We are all now getting our clocks back in order after the long flight in. It wasn't bad at all. The food was good. The personal televisions fun, and after spending seven hours tooling around San Fransisco with cousins on our layover, we were all so tired, we slept around eight hours of the fourteen.
These days have been full trying to set up a life with as much fervor as it took to rip down the last one. Here is the progress report.
- cell phones. I'll post the numbers on my facebook page.
- Visited three villages and city neighborhoods. Determined we want to live in Sumner, the seaside village where we are currently staying and on which Steve had his heart set. He is going to have to get in really good shape though to ride his bike to work because it is 15 km each way. (He can also take the bus). The city neighborhoods felt too big and overwhelming. The other outlying villages are too far away.
- Tried to open up a bank account. Must get permanent address first.
- Tried to get a library card. Must get permanent address first.
- Tried to enroll children in school. Must get permanent address first
- Put down a deposit on a small cottage a block from the ocean to rent for the year. Waiting to hear if we are suitable tenants. (Better be suitable tenants. Need to get rid of kids and read a new book.)
- Met Steve's new boss and got invited for coffee on Sunday.
- Contacted Chabad, going for Shabbat dinner (next shabbat).
- Found the synagogue (under construction, no one there but very nice contracter).
I think we will have a tenancy agreement by early next week and will get the kids enrolled in school by then. We also still have to buy a car.
By the way...the one thing I left off of the progress report is that we rented a car and yes, I drove. So did Steve and the surprising thing is that my general lack of respect for the rules of the road in the states has proven to be a boon for my driving here. While Steve found it much harder to make the switch, I apparently am used to driving on the wrong side of the road, going around roundabouts against the flow of traffic, passing on the right and parking on the left side of the street. (Of course any of you who have driven with me already knew this.) It wasn't much of a change for me. The biggest problem. The blinker signal and the windshield wiper are switched. Both Steve and I kept that front windshield clean today. Every time we needed to make a turn, damn if we didn't clean that windshield. And the kids made up a jaunty little tune while I were driving on a winding mountain road to Lyttleton (the drop off side). It went something like "I am afraid of death..." Ha, like this was worse than any other time I ever drove. We did see a very cool "time ball" while we were there. It is how the sailors calibrated their chonometers so they could figure out their longitude when sailing over open ocean before radio waves. Check it out. http://www.google.co.nz/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CBsQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.timeball.co.nz%2F&ei=f4d3TLq6DKaRnAfVm7z3AQ&usg=AFQjCNE-4_-smEeWCevEXIpDoJb8_00fqA&sig2=x12AzAbDMVHBHlCJQQAWSg
Overall, we are getting started. Perhaps my expectations are a little off, (of course they're off, this is me) but it is slower than I had hoped in terms of getting connected. We haven't really met anyone yet outside of Steve's boss, (who is lovely). I was hoping the synagogue would be more of a grounding point, but given that it is essentially closed at the moment, that isn't happening. Of course, four days is hardly anything, and we were groggy for one and a half of it. I think though a bit of the disconnect became clear for me today when we went to an outlying town called Rangiora to see if it was close enough for us to live there or not. (Not.) There was a lovely, manicured central park in the town center with a playground and fields. The rose gardens were clipped back because it is winter, but they lined the center and I am sure they are beautiful in a careful way in the summer. Children were playing quietly with their "mum's", no screaming (except for my kids.) And it occurred to me: this is a very English place. Go figure. New Zealand, a former English colony; part of the British Empire, still part of the crown on some level (I have to do some learning on this), is culturally English. The people are very pleasant, helpful, sweet, but reserved. They are not falling-all-over-yourself-friendly like Americans can be or hospitible in the warm, open, adopt-you-into-the-family-even-though-I-just-met-you way people are in the middle east are. As least I havent' experienced that yet in the odd 200 hours that I have been here.
Here are some pictures of the house we are staying in at the moment, us at the beach, the street and the hill that stretches up behind us that comprises the town. There are more pictures, but blogger won't let me put more in this post, and I am too tired to figure out how to make it work. Good night!
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