Kevin's Announcement

Hi all.... Alright... alright.... I will admit it. I'm sure Leslie has been a bit suspicious lately, and I have tried mightily to keep my new relationship under wraps, but I think I should fess up and get it out in the open before Christmas. I have fallen in love. I can't stand to be without her very long. Rob will understand I am sure. Just a walk with her is enough to relax me, and I feel better just seeing her coming. She murmurs loudly, and sometimes is a bit cool, but I just can't stay away from her for long. Yes, my new love is the Ocean, the Tasman Sea. I should have seen it coming long ago, from the time I was 16, I have wanted to be an oceanographer, and this is the first time I have been able to spend a significant amount of time with her. Wow!. I don't want to go a day without a walk beachcombing. It appeals to my dumpster diving side. Remember mom those sandals I found? You never know what you may find. I have been fishing twice, skunked twice. Went crabbing and cooked up a bunch. tasted good but lots of work. beachcombing I found 3 scallops shells, and they appeared in good condition, so I took them home, pried them apart, and smelled them and seemed ok so I cooked them in butter, and added milk and salt and pepper and had soup. Marvelous!. And now my boss, Dr Hull just got a fishing seine. the store was out of 20 meter nets, so the poor man had to get a 30 meter net. I can not wait to go. I already have been seining 2 days ago and we cought several crabs, one kahwai fish, and several 1 foot long flounder, which I learned to fillet. So far Leslie is bearing with me, as long I I cook the fruits of my new love the sea, but we both agreed that we better lay off the fish, as when I was in the shower last time, I noted some new webbing of my toes, and some scales developing. I haven't dared share my latest urge with Leslie to get my mask and snorkle and see if I can go out into the ocean and come up with some more scallop shells. Well, got to go back to work. Only 4 hours to a 4 day weekend, which they all are. Wow. love, Kevin

Belated Merry Christmas to you!

It’s December 27 here, and since we’re 17 hours ahead of Iowa, we’re not sooo late with those holiday wishes as it’s still the day after for you all. We had a really nice, if not very different for us, Christmas. I spent much of Christmas Eve Day baking, to the tunes of various years’ Christmas at Luther from my iPod coming from the surround sound, just lovely as they say here. We did make it to St Mary’s Anglican Church family Christmas Eve service at 7 PM in Levin. The music was not particularly inspiring but the nativity story was played out with a LOT of cute angels and 2 three year old shepards, as well as all the other necessary characters. The sermon message reminded us about how Jesus turned everything upside down, beginning with being born in a stable and continuing throughout his life. We had a relaxing Christmas morning, with Allie’s recipe for french toast for a special breakfast...thanks, Allie! The difference with it was that we had FRESH, LOCAL strawberries on top, haha! (We bought fresh local blueberries the day before, too!) The Hulls took us with them to their extended family Christmas in Wellington for the day, where their 3 grown children live, with five grandchildren ages 2-12 between them. It was sooo nice to be included. We took Carole’s potato buns (or at least a good imitation) and mint brownies, and gave the Hulls one of the Iowa picture books that we brought as gifts, and it generated a lot of interest amongst everyone. The day after Christmas here is celebrated too, it’s Boxing Day. I think it’s British, but no one I’ve asked seems to know it’s origin otherwise. So the NZ custom for these two summer days is lots of family gatherings often on the beach, with BBQ. We have seen some increased activity that way here in Waitarere, with a lot of cars outside baches that up to this point have appeared empty. And, as in the US, since the holiday is on a weekend this year, everyone also has Monday and Tuesday off this week, and next week will be similar. It is interesting to be on this end of the globe during the Christmas season, as it becomes more evident how US music (Christmas songs with snow) and culture gets around. I’ve also noticed that the commercialism of the season has happily NOT crossed the big pond. The Hull family exchanged basically one not-so-huge gift per person, such as a book, cookbook, shirt. It was all about getting together as a family. What a concept! There was no mention of a prayer though, or reading the Christmas story, we missed that.

