Free, free as we'll ever be!

The eleven girls that made up the awesome weekend! We are on a random hill near Huka Falls!

After an awesome day, a car packed illegally full drove along listening to Zach Brown Band's song, Free. We couldn't help but appreciate our lives while relating to the song, well just the traveling part! I kept saying I wish I could live in a van and travel all across this land like in the song. Living in a house and traveling on weekends is pretty cool too. I enjoy it and can live more comfortably than in a van but maybe that's next?! Apparently, I moved away from the happiest place in America to come here so I better be enjoying life!  And that I am, so much that I have to update this blog on four awesome days! To organize my crazy, fun, life I will go chronologically, with day labels this time!

The car singing to Free!

Thursday:
I went over to Caitlin's house in the afternoon to cook Thanksgiving dinner. I got there a little late and her friend, Annie who was visiting from Chico, California, had already started. They had figured out how to make the turkey, taking out the guts and stuffing it and all. They had also made homemade apple and pumpkin pies, yum! Actually only the pie crust on the pumpkin pie was homemade because Caitlin's mom sent her a can of pumpkin, knowing you can't get that in New Zealand. Gendie kept asking for a picture of the pumpkin can to show previous nannies who had to make the pie from-- get this--a REAL pumpkin! Sadly, in a rush to delete pictures this weekend in order to make room on my memory card, I accidently deleted the evidence, forgetting that picture hadn't been loaded on my computer! Maybe someone else took one?  I took the challenge of making a pumpkin pie out of real pumpkin for Christmas!
After my arrival and seeing their progress, I got straight to work making spinach dip (soup mix sent from the states), twice baked potatoes, arizona salad and green bean casserole! Catilin and Annie kept making their list of items, they made the cranberrys, stuffing, a salad and quiches! Once dinner was ready, the eight kids ate their meals while the gravy was cooking. When all the adults sat down, we all said what we were thankful for because we can't forget that American tradition! Then we all dug in but not before Tim almost burnt the house down! He somehow set the bowl of towel covered bread rolls down next the the decorative candles, luckily it didn't burn down and our meal was delicious, it tasted like Thanksgiving! I'm glad I got my Thanksgiving meal even if it meant cooking all day and partying before leaving bright and early for an awesome weekend!

I love how we decorated the table but maybe we shouldn't have lit the candles?

Friday:
I woke up at 5:30 am! Got ready to go, made sure I wished my family a Happy Thanksgiving via e-mail then drove away to pick up the girls for the weekend trip! We made it to Waitomo with plenty of time before our 12:00 pm glowworm cave tour. The cave tour was awesome! We got on our wetsuits and hoped on the bus. Our silly tour guides talked about the small town on our way out there. Then we picked out tubes, making sure they fit our butt! Then practiced our waterfall jumps outside of the cave, man the water was cold! After all the prep, we finally headed into the cave. We had to climb underground into the cave. We let our eyes adjust then we walked along the cave until we got to the first waterfall where we jumped down backwards, landing onto our tubes with a splash. Then we floated down and stopped. Here we turned off our headlamps and they told us about the glowworms which we found out are really maggots with shinny shit but that wouldn't be a good name for them on the marketing standpoint. We spent some time looking at shinny-shit-maggots, then floated off again and then stopped to see some sunlight sixty meters above our heads, jumped down another waterfall and floated some more. It felt like we were on the Disney ride It's a Small World at this point because we were just floating down looking up at the millions of green dots on the cave ceiling! We were just missing the music! The end of the tour we played the "find your way out of the cave in the dark" game, we all made it safe and sound and enjoyed our complimentary bagel (with no cream cheese) at the end!

The group half way through the tour 65 meters underground!

Ready to start the adventures! I love our enthusiasm!

Do the tubes fit our butts?

After the cave tour we drove to Taupo. All drives in New Zealand are awesome! They don't have many big motorways (or freeways as you would call them). Their motorways are more like numbered country road with picturesque views at almost every point in time that are impossible to capture on camera through a car window, especially when you are the driver! You just have to be there to appreciate the beautiful scenery on the drives!
We got to Taupo and stopped at Huka falls to see more beauty! I love the color of the water! The waterfall wasn't as big as I expected but it was still beautiful! Of course we took a million pictures here! And stopped at a look out point to take more pictures!

Huka Falls!

Next we all journeyed to our three different hostels, a group of eleven could not all be at the same one because of the huge cycle race that weekend! Thousands of people were planning on riding around the huge Lake Taupo on Saturday morning! Lake Taupo is 160 km around! Sofia and I had a room with a guy who was riding with the elites and he told us his goal was to do it in four hours and that's with the elite group! It was cool to be there during the cycle race even if it did mean we all slept in separate places!

Saturday:
Named best day in NZ thus far!
I woke up bright and early feeling like a badass because I was about to jump out of plane! When we arrived at the location of the jump, I talked myself into buying pictures and a dvd of myself skydiving. I figured I would never be brave enough to do it again, I have to remember it! Of the eleven on the trip, nine girls jumped, three brave girls went in the first plane load! The other six of us waited for them to fall from the sky and see that they lived before we went up!

A product of the second plane's waiting-for-friends-to-live-photo-shoot!

