Spring?!?

We recently changed our clocks for daylight savings, and we had to remind ourselves to "spring forward" even though it was September. Not only does the name of the month make us think it should be fall, but the weather lately has been grey, rainy, windy, and incredibly chilly. There have been enough sunny days for the flowers and trees to bloom, but I think it will still be awhile before we put the electric blanket away.

We haven't had much time for adventures lately, as we've been settling into work routines and are busy searching for our next home. I continue to learn a lot on the paediatric ward, and am finding the variety of cases quite interesting. Unfortunately though, I've had to work most weekends. Steve is still enjoying his PhD project and spent a day in Christchurch last week meeting with one of his supervisors.

Our second stint of housesitting will finish at the end of October, so we've been busy looking into our options. Although it hasn't exactly been our style of place, we've been thankful to have an affordable place to stay while we search for a more permanent home.

Most of our time has been spent looking at the listings on trademe.co.nz, the NZ equivalent of eBay. It's an incredibly popular site, and is definitely the best place for people to advertise anything they want to sell. Kiwis sell everything on trademe - in fact, it's so popular that the hospital has blocked access to it from every hospital computer.

We finally had our first Canadian guests! Jenny and Ross are friends from Ottawa - I worked with Jenny on the oncology unit and she and her husband have just finished a year of working and traveling around Australia. Now they plan to do the same here in NZ and are kicking off the adventure with a few months in Wellington. It's been fun to have them around and hear their stories from Australia.

And one last picture - although it's not exactly from New Zealand. Steve's birthday was a couple weeks ago, so I can't resist posting this picture of him when he was just a wee boy already tinkering with bikes and tools...

Castlepoint

This past Saturday we took advantage of the sunny Spring weather and did a day trip to Castlepoint, about a 3 hour drive from here. It is on the eastern coastline and features a beautiful old lighthouse, a unique reef, long beaches, and a tall grassy cliff.

It was a beautiful sunny day, and we had brought along our hiking boots, not knowing what kind of trails there might be. It turns out that there is a track up the tall cliff, so we climbed up to the top.

One side of the cliff is completely covered in wild grasses, and the other side is formed by jagged sand and rock that has eroded away over the years. At the top, we basked in the sun while eating some lunch, and soaked in the spectacular 360 degree views. Looking towards the land, there was nothing but farms and fields of sheep covering rolling green hills. The farms went right up to the edge of the coast which give way to dramatic cliffs and long beaches for as far as the eye can see.

Looking towards the ocean, there is absolutely openness, all the way to Antarctica!

On the way home, we stopped for dinner in one of the cute small towns in the Wairarapa region, near Masterton. There are antique shops, and cafes, and markets galore and we agreed that one could easily spend longer exploring this area. For now though, it made a perfect day trip, and made me feel like I got some good weekend fun even though I had to work on Sunday.

Wool for the Lambs

A couple of weeks ago we went for a drive through some of the nearby valleys and farmland. In one field, we saw this lamb wearing a little wool jacket! Apparently it is just to keep the little guy warm on these chilly spring days.

New Zealand is definitely full of sheep, but it is also full of many unique native birds. One of the most common is the Tui; it is a dark-coloured bird with a tuft of white feather at the base of its neck. It has a very distinctive song because it has two voiceboxes and can make a huge variety of sounds. At the flat where we were staying, there were lots of Tui in the surrounding trees, and we took this video to give you an idea of the songs we hear (click on the triangle in the bottom left of the picture below to play the video).

Earlier this week, we moved from the flat with the ocean view to a townhouse a few kilometers closer to town. The first flat was a short-term sublet and the couple who live there have returned, so we said our goodbyes to the cat Falafel and moved on to our next sublet. Through someone at Steve's work, we found out about this townhouse, owned by a woman who spends part of the year in the UK. So we will stay here until we find somewhere more permanent... hopefully that will be soon!

Mt. John Observatory

Hello all - Steve here. Thought I'd give AK a break and give a quick update on my trip to Mt. John Observatory at Tekapo on the South Island. We'd been to Tekapo on the Easter weekend, but it's such an amazing area I was happy to return. One of my advisors was there for two weeks using one of the telescopes, so I joined him for a week to learn how to drive a big telescope and run a spectrograph.

