30 January 2008

Things that are different...

People keep asking us about things that are different in New Zealand than they are in Canada. Dan and I decided to make up a list. Here they are:

-light switch down is on, switch up for off
-plugs, different voltage..but there is a switch to turn the plug to "on"
-eggs are not refrigerated (however we do)
-no BBQ chips
-no laundry dryers in homes, everything gets hung
-cars drive on the other side of the road
-cars are made with driver on right hand side of the car
-lots of "trucars" on the roads (El Caminos, the truck/car thingy)
-no stop lights in our town, only round abouts
-stop lights in cities are like signs to the side on a pole
- Wal-Mart = The Warehouse
-toilets, different shape and flusher is a button
-a flushing toilet shoots water from all directions, no swirlies
-single paned windows
-no screens in windows
-meat tastes different
-quantity of food items comes smaller (ie. largest spaghetti sauce jar 550grams)
-all metric measurements
-NZ dairy products taste better
-yoghurt is spelled with an "h" and it tastes soooo good!
-debit card is called EFTPOS, electric funds transfer, point of sale
-plastic things are very expensive, like little garbage pails are $30
-shops close at noon on Saturday, nothing is open Friday nights...no Sunday shopping
-palm trees and tropical plants all around
-scented toilet paper is common
-houses heated with a coal stove and rad system
-sun comes up 5am and sets 10pm
-so many different shades of green in NZ
-sheep EVERYWHERE!

We are finding differences daily, this is what we have discovered so far.

28 January 2008

Dan's first day of work

I finally started work today at Camp Columba. I started the day with an impromptu meeting with the grounds keeper. He's a really decent fellow who spends two days a week working on the lawns, forests and trails at camp. He has been here for 4 years and understands what the mission of the place is. He was also really handy helping Samantha understand the sprinkler system that is in our gardens. It is really rather neat.

I spent most of the rest of my day being introduced to the systems in place to deal with bookings and camper registration. The last of our summer holiday camps, Pampering Princesses started today. The current office administrator is a wonderful lady who spent the better part of her day introducing me to how things work at camp. I refer to her as the current office administrator because she recently gave notice to the Board of Directors. Her last day will be February 29th. I have a lot to learn from her in the next 5 weeks.

The most interesting thing that I took away from today was that many of the issues that Camp Columba faces here are the same issues that church camps in Ontario are facing. Declining church numbers, fewer children in the church, harder time getting volunteers, balancing the price of camps against the economic climate of the area, finding the dollars to put towards capital maintenance and improvements, trying to pay camp leaders enough so that they can justify working at camp to their parents - just to name a few. I would have liked to discover that these challenges were not present in New Zealand but there is something comforting in finding out that it is not so different down here.

27 January 2008

Here is the downtown of Gore. It is a beautiful little town, I wish I could send smell through this post because the fragrance in the air is sweet like honeysuckle and lilac. You will just have to imagine...

23 January 2008

Samantha's first post

We have arrived safely and things are going well. We feel very welcomed to the area. Gore is a charming little town and we are taken with the colour and the vibrant downtown. We have been to some of the stores in Gore thus far. New World is a new grocery store but we have also been to Woolworths too. Things do taste different here, the meats especially. I ( Samantha) was never a dairy fan but have fallen in love with the yogurt and cheeses down here. The juice is also wonderful. We are living at a camp, Camp Columba (you can see the website if you wish) and the chair of the board is a farmer as well. We found that our deep freeze was filled with beef and pork and veal! Our cupboards were stocked as well. Now we go to second hand stores to get the items that we still need.
We are in the market for a "runner" car. I call it a julopy, but the salesmen call it a runner. A board member has given us his car until we buy one of our own. We have been driving for 3 days now and it is not bad at all. I love the turn-abouts in town. The speed is quite fast but the opposite side thing has not proven to be a problem.....yet, anyway.
I have visited Gore High School and met with the Head of my Department, things seem to be okay there. I was surprised to hear that I would be teaching a grade 12 English class, however it is an alternative class for kids who are not really into school. So, much of the content will be junior material anyway. I will also be teaching year 9 English, year 9 computing and year 10 Food Tech.
The kids school is Pukerau Primary and we have been for a tour and met the Principal/teacher. Both kids will be in the same class, Abby Year 4 and Sam Year 6. We'll see how this goes???? Their school is an enviro-school and this is interesting as they have a worm farm, and many cool things that they do besides sitting in desks and working. It seems really hands on. Each student has a laptop at their desk too.
The weather is nice, but unpredictable. We arrived Sunday to hot, sunny weather. Monday was also beautiful, the kids swam in the pond on site. Tuesday we awoke to misty rain and cold temperature. It down poured many times that day. Today we woke to sunny skies with giant dark heavy clouds. When the sun was out it was warm and when the monstrous cloud came overhead it rained and became cold, then the sun returned and it was nice again. They say that this weekend will be warm, sunny and beautiful. We may go to the ocean and explore. Sam has yet to see a hedgehog but we have been told that they live in the hedges around the camp.
Our house is very cottagey. It is spacious and has the things we need. Nothing fancy and fits in really well with our new philosophy to DO MORE AND HAVE LESS. We have been to a party already and we are fascinated by the classless attitudes. The clothing and decorating in homes is not as superficial as `home`. It is refreshing to see people not care about what they look like, the couple that hosted that party were sincere and not consumed by what their house looked like. It certainly is a different feel down here. A few things that I have noticed and like are: scented toilet paper, the constant sweet smell in the air, the wonderful smell of laundry soap and fabric softener, no dryers so everything hangs out, the breath-taking mountains, hills and the laid back attitudes, and the shorty shorts worn by the Kiwi men! I seem to be only struggling with the letters a and e. When they speak here I often cannot understand a word and have to ask them to spell it. A bank card, like and ATM card is called a EFT POS card here. That took me a while to get it. Finally I had to ask the sweet bank employee to write it down for me.