The plane ride up was a little scary but I just keep smiling and telling myself how cool it will be. It's all in your head anyway. Once we reached our height of 12,000 feet it all went so fast! I was the first one out of the plane and did not expect it to be my turn for a while! Then all of a sudden Ronny--my tandem jump guy--started moving me toward the edge of the plane! I closed my eyes and let myself fall! When I finally realized I was falling I opened my eyes and realized HOW COOL it was! I was falling so fast from the plane and could see the coolest view! I couldn't stop smiling! It was weird how it didn't feel so much like I was falling. You know like the dreams you have of falling, it was more just lots of wind. Then all of a sudden I get jerked into a vertical position because Ronny had opened the parachute!
The parachute ride was what I was most excited for! I couldn't wait to check out the view! We were over Lake Taupo and it was awesome! I could see the whole lake, the mountains surrounding it and the land too! It was so pretty! Ronny spun me around a couple times to see the 360 degree view! That was so fun, suprisingly that spin was the only time the whole skydive that my stomach dropped! Weird right?

SKYDIVING! I loved the view, isn't it awesome? That's Lake Taupo behind me!

Once I landed I couldn't stop saying, "That was so cool" and "I'm so glad I did that"! I was going to be a self-proclaimed sissy and watch my friends from the ground. Just a few days before we left for the planned trip I decided I need to skydive on this trip! I knew I would regret it if I didn't. I mean when else can you jump out of a plane with a huge group of fun girls, over a beautiful huge lake in New Zealand? I am happy to say that I am super glad I changed my mind! After the sky dive we were all reviewing the videos and pictures and the tech guy said he never had a group so big!
Skydiving was a great experience. I will keep saying I'm so glad I did it and telling people who think they will never skydive that if I can do it, anyone can! It really wasn't as scary as I thought! So go, jump out of a perfectly good aircraft people! :-)

The day is not over yet, that was just the morning...

After the skydive we walked to a cute cafe to grab lunch before driving to white water rafting! The food was so good and someone drew a fern leaf in the foam of my double shot flat white coffee (For those who don't know a flat white is the famous coffee drink in NZ, it's basically just a small latte)! I had a double shot because I thought I would be driving the forty-five minutes to white water rafting. After I drank it, we decided to cram the eight white water rafters in Jer's seven seater Mercedes station wagon and just leave my car in Taupo. Needless to say I quite energetic on the drive down, probably bothering the three sleepy girls I was sitting next to. I wanted to scream out the window at the thousands of cyclists finishing their long race! It was really interesting to see the race and luckily we were going the in opposite direction of them so they didn't make us late for our rafting trip!

This picture is put here to show, 1) cyclists 2) beauty seen on drives in New Zealand 3) the picture quality through a car window 4) the "motorway"=two lane road

White Water rafting was awesome! I really enjoyed it. The Tongariro river is beautiful. I kept saying it was beautiful and our tour guide kept saying thank you. I think he thought I was talking about him. Our group split into two raft groups and conquered the white waters. It was so fun to go over the rapids. Our raft kept getting stuck on rocks and we thought it was funny. We saw some cave relating to Lord of the Rings. I shamefully admit I have never seen those movies so I do not remember who's cave, it looked neat-o though! We stopped part of the way down to jump off cliffs into the river. I jumped off the low one and wasn't feeling like I needed any more adrenaline so skipped the high jump! Then we paddled some more. I was in the front of the raft so I got a lot of the splashes which was nice because it was a hot day and the water was cold. We also were able to drink the water, it was crystal clear and came straight from the mountain peaks! I again felt like a badass but this time a badass wilderness girl who drinks river water with her hand!

Need I say more than "SO MUCH FUN"?

My boat white water rafting-I think we were stuck on rock here? Not sure but it happened so many times it's quite likely!

After white water rafting we enjoyed a complimentary make-your-own-sandwich then drove off to jump off more cliffs! The raft guides told us about this place called Bully Point that is unmarked and you can only find it you are told about it! We just had to drive and park near the first 25 km/hr sign we came to and walk across a little path to find the place to jump! Yeah I didn't jump there either but I enjoyed watching the other girls and the view was beautiful there! Since I felt like a sissy for skipping two jumps, I decided to swim in the lake later that evening! The water looked so inviting and was warm enough even though it was dusk! Jer came in with me and we have some fun pictures!
After the swim we drove to Rotorua! On the drive we saw an awesome sunset over the beautiful nature of New Zealand! I loved this day! It was an adventure-filled day with great friends!

The random cliff jump spot, see I still had my togs and towel I had good intentions...

I just love this picture, yoga poses at sunset, in the lake, with the snow tops mountains in the background!

Sunday:
Most of us slept in the same hostel the night before, only different rooms! Once we left the cool hostel and we stopped at Pak-N-Save. After this our two cars got separated because my three passengers went into Pak'n'Save and disapeared! It's a mini-Costco so you can guess why! Jer's car went on a volcanic walk and my car went on a volcanic walk, only somewhere else! Despite the group separation, it was an awesome day! The volcanic walk was super neat and it was again a beautiful day! We kept trying to capture the beauty on our cameras! It's quite hard to take a picture of steam coming from boiling water! The walk was four kilometers through the Waimangu Volcanic Valley. We saw six craters, some connected by boiling streams and a big pretty lake at the end. In between craters was forest with beautiful flowers! I loved it! It was quite hot though! I wished I could jump in the water to cool off but it was boiling hot and probably really just contributing to my heat!

Can you see the steam?

The lake at the end of our walk, so beautiful!

One of the craters, I love the color of the water! Apparently it's not always this color, we were lucky!

