesday. As it turned out, I am not taking any of the bags she lent me; two of them were too small, I already had a carry-on and I didn't like either of the passport carriers.
Yesterday evening I got a measuring tape out and checked to make sure my bags made regulations. My biggest bag didn't make regulations. That was a big disappointment for me. I tend to pack heavily and the thought of packing for a month plus the stuff I am bringing over for my cousin in the two little bags I thought I had left was depressing. Why just one of those bags will be filled with Havie's stuff, I wailed. Fortunately, however, God is bigger than two tiny suitcases and I was able to actually find two decent sized cases for all my stuff. I have actually filled one of them already with all my clothes plus some and the other has Havie's stuff and plenty of room left, so I might actually have some trouble filling it up. HA! HA! I know one thing for sure, on the way home, even though I won't have all of Havie's stuff, I will have a hard time finding room for stuff. :-P
Just got off the phone with Susie about flying and airports and terminals and stuff. Very very helpful! I'm not nearly as worried or nervous now. I'm off to finish packing now. More later.

Off to a start of sorts....

I decided to start this blog to keep my New Zealand trip separate from my main blog and my usual ranting. I am planning on updating pretty regularly and posting lots of pictures. I probably won't update starlacedwings while I'm gone though. I have set up the automatic time stamp to be EST but when I remember, will add my own little time stamp so you can see the time difference and everything.
I leave in one week. In exactly one week from now, Lord willing, I will be on my way down to Boston for my 4:55 flight to LA. From LA I will fly to Sydney and from Sydney to Auckland. I am really nervous about flying. I have never flown before and I will be by myself. My biggest worries are not the actual flying but the changing planes and layovers. With those, however, I just have to swallow my pride and ask for help and hope I don't look too much like a rabbit being chased by a wolf through a maze. (That didn't make much sense...)
I have to find my suitcases, I'm not sure where they are. Not really a good thing when I leave in a week and still have at least one maybe two work shifts left, and four completely packed days of Soul Fest. Sunday is going to be fun!