Where has the time gone?

Tiritiri Island (near Auckland), February 25th

Good day,

I apologize for being so delinquent in posting any new stories about our time in New Zealand. Many of you probably know the feeling, you fall behind on something and the longer you stay behind the harder it becomes to start (or restart). So, to help me restart our postings, I am going to keep this one pretty simple. In this posting I will tell you a little bit about what we have been doing with our time when we have not been seeing the sites. I will also talk about a few things we have noticed about NZ.

Marshall:

After a bit of a rough start transitioning to a new school and new friends, Marshall has really pulled it together and is making the most of his school time here. He has made some friends and one really good friend in particular, Tyler. In fact as I write, Marshall is spending the weekend at Tyler's bach (cottage) where he will get to spend lots of time playing on the beach, exploring, and having fun without his parents.

At school, we have received nothing but glowing reports from his teacher. She says he is an excellent role model and would love to have him for the whole year. Not to brag, but Marshall even received a certificate from the principal and his teacher for his "amazing manners and for working hard all the time." One thing Karen and I found funny was to hear how organized she thinks Marshall is. They are given class work assignments at the start of the week that are to be completed by Friday. Apparently Marshall is very diligent about getting them done early or on time. Before NZ, this was not his usual modis operendi.

Marshall finishes school here in two weeks. The first term ends on April 5th. Then the students get a two week break and return for term 2 of their school year. Marshall has said the time has gone by really fast but that he is also really looking forward to getting home and seeing his friends and classmates. We return to Canada in time for Marshall to attend the last month of the school year. This is important to Marshall because he and his classmates will be "graduating" from Grade 5 and going to a new school for Grade 6.

One example of how Marshall has stretched himself since we have been here is his trying out for his school swim team. Karen and I were both surprised at how keen he was because to this point in his life, Marshall has not been a trying-out kind of kid. Anyway he made the team (fastest breaststroke). Last week there was a swim meet where Marshall's school competed against around 10 other schools. Unfortunately, the result was not what Marshall was hoping for. Marshall can swim fast, but some of the other schools have very serious, real swim teams (labelled swim caps, racing bathing suits (seeing them on 8-10 year olds made me shake my head)). They started the race from actual diving blocks. Like me, Marshall is not a born diver and his school never practiced any diving to start his race. So, of the 5 swimmers in his heat, Marshall was the slowest starter (by a lot). However, Karen and I (no parental bias here) both think he was the fastest swimmer as he came third and was catching up to the two boys in front of him. So, Marshall did not make it to the final 5, which he was unhappy about. What he liked least about the day was only getting to swim once. All that build-up and nervousness for one short lap. Still, he can't have been too discouraged as he said he would think about trying speed swimming classes in the fall, vs. an outright No! to the idea.

I think you can tell from what I have written that Karen and I are proud of and pleased for Marshall about how he has embraced his time here.

Karen:


Karen hard at work

Karen is now three months into her sabbatical and has no idea where the time has gone. She has been very diligent and other than our week-long trip has worked full-time (other people on sabbaticals here say she is working too much and/or making them look bad). A lot of her time has been spent co-writing and co-editing a report for the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). The report is a state of the science review about estrogen compounds and their impacts on human health and the environment in general. From where I sit, it has been a very demanding project. The one down-side of the report is that Karen has not been able to spend as much time working on some papers she wanted to complete for publication, which was one of the main purposes of her sabbatical. That is likely to change though as the UNEP report is due Monday. Karen has also given two well-attended seminars in the past month.

Of the three of us, Karen has been the most social. The institute where she is working has regular tea-times every day and on most days Karen goes in the morning and catches up with people. (She always has news for me at the end of the day.) She finds tea time quite civilized. Her office mates in Winnipeg did the same thing, but this is not a regular occurrence at UNB. She has also got out a bit more in the evenings than I have (or wanted to), such as going to a few wine tastings.

Finally, she has been keeping fit by going to the gym and doing some jogging.

Scott:

Not writing our family blog.

Okay, I've been doing a bit more than that. Over the past month I have been volunteering with two organizations. The first project has been assisting one day a week with the restoration of a creek gully within the City of Hamilton. Sounds glamorous, but my work has been pulling weeds. Still, I am happy to be helping with this project as the gully has a neat history. It was owned for a long time by a local doctor. When he got the gully 60+ years ago, it was a donkey paddock and pretty much devoid of natural vegetation. Since that time he has been replanting the gully with native trees, shrubs, ferns, etc. and has rewilded much of it. A few years ago, he gave the gully to the city. They were happy to have it, but had/have no real budget to do much work on it, hence the need for volunteers. It is really neat to walk through this natural area in the heart of the city and hear true NZ forest birds. Given time and dedication, one man can accomplish a lot.

Another project I worked on involved building a stretch of boardwalk around a lake that is about 40 minutes south of Hamilton. To make a long story short, I enjoyed working on this project and given the building skills of a majority of the volunteers, they were happy to have me.

Outside of my volunteer work I have been keeping up to date with a few projects back in New Brunswick, doing some reading, managing the household, planning a few of our weekends, and running.


