Our Summer Holidays Have Been Planned...

After much deliberation, we've finally got around to planning and booking our first sojourn out of NZ since arriving in July. We'll be heading over to Melbourne for a week at the end of July, and while we're there will be catching an evening session and a day session of the Australian Open. Very exciting!

The holiday starts with a free car rental - Emily found out that car rental companies let people hire vehicles at no cost if they only go one way; a simple method of returning all the cars back to the airport for their next rental arrangement. So we'll be collecting our free ride from Wellington airport on the afternoon of Sunday 24th January and driving overnight up to Auckland airport to arrive for an early flight over to Oz on Monday morning.

Once there, we'll have a day to recuperate before heading to the evening session of the quarter finals in the Rod Laver Arena on Wednesday, as well as general entrance to the ground for the following day session. It's sure to be scorching hot, so we feel a night session is best for watching the tennis, and hopefully on the next day we can find a nice stretch of shade from which to watch the action on one of the big screens.

Once the tennis is over and done with, we will have until the following Monday to explore one of Australia's primary cities, and we'll update you with more news once we work out an itinerary.

We have talked about what's happening afterwards as well: my contract at work will have expired, and Emily will attempt to get a month off from her job so we'll have time to head down to Queenstown in the height of summer - something we didn't get a chance to do when we were travelling around in Leland / Leland II. We may even do something similar with a campervan, although we have no solid plans at this stage.

All Whites, Pizza, Santa, and Fire Sky-Shows!

While Emily is falling asleep leaning on me, I have some time to write a blog, because I'm not allowed to move away just yet.

So plenty has happened since last we posted; we celebrated Fireworks Night kiwi-stylee; Wellington hosted its annual Santa (that's Father Christmas, Dad) parade on the streets of Lambton Quay; I went to perhaps the most significant international football match of New Zealand's competitive history; and we hosted a successful pizza party in The Terrace. That was the month of November for us.

Firstly, the fireworks was an impressive show for New Zealand's capital, but was hardly of the callibre Emily has come to expect from the U S of A. But we had a very enjoyable evening on the waterfront, sandwiched between me helping to set up and tear down respectively the weekly live music stage at the Hotel Bristol. What seemed like all of the city seemed to be watching from somewhere along the bay, stretching from where we were near the business district, down to Oriental Bay and beyond. The fireworks lasted a good 25 minutes, accompanied by what seemed to be a Michael Jackson megamix, and the evening was nicely mild for the event.

The Santa Parade, held a few weeks later, saw Lambton Quay and surrounding roads closed off to traffic for the day, while an array of oddly-themed floats meandered south. Among them were marching bands, The Simpsons, Spongebob Squarepants, various New Zealand foodstuffs, and some mysterious yellow dog neither of us recognised (but whose name the children around us seemed to be incomprehensibly screaming), and bringing up the rear, good old F.C. himself. The parade officially marked the start of the busy season in my Christmas shop, as scores of revellers attempted to squeeze into the tiny Mezzazine once the parade had passed. Although it was my day off, I later heard that the shop got so packed that someone had to hit the emergency stop button on the escalator, for safety reaons.

On the same weekend, the national football (that's the soccer type of football) team the All-Whites took on the mighty nation of Bahrain in the second leg of their World Cup '10 qualifier. A few weeks previous a friend of mine from work had acquired a ticket for me, and in the period between him getting the tickets and the match itself, the hype spiralled to ridiculous proportions. Billed as the biggest match in some three decades, a win would qualify New Zealand for entry in the World Cup for only the second time ever. All of a sudden the kiwis around town abandoned their precious rugby and shifted to football fever. But the hype helped to make my first experience within the hallowed Westpac Stadium in the north of the city an incredibly memorable one. The almost uniformly white-shirted crowd in the match was fantastically eager to support their guys, and both the single goal for New Zealand just before halftime and its denial of a Bahrainian penalty in the second half were met with roaring applause and singalongs. The singalongs and chants were pretty straightforward for me, as they were the same ones from home, but instead of singing 'Eng-land', I simply had to shout 'All-Whites'. In our section, the spectators didn't take their seats once throughout the whole match, and New Zealand's victory spurred a celebratory atmosphere in the city (and country) which lasts to this day.