Enjoying the sweet smell of New Zealand,
Samantha

Pictures!

Here are some pictures from our first two days. They are some snapshots to show you what we've been seeing. We are still in the process of getting settled. After a little nap time, we are going to a large second-hand store in Gore. Samantha had her first view of the high school this morning, she met with the English Dept. head. Her foods room is like a television set! I have my first meeting with the Board of Camp Columba tonight. Last night, Shelley & Philip Taylor organized a barbecue for us with members of their church. More meat than anyone could eat.

The pictures will play as a slide show. If you want to view larger versions of them, just click and you should be taken to the web album that holds them.


22 January 2008

The Rest of the arrival story

On the way home from the airport, we did a quick tour of Gore, the closest town to Camp Columba. We stopped at the grocery store, drove by the Warehouse(NZ version of Walmart), saw the Gore High School where Samantha will be teaching and got acquainted with round-a-bouts and the give-way rule of driving. More about that in another post. Camp Columba is about 10 minutes from Gore, just outside of the village of Pukerau. On our way to camp we stopped by the Pukerau School where Sam & Abby will be attending school. It's a small 2 classroom school. It was very nice looking from the outside. After looking that over we headed to camp. Camp is a 2 minute drive from the school.

We pulled into camp and were met by another board member and his wife who were preparing tea(that's what they call the supper meal) for us all. Shelly and Phil, two of the camp staff came over and helped us move in as well. It didn't take long to get the bags into the house. We did a wander through and the kids picked their bedrooms without much difficulty. We put our bags in our room and shared a meal with the Gardyne's and the Kennedy's. We then took a quick walking tour of the sight with Dave Kennedy, a board member. It was nice to get a chance to be outside and in the fresh air. The air is so fresh and wonderfully fragrant - it smells great. The kids enjoyed a bounce on the camp trampolines and then we headed home.

We followed a tip from Samantha's seat mate on the overnight flight and we stayed up until our normal bedtime and then went to bed. Exhausted and ready to sleep in beds, it didn't take us long to drift off.

I really want to type more but am exhausted. I shall fill in the rest of it so far at some point tomorrow.

21 January 2008

New Zealand

First a quick apology for not getting a post up yesterday. They will be more regular now that we are starting to get settled in.

Vancouver to Auckland - It was not nearly as tough a flight as we thought it might be. We flew on a 777(fully booked), 3 sets of 3 seats across the cabin. We were split into 2 & 2, one behind the other, at the window. So that meant that Samantha & I had middle seats. We were fortunate that each of us were beside very nice people, neither of whom were very big. The guy beside me was very little, meaning that I didn't have to worry about space. The kids both enjoyed the flight, watched movies and slept. The food, supper & breakfast, was very good. It seems that they timed the serving of breakfast so that our bodies were already starting to adjust to our new time zone. As a side note, I'm pretty sure that our Saturday was only 3 hours long. Our pilot was also very helpful in making the flight easier, he shaved 1.5 hours off of the schedule, meaning that it was a 13 hour flight instead of 14.5. We landed at 5 a.m. NZ time - it was 16 degrees Celsius. We had no trouble clearing immigration and enjoyed a nice leisurely walk to the domestic terminal for our next flight.

Auckland to Christchurch - We realized that we were going to have some luggage trouble as we waited for our Auckland to Christchurch flight. The domestic carry-on policies were more restrictive. To that point, we each had a carry-on & a personal bag. New Zealand Air would classify our personal bags as carry-ons, meaning that we had 4 bags too many. Thankfully we were taken care of by a very helpful Air NZ employee, Cindy, who checked our extra bags as "late baggage" at the gate and didn't charge us any excess baggage. She simply wished us well on our Kiwi Adventure. The flight was very quick, just 1:20. Arrived in Christchurch on schedule.