The group met one last time for ice cream. I wish I had a picture of our table eating the ice cream. We were practically falling asleep right there after the fun weekend! We didn't even want to walk a few hundred feet to see Lake Rotorua before we drove home after the extremely fun, adventurous, tiring weekend!

Such a fun weekend! :-)

Monday:
I'm going to add Monday here too because I took Sam to the Auckland museum because he didn't have to go to kindy! I love that museum! There is so much to read and learn about New Zealand and science and life! I want to go back when I am not chasing a four year old around and actually read it all! Not that it's not fun to take him! I got to read what I could and teach him about it!

...Now I am going to add tid-bits from the rest of the days it took me to post this just as a punishment for going to sleep early every night since Monday to try to get rid of my cold!...

Tuesday:
Oli wrote me a letter, it made my day. It was so cute. It was written all five-year-old-like and out of order but here's the order he read it to me in:
"To Jenny From Oliver Morris. I love you are cool and so osim (awesome) Jenny. Your dinr (dinner) is so good but my fafrit (favorite) is thing is raps (wraps)."
It made me smile and you can bet I made raps for dinr that night! And I love how he used the you twice. The teacher in me also appreciates his sounded out spelling. It's so cute!

Wednesday:
The first of December means Christmas music time (although I did hear some on Thanksgiving)! I discovered that New Zealand has mostly the same music as America. I was disappointed I wanted sunny Christmas music. I suppose if sunny Christmas music was out there in the world, California would have found it! I did find an awesome Kiwi Jingle Bells song by the Polkadots. I will add the link. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4unzHxZKzk&feature=related
The Polkadots are so much fun. One day, weeks ago, the kids and I were hanging out at Caitlin's house and the girl she watches, Ella, wanted to watch the Polkadots. Caitlin turned it on and I thought it would be some cheesy kid's show then I started to enjoy it and it's cheesiness!  The Polkadots sing fun songs and have simple dance moves. I decided to work out by copying their moves. It was the funniest work out I've ever had and part of the workout was my laughter! And that random story is the reason why I love their Jingle Bells song and I love the great references to Kiwi culture in it too!

Thursday:
Oli has caught the chicken pox! He stayed home from school today! It was his first day with the itchy bug so we had a fun day! He kept saying he likes having the chicken pox! I kept thinking "aww poor boy, you just wait". Maybe/hopefully he won't get it as bad as I remember having it! Either way, today we had fun. We played a lot of games. Oli is really good at Scrabble, he almost beat me and he did beat me at kid's Monopoly!

This concludes the summary of my week of fun!

In case you were wondering throughout this entire long blog entry about the happiest place in America here's the evidence!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_weekend/20101125/ts_yblog_weekend/welcome-to-the-happiest-place-in-america

Go SLO! I miss you! Keep in mind this is only one guys opinion but it does have some valid points! SLO is un-American in that it doesn't allow drive throughs, and Wal-Marts! Hopefully this happiest place in America thing doesn't make everyone want to move there because it's good with the population size it has now!

Adios amigos!

Story time!

Ok I am getting in trouble for not posting blogs enough! Woops! I blame it on the fact that so much goes on my life that I can't narrow things down! I could write and write and write and write but that's not possible is it? I usually fulfill my story telling need by telling a story once to some lucky person then forgetting all about the cool thing! So yeah where to start...

I am so glad I came to New Zealand for starters! It's seriously awesome. So awesome I'm wondering when it's going to be non-awesome because life has those moments too, whether they are welcome or not! Everyday I appreciate the beauty around me! The land is so green and the sky is so blue! I'm not sure if A. New Zealand has pretty sky B. it's just me taking the time to appreciate the beauty or C. it's the green land complementing the sky. Possibly it's d. all of the above! One of my new friends asked me why I say I am so glad I came. I have many reasons but a general answer is not as simple as it sounds--learning. Did you ever get that feeling in classes of "wow I am really learning a cool thing about the world right now". Feelings aren't the easiest thing to explain but I had this feeling every once in a while in school and I always appreciated school at that very moment. These moments were much rarer while in school but in New Zealand I have that feeling like ten times a day-hence the too many stories. 

My new favorite thing is to take a walk up the hill to watch the sunset after dinner with my bud Coco. The other day the cows were on the hill behind us and cows are seriously funny. I can't quite explain how they are funny but they make me laugh out loud. Maybe they are just funny because I have never spent much time with cows. Really they are just stareing at me with their big eyes and funny looking faces and wondering why I am looking at them and what the heck Coco is and why she's running around like a freak trying to get them to play! The baby cows are the most funny, pretty cute. Yeah I am going to move on to more entertaining stories now.

I went on a really cool bush walk the other day. Caitlin and I took Coco and went exploring while the kids were at school! It's a really cool track that starts just a short drive from my house, called Goldies! Of course neither of us had our camera! Oh well I have plenty of pictures of this country and there's always next time! This track was covered in stairs! We started off walking down them thinking "Oh man this will be good for the butts on the way back up!" Once we got down hundreds of stairs we came to this creek with a crazy cool bridge! The bridge was hanging by cables and had a maximum limit of ten people! As we walked across, the bridge swayed in the air above the water. I kept talking about how I love New Zealand in between telling Coco to heal, as Caitlin was talking about the swaying of the bridge and agreeing with me. I had never been on bridge like that but it didn't look to creaky so I didn't freak! This is a good time to give New Zealand props for how they keep up their parks! After the bridge we found more stairs that just kept going! After every turn we'd see more! It looked so cool we just had to see what was at the top! It was just more forest which is cool but maybe it could have keep going to somewhere neat but we had to turn around to get home and back to work! The trail has a waterfall we have to find next time, it has to be pretty because the creek that must connect was awesome! 