In other news for this month, my new iPod had the desired effect of reducing our electicity bill by keeping me from going on my computer so much, and I invited some people from work to our apartment for what I hope will be the first of many pizza parties. The evening took a week of hard-graft and intricate planning, as it entailed getting 10 pizzas from 5 pizza places around town and getting them back to mine (while still hot) for a 7pm gorging, but as I sit here in a room which stinks of cheese and tomato, and with pizza boxes wherever the eye turns, I can only say it was a total success.

It's our day off together today, so later we'll head down to the tennis courts for a match, and we'll get to try out both mine and Emily's new racquets. I'll try and put some photos on Flickr from this action-packed month this afternoon. Ciao for now.

if we should meet on cuba street...

Oh hello there, have you been waiting long? Yes I guess you have, but hopefully this post will temporarily satiate any blog post withdrawal you may have experienced.

Wellington is still treating us very well and our social calender seems to be filling up by the day. The majority of Jamie's co-workers are in very similar situations (working visas, international partners, and coincidentally most of them are also 22) so they've all become fast friends and readily include me when Hotel Bristol doesn't claim my nights. We've been to some pub quizzes in town and there's bowling to come- its nice to have some new company though somehow we're not remotely tired of one another (at least I can say so for myself...). Sunday night Jamie and I went to a Ladyhawke concert- one of my favorite kiwi musicians whose album I listened to every day before leaving home. She put on a good show though seemed very nervous, which makes sense after reading that she suffers from asperger's syndrome. Strangely enough, she came into Hotel Bristol the previous week for drinks with her family. I was by far the most starstruck staff member. It seems that celebrity spottings are quite common in Wellington- I learned that during the filming of Lord of the Rings, the hobbits came into Bristol quite regularly and Elijah Wood, star of the trilogy, decided to pee in the bucket fountain - Wellington's iconic water sculpture. The highlight of my kiwi celeb sightings occurred yesterday when Ladyhawke came into Bristol again with her band and friends and *I* got to pour her beer. Of course the keg ran out while refilling her second pitcher but she was really lovely as I congratulated her on a good show the previous night and seemed genuinely happy to be back in Wellington.

Since we haven't left the city yet since moving in, I've proposed to Jamie the idea of taking a short jaunt to a scenic North Island town. I visited STA yesterday to find out about cheap rental cars and destination suggestions (and to see if they had any jobs going...). Looks like we'll be able to rent a car for under $40 a day and there are some nice drives up the East coast that we could do in 2-3 days time. The woman suggester Cape Palliser which has lovely lighthouses, a seal colony, and some nice walks along the coast. I don't think asking for a few days off will be a problem at Bristol, but it may prove more difficult at the Christmas shop, as they are understaffed and may lose another employee soon. Hopefully it works out.

There is no shortage of fresh air here, though it is the island's second largest city. I spent yesterday wandering around the waterfront, stopping to read in the patches of sunlight I found. I thought I had the whole day off and was happy to take advantage of the time off by doing nothing at all, but a call came at 5 pm- apparently the schedule had been changed so I hurried to work, leaving Jamie to cook lonely jumbalaya :( I do have a nice midweek break though, with wednesday and thursday off- hopefully some time to try out my new tennis raquet.

Looks like we will have some more familiar faces coming round in a few months, which I am thrilled about. My Nana has just finalized her plans to visit in January and will be doing quite the thorough tour with a three day stop in Wellington! Also in January, a friend of a friend who performed and stayed with us at Muhlenberg, will be touring NZ with his band.

Jamie's just purchased an ipod touch and its become the apartment puppy- its always doing something new and I think Jamie talks to it more than to me. It is pretty amazing, I have to admit and we're hoping the purchase will reduce our electricity bills since he hasn't been plugging in his laptop. My favorite application is "Google Earth," it starts off as a globe and you can zoom into basically anywhere in the world and see exactly what it looks like since google has taken millions of photos- we were able to see our Wellington apartment as well as the backyard of my house in North Andover. Technology is weird.

