Exploring the Land of the Long White Cloud

When does a "dream" just become reality? And at that, how do you decide when that reality doesn't suit you? We've been discussing these themes a lot lately. How long until we know if staying here is working? For people who like to see things happen, we're really struggling right now to decide if what we thought we wanted is what we want. On one hand it would make sense to quit while we're ahead (but what's the measure of that??) if we aren't happy. But then if we came here at all, we should be willing to stick it out to make it work. To us though, if it means 12 months of so-so life, why bother waiting that long? As Dustin put it, maybe it's a case of unrequited love. We can try and try and force ourselves onto this city but if it doesn't love us back we'll get nothing but a restraining order. A sad case of couple meets city. Couple loves city. Couple can't make city love them and take them in. Or maybe we've misdirected the l...

Uh yeah, we aren't bears. Oh the local paper always makes me laugh. I wonder if that girl ever imagined 30,003 people would watch her stuff her face with cinnamon buns. So last night, as has happened a few times now, the wind and rain woke us up. That's the fierceness of the winter storms. And we haven't even had a real bad one yet. But, I do appreciate that it's over and done with quickly. And most times it waits until nighttime to attack which means it doesn't hang around all day. We realized that we've hit the 3 month mark of being in NZ. Which is quite depressing considering I'm still not working. Dustin's job has been so-so and I think he's considering whether he'll stay with them or not. I've been able to keep positive until recently. I don't know what's shifted but it's much tougher to get motivated and be happy about the current situation. Two things that always shock me here when thinking of cost is power and car...

As a consolation to myself for another unsuccessful job interview, I wanted to share some pictures from the weekend. Yep, the internal applicant foiled me again! Of course they said I interviewed well and encouraged me to put my name back in if another posting comes up though. I apparently haven't stumbled across what's meant to be yet. But this lovely day was meant to be: That was the view from the Okurukuru Winery where we ate lunch on Saturday. It's about ten minutes south of New Plymouth. It was incredibly windy but boy was that water cerulean. I could look at it all day! I also found some cool features on our camera that I didn't know we had before! The mighty Mount Taranaki with a bit of cloud around it. This week two hikers got caught in an avalanche up there! Luckily they both survived but it's quite a treacherous place in the winter. Ok so it wasn't technically still my birthday but I didn't take a picture on the actual day....

There was frost on the ground this week! It's getting dark by about 5:30pm these days so it's feeling wintry. Dustin was bugging me this week that I have been bundling up more for a low of 1 than I did for a low of -12 back in January. My defense is that at least at home I can go inside to warm up. For now, we just have a faux heat pump on the wall teasing us - the landlord installed what he could and the installers are coming Monday to finish hooking it up so it's nearly there! So we are 3 days shy of hitting 3 months in NZ. Yes, we are still settling and thinking and deciding and figuring it all out but I can honesty say, I already notice a difference. Often people would ask, "Why NZ?" and we couldn't always articulate what it was. Often we put it down to the day-to-day small differences that added up to big feelings overall. I've been noticing lately a few examples of this. So I thought I'd share. The government listens to people here. It sounds...

Now that it's getting cool overnight, we're learning the real lesson of how houses are built here. Ugh. Condensation. Yes, it's actually dripping! This certainly isn't because we're keeping the house so warm or anything, it's just the symptoms of poor housing standards. It really makes us think that if we bought a house here, we'd strongly consider a newer one that's been built to the newer standards. Not just in the living room either, this is the bedroom window. It's making me wonder where all this moisture goes. I don't see any mold anywhere but surely it's lurking. My clothes hanging in the closet seem to always feel damp. Hilariously, we learned that if you take clothes to the laundromat to put in an actual dryer, don't bring them home at 98% dry and hang them to finish. The next morning you'll wake up and find they feel wetter than when you took them out of the dryer. Oops. We don't want to wait for the he...

Today is a public holiday here called Queen's Birthday. Which is what I thought Victoria Day in BC was celebrating but it's a good 2 weeks apart so now I'm not sure. Worked out well for Dustin because it meant his birthday weekend was 3 days long. Birthday waves at Fitzroy. Fancy breakfast took too long so the conditions had deteriorated by the time we got there. So on the agenda for Saturday: surfing, dog walking, playing with kittens, dinner out, comedy night! We checked out this restaurant called The Good Home and both of us enjoyed our meals. We had company too - the couple we first stayed with back in 2010 when we got to New Plymouth and her parents were in town so they joined us too. Dai Henwood and Ben Hurley did not disappoint and the other guy on the bill, TJ McDonald had us laughing as well. Turns out that buying some of the last tickets available translates into being seated front and centre! Dustin's nightmare - especially on his birthday, and being a...