Last weekend I went wine tasting! The wine was awesome and tasting was FREE! One place, Matua Winery, had a list of eleven wines and we could have tasted them all for FREE! All the wineries I have been to in California make you pay and only let you try five small pours! All the wine was yummy, I bought one bottle! Even though the tasting experience is nicer due to free-ness I still love wine tasting in California! 

I am so excited for next weekend! It is going to be so much fun starting Thursday! Thursday night Caitlin and I are cooking Thanksgiving dinner for our families! Since it's not a typical Thanksgiving Day with no work and school, we will have to be well prepared and organized to make the big dinner while watching the kids too! I will have to post about how the American holiday of Thanksgiving in New Zealand turns out! After the Thanksgiving celebration I will have to wake early Friday morning to drive to Waitomo to go tubbing in the glow worm caves! Due to the time change, I will be in the glow worm caves while people in America are eating yummy Thanksgiving dinners! The caves are the start to an awesome, fun packed weekend trip with like ten girls! We also plan on white water rafting and seeing a few different cool places in New Zealand including the biggest lake in the country, Taupo! Some of the girls on the trip are going to be skydiving on Saturday morning. I am too much of a sissy to do such thing! I wish I could! I have debated it! But then I remembered how I felt jumping off of a semi-high rock into a lake. I know I would never regret it but ek sky diving! Humm maybe I will change my mind in the next week.

It's kind of hard to get into the Christmas spirit when it's turning into summer. This is seriously freaking me out! It's not normal. I have to keep reminding myself that I grew up in California where it doesn't snow and we could still go outside into the cul-de-sac to play our new games on a beautiful, sunny, seventy degree (that's twenty-one degrees in Celsius) Christmas day! It could just be in my head knowing the season will be summer because California weather and New Zealand weather are somewhat similar at the moment!  But yeah Christmas in summer should be quite interesting. It will be BBQ's and sundresses from what I hear. Not people in seventy degree California weather wearing sweaters just to fit into the traditions. Maybe New Zealand just embraces the fact that is doesn't snow on Christmas! I just need to get into the Santa in sunglasses spirit!


Speaking of converting to Celsius! I wish the United States would bust out of the measurement system we use! The metric system is so much better than the customary system that America uses! It makes my life harder here to have grown up with the stupid measurement system we use because I have to convert everything to what I am used to. Which is exactly why it's so hard to bust out of that system. But the teacher in me wishes we used the metric system because it's base ten and just makes more sense mathematically. But right now it doesn't make sense to me because I grew up with inches, pounds and miles! That's my rant. Oh yeah and why doesn't America have roundabouts? Traffic just flows better. Ok done now.

Speaking of sunglasses! New Zealand is right under a hole in the Ozone layer! I'm afraid of the sun! I need to buy my first hat and actually wear it! The sun is very harsh and skin cancer rates are higher here! My theory is that New Zealand is better at protecting the environment because they feel the effects everyday by needing to apply sunscreen every hour so they don't die! I love the little things New Zealand has everywhere that are environmentally friendly, like full flush and half flush and wall plugs with the ability to turn off when nothing is plugged into them!  I could go on and on about environment stuff but it's time to go!

I must say it's pretty awesome to have a life with so many stories worth telling that you can't narrow it down so you just go to bed! Good night friends! 

Life on the Farm!

Gendie and Tim left me in charge of the kids and the farm for a few days! It's just Sam, Oli and me this week. Oh and Spooky and Scrappy--the goats, ten chickens and Coco--the dog! The boys are easy peasy, been there done that (knock on wood, chicken pox has been going around these parts). It's the farm that is quite entertaining for me to be in charge of! I laugh at the things I am doing and can't believe I am doing them!

I have had to untangle the goat's chains a few times. This involves either stepping on or holding down one side of the chain while the goat is running wild because it's scared to death of me (Spooky) or trying to eat my sweater (Scrappy). While managing the goat I have to figure out how to untangle the mess the goat made with the chain. All the while I am laughing, wondering how the heck the goat got into such a tangle. After what feels like thirty minutes of struggle and laughter, I feel victorious and like I had my work out for the day! Thanks Spooky and Scrappy for the entertainment and free exercise!   

I also am in charge of feeding the chickens at times when they are so hungry! They follow me around and peck at me! Then when I try to pour food in their dishes they crowd me and peck at my poor hands!  If you can imagine this suburban girl doesn't like when they crowd and peck at me! So I devised a throw-food-in-random-places-method to get them away so I can put the food in the right place!  

I'm hesitant to quote "Samantha from America" again because she already thinks she's famous being in my blog but...she knows me well. I like that she was shocked that I was taking care of a farm and that I was able to make her laugh with these stories. So she is why I posted a blog two nights in a row! 

Halloween?

"What?! You can be something that isn't scary for Halloween?"--Summary of non-American girls reactions to American girls talking about what to be for Halloween!

"I would NEVER dress up as something scary for Halloween!"--Samantha from America, reacting to me telling her about that conversation!

