The Final Update..?

Yep, we're still here! Somewhere along the line, this blog got buried underneath a mountain of other priorities, so apologies if you've been waiting for an update that just hasn't come until now. But here it is at last! And it may well be the very last from New Zealand :(

As of today, we have exactly two weeks left in Wellington, and only three weeks left in the country, before we fly back to the Northern Hemisphere. I'll just explain a little about what we've been up to and what the plan for the next months will be.

Firstly, I'm down to working weekends only since the Kirks Easter Shop closed, and I'm over in the Wine & Cheese department. So if you ever need to be told the difference between a Gewürztraminer and a Viognier, I can pretend to know it. It's been a nice way to slowly wind down from working full-time all year, and having heaps of time off has given me a decent chance to tie up all the loose ends in Wellington, as well as enjoying the last of the summer weather in the city. Last week was also my final time as the sound man at Bristol (or, as I learned sound men used to be known, the 'Balance Engineer'), and I oversaw the board for an album release party for a singer called Carol Bean. It went well, and I've really enjoyed doing it since October. It's sad to think I won't be back.

Emily is still on full-time at Bristol, but her schedule has been a little kinder to her recently, with plenty of 9-5 days. So in the evenings we've been looking into possibilities for next year, the most prominent of which has been joining a program to teach English in South Korea, and discussing the idea with some friends who are already there. Last week we sent in our application forms and letters of recommendation from work, and next we're expecting a Skype interview, after which we'll have to chase up other official documents like duplicate degree certificates and apostilled police checks. It's all complicated drastically by our temporary residence on the other side of the world, and if we leave it too late (for instance, when we get back home) we'll miss the deadline. It adds a nice 'race against time' element to things, as if we weren't under enough stress.

Our plan for the next few weeks involves finding someone to replace us in our house, and trimming the fat from our luggage to be brought home. This morning we dropped off a LOT of clothes at a second hand op-shop, but it's still all up in the air whether or not we'll be able to get everything back! Other than that we have all the other issues like closing bank accounts, packing, and saying goodbye to friends and the city.

After we leave Wgtn, we fly to Christchurch where we'll pick up another campervan, and attempt to resume the trip around the South Island we didn't have time to finish at the beginning of the year. We haven't yet finalised an itinerary, but we'll definitely head down to Queenstown, and time depending explore some of the other regions at the far south of the country. We might get a chance to see Dunedin and Otago, and maybe even head back up to Kairkoura and Hamner Springs. Hopefully, if we have similar campsites as before, we'll use the internet facilities to update on where we are and what we're doing.

Then, after our camper-trip, part deux, we're due to fly back from Christchurch to Auckland, and then on to London via Hong Kong. It'll be a long day! Emily will be staying in Harold Wood for a week, and if we're not too jet-lagged or tired, we'll head down to Canterbury to catch up with some friends, before Emily flies on to Boston. At that point, we'll just be waiting on the word from Korea...

So that was Wellington for us! I know I keep saying this, but at some point I'll upload the recent pictures onto Flickr from the whole experience. And I'll get Emily to round things off from her perspective when she's not too busy. Thanks for reading!

Photos

Here's a link to some photos my brother Richard took while the family was in NZ: http://picasaweb.google.com/rich.besen/NewZealand2010?authkey=Gv1sRgCLO8zoC-5oTdfw#

Enjoy!

New Beginnings

Hello Everyone. I write to you tonight from our breezy back garden on Brougham st, Mt. Victoria. The move was a very overwhelming ordeal involving a lot of frustration and for a while we were convinced we needed to settle on another tiny apartment or a spacious place way out of the city. With time and help from our new kiwi flatmate, we managed to find a gorgeous, spacious, self-contained house not far from the city at all. The place has three bedrooms, the biggest of which Jamie and I have claimed (there are two of us after all), a separate kitchen and combined living/dining room. The best part of the house is undoubtedly the back garden where I am sitting now. Nick (flatmate #1) purchased a lovely outdoor dining setup which we've put on the deck that opens up into a small yard complete with shed and large clothesline (I've never hung clothes on a clothesline before, I have to admit I felt quite the domestic goddess). We are sandwiched snugly between two houses which from the sound of things have families complete with crying babies, but the house is its own unit, which is nice.

Since our Terrace lease doesn't actually run out until tomorrow, we've been shuttling things over all week- but today was the last of it. I kicked up quite the fuss on a bus ride cross-town where I almost missed my stop and probably took out a few eyes with the fake christmas tree and ornaments I was carrying. Tomorrow Jamie and I will hand in our keys to the property managers and hopefully get our bond back in full.

I'm still hard at work at the Bristol which is about the same distance from here as was the Terrace. The morning commute is a bit longer for Jamie, who has been working a few days at Kirckaldie's. Today he and a friend from the Christmas shop were hard at work painting shelves and he's done a few days at the wine and cheese shop. They don't seem to want to let him go and have tentatively offered him a permanent weekend position in the shop.

March brings the long-awaited visit of my family and I can't wait. We're planning a roadtrip starting from Auckland where they arrive, but I've tried to make our route a bit different from Jamie and I's so I can see more of NZ. We'll finish in Wellington where hopefully they'll treat us at the nicer restaurants our budget doesn't quite allow. Melbourne did afterall, pull at the old pursestrings.