A few things about New Zealand

1. No shoes, still service: One thing I don't think I will get used to seeing is the number of people in bare feet. Kids wear bare feet at school and lots of people walk on the sidewalks and streets with no shoes. While this was surprising, what I find most strange is seeing people in bare feet in grocery stores and restaurants. It just does not fit with my Canadian sensibilities. If people are wearing something on their feet, 9 times out of 10 it is jandals (flip-flops).

2. Friendly people, unless you're a pedestrian: Marshall and I walk a lot here and we are constantly dodging cars. Simply put, at uncontrolled intersections pedestrians do not have the right of way. In Hamilton, there are very few stop signs or traffic lights and almost all side streets merge with either a modified yield or round-abouts. Because of this, drivers do not stop at intersections and are usually looking to their right for oncoming traffic. They will not stop for pedestrians who are on the sidewalk at the intersection. Again, very un-Canadian. The classic for Marshall and I so far was once we were halfway across an intersection of a side-street where it merged with a main thoroughfare. A driver coming down the main road took the time to give us two friendly beeps, wheeled through the intersection literally running over our toes, and waved at us as she went by. I find I have to be especially careful when I am out running because I still find myself looking left first at intersections vs. right. I don't have this problem driving anymore (too much), but when running I am constantly slowing down and triple checking at every intersection.

3. The weather: Unfortunately for us, the north island has experienced its cloudiest summer in 70 years. As a result, it has not been as summer-like as we expected. We are not complaining because we have missed a Canadian winter, although several days this week it was warmer in many places in Canada than it was in Hamilton. We have been pretty lucky though with our weekends. Although cloudy, we have not had much rain on the weekends. During the week has been a different story.

4. Kiwi fruit: We have been eating a fair amount of kiwi fruit since our arrival. Please take note that it is kiwi fruit, not simply kiwi as we would call it in Canada. Kiwis the people (New Zealanders) don't mind having the same name as an odd-looking flightless bird, but they take strong exception to having the same name as a fruit, hence the emphasis on kiwi "fruit" vs. simply kiwi.

Like all food in NZ, we are surprised at how expensive kiwi fruit is here. I think there are two reasons for this. First, kiwi fruit orchards are being attacked by a disease that is resulting in fewer kiwi fruits. Second, the price for kiwi fruit, at least in stores, seems to be tied to the export price of kiwi fruit. This seems to be the same for all foods here as both lamb and dairy products are surprisingly expensive. People we have met from Britain say they can buy NZ lamb much cheaper in Britain than they can here. On the plus side, good NZ wines are very reasonable.

Regular gas has averaged around $2.10/liter during our time here.

5. Sheep: Yes, New Zealand has a lot of sheep--around 48 million of them. About 12 sheep for every 1 New Zealander. The number of sheep has been declining, while the number of cows has been increasing (now around 6 million). As an aside, there are an estimated 70 million nasty possums living in NZ.

NZ is very green and pastoral. The only problem is that like the Canadian prairies, pretty much anywhere that can be farmed/have a pasture, has been. So, like in Canada, you find parks on "useless" land, e.g., mountains, swamps, etc.

To the left is a picture of Shrek the Sheep, a Marshall favourite. He was a merino sheep that avoided being sheared for 6 years and became famous in NZ, with books, pictures, and even meeting the NZ Prime Minister. He died in 2011 at the ripe old age of 17. (Photo from: http://nemp.otago.ac.nz/read_speak/2004/read_comprehension/shrek.htm).

One last thing about sheep, they are not as docile as they appear to be.

6. The Great Kiwi Migration: A lot of young people from NZ go on this trek where they move to England for two years, then to Australia, then back to NZ. Under the age of the 30, they are allowed to live and work in England for two years visa free. (One person I talked to about this migration said that many NZers still view England as the motherland.) From there they go to Australia, where there are more and better paying jobs. After awhile, they tire of that and return home to NZ, often to raise a family.

7. Rugby: New Zealand as a country is as obsessed about rugby as Canada is about hockey. A few weekends ago Karen and I went to see the Waikato Chiefs play, who are part of NZ's professional rugby league. We had seats in the end zone right at field level. We had a fun evening, in part because the Chiefs won and scored most of their points at our end of the field, so we got to see lots of action. Before we went we boned up on some of the basic rules. However, throughout the game we were pretty lost about what made something a penalty or other infraction--the subtle nuances of the game that take a while to learn. Fans being the same everywhere though, we heard loud and clear when the referee made a good or bad call for or against the Chiefs. One final note about the game, it was played by some very big men.

8. JAFAs: JAFA stands for "just another f#$&!ing Aucklander". This is a common expression on the north island, particularly along the east coast where there are lots of nice beaches, which apparently get over run with tourists from Auckland. (Even people from Auckland call themselves JAFAs.) NZers believe in being modest and that people shouldn't think too highly of themselves. Auckland is prosperous compared to much of the country and is the most populous city by far, so it is not looked on so favourably by the rest of the country. Reminds me of Canada and Toronto.

Enjoying the surf at Papamoa Beach, near Tauranga NZ

 9. The beaches: After the friends we have made here, the thing we will likely miss most about NZ is the easy access to an endless number of spectacular beaches. The past few weekends we have spent a lot of time at different beaches, all of them offering kilometres long stretches of clean sand and great, if cool, swimming.

Well that's it for now. Now that I have started writing again, you won't have to wait so long to hear about some of our recent weekend adventures. Cheers.