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!