Akaroa and the Big Ruck

Yesterday, (Saturday), we took the drive to Akaroa, a town on the Banks Peninsula about twenty-five minutes or four hours from Sumner, depending on how you go.

We took the scenic route.

This entailed driving the rim of a ancient volcanic crater on a two-lane, mountain bike path masquerading as a road. We gripped the wheel in concentration to stay in the left hand lane alternaively trying to avoid careening off the mountain, smashing into the cliff and oncoming traffic, and flattening the magnificent men and women pedaling up the hills the car struggled to climb. It was a glorious day. The above pictures (completely out of order) show the view of the hills above Sumner (me and the kids), the city of Christchurch down in the valley, then as we drove along summit road and the rim of the crater looking down into Lyttleton Harbor/Diamond Harbor/Govenor's Bay (the ones looking down into the body of water). The last picture is of the flat in Akaro looking back up at the mountains there and the sunset is at Akaroa Harbor. (I am still struggling to figure out how to work the picture insert into the blog thing)

What is Akaroa? you ask. It is a peninsula first settled by Maori about 1,000 years ago, fairly peacably among themselves. Captain Cook first sighted the land in the 1770's and the usual taking of native lands by Europeans for paltry sums of money took place after that. In a singular piece of bad luck, a French captain who had plans to make a French settlement in the area bought some land from the Maori, left to go to France to get some settlers right before the Treaty of Waitangi was signed in 1840. This is the treaty which established all of NZ as a British colony and passed control from the Maori to the empire. The French guy returned shortly thereafter. He and his settlers stayed on, but under British control. Akaroa is the only place in NZ with french street names. And I think I feel out of place.

On our way home from Akaroa, (we drove home the 25 minute route along the highway, no need for any pictures of that), we passed the Ami stadium. It was 6:56 p.m. People, young and old, were streaming through the roads dressed in red and black striped scarves, red and black shirts, carrying red and black flags. Rugby. Canterbury v Auckland.

A cheer went up in the back seat. "Can we go? Pleeeease! Pleeeease! Pleeeease!"

Ten minutes and $68NZD later we were sitting mid field, half way up the stands with our three "Take your kids to footy" bags in hand. (promotional chips and strawberry milk in a plastic bag covered in rugby info). We had the good fortune to sit next to a nice man who smelled pleasantly of beer and cologne who explained everything.

First of all, I always thought I had a scrum in my living room between all the kids and the neighbors. I did not. I had a ruck. A scrum in an organized setup then dive for the ball. A ruck is the free-for-all-pig-pile on top of the ball. There was (and is) no organization to the chaos of boys in my life. A ruck is what I've got. The other things I learned is that the touch down is called a "try" (5 points), the extra point a conversion (2 points), penalty kicks (3 points) and the kicks happen at the angle to the goal posts where the try or penalty occured. So sometimes they are off to the sidelines and sometimes dead on center. If someone is hurt, they just play around him and the trainer, though if a player is bleeding, he must leave the field. (HIV and Hepatitis and all that in these modern times). Other things I learned: the play doesn't stop for anything except the ref's whistle, not even if the time of the half or the game is over. The game ended. The horn blew, but the ball was still in motion, so they played on.

It was a delightful day and night. It was also really wonderful to be out and in the mix with other people, though I must say, even at a rugby game, they were awfully polite.

A Very English Place

It's four days that we're in NZ now and I'm started to hear that cute little clipped accent in my head when I think. (But no worries, when I open my mouth, I sound just as big and brash and in your face as when we left.)

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!

A Florida Surprise

On Monday evening ,

the night before we left, we had dinner with our dear friends the Majid's (Melissa of previously mentioned sainthood). It came out that Anouar, a professor of English at UNE and director of a center for global humanities, was going to be in Orlando on Wednsday for a conference. What a shame he hadn't realized it sooner, he said. He could have brought Ridwan, (his oldest and Sam's best friend). It took all of five minutes of logistical brainstorming. Could we come and pick him up early in the morning on Thursday before Anouar had to go to work? Would he let us keep him overnight if I could wrangle it with my parents? Could we do it without letting the boys know? A few taps on the keyboard and a few XXX dollars later it was done. (do those kids realize how lucky they are and how much their parents love them???? Doubt it.)