Okay, that's all you get for now, folks. Hope all is well!

A Few Exciting Things

This week has gone more or less routinely, which usually means that Emily's and my work schedules barely cross over at all, and as such we've got to make use of the time that actually coordinates. The last few days would be a good example; Emily's two days off for this week were Wednesday and Thursday, so after I finished work on Wednesday we took another trip down to our local Reading Cinema (we thought about how many films we've been to see together, and the number is surprisingly high) to see 500 Days of Summer. We both really enjoyed it, and although I won't try to review it, I'll mention that Emily said she 'didn't want it to end'.

The following day was my day off for the week as well, and so we took advantage of the slightly improved weather to play tennis for the first time in a while. Playing on outside courts in what is known as the second windiest city in the world has its downsides, but we've been adjusting to it. Then we rested up for seeing The Ataris that night, who were on their NZ Tour. We both really enjoyed the gig, and it was nice for me to see some live music that wasn't blues at the Hotel Bristol for once.

We got our electricity bill for September-October, and were shocked to find that it's no more reasonable than last month's, which was only our 'estimated power usage'. This news is particularly unwelcome as we've been doing our very best to turn things off and keep it down to a minimum, on top of which we were hardly at the apartment very much. Yet we barely managed to shave anything off the bill. Oh well, we can keep trying.

I'm off to work soon, and for the next meanwhile I'm working a 6 day week. Work at Kirkcaldie's is going well, and I'm getting on well with everyone who works there. The HR department have managed to pick a team this year of mostly 22-year-olds, and so we all have plenty in common. We went to the Bristol (I seem to be there more than home, and the same can definitely be said for Emily) for the weekly pub quiz on Tuesday, and it was a great night out. Looking forward to doing the same again.

Apologies for not updating the photos just yet, but it's on my to-do list...

A Promise of Things to Come

I'll really try hard to give a more thorough update on my next day off, as this blog thing really took a nose dive throughout the entire month of September. We'll try to correct this soon, promise! In the meantime, I've uploaded a few more photos of us settling in to Wellington on Flickr, with captions to follow soon. There are plenty more photos to come, which I'll also upload when I get an evening by myself (Emily is working late tomorrow, so outlook is good for then.)

Sweet As !

Well folks, we did promise you a New Zealand blog, so I'm terribly sorry about our recent lack of posts (plus Jamie said I had to apologize). There is some exciting news though which involves two sets of visitors from the outside world. This Saturday Caroline's brother and sister-in-law, David and Janet, are due to drop into Wellington en route to the South Island in their campervan. Hopefully they can regale us with tales from the road, though it will be hard to match Leland's wild night of being pulled over by NZ police. If I am able to get the night off work, we're planning to take our visitors to Southern Cross-a bar/restaurant with an amazing outdoor garden where they cook on open grilles. Our other visitors come a bit later- my parents and brothers were planning to arrive in December during the Christmas holiday but because of astronomical airline costs, NZ can expect the Besens in early March. By then, hopefully, we'll either have renewed our contract at 3A/163 The Terrace, have found a new, less expensive place in Wellington, or have fled the big city for greener pastures (or kiwi farms?) Jamie's job at the Christmas shop ends in January after "The Big Sale" and I've committed to 6 months at Bristol, though I have yet to sign a formal contract. In other words, we'll be free as Tui birds come February.

Speaking of work, all seems to be running smoothly. Jamie's shop has opened as of last thursday-apparently it was quite the event. Hundreds of tickets were sold so the christmas fanatics of Wellington could get their fix one night before the public. The ten shop workers had only one day of training on the till in completely random departments of Kirkcaldie & Staines. Jamie worked in the linen department after which he only wanted to talk about Egyptian cotton. Now that the shop is officially open, Jamie has 2 random days off a week, like me. This week we both have tuesday off and next week its thursday. Also I haven't been working many late nights which means we get home at the same time in the evening. I think I speak for both of us when I say we have been learing a lot about the country by working with New Zealanders. Unlike many Americans, they seem to be well informed about current affairs and posess a strong pride for Wellington and their country.

