The Non-Trip to the South Island of New Zealand!

 The big summer holiday is coming right up and reservations for New Zealand vacation spots are disappearing quickly.

The holiday is the week between Christmas and New Years.

Schools will be out by then, and if last year’s pattern continues, the season will be heating up. Last year’s Christmas day was so unbearably hot that people are still talking about it.

What will it be like in your world? Will you be heading to the beaches? Mountains? Probably not!

But you may be heading south. To warmer weather.

Here in New Zealand, everyone is heading to the South Island to cooler weather!

We ourselves are heading to the South Island. Our son Peter and his family fly out of Honolulu on Christmas day and arrive in Auckland, way up north, late on the 26^th (thanks to the International Date Line!).

Because ferry reservations were so hard to come by, we will not see them till we meet at about the time the ferry departs late on the 28^th. Meanwhile they will drive to Wellington and the ferry terminal from Auckland, a good long drive by New Zealand standards, or about as far as from San Francisco to LA.

And we will drive from Feilding the two hours to Wellington, and have a much anticipated mini-reunion in a place to be determined.

Everyone here on the North Island tells us the South Island is completely different and we will like it very much. I don’t know if they are picturing us going to Christchurch or another city, but since we will be with the Peter Lewises, we will certainly not do anything in any city except drive through.

The Peter Lewises consist of Peter, Amanda, and their three children: Eleanor 7, Alexandra 6, and Miles 3.

These are veteran outdoorsmen, all 5 of them. Peter and Amanda are birders and bird-photographers. Miles is impassioned about orcas. All of them are excited to see live penguins. The children have been birding in Costa Rica and all over Washington State and in numerous other places. Ella started at age 1 in Alaska.

We are going to learn a lot. And we will be in the south, where the temps might be cooler than in stifling Feilding (where when the mercury hits 25C, everyone wilts. That’s about 77F).

And we will get some photos. We won’t even have to take them ourselves!

We’ll be gone for a week, December 28^th through January 4^th. The mission president had no qualms about giving us a week off during this time when no one will be around, and has generously allowed us to use our mission car, too.

We’re not counting the days yet. We love what we do. But it will be great to see a few of our numerous grandchildren (3 of 32) and spend a unique Christmastide in the southland. Photos to follow!

Update: We can’t get accommodations on the South Island during Christmas week! And we don’t have camping gear as the young Lewises do. So we’ll be staying here on the North Island. Stay tuned….

First Thanksgiving In New Zealand

A Maori friend said to me today, what is Thanksgiving? What are you thanking? So I told her the story of the first Thanksgiving in New England. And I told her that we New Englanders really thought of Thanksgiving as our holiday. (I was going to say 'Kiwi friend' because she is from New Zealand, but that would not have been exactly accurate as I understand things. And 'New Zealander' is a bit cumbersome.)

We've had Thanksgiving in many places: As an 8-year old, I lived in Louisville KY, and an Army Air Corps officer who lived with us while she and my father were stationed at Ft Knox thought it fitting to treat us to Thanksgiving dinner at a fancy restaurant. I had almost never been to a restaurant at that point, and rarely such a fancy one. And we had it to ourselves. We thought it odd to eat Thanksgiving any place but home. It was over the Ohio River into Indiana, so I guess we never really had Thanksgiving in Louisville. The Korean non-war was over and we went back to Connecticut the following summer.

Many years our cousins came from West Hartford for Thanksgiving. It was about an hour and a half away and we saw them only a couple of times a year. Odd that we didn't see them more often! This same cousin's typical commute in Houston is that long.

One year my parents went away to an English teachers' convention and my mother did all she could to find a good place for us to go for Thanksgiving dinner. I went to my friend Helen's house. That was when I was about 14.

Later when Juan and I were married, we spent our first Thanksgiving apart: he was in grad school in CA, I was finishing college in MA. The year before, his parents found out during his last Thanksgiving at home that we were dating.

I don't remember the Thanksgiving after I joined Juan in CA but the following year a whole group of grad students plus our baby Van drove to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument for the long weekend. We had Thanksgiving dinner before leaving for a few friends.