We took a day trip a few days ago to Dannevirke and Norsewood. Our destination was determined by the fact that 1) they were close by about 1.5 hours northeast of us, and 2) they were settled by Norwegian immigrants! Dannevirke is larger but mostly closed down on a Saturday afternoon, even shortly before Christmas! Norsewood was tiny, but more interesting. It’s got a charming small immigrant museum, open during daylight hours on the honor system! You put your $2 in the box out front, go in the door and turn on the lights and walk through. It’s pretty cute, with a lot of artifacts actually. I’m going to send them a Vesterheim postcard later, ha! Then we found the local sock factory outlet where we helped out the local economy a little. The exchange rate is favorable to us, with a NZ dollar worth about 75% of the US dollar. I like it when I take out $100 at the ATM and it shows up as $75 in our Decorah online banking, ha!

I have felt my first earthquake! Don’t get too excited, Kevin didn’t feel it at all and he was in the house too. It was just after I woke up on Dec 23 and was still in bed, feeling the bed jiggle briefly like I was laying on jello :) Kevin was standing in the bathroom. We didn’t hear anything at all, either. Coffee in hand a few minutes later, I checked out the website that Randi and Matt, the earthquake experts, had shown us. www.geonet.org.nz Indeed, there was a 4.1 earthquake at 7:02 AM, in Masterton, which is on the other side of the Taratua Range that we see from our backyard. Pretty exciting for me...and I hope we don’t feel anything much stronger! Neighbors around here didn’t feel it, I think because I was in a jiggly bed I felt it easier. But we have heard repeatedly, “oh, you WILL feel earthquakes while you’re here”. And now checking out the website again, I can see there have been several over the weekend, mostly in Christchurch, whew.

Today we took off on foot for the nearby Waitarere Forest. It is adjacent to our little beach town, on both the north and south borders, and some scenes from The Lord of the Rings were filmed there. We got off the beaten path some and ended up reading on the beach for a while. Next time we might take the bikes (one came with our house, one was lent to us by Chris Hull) and stick to the paths more, to get a better overall flavor of the woods. It is pine, and is managed by the forest service. It does get logged but is also being replanted.

Post your questions or email if you want to know more! I started out trying to keep a journal, especially since we couldn’t get on email often. I should start that again, as I can see I’m not posting very often. In general, we miss you all, but the snow not so much, ha! Kevin says if he misses snow he stares at a white piece of paper, then sticks his head in the freezer, til the feeling passes. We’re glad we came and it’s all going well, but will be happy to come home, too.

Settling In

NOTE: I'm lying here, as in telling a fib. I wrote this too long ago, will post it now and will write about Christmas soon. Sorry to be so far behind! Merry Christmas to you all!

Today is Monday, Dec. 20, so we’ve been living in Waitarere Beach nearly a week! Kevin has worked two full days, though he spent more time than that just familiarizing himself with a new system, getting to know office staff, and was able to observe a few of Dr Hull’s visits with patients, which was really helpful. He was able to use their computerized medical record with a patient named Mickey Mouse, who had earlier called in with a pain in his tail. He’s had fun too with the slang here, he had one lady tell him that her son was “a box of birds”….meaning he feels great! If a patient is “crook”, he’s sick, and you go to hospital, not to the hospital. I’ve spent a fair amount of time familiarizing myself with secondhand shops in Levin, adding a few household items to the “bach” to make our 3 months here a little more functional. Kiwis call their vacation homes their bach, pronounced like “batch”, and there are alot of them in our little beach town. I got an “official” population count of about 500 permanent residents, up to twice that in the summer, which evidently hasn’t started yet! There are 2 cafes, a convenience store, and two churches. Our attempt to attend church yesterday was pretty funny, as we intended to go to the 10 AM Presbyterian service. We walked up to the wrong church, Anglican, a block from the intended church, whose service had just ended (seeing all the people out front made us mistakenly think it was before the service) So after chatting with those friendly people, we walked a block beyond to the Presbyterian church. (You need a visual here; the Anglican church actually has a cross atop it’s otherwise non-distinguishable building, the Presbyterian church has nothing to distinguish it from it’s surrounding homes until you get up close and see a Bible verse outside). Inside this building were chairs and a man up front fiddling with a laptop on a table, the only person there and it is now exactly 10 AM. He looked up at us, then looked down, not saying a word. When Kevin asked if there would be church today, he indicated so and that there might be one or two more coming. Hmmm….so we waited a few minutes outside, no one showed, and we decided to give the Anglicans a chance next week at 9 AM! We’ll go into Levin for Christmas Eve service at 7, we hope we’ve got that straight! So far we have seen no Lutheran churches, and had one question about what do Lutherans think, so I googled “Lutheran church New Zealand”. The two closest to us are almost 50 minutes away, there are 17 Lutheran churches in the country. If we get really homesick, we can travel to get to one...otherwise, we’ll go with the Anglicans!