We got tickets to see a few concerts here in Wellington. Next week Jamie chose the Ataris and on Nov 1st we'll see my choice, Ladyhawke, return to her NZ roots after a long stint abroad. Jamie is also planning to catch an All Whites (NZ national soccer team) game with some friends from work. The stadium will likely be pretty empty- firstly because NZ is playing Bahrain- a teeny country in the middle east and secondly because New Zealanders don't seem to like soccer much. They do however, love boxing. At work on Saturday all anyone seemed to be talking about was the boxing match scheduled for that night. It was the legendary David Tua, who has never lost a match and came out of retirement specifically to fight Shane Cameron in the "fight of the century." I figured we better witness history in the making so Jamie and I returned to a packed to the rafters Hotel Bristol to catch the three-minute, two-round fight in which the retiree took down the new kid quite easily.

This past week I wandered down to the Botanic gardens again hoping to see the flowers in bloom and was thrilled to find an entire garden of tulips, next time I'll bring my camera. But for now you can feast your eyes on pictures of Jamie and I on our various rentals -roller blades and bike respectively- against the backdrop of the Wellington Harbour.

My Job

There's a perfect opportunity while my kitchen-wizardry is simmering and while Emily is slogging it out at work to deliver some good news. At last I have found employment! Today I worked my first day at Kirkcaldie and Staines, one of Wellington's premier shopping 'experiences' and something of a dying - although some would say dead - breed of department stores in New Zealand.

After a month of applying to various retail positions all over the city, and Emily's eerily accurate prediction on Monday that 'this would be my lucky week', I got a call on Tuesday afternoon inviting me in to a meeting with the HR Manager of the store, who I had emailed several weeks previous to enquire about any available work. As it turned out, there was an opening on a team of ten required to staff the Christmas shop, a seasonal department within the main shop, and I was told I could start the following day.

My initial reaction is positive; the work is something I'm familiar with, and the people, wage, and role are all fine. I'll be working very close to home as well, on the upmarket shopping street of Lambton Quay, just five minutes' walk from here, and I'll have regular 9-5 hours for the time being at least.

Since it's seasonal work, it also gives us the chance to re-evaluate what will happen around February, and if we decide to go fruit-picking as we've been planning, it'll be one fewer commitment to worry about. Besides which, several of my co-workers have tried out fruit-picking in various regions around NZ, so there'll doubtless be some contact information to grasp at some stage...

Update from Wellington

Hello to anyone still reading! We congratulate you for making it this far...

There's just time to say what we've been up to in the last few weeks, now we've been in NZ for our first month. We've settled into a routine which usually involves Emily heading out to work while I stay home or look for a job - still unemployed for now - but on her days off, we've been finding things to do. Every Sunday, we head to one of two farmers' markets to get the next week's worth of cheap fruit and veg. We discovered them both very soon after arriving, and now rely on the supermarket only for milk, meat, cheese, bread and cereal when we can help it. Hopefully this'll help us to save a few pennies.

We've been back to the Te Papa National Museum on the waterfront, since we both enjoy museums, and especially free museums. We think they change some of the exhibits each month, so it'll be something we can go back to whenever we don't feel like spending money. Aside from anything else, the quality of the exhibits is excellent; fascinating and thought-provoking, and mostly about New Zealand's ecology and social history. I was particularly intrigued by the section about the Earth's core (which warmed me up).

Speaking of natural history, we endured our first earthquake recently, although we managed to sleep through it. Measuring a 5 on the Richter scale - strong but not particularly harmful - it hit in the wee hours of a Friday morning, but we remained unaware of it until Emily's workmates told her about it later that day. My friend then told us that these 'little' earthquakes help to stave off 'The Big One', predicted for sometime in the next thousand years. Apparently, this upcoming earthquake is set to completely obliterate Wellington, and our apartment on The Terrace is but a stone's throw from the guilty faultline.