Later, when we were back in MA, we went to our friends the Fergusons' for Thanksgiving several years in a row. And we had them the Sunday before Thanksgiving. it was Kay Ferguson's birthday on November 22 so that's what we were celebrating. (She will be 93 this year on that date. I wish her a happy birthday and Happy Thanksgiving.)

In 1981 we moved to Arizona and had big Thanksgiving dinners for a crowd. And later when we had our ninos living with us, who had moved as a family of 6 from Venezuela, we had a big table-ful of just us. And one year we met friends at Zion National Park and had Thanksgiving there, with a precooked turkey and I don't recall what-else: something manageable in a camping trailer.

We're having our 48th Thanksgiving together this week with probably no celebration at all. When we were in China for Thanksgiving 2005, the expats from Beijing had us over. It was their Thanksgiving too. But here we have just fellow missionary couples. They are gathering in Wellington for a meal, but we are 2 hours away and have to come and go in one day, with lots of regular traffic on the Wellington end, and we've decided not to do it.

It's still Thanksgiving. We've had many in full celebration, so one where we end up going out for Indian curry will not hurt us.

My parents were married on Thanksgiving day, which was November 25 that year (1937). Did I mention Thanksgiving was special to our family.

While we have too many to mention, and each one of them special, we will kinda miss having family for Thanksgiving this year, and turkey and oyster stuffing and squash and sweet potato and gravy and white potato and creamed onions and rutabagas and pie after pie after pie. My daughters-in-law have their own traditions so that list of foods has morphed and new traditions have evolved. 

And they will continue to do that. I know that. But for me it is The Holiday of the year, and this is how I am celebrating it this year, by reminiscing. 

May you have a Happy Thanksgiving, wherever you are.

We like sheep....

We like sheep!

This simple phrase is something we get goofy about at Christmas every year, no disrespect intended. We’re thinking Handel’s Messiah. ‘We like sheep have gone astray.’ It’s a wonderful example itself of going astray, linguistically speaking.

But now it applies to a fun trip we had on Saturday to an actual working sheep farm. We do like sheep! They make wool and meat and a lot of noise when they’re being caught to be shorn.

The word shorn is not one you hear all the time, either. I had a favorite poem as a child that included ‘shorn’ and I remember asking what it meant. Here’s what I can remember.

This is the house that Jack built.

This is the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.

This is the rat that at the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.

This is the cat that killed the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.

This is the dog that worried the cat that killed the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.

This is the cow with the crumpled horn that tossed the dog that worried the cat that killed the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.

This is the maiden all forlorn who milked the cow with the crumbled horn….

This is the man all shaven and shorn who kissed the maiden all forlorn….

Possibly I have forgotten a few characters by now. I must look it up and get on Skype with my younger grandchildren and do this poem with them.

IN ANY CASE, we went to a sheep farm on Saturday with several other senior couples from our mission. We had already been, earlier in the day, to a wildlife preserve (Bruce Mountain), lunch at a lavender farm, a tiny art studio in the town of Pahiatua, and then finally the sheep farm.

We learned about two entirely different kinds of sheep dogs, one that moves small groups of sheep as in the trials we have all probably seen on TV or in the movie Babe, and the other that moves as many as 1000 sheep away from the barns and up the hills to the paddocks. We watched them in action. Both were young dogs and ended up a little confused about what was expected, but we enjoyed what they were able to comprehend from just some whistles through a green stone that the shepherd used.

This is the whistle green and smooth that called the dogs that herded the sheep that made the wool….

After the outside dog demo, we went inside to see a display of about 20 different kinds of sheep in tiny pens. Each pen had a mom of the given breed and her lamb or lambs.

They were all sheep, without a doubt, but they were clearly distinctive. The black-faced ones were all for meat. And most of the white-faced ones were for wool production, with one exception. Some were dual-purpose. Some had coarse wool for making carpets, some had very fine wool. Most were solid white but a couple were dark or varying shades of brown. The dark doesn’t dye well but today’s weavers like the natural dark colors.

We were able to watch a shearing. While the shearer did his careful work, a helper used a flat-bladed tool to separate out the stained and short pieces of wool. In the end the fleece was rolled up and made ready for washing.