Christchurch to Invercargill - We enjoyed some lunch at the airport. Nothing exotic, just some pizza. At Christchurch they have an outdoor observation deck on the roof of the terminal, so we enjoyed some sunshine and warmth watching planes arrive and depart. It was nice to get outside but also to get out of a very crowded terminal. There were a lot of travelers and Girl Guides. Sunday morning was the end of their annual jamboree and there were a whole bunch of them flying out on Sunday afternoon. We encountered our only delay of the trip here as well. The plane we were to fly in arrived 30 minutes late so we departed 30 minutes late. No complaints though. To have 4 flights on only 30 minutes total of delay, something we could definitely live with. This flight was also on 1:20 in duration so it was quick as well. We flew down the coast of the south island for the most part. Saw many mountains out Sam's window. When we arrived at Invercargill we were greeted by Jo & John Gardyne. Jo is the treasurer of the camp board and was my main contact prior to arrival. We retrieved our bags, all 13 arrived with us, loaded them onto the Gardyne's trailer and into their SUV and then headed to our new home.

I'll continue the story in the morning.

The slideshow to the right is now some pictures of the journey. To view them at full size, just click on the picture.

19 January 2008

Vancouver

We made it to Vancouver. The flight was rather pleasant. Had some extra leg room as we had the first row behind business class. We are waiting at our gate for the Air New Zealand flight, 14 1/2 hours. Just a short post this time because on a pay for internet thing. Only bought 10 minutes. I'm thinking that my wi-fi on the laptop is acting up. Might try to work that out now. If I can there might be some pictures up before we leave Vancouver. We'll update next from NZ!

18 January 2008

Twas the night before departure...

We've just finished packing our bags. It was a real challenge trying to fit everything that we need and want into 8 suitcases and 4 carry-ons, a challenge we did not overcome. We are taking one extra piece of luggage. I'm a little bit concerned about our carry-ons and personal bags. Hopefully we have some understanding flight attendants.

The kids are tucked into bed - Sammy feeling a bit emotional about leaving and Abby really excited about the whole adventure. It's kind of a flip-flop of how they've been feeling up until now, but not an unexpected one. Samantha is just ready to get on the plane and experience the journey. I'm feeling more convinced than ever that New Zealand is where we are supposed to be right now. Both Samantha and I have a real sense of peace and calm about our journey. Exciting stuff.

We have both enjoyed all of the short visits, phone calls, wall posts and emails over the last couple of days. Thank you.

We plan to add some posts along the trip, maybe a short video or two tomorrow. Lots of pics once we get there.

12 January 2008

It's finally happening

I'm thrilled to share that our journey to New Zealand begins on Friday, January 18th at 2:00 p.m. We will arrive at the airport in Invercargill, NZ on Sunday, January 20th at 3:05 p.m. local time, which is 9:05 p.m. on January 19th in Ontario. New Zealand is 18 hours ahead of home.

Here are our travel details. We fly from Toronto to Vancouver - 5 hour flight & 3 hour layover, Vancouver to Auckland, NZ - 14 1/2 hour flight & 3 1/2 hour layover, Auckland to Christchurch - 1 hour & 20 minute flight & 2 hour & 25 minute layover, Christchurch to Invercargill - 1 hour & 20 minute flight. Board members from Camp Columba will meet us at the Invercargill airport and it will be just under a 1 hour drive to camp from their. If everything goes right we could be at camp 32 hours after we fly out of Toronto.

I've been waiting for two weeks to get excited about our departure but wouldn't let myself until everything was finalized. Well things are finalized and it's pretty darn exciting. This whole idea becomes completely real to me now. We are really doing this and it feels great. This whole process has been incredibly liberating for both Samantha & I. Who knows how this adventure will end? I'm pretty sure that the ending isn't the important part, it's the time between now and the end that matter most.


08 January 2008

Good News!

It looks like things are moving forward. The New Zealand Qualifications Authority has informed Samantha that they have completed assessing her qualifications and have sent the required information onto the New Zealand Teacher's Council(NZTC). Samantha has had a conversation with the NZTC and they are willing to do whatever they need to to get Samantha's registration information to the New Zealand High Commission in Ottawa. The High Commission issues the visas. We are still a little uncertain about the exact time line but it would appear that January 16th is very likely our departure date.

New information should be coming in fairly quickly now so I'll be certain to keep posting new details as they become known.

New Zealand, here we come!

04 January 2008

Last big snow?

One of the common questions/comments we've received during our farewell get-togethers has been about the weather in New Zealand. We are heading to the bottom of the South Island and are the same distance from the equator as North Bay is. That means that we do get some winter - but nothing like the winters here. I've been told that where we are, just outside of Gore, there will probably only be two snowfalls each winter that have any accumulation and that they will melt away in a couple of days. So it gets cold, just not as cold as here. I thought I would post a couple of pictures of the kids playing in the snow. Sammy is pretty sure that he is going to miss the snow. He loves the snow.

Not there yet!

Our original travel plans were that I, Dan, would be leaving on January 1 and that Samantha and the kids would follow two weeks later, leaving January 16. That didn't happen. There was a delay in our paperwork and we still are not sure about our departure dates. There was some encouraging news today and we are hoping to receive word from the New Zealand Qualifications Authority by Monday, Jan. 7 that things are moving forward. It would seem that January 16 is still a realistic departure date. It is very likely that the whole family will travel together - not a bad thing. It will be neat to experience the relocation as a family instead of going ahead and the rest of the family following. It will also make the traveling a lot easier on Samantha. I'll be sure to post when our travel plans are firmed up.