I wasn't there when Steve went to pick him up, but I was told there was screaming and jumping up and down and someone jumped on top of the other and got him in a bear hug with his legs. But that couldn't be true. These are twelve year old boys. They are way too cool for that.

It was a great two days, and as I see it, so important. I haven't talked about it with Ridwan, but I know though Sam wouldn't admit it, leaving everything, his best friend most of all, is hard. I am pretty sure it is tough for Ridwan too. (I have my sources.) Knowing that the unexpected can happen, that friends turn up where you least expect them was a good lesson for them both right before we leave native ground.

Breaking Radio Silence

It has been nine days since the movers came, and only now have I had a chance to write an entry. What an enormous amount of work to reduce a whole life to a 10 x 20 storage unit, ten bags and four carry-ons. (We learned our baggage allowance was two pieces per person on United, and as our originating airline, NZ Air honored that. So, yes, hockey equipment was taken.)

The last four days in Portland were a whirlwind of disposal – selling, donating, dumping, storing, and multiple trips often to the same places over and over again, because, frankly, we were so sleep deprived, we couldn’t remember diddly. The most remarkable thing about those four days was the generosity of our friends and neighbors. A couple, deserve mention by name. Melissa Majid for taking over the care and feeding of the kids for two weeks, or four years, depending how you look at it. Elena and Ted Morrow-Spitzer for taking anything that didn’t fit in our storage unit or couldn’t go, like our canoe and outboard motor, particularly when it showed up announced on their lawn. Adam Arens of Patriot Subaru for not only buying both our cars for probably way more than what they were worth given how pitifully we took care of them, but for making it so easy that he even let us take one of them to the airport and leave it in short-term parking the day we left, after he owned it and had already given us a check for it. (I hope I didn’t make things difficult for you, Adam). This man is the definition of mensch.

If you need to buy/sell/fix/trade a car, GO TO PATRIOT SUBARU- NOW! (They even compost in the showroom) (This concludes the public service announcement portion of our programming schedule. We now return to our regular blog post.)

So far, the theme of this part of our experience centers around stuff- owning it, getting rid it, being attached to it, valuing it, etc. I found deciding what to part with and what to keep really illuminates a life and a personality. I think even more than what a person articulates about values, having or not having things and what people choose to own it is a much greater visible, tangible proof of those values. The process of actively having to decide, in one fell swoop, really brought to the fore the issue of who we are and what we wanted to be at this point in time. It took me time to move away from the urge to save from the fear of not having. I found I had to let go of the idea that I might not have something when I get back, so I better keep it now: like the old upholstered chairs that Reuben drew on with a pen and we pretended was just a part of the pattern of the fabric, and Sam rocked back and forth on so many times we had to warn guests not to sit in them or they would topple over. Yup, those I just had to save. (Thank you Steve for talking me out of saving them.) Steve was much clearer about keeping what he loved – fishing gear, hockey gear, biking gear, boating gear.

The issue raised itself again after we were in Florida visiting family, but in a very different way. We made a conscious purchase decision and had bought a new laptop to replace our old desktop which was 1) too large to take to NZ and 2) so filled with bloat and viruses that it only went on the internet if the sun was rising in the second house of Mars on a Tuesday in months ending in the letter ‘Y’. We got a large-ish family laptop. Not hugely portable, but with a good screen for watching movies and playing games and that’s how the kids are going to use it mostly anyway. I had been considering a netbook for myself so I could write (and cuz I don’t want to share. There, I said the truth.) Steve had bought himself an unlocked 4G phone to use as a phone and camera and video and Skype. We thought we were set technologically speaking. One laptop. One phone. When we arrived in Florida, my father had gotten us a Kodak Play camera. It is a waterproof video camera, good to 3 meters. Very cool. And my brother gave me a wonderful gift of a netbook as a going away present. The two laptops needed to be set up. The phone too. Now we are a four device family. I am extraordinarily grateful for the gifts. I think they are going to be a tremendous addition to our experience and I am so psyched to have them, but when we were packing the carry-ons for the flight to San Francisco, I was feeling like we had a lot of stuff again. It is the dual side of possessions. It is simply the nature of owning things; they are both a blessing and a burden.