Speaking of, the trip was fantastic. Hopefully we'll get some pictures up soon, but you can expect some snaps of the Australian Open, an Australia Day picnic, and various other city sights. We'd heard Melbourne was a lot like Wellington, only bigger, and I did definitely see the similarities- same cafe/coffee culture, centered around a harbour, totally walkable, and very safe. We were lucky to meet up with some friends of Jamie's from Amsterdam who took us to the best shops and rooftop bars the city and our budget had to offer. Melbourne was definitely abuzz with the Australian Open and we spent a few evenings watching the matches on a bigscreen in Federation Square along with other (mostly foreign) tennis enthusiasts. The match we ended up seeing inside the arena from waaaay high up was Tsonga and Djokovic, a well-played 3 hour+ affair. We also saw the Williams sisters in action and Jamie's favorite Brit, Laura Robson. It was a very fun week.

It getting quite chilly out here and the baby next door has been screaming for a while now, so I think I'll go inside. Hope this update finds you all well. Oh and here's our new address:

67 Brougham st
Mt. Victoria
Wellington, 6011
New Zealand
The other side of the world.

End of Work

Now is the beginning of an uneasy time for us, or at least an incredibly hectic time. Perhaps most importantly, my job at the Kirks Christmas Shop is coming to an end. (Today was my last day in the shop, and next week will be spent packing everything away...) To add to the tension of beginning the jobhunting process once again will be the stress of finding a new place to live in the next few weeks, not to mention actually closing the deal and getting successfully transferred.

On the plus side, our Australian holiday is coming up, although the timing of it pushes it right into the thick of everything else we have to worry about, and besides the distraction it provides there's also the damage the trip will do to our bank accounts. However, we've been looking forward to it too much to let that bother us.

Also coming up is a visit from Emily's grandmother, who has arrived in NZ and should be in our fair city on Monday afternoon. Emily has also been incredibly excited about this, and I'm sure will update on what occurs during her stay.

Holiday in the Sun

SO now that Christmas is over and done with (at least in this hemisphere), we figured we should fill you all in on our exciting and warm(ish) holiday festivities. Since the weather felt very unchristmas-like, Jamie set up a lovely little Christmas tree with gold and red baubles-to get us in the spirit. After he had bought the decorations he commented that he was upset he couldn't find a Star of David for the tip of the tree; I pointed out that Jewish themed Christmas tree decorations don't exist... You may have seen from the photos that I also decorated stockings in hopes that the quality of $2 shop goods is high enough that we are able to take them with us to NY next year. Speaking of which, Jamie has sent in his application for the Sound Engineering School in midtown NYC! He was toying with the idea of applying to a less estabilished and cheaper program, but SAE definitely seems like the best option with a huge career network due to the school's locations throughout the world. NY also seems to work with my plans to work as a student advisor for study abroad programs at high schools or universities, not to mention it is currently the epicenter of our social network- most of our friends either live in or have plans to move to the city.

Anyway, back to our Christmas day goings-on: We started the morning as good son and daughter and skyped our parents in hopes of prolonging the christmas morning anticipation (and to catch up with our families of course). After bragging about the warm weather a bit, we exchanged gifts. Highlights included perfume and a new book for me and headphones and a photo album complete with printed NZ photos and commentary for Jamie. We realized we had a total of three Christmas evening invitations, but since the dinner we commited to was due to begin at 5, we sent our regrets to our respective co-workers. We were responsible for bringing dessert to our Chrismas dinner at the home of Jamie's co-worker's boyfriend, so I got to work on baking a cake. After a few hiccups (I don't bake much), I managed to produce a yummy, if a bit lopsided, chocolate strawberry cake and some Christmas cookies. We brought our goodies across town where we finally met the boyfriend, who is from Scotland, as well as his kiwi roommate who joined us for dinner and Jamie's canadian co-worker and her roommate. It was a truly international Chistmas. Rich cooked us quite the feast which we promptly worked off with hours of Wii tennis, bowling, boxing, and golf and an intense game of Cranium. We waddled home stuffed and full of Chrismas cheer just after midnight.

January is going to be a big month for us. Somehow I managed to get New Years Eve off work, so we'll have another holiday night to celebrate together. Bristol's staff holiday party is on January 2nd where tradition dictates a costume theme. Last year it was "rockstars," and this year its any getup beginning with the letter "R." I'm still undecided, but will let you all know. Jamie's stint at the Christmas shop ends in the next three weeks after the "Big Sale," which is apparently the Kirk's event of the year, after which he'll need to find a new job. Hopefully the tourist season won't make that too difficult. We'll also need to start looking for a new apartment, as our landlords have informed us of the $10 raise in rent. We're hoping to find a place a bit cheaper and not too far out of town since we've become so accustomed to the conveniences of living close by. January also brings my grandmother's visit (yay!) and of course our big Aussie adventure.

We hope you all had a very merry Christmas and/or a Happy Hanukkah and send our best wishes for the new year!

Photo Update! At Last!

Just a quick post to wish everyone a Merry Christmas, and to say that your present is the last few months' worth of photos from Wellington. Check the flickr page for the set.

Emily has promised to write a proper post tomorrow, so look out for that.

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...