While trick-or-treating here I started talking to a lady at the door about how shocked I was at the lack of Halloween spirit here and she said "America just knows how to do holidays right!"  I took that as a compliment but before I give that much credit to the states, I will see how New Zealand treats other holidays! Although, New Zealand is definitely missing out on Halloween!

Caitlin and I took the kids trick-or-treating on Halloween evening and we were shocked! Every other house had NO candy and NO houses were decorated. I didn't see one single jack o' lantern! We saw less than twenty other trick-or-treaters in our hour of wandering the empty streets, all wearing scary costumes--we saw a lot of little devils. As Americans, Caitlin and I were shocked but the kids had fun and loved getting free lollies (candy) from the participating houses. But their amount of lollies wouldn't even fill a whole sandwich size ziplock bag! I didn't tell them about how I used to fill a whole pillow case in my trick-or-treating days! 

I went out in Auckland the night before Halloween and it took a good ten minutes before we even saw anyone else dressed up! Where I am from you would stick out like a sore thumb if you went out with no costume any day near Halloween! The costumes were on a whole different than what you would see in the states. I was told by a few people that I had to be something scary but I refused! I wanted to be something cute, maybe pass along the American tradition! Cute is the word I prefer to use when referring to myself. But usually the adjective in front of all American women's costumes is "sexy". You can be anything you want as long as you put the word "sexy" in front of the idea and go with it! The non-American girls I was talking to thought of the movie Mean Girls when we had the costume conversation! 

There are some more differences (like giving unwrapped candy to trick-or-treaters) but I'm just going to summarize by telling the entire country of New Zealand that it needs to step up it's Halloween game! That being said I did have a blast in New Zealand for Halloween! I still dressed in my American style costume and hung with the mixed crowd of cute and scary dressers alike! I also got to go trick-or-treating for the first time in years and eat lollies found only in New Zealand! Speaking of which, I want some more milk bottles and hokey pokey chocolates!

Scary and cute!

Baby Zebra!

Word!

I just helped carry a yacht to it's dock on the water! The yacht is really a small row boat to go on the pond but I am so excited to use it! It was too dark and buggy to take it out on the pond tonight! 

Today was one of those days I wish I had a camera glued to my hand! I want to make an animal album with all the animals I have seen! Today I saw the baby cows I have been meaning to take pictures of. A rat, I actually would never want a picture of that but I saw it today so it's included in this story. Teeny-tiny baby turkeys who may have no daddy because I ate him but I still wanted a picture because they looked cute for having such an ugly mommy!  And the thing I wish I had my camera for the most...a wild male peacock! He was so pretty and I hear peacocks at night all the time and finally saw one! Another awesome picture would have been of Sam fast asleep in the car with food spilling out of his mouth! Oh I just never know when I'll need it, mental pictures I guess!

My favorite baby zebra as a stand in for the pictures I did not get to take today! Isn't he adorable?!

 I did have my camera this weekend when I met a bunch of girls from around the world. I took many pictures I have yet to put up on Facebook--"the stalker website"! Often we hear negative comments about Facebook but it is great for some things, keeping in touch with old friends and meeting new ones! That sentence inspired me to sing this "Make new friends but keep the old, one is silver and the other is gold!  Anyway, all the girls I have been meeting via Facebook are also au pairs/nannies in the Auckland area!  I now have friends from; Belgium, Germany, Japan, Sweden, the UK and the east coast of America and the group is still growing! Each and every girl is so sweet and fun! It's easy because we are all away from home therefore very open to meeting new people. And we are all taking care of kids and not so familiar with each other's culture so we have lots to talk about! I love learning about other parts of the world from the girls as well as bashing stereotypes of California! Some people think California has no farms and is all beach and full of girls like on the Hills. I am grateful for the beaches, the farms and especially grateful I am not a girl from the Hills or even remotely like one! I partly blame Katy Perry's recent song for this stereotype and I suppose the whole of Hollywood as well! 

My new friends from around the world!

My old friends being your stereotypical California Girls!

Per request of Grandma and maybe some silent requests from those who care, here is a weekly schedule of mine!

Monday, Wednesday and Thursday

Morning: Wake up-slowly to the sound of the boys playing in the lounge, have coffee, make sure they eat breakfast, get dressed and ready for school, then drive off!

Mid-Morning: While Sam is at school, I clean the house, go to exercise classes, grocery shop, and starting next Wednesday help at Oli's school.

Afternoon: Pick Sam up from school play at home, the library, the park, etc until we pick up Oli from the bus stop.

Mid-Afternoon: "Can I go to Jack and Taylors?" "Can Oli come to my house?" are questions Caitlin and I hear EVERYDAY at the bus stop! So usually we all go hang out at their house! The kids have fun playing and we have fun talking!

Evening: Go home for dinner baths and bed! Then I jump on the computer to catch the night owl Californians for a chat!

Tuesday and Friday

Morning: Same as M, W, Th only Sam doesn't go to school so he gets ready for a day of fun while Oli gets ready for school!

Mid-morning: go somewhere with Sam, we have gone to the zoo, on a bush walk with Coco, played at Kindy. Actually that's mostly it because Oli has had a lot of holidays from school since I've been here so we all go somewhere together! It's different everyday and fun!

Afternoon: Take the boys to swim lessons on Tuesdays! But still hear the usual questions; "Can I go to Jack and Taylors?" "Can Oli come to my house?" and on Fridays usually go there or have Jack over for once!

