Time is flying these days. We got a bunch of Thanksgiving greetings and it hadn't even crossed our mind that it was the long weekend at home because it felt too early for it! We were talking about doing a dinner this coming weekend with our Canadian friend and his wife but she's due with their second child within a week or two so a big dinner might be too much to bring into the mix! Plus if we wanted turkey we'd have to hunt for it far and wide here. (I'm not meaning on a supermarket shelf either.) Apparently during Christmas they bring in a bunch of frozen turkeys but it's not usually on the menu here.
Sad news on the rugby front. Taranaki lost the shield to their age-old rivals from Waikato. Back in 1996 Waikato stole the shield off them as well! So the rivalry runs deep. Not so deep that it stopped Dustin from posing for a picture with some of the opposing team the day after the shield match!
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| Not the shield. But a potato growing award we found at Pioneer Village Museum. |
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| This is the almighty Ranfurly Shield. Dustin almost got us kicked out of town with this picture. |
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| Too bad there was a gate, I am interested to see how comfortable this was. |
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| At least the girls at the switchboard had a nice view. |
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| A wooden bathtub! |
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| Teaching our couchsurfers about real surfing. |
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| No, it wasn't the best day for it but it was better than the day prior! Don't worry, we kept them in close to the shore. |
Last weekend we had visitors via the couchsurfing website. They were from New York State so it was certainly fun to see how NZ looks to people relatively fresh from North America. We got along well though and took them to see the sights around town - from the annual 24 hour book sale to the Wind Wand. It turns out there's lots of things to show people around here and we didn't even realize it! We even managed to get drenched during the last fifteen minutes of the hike we went on, thanks to spring rain squalls!
We had to go down to the police station last week to get fingerprinted so that we could send them back to the RCMP for a record check. Since it says it could be upwards of 5 months processing, we decided to start our immigration process with that. We got a mini tour of the temporary station (they moved while the new station is being built) including seeing the holding cells. The policeman was quite friendly and cracking jokes. And we didn't even have to pay for it! But we have to pay the RCMP $25 a pop. Which was rather difficult to arrange since we didn't want to mail cash and for some reason they accept Canadian or US dollars which was odd. But US was cheaper! So off I trotted to buy one traveler's cheque for $50. They must have thought I had a big big trip planned for all of that dough.
In about one month I think we'll start the official first step - submitting an Expression of Interest - so that we can line up receiving the police check results with our time frame for the application process.
Until next time, happy belated Thanksgiving!
ah ha ha, "vitamin high, calorie low" Love that poster!
ReplyDeleteA wooden bathtub!? Outrageous. Love all of your photos! That's also really cool that you dudes are open to couch surfers. I bet you meet some interesting folks that way!
ReplyDeleteAlso really snazzy immigration news. Getting your ducks in a row can always seem like an insurmountable task, but just doing little by little before you know it, you'll be citizens!