The highlight of the day may have been the spinning. The woman who makes fine sweaters, hats and scarves, baby booties, and other small items had just picked out by hand the colors in a single dark fleece, then spun them separately to make yarns of subtly different colors. She used those to make a child’s sweater, a beautiful item.

I am very susceptible to textiles and this wool was no exception. Around the periphery of the spinning room were samples of each of the kinds of wool, plus a small swath knit from it. I was amazed that each swath was different in feel and size. Clearly they had been made the same way, but some wool just made a bigger, looser item than other varieties.

Now I want a sheep farm, or at least some armfuls of wool. The spinner said that while she can prepare the wool directly from the sheep by washing it carefully, then carding and combing and spinning, she prefers to work with commercially cleaned wool, which has far less lanolin in it and so feels less greasy to the touch.

I might feel the same way if my livelihood were tied up in sheep, but I’m just romantic enough to want to take the wool from sheep’s back to finished sweater -  in natural colors, of course.

I heard today that there are 20 MILLION sheep in New Zealand. So we may revisit them. For now I’ll just finish with:

This is the weaver in apron blue who spun the wheel with leather shoe who twisted the plies who knit the yarn who made the sweater in the dark warm barn…..

New Zealand: Why no photos

I'll get there with the photos. I think I have to do them with my iPad. I'll learn more soon about what it would mean if I actually used my iPhone camera here. Would I incur roaming charges?

New Zealand: it's almost like us

What is New Zealand like? People ask.

What it's like is this: You look up at a tree expecting it to be a cedar, but it isn't.

You talk to someone from the neighborhood. You expect an American. He isn't. He's clearly got the same English roots. Maybe he's Canadian. Something not unfamiliar. But not an American.

You talk to someone from around the corner. You expect a Mexican or a Yaqui or someone familiar. She isn't. She's Maori. She may be other things too, but she's Maori. Definitely not Mexican. Saying 'hasta' gets blank stares.

But there are refried beans on the store shelves. $5 for a small can. That's NZ$5, and some change. No dried beans in sight.

Everyone is friendly. Calm. Patient. At least with us.

Traffic is very orderly here in Feilding. We thought it was crazy in the Wellington suburbs, but maybe it was just lack of experience.

It's not just the driving on the left with the driver on the right. That is fairly easy to adapt to. And it's not even the lack of stop signs and stop lights and huge numbers of yields and traffic circles. Those things have their own logic.

No, what is the greatest challenge in driving a car here - after the $8-$9 a gallon gas - is the location of the blinker, the directional signal. It's switched places with the windshield wipers.

It goes without saying that the steering wheel is on the right, and the gear shift is on the left. These things are there and we get used to using them as they are positioned here in New Zealand.

We just don't adapt as easily to the turn signal. Windows have been wiped hundreds of extra times since we got here.

Wellington has hills like Seattle; Feilding has flats. It's easier here in Feilding.

In Wellington, you enter a traffic circle as long as no one is approaching from your right with whom you might interact. In other words if you are out of the way soon enough so as not to interfere with someone zooming around the circle and approaching from the right, you can go. Start blinking that you want to get off just after the next to last exit. You can blink right right up until you blink left if you want.

In Wellington it is not unusual to have 6 entrances to a traffic circle, and two lanes around the circle. If you are in the outer lane you might find yourself exiting with the lane. If you are in the inner lane you might find you can't exit. But you can pull over to the left lane and then exit. Maybe the next time around.

In Wellington, it's unusual for anyone (except a visitor from the US) to stop at a yield to check out the traffic. It is more likely that one would speed up.

In Feilding on the other hand we have seen people wait to enter just in case we might choose to enter, just because we're to their right - on a side street to their right. This is very nice behavior. (I don't think they can tell we're Americans likely to be erratic in traffic - I think they're just nice. Or else the whole town is onto us.)

In Feilding it is more common to have 4 entrances to a traffic circle and only one of them occupied. It is also unusual here to have a double lane going around a traffic circle.

As far as we have been able to tell, there is no way to practice the special New Zealand combination of driving on the left from the right side of the car and entering and exiting multiple traffic circles. You have to do what we are doing: do it.