Evening: dinner, baths, bed.

Weekends plan something with the girls on the weekend planning Facebook group and take too many pictures! The weekend planning group on Facebook constantly gives me notifications! The current lot of Facebook notifications are about planning to go out this weekend for Halloween-American style! I'm excited for that!

I promised I'd be better with my blog! I'm trying! Despite having no homework and way less commitments than I did in Cali, I'm somehow still busy enough to not post a blog as often as I'd like!

"Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake" -H.D.T.

A new blog post is long overdue. I have so much to say. It's been three exciting weeks of hanging with the boys and two fun weekends since my last post! I will try to just write about the highlights to keep interest! But be warned sometimes I just can't help but think about other random cool things to write about that might only be random and cool to me!

This most recent weekend was quite eventful! I went on a weekend trip to Hahei on the Coromandel peninsula with Caitlin and our new friend from Japan, Mami (pronounced Mumi)! We wanted to go there to go to Hot Water Beach and see a famous beautiful beach, Cathedral Cove! Cathedral Cove is seen in the beginning of the Prince Caspian movie. And it is beautiful, yes, yet another beautiful beach, New Zealand is quite lucky with their beaches!  It was a nice forty-five minute walk to get there we saw some awesome views and took many pictures of the beauty! We saw random sheep on the walk we believe to be wild! I couldn't help but be jealous of those sheep--they have the best life living on the hills overlooking the beautiful bay! Thinking of which it's quite cool that most of the land near the beaches aren't covered in houses!

Beautiful Cathedral Cove, I love the color of the rocks with the light color of the water!

After Cathedral Cove, we ventured to Hot Water Beach! This is such a cool beach, I don't know of any other place like it in the World! Two hours on either side of the low tide you go to this beach, look for steam coming up from the sand and start digging there. All we had to do was dig a couple inches and viola, hot water! It was so cool! This natural spa is there because there is volcanic activity below the surface that creates the pools of hot water below the beach! At high tide, the ocean water covers the pools of warm water beneath the surface, so you have to go at low tide! The water is so hot, after digging a circular spa we couldn't get in, the water was burning us! Luckily, the ocean left behind pools of cooler water in the sand that we could dig to and connect to our steamy spa! We ended up with a bunny shaped spa or a hand peace sign-- depending on how you see the ink blot. I loved relaxing in the hot water watching the beautiful ocean! It's a whole new way of relaxing on the beach! It's too bad I live about three hours away from this awesome beach otherwise you'd see me digging holes at every chance I had! Forget the beach towels, I'm all about relaxing in natural warm water at the beach!

See the bunny/peace sand spa! Hot head-cool ears!

The view I had from my sand spa, gives a whole new meaning to relaxing on the beach, eh?

The weekend before I went out of town to the Coromandel peninsula, I explored the beaches around Waimauku. I went on awesome bush walks around Muriwai, saw the gannets and walked around Bethells Beach. I really enjoyed that weekend. I spent it by myself and enjoyed exploring alone on my second weekend in New Zealand although I am grateful to know girls my age here! That weekend, I enjoyed walking along the beach and exploring! As I was walking along I kept thinking to myself, "Am I seriously here? This is beyond beautiful!" It felt like a dream. Then it reminded me of a quote I have had on my facebook for years by Henry David Thoreou, "Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake" Seeing as it's been on my facebook profile I have tried to live by it and try to make life feel dream-like and surreal. Obviously, this doesn't happen all the time but I do appreciate when life feels like a dream--a good, pleasant dream, mind you--no nightmares please! I will add a picture of Bethells but the camera never fully captures the beauty.

One of my many pictures of Bethells Beach

It's funny the random things I am starting to miss about home! They usually revolve around food. Ok, yes, I miss the people but I can talk to you! I really miss Tapatio, the delicious hot sauce I put on everything! And authentic Mexican food! Also coffee, New Zealand coffees are all expresso, not filtered drip coffee. Where's my regular horribly made (by me) drip coffee with a little light milk? The coffee here is going to spoil me! Oh something else I miss, cheap gas! We complained when it was $5 a gallon. Well here it was $1.82 cheap right, NO, it's for a liter! And there are about 3.8 liters in a gallon so with my handy dandy math skills that comes out to $6.84 a gallon. But then in U.S. dollars thats only $5.14 per gallon. Ok, well it's as expensive as it was when gas was expensive to us Americans!

There are a lot of things I love about New Zealand. "Eh!" It's so fun to hear people with New Zealand accents say "eh", as in "That was pretty wicked, eh?".  I repeat Sam when he says "hey" (the kid version of eh) and he gets annoyed. I tell him it's because it's cute, but he is still annoyed, I guess even little boys don't like to be called cute. Little Cooper didn't like it either, maybe it's a man thing, I don't know! Anyway, I wish I could say "eh", Caitlin says I'm not allowed to say it because I will sound Canadian, nothing against them though. Plus, I wouldn't sound as cool because I don't have a Kiwi accent! I'm actually not sure if it's spelled aye or eh, I have seen Kiwis spell it both ways. Next topic, I love how they serve iced coffee! I'm used to Starbucks (which they do have here) just putting ice in drip coffee. The iced coffees here have ice cream and whip cream, sooo delicious! OO I have a picture. The picture also has a savory muffin in it! Savory muffins are the best. You can find them in all the coffee shops. I actually made some the other day because I saw the recipe on the back of a flour bag and Sam sounded interested in helping. Pretty easy and yummy, the ones I made had cheese, bell peppers (capsicum as they are called here) and celery!