We’ve really been taken under the wings of Dr Alan Hull and his wife Chris. They are just really wonderful people who have helped us out a lot and been so friendly. He took Kevin out fishing and crabbing the other day. They didn’t catch anything, but more importantly he introduced Kevin to some other local fishermen and he got to go out today again; they caught lots of flounder and small crab! Their son turned us on to a 3G T-stick, which we purchased for $100 and turned the world around our computer into a wi-fi hotspot, hallelujah! We will have to add more MBs to it when we run out of internet time, but that is easy to do, and so far way cheaper than the ISPs around here, who were really making it difficult to get internet in the house. Now we don’t need to be tied to the house, as long as we have the laptop and T-stick, hooray! The first night we had it though, we burned through $20 of time, skyping with Jen and Carlos...so now we’re restricting ourselves to free google calls :)

Pics from "home" are at http://picasaweb.google.com/116819527466773721245/AroundHome#

Thursday, Dec. 16 and we’re in Levin!

I can’t believe it’s been a week since I wrote last, sorry! We kept pretty busy at Randi and Matt’s, exploring Christchurch and some surrounding area. It was really fun to see them and get to know their kids better. There was some earthquake damage still visible in Christchurch, but not so much that it was readily visible; it almost had to be pointed out as it looked like usual construction work. Plus, we really only saw a small sample of the city. Where Randi & Matt have lived in Darfield was really the center, but it is such a small town and has no 2 story buildings, so we saw nothing there. Our highlight in the town of Christchurch was seeing the Ron Muenck exhibit. He does very lifelike sculptures of people in every size except life-size, ie, doll-size and HUGE. Really very interesting, if you ever have a chance to see his work, do so! We also went to the nearby beach, and took some walks to nearby natural features, Castle Hill (huge boulders spread out over several acres) and a hike up to a waterfall, the Devil’s Punchbowl. Both were really fun, some of the Spencer-Berg family favorites!

We arrived in Levin on Monday evening, Dec. 13. Kevin’s “boss”, Dr Alan Hull and his wife, Chris, welcomed us warmly and took us down to our new home, about a mile from theirs. Our new address, permanent now until March 15, is 29 Matakane Rd, Waitarere Beach, Levin 5510, NZ. It’s small but clean, 2 BRs with a 3rd attached to the rear of the garage; some privacy for our guests! We can hear the Tasman Sea surf from our front porch, barely, since it’s always pretty quiet at our little “suburb”. We have about a 12 minute drive into “town”, Levin, where Dr Hull has his clinic. We really like our surroundings, both in town and out, so far after a whole 2 ½ days :), though we are still waiting for the wi-fi and that is the only thing we’re really missing. (Well, we have one TV station, but I’m not too disappointed about that…..) We’ve walked on the beach each day; last night we went there (3 blocks away) for the sunset and it lit up the sky over the surf, AND the mountains to the east, just fabulous pink/yellow/purple. Temps vary alot, generally around 68-75 so far I’d say, but I’m guessing because here it’s centigrade! Driving has been interesting too, trying to keep your speedometer at 100 on the highway, while driving on the left, with the car a mirror image of what you’re used to. Steering column is on the right hand side of the car, turn signals are on the right, gear shift on the left. We keep walking up to the wrong side of the car to unlock the driver’s door, and laughing while we wonder who saw us! I’m just glad we’re not in the big city. Oh, the worst too is that you yield to drivers on your right, somehow even if they are turning in front of you? So instead I go verrry slowly…..and the 100 speed limit is because it’s km/hr, which translates to 60 mph. But when you are driving on and in a mirror image, it’s quite intimidating!

We’ve got more funny stories, but for now I’m going to sign off and try and write again tomorrow. Since we pay for internet minutes, I’ve been writing in a word processor on the computer, then cut and paste it to the blog when I get online. AND, tonight I get to go out with the women, so must get cleaned up! Ciao!

Thursday, Dec. 9 - Off to the South Island! and Spencer-Bergs!!

First off, we want to say that Jeanette gifted us with an awesome lunch that was such a treat (lots of delicious treats, actually!) to munch on during the whole day on the train, getting to Wellington. Thanks so much to our new friend!