My flight out of Wellington left just before 7am. The flight followed the east coast of the South Island down to Christchurch, so I had a great view of the Southern Alps out my window at sunrise.

Going to Mt. John in the middle of winter, I was hoping to find the summit covered in several feet of snow, and experience something akin to a Canadian winter. But the summit was completely bare - the mountains surrounding it were covered in snow, but none was to be found at the observatory. I stayed at the closest building, and used the telescope in the attached dome.

This is the telescope we were using - it has a main mirror 1 metre across. The green part is the mount that moves it around the sky, and the white disk on the right contains the many weights needed to counterbalance the telescope on the mount.

Here I am next to the telescope at the start of a night, moving it to the first star. The telescope is all computer controlled, but it's more fun to move it with the hand paddle.

These days professional astronomers can spend a whole night observing and never have to look at the sky because everything is controlled by computers. Mt. John was no different; these are the computers that run the telescope and the spectrograph. Luckily though, a lot of it was automated, which meant I could sneak outside now and then and take a look at the stars. And I'm glad I could - Tekapo has been in the news for being an International Dark Sky reserve, and I can see why. The Milky Way arching overhead, from one side of the sky to the other, was a spectacular sight.

This was the view outside during the day - the distant mountain ranges surrounding Mt. John and the brilliant blue colour of Lake Tekapo.

And one last picture from town, of the famous little church on the edge of Lake Tekapo.

Maple Syrup!!

There aren't too many food items we haven't been able to find over here, but pure maple syrup is one. There are a lot of "flavoured" maple syrups, but the pure stuff was harder to track down. In Ottawa, we regularly had pancakes on a weekend, but this was the first time in NZ that we've been able to re-live our tasty tradition. Sadly, the bottle is now more than half empty.

Our first Kiwi pancake breakfast.... yummy!

Steve continues to enjoy his work and even brings home some of his favourite books, like the one pictured above. He is flying to Christchurch this Friday, where he will take a bus to Lake Tekapo to spend 5 days at the Mt John Observatory. One of his advisors will be there and this will give them a chance to discuss the project in more detail, and also for Steve to use and examine a working spectrograph. It's a bit strange to think of us being in different parts of NZ, but it is great that he will have this chance to be down there again. It will probably be all covered in snow, so he will even get a taste of real winter!

Today was my first day of work on the Pediatric Ward at the Hutt Hospital. They are giving me a full six weeks of orientation since I have no nursing experience in pediatrics. I am really looking forward to learning about a completely new area, and I think I will enjoy working with families. I'll be on a full time schedule, working a variety of 8 hour day, evening, and night shifts.

I went to the Wellington Botanic Gardens last week and enjoyed seeing a surprising number of flowers in bloom. These snow drops were definitely my favourite.

Winter in Wellington

Even though we've been in Wellington nearly three weeks, it still feels like we have a long way to go before we are settled. We are enjoying this flat, but knowing that we have to move again at the end of August keeps it from feeling like our own. Steve has been commuting by bike to work most days. I drove him today though - it is a super stormy day where the wind is gusting, rain is lashing, and the waves are crashing over the road leaving behind driftwood and seashells. It's fun to watch from the indoors, but not the best for cycling. It may be stormier here in Wgtn, but overall, the temperatures are noticeably milder here than in Nelson and it feels much less like a true winter.

Here is a little map to show you our current whereabouts (like the pictures, click on it to see a larger version).

It is about a 25 min drive to Wellington; there is a little ferry that goes from one side of the bay to the other, but it is $10 per person each way, so not the most economical.

The hills behind us are filled with trails and I went exploring one day last week. This is a view from one of the trails, looking out towards Lower Hutt.

This is the view from our current flat - the hills are on the other side of the Wellington Harbour, and on clear days you can see some snowy mountain peaks in the distance. These are the Kaikoura Ranges, on the east coast of the South Island.