Iced coffee, you can barely see the savory muffin but it's yummy!

I am excited for this weekend! I have made some more awesome friends via facebook groups for Au Paris in the area and we have plans to explore Auckland! We are going to eat dinner up in the Skytower! It's a tall touristy, needle-shaped thing, um hard to explain I'm in need of another picture--see it's good to be click happy, I have one! We currently have five au pairs going to eat in a rotating restaurant! I am super excited! 

Skytower-it's lit up pink for breast cancer awareness!

Well this concludes this blog post! I vow to be better at my blog, no more almost three week gaps! I have so much to say about living in the country, watching cool boys, the way the Kiwi's live! I also am sure to have more adventures to talk about! Adios amigos!

Click, click, click, smile!

New Zealand is so beautiful! I took over 200 pictures in twenty-four hours on a mini-journey with Caitlin this weekend! By then end of the time, Caitlin called me "click happy"-- I suppose I am but I can not help it! On Saturday, she picked me up from a birthday party in Auckland at a climbing gym and we went up Mt. Eden. Mt. Eden is the tallest natural point in all of Auckland city and you can see the whole city from up there! It's a volcano and it's beautiful--there and the views. Auckland has many volcanoes around it. As Tim put it, "One day they will erupt and we will all die, but it's nothing to worry about." I laughed because really San Luis Obispo, the very town I have lived in for the past five years, is on the San Andres Fault that is bound to move one of these days--ok well in the next fifty years, as my professor once predicted.

Me on Mt. Eden, see the Auckland skyline behind me!

The crater! 

After Mt. Eden, we got lost driving around Auckland but I didn't mind because I got to see it better. Then found some place to eat dinner, near the water. We decided it would be cool to stay in the city for the night instead of driving back to Waimauku, so we booked a room at a hostel. Neither us of had ever stayed in a hostel and were quite excited about the new experience, only to find our roommates were slobs and decided to smoke at 5:00 in the morning--in the room! Yuck! Still, the price was good and it wasn't so horrible. I'm not completely turned off by hostels.

Nomad Hostel, I love the name!

The next day, we explored Muriwai beach, the beach right by our families' homes. By the way Caitlin lives right up the road. Our families are friends and the boys are really good friends. Actually as I type this post one of the boys she watches, Jack, is sleeping in the other room. The beach was so pretty! I could not get enough of the views so I took many, many pictures. We were really impressed, among other things, with the soft, black, sparkly sand!

Cool black rock makes cool black sand. I couldn't resist climbing up the rock!

Crazy big cliff side, really cool looking!

Same cliffside, from afar!

It's spring holiday for all the school children here.  Oli has the next two weeks school free, we plan to go fun places! We went to the nearby beach today with their dog Coco. She's a sweet dog but still a puppy and needs some more training. Tomorrow is some sort of adventure and Friday we are going to see a play--Badjelly the Witch! Apparently it's a popular children's story but I have never heard of it.

It was just daylight savings here. Now instead of being nineteen hours ahead of California, we are twenty hours ahead. I am excited for when California has daylight savings and they "fall back" to make New Zealand twenty-one hours ahead. That's almost a whole day, which makes scheduling Skype dates much easier! At first, the whole daylight savings thing confused me. I forgot it was spring here. The cold weather was quite fooling me. Plus, it's September and that's always been fall. So I said it was "fall back". But a nice Scottish couple, that we met when out in Auckland, kindly corrected me to realize it's "spring forward".

I am so glad I decided to come to an English speaking country! I was thinking of Italy or Spain before I found this wonderful family and place! At times I have a very hard time understanding accents and lingo. The Scottish couple were especially hard to understand and Gendie can be as well. New Zealanders say my accent is easy to understand because it's what they hear on the "telly". Caitlin and I were often asked the question, "Where in America are you from?" For some reason they believed she was from California easier than they believed I am from there. Not really sure why, I've lived there my whole life, up until now at least!

Well time to end my blog, although I'm sure I could ramble on for many more paragraphs! Keep in touch America! It's been great having Skype and Facebook to keep in touch. What in the world did people do without all this technology!?

"Jenny I got your number"

Oh man where to start, so much has happened so far! I suppose I'll go chronologically.

At the airport I did not allow myself to sit down until I got on the plane. The idea of fourteen hours in one seat scared me into making laps around LAX. Once on the plane, I sat in my aisle seat, that was part of a three seat row- in the middle of the plane. Soon after I sat down, an older man sat on the other aisle seat. We kept waiting for someone to sit in the middle of us. When the plane began to taxi we were delighted that no one sat next to us! I would not have been able to sleep as well with someone in that seat! I got to curl up and sleep as well as one can in a slightly seated position in two seats, instead of one!

On the plane, I started to write in a journal and had a hard time dating it. I went over so many different time zones. I decided to call it Time Lala Land.  With all the time changes, I settled on saying that I completely skipped over Monday. What a day to skip, right? I'm a lucky girl!  It wasn't just a random skipping mind you. I left late Sunday night in California and got to Auckland, NZ on Tuesday afternoon!