But, always one to remain optimistic and calm in the face of potential destruction, we visited Wellington's annual Book Fair in the TSB Arena this weekend. Emily picked up a few bargains after coming close to the end of the Ayn Rand book she bought in Nelson, while I purchased a Reader's Digest Book of Facts for $2. Since then I've been starting most of my sentences to Emily with the phrase 'did you know that...?'.

After that, we wandered along the harbour area and discovered a boardwalk full of neat eateries and bars. While most of them are well out of our budget for now, we split a pizza, and were inspired to return the following day to explore more of the beautiful waterfront. So we made the most of the fantastic weather on Sunday by reading in a park, before observing a great deal of cyclists and roller bladers scooting past. Not wanting to be left out, we headed to the rental shop; I grabbed some blades to show off some of the skills I've learned while playing hockey, while Emily chose a bike to remind her of cycling around Amsterdam again. From just outside the TSB Arena, we went all the way up the coast, past Oriental Bay and almost to the tip of the peninsula in Roseneath before heading back. (Feel free to plot our journey on Google Maps.)

This morning we went to play tennis again, having discovered some decent courts last week, just south of the town in Brooklyn. I currently stand at 0-2 against Emily in our two bouts here, but my excuse is that I was hurrying the game alone so we could get back to watch the US Open... Nonetheless it's something we could see ourselves doing sometimes, but sparingly, again because of the expense.

I'll upload some of the photos of our first month onto Flickr when I get the chance.

oh blah-dee oh blah-dah life goes on..

Hullo loyal readers. Sorry for the delayed post but compared to life on the road, being settled is far less exciting: but great just the same, I'm liking Wellington more every day. Today I explored more of the Botanic Gardens which are about a ten minute walk from here and form a longer loop through the suburb of Kelburn. I walked along a winding path down a hill completely covered with rose bushes of various colo(u)rs. Another turn brought me to a grassy hill covered with daffodils. A sign warning me that thieves would be prosecuted stopped my greedy flower picking hands. It was refreshing to get out of the bustle of the city for a bit and great to have the garden so close by.

I've worked three shifts at Hotel Bristol so far, and it's going pretty well. There's a lot to learn on the register and I have yet to work a truly busy night, but its nothing my college educated mind can't handle. Half the staff looks like they just stepped off the rugby field, but everyone is really friendly and eager to welcome me to the "Bristol Family." I work my first day shift tomorrow which will be interesting considering I don't really know how to make coffee BUT i finally found out the difference between a flat white and a latte (a latte has more milk). I think a day shift will feel more familiar to this American waitress.

Jamie is the one at Hotel Bristol tonight- he's sitting in with the sound technician for the live music they host Thursday nights. If all goes well he will work as his substitute and potentially help him get in contact with some people in the sound engineering circuit.

Now it is time for a little taste of home-The Sex and the City movie!

A Video of the Terrace

Two pieces of big news today: firstly, Emily is now an employed Wellington resident! After a successful interview this morning, she attained a position behind the bar of the Hotel Bristol, a neat bar and restaurant on the central Cuba St. The first shift is Saturday evening, so I'm sure Emily will update afterwards. In the meantime, it seems to be a nice spot; we stopped in on the bar by accident last Thursday when we overheard some music spilling out onto Cuba St., a fantastic big swing band. They have performances like that every Thursday, while the rest of the week is spent showing rugby on TV - something Emily will have to get used to (and learn the rules of).

Secondly, we've filmed and uploaded the first nugget of insight into our kiwi lives, the inside of 163 The Terrace. We've waited until the apartment is of a decent level of presentability before documenting it, and this has only been achieved after we acquired a new coffee table today. (Much of the rest of the day was spent hauling the heavy, heavy table from Ghuznee St. up the hill to our place...) But as a result, we feel truly settled in.