Here is Steve with his new best friend, Falafel. Much to our dismay, she is quite cuddly and loves to snuggle when you are reading on the couch.

It's hard to believe we have been here nearly 7 months already. While here we have often commented on the things that seem uniquely Kiwi to us. We always mean to get pictures, but rarely remember. However, we do have a few pictures of things that have stood out to us. The first, is the hedgehog.

Now, I know there are hedgehogs in other parts of the world, but this is the first place we have ever actually seen them. This little guy lived at the cottage in Nelson and could be heard foraging through the leaves at night. They look quite cute, but we've heard they're covered in ringworm and fleas! Another infamous imported pest is the possum, and although we have heard them and seen many as roadkill, we haven't seen one alive yet.

The mailmen here are called "posties" and of course, they deliver the post, not the mail. In some parts of NZ they ride these red bikes, in others they ride around on little red motorcycles.

We've always been amazed and impressed with the selection of dog food at grocery stores. This is one example of the many yummy doggy meals. The big beef bones on the bottom left are about $3.

The other thing that stood out to us in grocery stores is that the eggs aren't in a chilled section, they are just on aisle shelves with all the other baking supplies.

We will continue to keep our eyes open for all things Kiwi-esque, but not all can be captured on film. Many expressions and pronunciations are new to us and either leave us totally confused or laughing our heads off. We'll have to start writing them down...

Goodbye Nelson, Hello Wellington

We have to apologize for not blogging in nearly a month! For the rest of June, we were both putting in a lot of hours at work - I picked up a lot of shifts at the hospital and Steve put in full days to wrap up the projects he had on-the-go with his Ottawa boss. The last week in Nelson, we celebrated Canada Day with our recently-found fellow Canadian friends - Alex and Andrea. Andrea is a nurse as well and it was fun getting to know them a bit before we left Nelson. They are getting settled in Nelson for the forseeable future, so hopefully we will cross paths again. I also spent some more time with the refugee family I've gotten to know and the eldest daughter taught me how to make some delicious Nepali dishes. Needless to say, it was a bit sad saying goodbye to all these new friends, and to our cozy cottage.

The ferry ride to Wellington was rocky as usual, and Steve slept beautifully through all of it while I caught the seabreeze on the decks. We had a week in Wellington before we could move into our new flat, so we lived at a hostel downtown - one of the few with parking available. We did some back-to-school shopping for Steve, since he can no longer wear his pajama pants to work every day. We also spent a day at the Victoria University library, where Steve immersed himself in optics books (not all catalogues at the library look like this!).

We also stopped by the National War Memorial on our way home.

On Wednesday, Steve went out to IRL (Industrial Research Limited) where he will be working on the PhD project. The first few days were mostly housekeeping and getting set up, and of course, getting used to the morning and afternoon tea breaks where everyone floods to the cafeteria to chat over tea.

I spent two days meeting with various nursing managers at both of the main hospitals in the area, and have to admit that I am overwhelmed with job options. There is such a demand for nurses here, especially since it is winter and the regular flus and swine flus are putting added pressures on the hospitals and staff. I am following up with a few managers this week, and will try to make some decisions by the end of this week so that I can get started soon.

Our new flat is lovely and so are the couple that we are housesitting for. We met them the day we arrived in Wellington, and they showed us around the flat. It is across the street from the ocean, looks out across the bay at Wellington, and is about 5km from Steve's work. We will be here for 7 weeks, and hopefully by then we will have found something just as lovely for longer term.

Our new flat, after sunset. Steve gets to use their guitar, and note the TV in the window reflection! It has been over 6 years since either of us has had a TV - hopefully we don't get addicted.

Here is the view from the living room this morning - a typical grey and cloudy day, but still nice to see the ocean.

This is the kitchen, and the bedroom and bathroom is around the corner - too cluttered with all our bags and bikes and boxes to be blog-worthy.

This is Falafel. She came from the SPCA and belongs to the couple who live here, and we agreed to catsit while they are away. The couple offered to take her to a "cattery" (very popular here, although we hardly ever see kennels), but caring for her gave us a slight discount on the rent, so we agreed, although neither of us are cat-people.