We do it because we need to get places by car. One of us (not me) drives, the other (me) cringes. I feel as though I am about to be crashed into a car parked on the far left. My depth perception is never great and I could swear (do swear) daily that we are about to collide with whatever is over to my side of the road.

Why do I not do the driving, then? I usually do at home, so why not here? It's because of the windshield wiper thing. While I'm circling clockwise, being courteous to those to my right, remembering where to exit the circle, and contemplating when to switch from signaling right (onto the circle) to signaling left (out of the circle), the windshield wipers end up on. I can't explain it.

There should be software put out by the New Zealand tourist organization for potential visa-holders, where we could clock the necessary hours and pass the necessary tests to be kiwi-worthy. Otherwise it's just a lot of chaos down here. Like America, almost. But not exactly.

New Zealand - the first few hours

We have now driven on the left. What a trip!

This area, just N of Wellington itself, is called Lower Hutt. The Hutt is a river big enough to require bridges here and there. We've been riding with other missionaries and have seen the area, been flung around roundabouts, have watched carefully at complex intersections, and pretty much have wondered how it's going to go for us.

And now I know. Juan is next to find out.

We went to the end of our little residential alley to the main street. After waiting for a lot of traffic streaming past us from the right, we pulled tight to the left onto the thoroughfare.

All we needed to do was to go straight for a while. That required hugging (it seemed to me) the white stripe. I felt I was drifting over it to the right, but the others in the car thought is was getting too close to parked cars on the left.

Next we made a left turn, tight again. We came to an intersection. We turned again to the left. So far so good!

Ahead of us was the entrance to a motorway, which seemed like a bad place to practice. So I pulled left into an empty parking lot. That was easy! I even practiced parking on the left side there.

Then we headed out again. That required right turns! !!!! And a piece of a roundabout....

The diciest moment came when I needed to cross two lanes of traffic to make the right turn. Cars streamed from the left, and when they cleared I could barely tell there was another lane across the road to turn right onto. It took actually doing it to see the lane.

That worked fine, thanks to no traffic.

After that we used back roads, the only real challenge being the obstruction of construction trucks.

It worked out. We found the main road, turned left onto it, and headed back the house. The only challenge left was to turn right into the alley across the busy traffic.

Nothing bad happened.

The rule of the road is to yield to anyone coming from the right. It works out that that rule is sufficient for most situations. It's just not something we do very often, we Americans. We also don't shift with our left hands, and I was forever turning on the wipers instead of the directional signal. That's work for another day. Tomorrow.

On Owning Animals - a taste of the past

Juan is on his way back from Washington DC, where he did some consulting for NASA. So I have been home alone, so to speak, these last many days. So to speak, because there are those ducks out there in the yard, 4 big ones and 10 or so little ones.

And they are rather independent, these muscovies are. They are not very closely related to domestic ducks. All the domestic ducks descend from a mallard-like creature, but muscovies come down a different branch of the waterfowl family entirely. Some people think they are actually geese.

Muscovies are independent in a couple different ways. For example, if we didn't clip their secondary feathers on one side, they'd fly off and probably take up residence in Clyde Brook, which trickles its way through the woods and backyards just a block away.

And even in their pen, they graze on grass (which is a goose-like thing to do and not a bit ducky) and they could stay happy for a while doing that even if I didn't carry feed out to them for a few days.

They also poke and prod the compost pile with their bills, ferreting out bugs and especially the little red worms that have been reproducing in there for a couple of years.

I also saw them billing some old logs in their yard, finding bugs there as well. 

So they have many ways to feed themselves. And because it rains a little most days, they could also get water when they were thirsty (which because they are ducks is quite often) even if they couldn't bathe as they like to do or wash their food. 

Because the animals do eventually need me, I feel I must be much more responsible than usual. I am the only one here to care for them (as unneedy as they are). 

And that takes me back to when we had a real little farm in the Boston area. That was a traumatic experience. Juan was also away for NASA back then, and we had several small children and a lot of animals. If you'd like to read about it, you can find it on a blog called Homestead Time. This blog is chronicle, so it should be read from the lowest down, earliest post first. Things weren't as easy then as they are now, as you will see.

That trauma carries forward till now. Juan is almost back and I will be most thankful for the back-up.