We’ve had a busy 3 days in Wellington. Kevin spent his days in orientation at NZ Locums office. He was one of five people being oriented, the others being from other English speaking countries and NOT American;o Wales, Canada, Scotland! One couple is returning to the small town that they served 5 years ago for a year. This time they intend to stay for good! Yesterday, the last orientation function was a tour of Te Papa, spouses included :) Te Papa when built 12 years ago was the largest museum building in the world; there is no admission, and it is spectacular. Much of the tour was directed towards Maori culture, aspects that doctors might need to know (always ask before touching someone’s head!) and their special greeting, involving a handshake and possibly something like cheek or nose touching, and “sharing the breath”. Glad I don’t have to anticipate knowing when to do that! We learned how to introduce ourselves; first say the land you are from (Iowa, in “the States”), the water (Upper Iowa/Cedar River, that flows into the Mississippi), the mountain (Kevin said Pike’s Peak!, I didn’t have one for CR), your tribe (none of us had one!), your parents names, siblings, and your name. We were only there for about 2 hours, we’ll definitely be back. Last

night we finished the days with dinner with some of our new friends; we exchanged emails and will be in touch as we all travel the country.

Wellington, the capitol city, is attractive, interesting, very compact and walkable, and we’ll be living only 1.5 hours away from it!. I spent time walking, and getting logistical items checked off the list; getting cell phones up and running (thank you, Crawfords!), lining up internet in Levin so we don’t have to wait for ten days after we get there, opening the bank account. Free wireless was not easy to come by, and my days were not too exciting, so that’s my excuse for no posts for a few days. Our other highlight, besides meeting some people who we hope to see again and Te Papa, was attending the Old St. Paul’s Family Christmas service on Tuesday night. http://events.stuff.co.nz/2010/dec/wellington/old-st-pauls-international-christmas-festival-2010 This too was by donation, and just luckily we sat off to the side in front where we had a great view of the kids who went back out into the audience to find dolls representing the nativity. One was reminiscent of Little Orphan Annie, at least two were barefoot and at least one was in her PJs.

We were up early this morning (Th, Dec 9) and now are on the ferry to the south island. The map above shows our route. I'm obviously still learning how to compose a blog, so bear with me! At Picton we will board a train to Christchurch, which is to be more spectacular than last week’s train ride. The ferry itself is across Cook’s Strait, which is also to be lined with huge rocky outcroppings, and beautiful. Once at Christchurch we’ll pick up a rental car and do our first driving (aaagh!) and go to Randi & Matt Spencer-Berg’s home in Darfield. She is one of Kevin’s partners from Decorah,and they are finishing up their 6 month stay here. It will be fun to see them and their family! We are told that the period just before Christmas through January is the school holiday, when NZ families take to the road (it’s early summer here, don’t forget!) and everywhere will be very busy, to the extent that it will be hard to get reservations in hotels, etc. We’re happy to be getting a short trip to the south island in right away.

I wrote this yesterday, Sunday, while on the train from Auckland (Middlemore, to be exact, south of Auckland) to Wellington. It’s about a 12 hour trip through the interior of the north island. Happily for the locals, we are not yet trying to drive on the left. Auckland has a sub-tropical climate, and the last two days we had the good fortune to have locals take us around to see some outdoor sights. Pat Chalberg, (widow of Gary Chalberg who was a brother to David Chalberg of Zumbrota, related to the Vikses!) and her partner took us on Friday to Waitakere National Park, where we saw kauri trees (old like redwoods, can get to 150’, more gnarly) and black sand beaches on the west coast. We had lunch at an outdoor cafe in Piha, with a view of the ocean and good food. Then went east to the calmer coast at Brown’s Bay where Pat and Michael live in a small charming suburb. All of this was north of Auckland. We also got to meet Pat’s children; Michael, wife Naomi and George Gary (7 weeks old) Chalberg, and Stephanie Chalberg. Pat has another son Robert who lives now in Phoenix; all her children have dual citizenship, and Robert is in the US Air Force. Then early that evening, we connected with Jeanette Lenz, a friend of Nancy & Pat Maloney’s of Decorah. She hosted us for two nights. Jeanette is a talented flower gardener and creator of pottery, much of which adorns her home and garden. We met some of her delightful neighbors, and she took us to the Watergardens Park on Saturday, followed by the Auckland Botanical Gardens. The first was started about 18 years ago in an old quarry; it covers several acres and now consists of a waterfall surrounded by paths and ponds filled with water plants, in addition to sub-tropical plantings all around. The botanical gardens are free to the public; the roses were in bloom (it’s early summer!) and we got several pictures. Now we know what flax looks like; it’s native and the Maori used it for clothing, baskets, and more. Between the two sites we saw several wedding parties; the first one in the water gardens had a Maori influence, with horn-blowing and chanting. What we’ve seen of the New Zealand population thus far is very diverse; a lot of Asian, islanders, and European. Jeanette’s husband Sam was Chinese/Samoan, a handsome man who passed away 10 years ago. She said that when they married about 50 years ago, her parents did not accept the marriage, similar to what may have happened in the US at that time. That attitude is slowly changing here also. We have heard too, that the Maori culture is more a part of everyday life in New Zealand; however, we hear now too that the people are still somewhat discriminated against, although some governmental policies seem to favor the Maori and the islanders, because they need more assistance.

