Christmas in Canada!

It's December! Yesterday was our last day of work before our Christmas holidays. Today we are packing our bags and cleaning the house, and tomorrow we fly to Canada for 1 month. We are so excited to be going back home to see everyone.

In the last few weeks, we have mostly just been working and sorting out furniture for the house. But one weekend we drove to the Waiohine Gorge in hopes of dark clear skies. It turned out to be exactly the opposite - cloudy, rainy, and incredibly windy! We explored the riverbed of the gorge, spent one windy night in our tent, and headed back early the next day.

The weather has finally turned somewhat summer-like and we have started to bring out the shorts and jandals (sandals). Wellington shorelines are always beautiful on sunny days:
We also decided to hire a "rug doctor" to clean our carpets. We figured it would be easiest to do while we still have very little furniture. It was very satisfying to see the dirty water and clean carpets.
We also made a trip to "Trash Palace" (a recycling centre/store) and found an old reel mower. They are also sold new and are pretty common here, but Steve hoped to fix this one up and get it working again. It is Steve's new favourite project and every week he spends some time adjusting and fixing it and then tries mowing the law. I think this week it actually cut grass!

Home on Mawson St

This past weekend we moved into a two bedroom house that we have leased for one year. The couple who own it are going traveling overseas for one year and possibly longer.

The house came unfurnished though, as many kiwi rental properties do, so we went to a big garage sale at a local church and loaded up our station wagon with as much as we could - a wooden desk, a comfy chair, two desk chairs, and some kitchen odds and ends.
I was doing night shifts all weekend, and this is what I woke up to on Sunday afternoon. Not only did Steve clean out Leonard (our free used fridge) but he also scrubbed kitchen shelves, desk drawers, and did several loads of laundry. I was so grateful for all his hard work.

Cape Palliser

Last Wednesday we shifted (aka moved) out of our housesitting accommodation and into The White House. Sadly, it's not quite as exciting as it sounds. It's a guesthouse on the grounds of Steve's workplace, and they were kind enough to let us stay there for the week before we're able to move into our new place.
It is meeting our needs for the week, but we are really looking forward to being in our own place and staying in one place for awhile. We counted up all the places we have stayed over the past year and this next house will be our 10th place! So if you've felt confused about where we've been living at any given time, you have a good excuse!
I've been fighting an unrelenting cold the last few weeks, but this past weekend was my first full weekend off and we wanted to make the most of it. We drove to Cape Palliser, which is about 2.5 hours away, near the southern coast but across the Rimutaka mountain range. The road over the Rimutakas is notoriously twisty and long; locals get frustrated with people who don’t brave the turns at high speeds, so we pull over as much as possible to let them pass by. They always say ‘thank you’ with a little ‘honk-honk’.
The weekend was quite low-key and relaxed. We stayed at a campsite near the Pinnacles, which are some impressive rock/gravel formations along a riverbed.
On Saturday morning we explored the clay and gravel riverbed and marveled at the remnants of shells embedded in the rocks.

We then drove on to see Cape Palliser, where a lighthouse is perched on a cliff and a seal colony lives on the rocks below. The seals were lazily sleeping along the roadside and as much as I would love to sit and watch them, they stink like a mixture of skunk and rotten seafood and it's tough to linger near them!
We reached the lighthouse by climbing 227 wooden steps and enjoyed our chips and chocolate snack while taking in the beautiful views.
On the way back to the Pinnacles, we stopped at a beach to watch the waves crashing...
explored the rocky shores...
paid tribute to the local Tucka stand...

and found a flat spot to make our own coffee.
By the time we got back to the Pinnacles, it was still early afternoon and we hiked along the riverbed to the base of the Pinnacles. It was definitely worth the 1.5 hour walk - the formations were very impressive up close and the weather was beautiful.
We watched a lovely sunset by the seaside that evening, and on Sunday we explored the country roads and towns. A few of the seaside towns are very small and mostly cater to people wanting to go surf fishing. There is also a large lake - Lake Wairarapa - but it is surrounded by farms and the waters are drinking/wading grounds for livestock.
Martinborough is the largest town in the area and well-known for wineries and classy cafes. It has lots of cute old buildings restored to be overpriced antique stores or cafes.
We will be moving into our new house on Saturday, and will try to post some pictures of it... but keep in mind that we will have no furnishings for it yet! We are counting down the weeks until we leave for Canada, and are very excited to spend 2 weeks in Ontario and then 2 weeks in BC.

A Belated Happy Thanksgiving

Our friends from Ottawa, Jenny and Ross, came over for our NZ version of a Thanksgiving dinner last week. There is no Thanksgiving holiday here, and I think turkeys are only available if you order ahead from a butcher. We weren't planning ahead that much, so had to make do with a little chicken instead. Thankfully, Jenny has much more culinary wisdom and experience than me, and everything turned out to be delicious!

The flowers in the middle are Columbines, which are growing next to the driveway, along with some Calla lilies and red geraniums. The colours are welcome amidst all the gray days we've had lately. October has definitely been the worst month for weather - rain, wind, hail, and cold temperatures. We are looking forward to summer!

Next week we move out of this house as the owner will return from the UK, and after spending a week in temporary accommodation, we will move into our new house on 14 Mawson St. We have signed a one-year lease there, so hopefully it will feel more like home. It comes unfurnished though, so we will be scouring "TradeMe" and second-hand shops for everything we need. The first item on our list will be a fridge!

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!