The added photos

Our first views of the South Island. Notice how close the snow is to the shore. We may have been looking at Kaikoura here.
Close to Akaroa. The town is in the background, but you have to go through this pass to get there.












Lunch in Akaroa, bay in the background, where you can swim with the dolphins. Perhaps when it is warmer!

Address and... A NEW CAR!

Okay, so it sounds all fun, like the Price is Right. It's not.


First, the practical information. The Lolos reminded us of the need to disperse our information.

Address: 83 Waimairi Road
Ilam
Christchurch
8041
New Zealand

Secondly, in hopefully our most definitive step toward settling in for the six... five remaining months, we finally bought a car yesterday. I need to post photos of the tike. It is a 12 year-old Toyota Camry. It will fit in well with the rest of the cars around here. Very few cars are new here; most are older and come from Japan, where there are tight regulations on the permissible age of cars. Here, in complement, there is no import duty on cars, so they are cheap! The price of the thing: NZ$2200, slightly less than US$2000.


Just getting to the car auction was an escapade which emphasized our need for the car. The auction would only be 5 minute drive from work, but I rode my bicycle 15 minutes home so that we could go get it together. I hurriedly changed clothes, and we grabbed the car seats, the two kids, and the stroller to board the bus. It was just our luck that this one would be piloted by a fellow from India, who had enough trouble with English, and I would propose that my accent posed even more difficulty. In addition, I don't think that he knew his roads much better than I, because when I asked him if there was a stop at the intersection with Lincoln Road, he made me repeat it a couple of times then said he was going down Barrenger Road. Later he added that I must mean Lyndon Road. I think this is a road nowhere near our proposed destination.


When we got to the right area, we pulled up to a bus stop. I asked if it was the closest stop to Lincoln, to which he replied that it was a long way down Barrenger Street. So we waited until the next stop.

As we walked the 10 minutes back toward the previous stop, we began to worry that we would miss the auction of our preferred vehicles. Long story a little shorter, we didn't get lost, but we had to reroute because the road the map appeared to show as a through-street dead-ended into a fenced-in set of railroad tracks.

Well, we weren't too late, despite the auction being half over by the time we got there. No one else even bid on our car. Maybe it was our determined looks. Or the car seats, little children, stroller, and our dinner of PBJ's while we sat out in a cold auction that evoked sympathy. Or maybe it was the car.


The longer we had the car, the more I leaned toward the last hypothesis, beginning about 45 seconds after the auctioneer's gavel came down. And the lean became more of a scrum-like lunge. Our ticket to freedom is being towed to a garage tomorrow for a new battery, the new inspection sticker, and the inspection we should have asked for a couple of days ago.

More photos soon to come

Three weeks in...

We have now been here almost a month. It seems like no time at all in most respects, but when you are here only six months, a good chunk of it goes by each month.

Aunt Bettye's last question to me was regarding work. Yes, it has been underway quite some time. As you may recall, we got in on a Saturday. Monday and Tuesday I had little logistical meetings (read: little necessary things that could have been done the morning I started work). But Wednesday I officially began work. So I have logged 2.5 weeks to this point.

It has actually been great. I operate more, more people defer to my judgment. The work hours are even better than the Kleinert fellowship (which, in turn, was a good bit better than residency!). And I am making more money. All of this in a new land half way around the world. Not bad!

To this point we have only seen a couple of things. Last weekend we just did a day trip to Akaroa. Check it out on the map. It is a nice little coastal town settled by some French fellas. I need to look into how this isolated place was the only, or one of the only, French colonies here. The streets are in French, and the French flag flies over the doorways of a few hotel doorways.

Matt will appreciate that it is a popular site for morning rides from Christchurch. We saw plenty of bicycles initially en route, but I doubt that they were going anywhere close to that far. But the bikes with motors ripped by with regularity. Several of them were there in town.

This weekend we went to Hamner Springs and spent the weekend at a wonderful bed & breakfast. In fact, the accommodation was better than the site. It is a wonderful natural phenomenon to have hot water bubbling up in the wintry mountains, but it was really, at least for me, more of a pain to get out and run for the open-air changing rooms, children in arms, and try to dry off and get warm again than it was to soak in water a little cooler than a hot tub.... especially when the B&B had a hot tub available.

The next morning, being today, we went to Kaikoura (Maori for "fish food"). Like most places, it was kind of sleepy due to the season, worsened by the drizzle. But it was beautiful. I don't think either of us has ever been able to see surf and snow in the same view before. The highlight, though, was the visit to the seal colony just outside of town. Ryan loved it! We strolled down a dirt path around the corner to see a handful of them just a few meters away. While taking a few photos we heard grunts and snorts from the bushes behind us. Looking more closely, we realized they were everywhere! Under each bush tended to be another one looking to get out of the wind and take a nap. Wow, maybe we don't have our senses tuned enough to be out on any walkabouts yet!