Roots Can Fly

During my last visit back to the States, I finally managed to go through some of the family china that my mom has been keeping for me in her cupboard.  There's a full dinner set of my great-grandmother's that I have always loved.  The problem, of course, is moving a full dinner set of antique china from Arizona to New Zealand.  It's fragile, and it's surprisingly heavy -- they don't make things like this anymore!  A full dinner plate weighs almost one pound!  In the end, I just sorted through this dinner set, made an inventory of what's there, and wrote a list of the pieces I'd like to claim as mine.  Then I put it all back in the cupboard. Getting it all over here seemed like an insurmountable task at the moment.  I'll get there though, I do have a bit of a plan now.  It involves packaging and mailing some and hand-carrying some on my next trip.

For now, however, I did bring a different set of plates back. These ones are a gorgeous pattern called Singapore Bird.  They were a wedding gift to my mom and dad, a gift from my grandmother's friends.  It's not a full dinner set but more like a dessert set.  There's medium sized plates and tea cups and saucers. I brought the plates... and one tea cup.  The weight of just that was more than the allowable weight of a carry-on on Air New Zealand.

Happy New Year!

 

Only in the Southern Hemisphere can I write a blog post about Christmas/New Years and making a pie from freshly picked cherries!  

It’s been an awfully long time since I wrote a new blog entry about anything at all -- and my excuse is not a novel one.  Things have been busy!  We’ve moved into a new house in Dunedin (photos to come) and we absolutely love it.  We bought a new (to us) car – a simple 2002 Toyota and my absolute thrilled excitement about it is justifiable when I explain that my previous car was a 1989 Toyota that we paid $200 for! I’ve been studying and working and these things are going well…  My mom has come and gone – she came for 3 weeks to experience the oddities of Christmas in mid-summer.  And last but surely not least, I was recently diagnosed with a health condition that requires some managing.  I won’t write about it right here right now, but it has been a significant experience.  

What do all these things have in common?  They have all greatly impacted and primarily advanced how “at home” I feel in New Zealand.  Indeed this last year, overall, my 5^th in New Zealand, has been some sort of a turning point in feeling more peacefully settled in this country.  More on some of these things later…  But for now, a couple of little things.  This year, I got to make Christmas sugar cookies with my mom just like the old days, but with some New Zealand flare.

And, on my way home from my in-laws at the end of a lovely Christmas Day, I realized that it didn’t feel quite like Christmas was complete yet – because I hadn’t been to the beach!!!  Goodness, I am turning a little bit more Kiwi afterall.  

So on the way home, I made a quick detour and felt much better.

And what did I do on New Year’s Day?  Well I went for a long, hot tramp (hike). 

 And on January 2^nd I picked gorgeous, fresh cherries straight off their abundantly covered trees at an orchard in Cromwell.  And on January 3^rd, I made a delicious cherry pie.   

Now that’s a good start to a new year in mid-summer that I could turn into a tradition and get very used to!  

 

 And Happy New Year!     

A Glass of Wine and the Evening News

It is 3 weeks from the shortest day of the year, so James and I are spending a bit more time inside this time of year. I've been doing some cooking and we have some unknown fellow-American expats coming for dinner this Thursday and James' bday dinner on Saturday. We've been running our heatpump and filling the fire with wood everyday to stay warm. I’m reading a lot (the classic Gone With the Wind right now) and wondering if I’ll get out the sewing machine. James has projects spread out across our table. It’s nice.


We’ve also installed Free TV. NZ is going digital, so getting the new dish and box to convert our old TV was a soon-to-be necessity anyway. We've gone from about 5 channels to about 12. I was surprised and ecstatic to realize that the American PBS Newshour is on one of those channels at 6:30 pm every night! In my humble opinion, New Zealand news leaves much to be desired. The evening news features about ½ hour of NZ news, about 5 minutes of international news, 20 minutes of sports and 10 minutes of weather. When we watch the evening news, I only watch the first 35 minutes, then get frustrated as coverage turns to regional rugby matches as if there wasn’t a whole world out there to report on. After the news, the two main channels each feature a sort of investigative news show for another half-hour. It is typically an elaboration on a couple of stories already featured in the evening news, going into more detail in a ‘surface’ manner, dramatizing un-dramatic events. I can’t watch them. The world beyond the shores of NZ doesn’t seem to exist in these mainstream news outlets.  Now, after the first 30 mins of NZ news, I can turn to the PBS Newshour for US and international news.

The Catlins

My first trip to The Catlins - with James in 2004.

This weekend we (James, Nick, Kelly and myself) headed down to The Catlins.  It was Nick's idea, as the surf at Purakanui Bay was supposed to be perfect.  I don't surf -- but any reason is a good one to head down to The Catlins.

Nick and Kelly's tent at our camp site.

Kelly walking at Purakanui Bay.

The Catlins is the name of a region south of Dunedin. Hills covered in dense temperate rainforest roll right down to the edge of stunning, seemingly untouched beaches. Until very recently, the only main road through the region was gravel. Most of the smaller roads are still narrow and gravel, undulating and curving with the landscape. Travel along these roads, from a scenic waterfall, to ocean side caves, to an inland walk, is slow.  And gorgeous.

Thanks for coming, Mom.

For some reason, my husband and I always seem to make the cross-Pacific journey separately. In this case, his work contract did not finish until after I was expected to be at uni starting my PhD program. So my mom saw an opportunity: accompany me to New Zealand and help me get settled. Without James around, it seemed like a good time for her to stay for 3 weeks, a little longer than she might otherwise. Personally, I think she could stay as long as she’d like regardless, but she values being what she thinks is a considerate mother-in-law. In addition to helping me cart all my things from North America to New Zealand, and the opportunity to watch reruns of the Gilmore Girls without annoying my husband, what my mom perhaps didn’t realize was that by coming with me, she was also my little piece of continuity, a thread to sew my two worlds together.

A Warm Welcome

From the minute we boarded the Air New Zealand plane we noticed a different attitude. The flight attendants were happy! They gave us a genuine welcome, made small talk with passengers and generally paced the aisles with a smile. A far cry of difference from the US Airways flight attendants on our previous flight from Phoenix to Los Angeles. Those flight attendants were fine; Nothing better or worse than what I would expect on a jam-packed domestic flight. They looked tired and slightly grumpy and I didn’t blame them. They are most likely underpaid and overworked. Most American airlines have been financially struggling for years, as manifested in their repeated staff cutbacks, pay cuts and increasing surcharges for everything from baggage to bathrooms. Many internationally based airlines, however, are partially subsidized by their government. Less pressure to make a profit means better working conditions which in turn lead to happier flight attendants. It also means more perks on board which leads to happier passengers. Freshly settled into our seats, slightly disoriented by the pleasant optimism of these accented flight attendants, my mom and I looked at each other with an “Is this dude for real?” expression when the “onboard concierge,” Mark, announced that he was available to advise passengers on navigating the Auckland Airport or on what to see and do in New Zealand. I mean seriously, that’s a little unsettling.

Another glass of wine, please. Thank you.