So what do you think about possessions? Do you possess them or do they possess you?

They're coming...

Not poltergiests, the movers. They arrive in approximately eight hours, so what am I doing? Packing? Sleeping? Running around like a crazy woman? No, I am doing what I have been doing persistently for the last week...procrastinating in front of the computer until the wee hours of the morning. In fact, I am, relatively speaking, incredible productive at the moment, as I am blogging instead of simply wasting time and potential sleeping opportunities surfing the web aimlessly.

Truth be known, I think we're ready. I've culled and purged, separated and donated, thinned and divested, and boxed. I think it will all fit and it is mostly relevant. We'll see tomorrow.

Happiness is getting your visas

I love the New Zealand embassy in DC. Our visas arrived. They turned around our 150 page visa application in just over 24 hours, and they arrived back to my hot little hands on August 4th. Did I mention that I love the embassy?

I recently read the book The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner and have been thinking a lot about it in reference to our trip. It is a memoir in which Weiner, a foreign correspondent for NPR, travels to some of the world's most statistically contented countries in the world, and tries to figure out what defines happiness, how culture contributes to happiness (or not) and what this means for how we walk through the world.

I keep thinking about this as people keep asking me the $64,000 question: Why are you guys doing this?

The short answer is that we are doing for the kids (of course). We wanted to show them the world. We wanted them to experience other ways to live than just the way they live now. We wanted them to know other cultures are out there and that America is not the one and only way to be in the world.

The long answer is more complicated. We are doing it for ourselves. (I say we, but I can only speak for myself. I assume I know what Steve thinks, but the truth is I am wrong 85-100% of the time.) I want to go back to a time, before kids, when Steve and I traveled, had adventures, had simpler lives with fewer meaningless attachments -- to things -- and more meaningful attachments -- to people and experiences. I want to be freer.

As a therapist, I know well about the efficacy in the geographical solution approach to problem solving in life: move and leave the problem behind. It doesn't work. Damn if you don't bring yourself along. I have had to ask myself if if this is what this trip was about, a geographical solution. But I don't think it is or maybe it is, but it has to be. That is just the nature of the beast. Nothing is wrong with our life here. It is pretty darn good. We (there I go again), I have community, professional and creative goals and accomplishments. But I do think that freedom from stuff and expectation and scripts is hard in America. I don't wonder if that is part of our cultural soup that gives flavor to our particular brand of happiness here. As Americans we are tied to what we own or achieve; less to what we experience or simply are. It will be interesting to see if it is any different in New Zealand or if it is just here with an accent. (If it is...next stop India.)

So now we are packing and saying goodbye: to things, to people, to places. Every day it is the last day we see someone, or the last day we go to a particular place, the last chance to do a particular activity. We had to say a very painful farewell yesterday, to our gecko, Twiddler. He was not been well this whole year and he passed on to the great terrarium in the sky. Happy, healthy hunting dear Twiddler.

Exhale

New Zealand bureaucracy grinds slowly, but it does grind. We finally recieved the paper from the Medical Council last night. I purchased our tickets in the wee hours of the morning and sent off the visa applications today. So we are really going, and I feel like I can exhale for the first time in six weeks.

As a result of all the waiting and changes to our tickets that we had to make, we are flying not through LAX as originally planned, but through San Fransisco. And better yet, we ended up with an eleven hour stopover from 10:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. I am really excited about breaking up the flights and showing the kids Fisherman's Wharf, the Golden Gate Bridge, giving them Ghiradelli's Chocolate and maybe even leaving them at Alcatraz. It will be a day of adventure.

Now on to the next step. The movers come in ten days. We have made great progress in throwing out, giving away and generally getting rid of 80% of what we own, but there is still so much left. It all has to go into a 10 x 20 storage room on August 13th. The purging must continue. Attachment is the enemy.