Fun and busy-ness in NZ

In light of the rather nice posts of Jono and Inti from their NZ trip (finally!), I think I should let readers know what we've been up to.

We've spent quite a lot of time this week catching up with lovely Mealys and Evelz' and other friends for lunches, and little sisters Ellie / Steph / Mekie as well. Even if we dragged aforementioned little sisters through every mens shop on Lambton and Willis looking for the perfect Brendan summer jacket (no easy task since all the shops are preparing for winter).

The rest of the time has been spent doing wedding-related stuff, with lots of Julie's (Brendan's mum's) help (and how could we forget Ellie and Jonny!). Suffice to say we're pretty busy, and Wellington has been traversed in search of various items, and hair and makeup trials. I even went to Wainuiomata!

I am also doing lots of sewing of table runners, meeting various Brendan relatives and trying to work out a ceremony compromise between Brendans and priests. Ouch.

So. Yes, to everyone, we would totally love to have lunch with you. I'm just a bit more busy for Thurs and Fri. Try after Wed of next week.

The apartment is full of little chinese boxes which need labels and have been stanped. They look very pretty. And I am trying not to open all the packets of American lollies we bought. Some have already been sacrificed to the brave cause of the Ida and Tina and Brendan hunger for peanut butter cups and chocolate.

We also had to buy shoes today since Brendan left his formal ones in America. Yay for Shoe Warehouse! My shoes are hurting already - wish I'd brought them to America to practice wearing them. I wore them to the Subway at the bottom of the building and that was sore. Amazingly, we have only been to Subway once. I am not joking. Unless Brendan's hiding the evidence...

I miss our warm Californian weather as it's a freezing southerly right now. I do NOT miss the Wellington wind by any stretch of the imagination. Brrr. All my "warm weather" stuff only just makes the cut. It's supposed to be fine on Friday, Saturday and Sunday - here's hoping the weather report is right!!

It's also starting to feel more normal being back, and I don't notice accents anymore.

I've spent vast amounts of time sewing these black table runners, and I've only done 4 out of 11. Hope to do some more tomorrow. It's depressing. I managed to score some amazing jet beads for Julie to borrow - 100 years old, they belonged to her great-great or something aunt Ellie. And they look just like my black ones that Julie likes.

Last night I drove Julie's car down this tiny, steep, windy one-way street from Northland to Glenmore - it was a shortcut. I've only ever walked down it before. The cars are the other way around from America inside as well.

Wedding dramas....

The amazing present we bought for someone has been recovered from the airport. Thanks, Air NZ. No, seriously. It was one cool present.

Apologies for the lack of posts recently - I've been busy with wedding stuff. (And Brendan has also been helping. :) ) After all the family dramas, the person has decided not to come! Oh well. More room for other people then.

We do have one small wedding problem however - we have over-invited and there are not enough seats in our venue. So last night we had to do the rather sad task of calling people who brought extra guests and ask them not to. :( It was very hard.

I've been overwhelmed by the level of support from various people here though, both for wedding stuff and just being pleased to see us generally. We feel very loved. :)

We are back in NZ!

Hi everyone, we are back in NZ now. :)

The flight went relatively well; I drove up to San Francisco airport on the very crowded 101 freeway, and Alex drove our car back for us and put it back into the garage, which was very kind. (His car was a bit smaller and might not have fitted our suitcases.)

I managed to get 3+ hours sleep, which was a minor miracle - no kids kicking my seat this time! I know it was around 3 hours since I apparently slept right through Brendan watching the entire James Bond movie, and I vaguely remember him watching other things. (He stayed up all night - I don't know how he did it!)

Unfortunately a very nice present for someone was lost on the journey - we spent an hour at Auckland asking various airport staff to find it. (They were very nice about it, but it's gone.) It was a very small and light package, and probably blew off the cart or something. We're pretty disappointed since we went to a great deal of trouble to find it and create it - we looked in THREE malls all over San Jose!

The landing into Auckland was very smooth, but as we were turning past the Marlborough Sounds to come into Wellington, it was very bumpy and I suddenly felt very sick. I started wishing ferverantly we were on the ground! I spent a lot of the next part of the day feeling slightly ill.

Geoff picked us up at 8am in his little dark blue hatchback and we went to his house for a few hours. It was very funny since we used to live there before we went to America - it was very different (and much more clean)! TheSam seems to have permanently moved in since he was asleep on the couch there. Apparently he contributes towards power and Sky (cable) TV - and has his own "den" in the downstairs room to play Playstation in! Soccer posters line the stairwell walls...

Brendan opened his bag at Geoff's house to give Geoff his laptop, and discovered a note explaining San Francisco customs had searched his bag. Fine, but we couldn't find the bottle of alcohol we'd put in the bag. Where was it? We were disappointed: "Those theiving customs people!" It was only 750ml as well, so not above any sort of customs limit.

Last night, Brendan found it - magically hiding inside his other bag, which we KNOW we didn't put it in! Hmmm...

Surprising Happiness at Immigration Services...