I had a quick layover in Sydney, Australia. As it was time to board the plane, I heard a very muffled, accented voice telling me we are boarding about twenty-five minutes late. I was actually happy to hear it! I wanted time to walk around the airport stores. It doesn't quite count as visiting Australia, but I hope to get back there. I had a window seat on the flight from Sydney to Auckland. The view from the plane was beautiful. 

In Auckland, New Zealand, I waited in many lines going through customs. Finally, I walked out and saw Gendie and Sam waiting for me. Sam was so sweet. He gave me a huge hug and a kiss right away. Then, within a minute of knowing me, he told me he loved me.  In the car, he kept saying my name in his cute accent. He was also full of questions and stories for me. He is very sweet. I didn’t get to meet Oli until later because he was at school. I'll get to him in a minute--remember my plan to go chronologically?

We stopped by a grocery store on the way home. I was relieved to see it looks quite like a grocery store you would see in The States.

This is my first time somewhere where they drive on the other side of the road. Even as a passenger, I was quite confused. I was sitting in the front left seat where one would usually drive. Oh, it’s completely flipped around! I’m glad they do not live in the city because I can get accustom to driving on the country roads first. As we drove, Gendie pointed out landmarks, road names and cool stores. I only half-way understood everything she was saying due to my tiredness, Sam talking in backseat, her accent and unfamiliar words.

The other side of the road perspective

Once we got into Waimauku, we drove to their neighbor's place to pick up Oli. He was picked up from school by their neighbor’s nanny, Caitlin, who happens to be from California as well, Chico to be exact!  I finally got to meet her, the kids she watches, and more importantly Oli. He was shy at first but then he and Sam broke into song--a song they learned about me. Can you guess? They learned “Jenny, I got your number” it was adorable to hear. They still sing it every once in a while after saying my name. But only Oli remembers my "phone number".

Then, we drove back to their house, my new house. It very conveniently decided to pour down rain as we were carrying in my things and groceries. Sam gave me the tour, which was a quick run through of the house followed by a long detour in his room to play puzzles! Then, Gendie came to get us to walk around the property. We put on our gummies (rainboots) and tromped around in the mud. I met their goats, Scrampy and Spooky and their chickens. Saw all the plants they planted in their garden, as well as the natural fauna. It's so beautiful and green!

The house, from where the goats live.

Next, we had dinner. Tim made sure I had wine to drink during dinner. I gave them a bottle of Wild Horse Chardonnay from Paso. I said I had trouble picking the type of wine so I chose chardonnay since that's what I like. Tim said that I will soon be cured of my chardonnay liking. I guess chardonnay wasn't the best choice after all. 

After dinner, the boys headed to bed and so did I! I had a great first day, well half day, meeting and getting to know the family. I was surprised I was able to stay awake so late. It was around 2:00 am California time when I finally got into bed after over twenty-four hours of traveling.

My bed!

The boy's beds

I would have liked to post all this before going to bed on my first night but I was too sleepy! Since I didn't, I am going to continue my story because so many more interesting things have happened.

I went with Gendie to drop the boys off at school. I was very interested to see the boy’s schools. I looked around at Oli’s Year One classroom. There were lots of cool projects hanging around. All things a future teacher very much enjoyed looking at.

Sam’s school or daycare was very cool. The first thing I saw when I walked in was a dog inside the daycare center. Oscar was a sweet doggie. In a short time, Sam took me outside to the play structure. Wow, this playground, I should get a picture of it. It would NEVER fly in The States. Everywhere you look was a lawsuit waiting to happen--ropes, wiggly walking boards, you name it.  No lawsuits here in NZ or at least less. Maybe their wild and slightly dangerous play structures are what led their country to be known as the adventure capital of the world. Humm, that's a discussion for another time, but something to think about. 

Then Gendie took me on a driving tour. We saw the beautiful beach and many walking trails I would love to go on asap. I asked her when I will start driving, she suggested in a few days so I get used to the perspective. But later they unexpectedly had to run into Auckland city. So I went to pick up Sam from school. I just jumped in the car and drove on the other side of the road.

Muriwai Beach, it's the Tasman Sea

Beautiful right? Very stormy though.

Driving on the other side of the road was an adventure in itself--hence the grand title of my blog. Everything is all turned around. I kept turning on the windshield wipers when I wanted to turn on a blinker. When it started to rain I turned on the blinker instead of the wipers! Oh man, a mess! And I had to REALLY focus about which the side of the street I should be on.  I kept asking myself, "Are you on the right side of the road? No, not the right side, the correct side, the left side. Yeah. Alright good." Repeat that internal Jenny dialogue for the whole twenty minute drive and you are in my head, welcome!

The weather is not the best right now, to put it lightly! I am FREEZING! It’s very stormy.  It hailed today and the power was out for a while.  Apparently, the winter is dragging on into spring. Is it summer yet???? This storm is as bad as the worst you would see once a year in California. I had to steal a pair of Tim's wool socks to warm me up because my tiny ankle socks are not cutting it here in freezing-cold-land. I'll ask again--is it summer yet? 

The weather complaint being said, I did suck it up and put on a coat to play outside with Sam today. We had a blast. We walked around the property, jumped on the trampoline and played with bikes and their dog, Coco. When Oli got home the boys played in the mud. No, not just stepping in it. Picking it up and making balls out of it and throwing it into the bushes. Very boy like --they had a blast!

I've been so busy thus far. I have to keep coming back to finish my blog then needing to add more! Don't expect so much detail next time! 

Catch ya later America! I'm trying not to miss you! Skype soon!