The terrain on our trip today is delightful. After we left metropolitan Auckland, it has been rather rural, with small towns and small farms dotting the landscape. The countryside for the most part is hilly, with some taller mountains in the distance at times. We’ve seen some but very little cropland, with some onions, potatoes, corn. Cattle, some horses, some deer, sheep (more sheep towards the south), and a few goats wander in paddocks, which are basically small fenced grazing fields. Some shorn sheep give evidence of early summer, and sheep shearing stations are seen. A lot of the fencerows have kept their shrubbery and trees, making for a much more diverse view. Small towns could stand in for movie sets for US westerns. The middle third of the trip is filled with more spectacular scenery, such as a spiral railway at National Park where we could disembark for 30 minutes to get something to eat, deep river gorges and viaducts, Mt Ruapehu which boasts snow and two ski areas. As we get farther south, more and more sheep are yet unshorn. In Auckland, I’d guess the temps were around upper 60s; we’ll see tomorrow what they are at the southern tip (southern means colder here, don’t forget!) of the north island. We get in tonight around 7:30, and will be put up by NZ Locums at the Hotel Ibis. The train announcer keeps us informed of points of interest, with Maori names unpronounceable by us, multiple vowels combined with lots of H, K, M, N, P, R and T. It would seem that names cannot contain other vowels. And WH is said like our F. We’re very glad that supposedly we speak the same language! It could be worse!

***We just got our first glimpse of Levin, stopping to drop off passengers! Bigger than most towns, the train depot was cute and a ridge of hills is off to the east. It’s in an agricultural plain, with a lot of produce and garden stores :) Has some cute houses, and we saw many different businesses though not too many restaurants :( nor a movie theatre, though we really only saw two roads, one on either side and did not see the central business district. Anyway, we’re excited!

I can imagine that this blog will be way too much info, sometimes. I'm likely to use it somewhat as a diary to record what's happening, so my old brain can look back later to see where we were and what we did! Then too, as we get into a routine, posts will be rarer...then you can email me to say "what's up!", ha! I'll go try to upload some pics soon!

We're Here!

We are in Auckland, have showered :), spent our first night and got great sleep! Our flights were good, all one could hope for when cooped up in a plane seat for 13:20 hours. Even got in 10 minutes early! Our first impressions were formed early; we're glad they speak English :) We were asked right away what we think of Mr. Obama, and everybody in the airport shuttle (one young American woman, two British women, and the driver) agreed with us that we like him. Then our friendly hotel receptionist, when asked where we might eat, assumed that we wanted burgers, being American and all. Later yesterday afternoon (we got in to the city by 11 AM. after customs, etc) we walked around near the hotel downtown and decided to go up the sky tower (similar to the space needle in Seattle) to get the lay of the land, as Auckland sits surrounded by water in the middle of the north island. Well, we ran to get the elevator, and that happened to be a minute before 2 PM when they were observing a moment of silence for the Pike River miners. Guess what, our elevator got stuck right at 2 PM. For about 10 minutes, we stood with about 8 others, including a security guy which helped keep us calmer, I think. Plus the fact that we had a window to look out over the bay!

Right now we are re-packing our FOUR large bags, and waiting for a woman who is the widow of a Vikse (Verna's maternal side) to come pick us up! Later today we'll go to stay with a friend of a friend for the next two nights, and she is planning tea for us tonight :) Can't wait! We'll head to Wellington on Sunday, where Kevin will do 3 days of orientaion. Some photos will follow, sometime! Stay warm, all of you :)