For now, at least. Today I had to get my biometrics done for my work permit. Yes, on Easter Saturday. America doesn't seem to regard Easter as a statutory holiday, much to my dismay, so Good Friday was a normal work-day.

All the websites I had consulted when preparing for my work permit emphasized that a trip to Immigration Services would be long and stressful. Go and line up at 5am, advised the Stanford University website. Make sure you get an appointment if you wait in line all day but still don't get seen, advised another. Make sure you take more documents than are officially required, suggested another.

So, I was dutifully up this morning around 11 making copies of things like certificates and passports and writing letters about how I wanted to use the money that I would get from working to go skiing or sight-seeing most weekends, which is true mostly, cos that's what we've been doing.

I also badgered Brendan into leaving an entire hour and a half early to get to my 2pm appointment, just in case the line was long.

When we got there (and worked out where it was - next to Ebay. The hint is, look for the little Mexican kids running around an industrial area - kidding!), I was surprised. It was almost empty.

A man in uniform at the door took my passport and notice of appointment, told me to fill out a form, and to take it to someone else.

The room was painted a stark, hospital white, with fluorescent lighting. The walls were slightly scuffed in places. Signs printed onto A4 paper sternly warned, "NO Cellphones! NO cameras! NO recording devices!" People sat glumly in rows facing a wall at the end of the long room, towards a TV. Brendan told me the TV was broken, and showed mostly static. A huge sign warned, "Do NOT touch the TV!"

There was a small issue with the first two people, who wanted to examine my hands to make sure they were OK for fingerprints. Unfortunately I sliced the top of my finger with a knife the other day, so it was slightly cut on the side still. So they weren't sure if they could do the fingerprints or not.

The second person looked at my form, gave me a number, and I went around the corner to another, smaller waiting room. This one had small signs on the wall with rows of seats, so you sat in your column depending on why you were there. My little blue plastic card said EAD 34. I plopped myself down on a chair, and waited.

The smaller waiting room was a bit nicer - people felt less glum. A small girl, about 2 years old, with a head of dark curls, ran around and everyone watched her and smiled. I wondered if I should go back for my ipod.

In the end, after only about 15 minutes, my number was called. I walked into the open-plan area and had my photo, signature and right fingerprint taken only. And then I left. All done in 25 minutes. I was most impressed. Maybe they do the 10-fingerprint for immigrants only.

One of the perks of having a car....

.. is trying to find it in the carpark when you come back. Maybe we should have left the stripes on.

Canterbury wants Easter Kiwi, not Easter Bunny

Apparently, people in Canterbury want to see an Easter Kiwi, not an Easter Bunny since they're a bit overrun with bunnies.

And wow, it made it to the front page of CNN. http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/04/02/easter.kiwi.reut/index.html

San Francisco Zoo...

We drove to San Francisco Zoo and back last weekend, and went to inspect a restored Mustang a few miles down the road, that Brendan's Dad is thinking of buying. (see next post for this one.)

I currently have a yucky cold, and am partially losing my voice. But we'd planned the San Francisco Zoo trip for a few weekends so we were determined to go this time. We were hoping to take Onita but she didn't answer her phone, maybe she was asleep.

I drove the 75 miles there, and Brendan drove on the way back. We took the freeways the whole way, which meant it only took us over an hour, rather than closer to an hour and a half. And traffic wasn't too bad. It's always best when navigating freeways if one person drives and the other(s) direct and look at maps, since time between seeing the sign for the exit and time given to get across several lanes and to the exit (even if you're in the far right lane) are often really short, or the exit is really well-hidden. Not to mention knowing whether to go north or south is often extremely vital. It's written in tiny signs just before you enter or leave the road.

The Zoo was really crowded, even at 3.30 on a Sunday. We paid $11 for our tickets each, and were surprised that no-one collected them. Parking was $5 but worth it to avoid horrible San Francisco parking woes. It was actually quite cold and foggy, situated on the edge of the city by the ocean.

Little kids ran about everywhere, screaming. Harried parents tried to quiet their children around the animals, and still take hordes of pictures every time one of the usually sleeping animals scratched itself or yawned. (Yes, I'm guilty.) And there were peacocks everywhere - people were more impressed when one of the male peacocks displayed his tail, and sparked a rush of cameras to the head, than for many of the surrounding exhibits. When did peacocks become the main event at a zoo?



One of the funniest things at the zoo was one of the rhinos. He had a new toy: a tyre on a short chain. He spent a long time banging the tyre around and picking it up with his nose. He kept trying to put it on a special rounded spike on top of one of the fences.



We also spent a lot of time wishing humans were as agile with climbing, as monkeys. The really cute little monkeys looked like Dr. Seuss characters - they had tiny brown faces with bright black eyes, and wide, white handlebar moustaches.



The polar bear was obviously very hot - he was stretched out by his pool, panting slightly. We were a bit cold.

We were also treated to the rather strange sight of bears "kissing" with tongue - everyone thought it was sweet and ooh-ed and ahh-ed. Disturbingly, the sign on the enclosure said the bears were sisters.


Brendan and Alex were disappointed. They didn't get to see the snakes.