I'm dreaming of a sunny christmas

On the way up Mt. Roy!

Merry Christmas all,

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and happy Boxing Day. Boxing Day??? That's right. For those of you who are confused over why anyone would have a national holiday celebrating all things pugilistic, wikipedia states that:

"Boxing Day is a traditional celebration dating back to the Middle Ages, of which the primary practice is the giving of gifts to employees, the poor, or to people in a lower social class. The name has numerous folk etymologies^[3]; the Oxford English Dictionary attributes it to the Christmas box; the verb box meaning: "To give a Christmas-box (colloq.); hence the term boxing-day."

So there you go.

Anyway, back to us. Drea and I spent the first part of our holidays (with the excpetion of Christmas day) relaxing around the house. We've been trying to sort out what we want to do with our two week (minus a few days for Drea's work) vacation. We ended up deciding that we would go up to Wanaka to do some hiking over Christmas. We left on Christmas Eve and turned a leisurely 4 hour drive into a leisurely 9 hour drive. The landscape early in the trip is famous from Lord of the Rings as the place where Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli were chasing the Uruk-hai across the plains. Along the drive, we stopped for a short hike, ate fresh homemade strawberry ice cream at a little side of the road fruit stand, stocked up on food since we weren't sure if we would be able to buy anything over the next couple days(with Christmas closures and all), and learned an amazing amount about the central Otago gold rush and methods for separating gold from rock. Did you know that the new zealand gold miners were the first ones to use dredging equipment to mine the gold out of their rivers? (by the way, this blog does not condone fact checking) We also found a couple neat tracks along the road to Wanaka that look like they might be fun to explore.

We arrived in Wanaka at around 5:30pm. We found a little hole in the wall restaurant where we had pizza and garlic bread.(Aside: 'Hole in the Wall' is also a Japanese-originated game show, also known as Human Tetris, in which contestants attempt holding correct poses in order to try to fit through cutouts in an oncoming wall. Please watch this video: http://youtube.com/watch?v=lam_1J65mes ) I think this was probably the best garlic bread ever. It was a whole loaf of fresh baked bread smothered in garlic and butter and chives. So good!!! After dinner we decided that we hadn't been in the car enough so we went to the movies. It wasn't a drive in but there was a drive in option...
We saw Elizabeth. Both Drea and I liked it but were unsure of its historical accuracy. The movie theater was a neat little one-screen place. They stopped the movie half way through for intermission during which they sold enormous fresh baked chocolate chip cookies. Brilliant!!! We, of course, took the bait.

We camped in our car that night (surprisingly comfortable!) and were woken early in the morning by some guy who wanted access to his boat ramp. Whoops! Nice views across the lake though.

Once were we up and refreshed we decided to hike up to the top (and not anywhere short of the top, dammit!) of Mt. Roy. It was a 6-7 hour hike straight up and straight down (it seems a lot of the best hikes are like this). It was gorgeous but I'll let the pictures and movies tell the rest of the story.

That's dave, still about 300 meters from the top of the hike.



From the top!!!! Note ominous storm clouds behind us.

They're sooooo cute!

Once we were down we made a brief stop at a golfcross course where Dave mistakenly decided that it must be for Frisbee golf. Since it was Christmas no one else was on the course, so I was able to play a few holes with my discs anyway. Here's what I was supposed to be doing. http://www.golfcross.com/ After that, we decided to head home rather than sleep another night in the car (despite its surprising comfortability). It started raining on the way home and then got progressively worse until it started hailing on us about half way there. It was definitely a relief to get home after the drive. It was much quicker on the way home since everything was closed and it wasn't all that inviting to get out of the car.

Anyway, we're back home now. Drea is working and we're planning our trip to Stewart Island.
Talk to you all later,

Love,
Dave and Andrea

the saga continues

Welcome back to the Dave and Drea New Zealand Adventure Cliffhanger series.

To be honest, I didn't even realize the point at which I had left off the last post as I was rushing out the door. Anyway, when we last left our heroes, Andrea was flying down the wrong side of the road with Dave in hot pursuit. As Dave rounded the corner Andrea looked back into her rearview mirror and wondered to herself what Dave was doing on the other side of the road (during the reconstruction of events it was learned that previous to this Andrea was wondering why it was taking Dave so long to catch up) . Brief moments later she realized and moved herself in to the correct lane. Pretty exciting, eh?!? Ok, sorry, I guess that's a wee anticlimactic.

Anyway, we also finally got all of our goods through customs and home. It took a lot more work than we had anticipated to get it done however. First off, we had to get the MAF inspection and customs ok finalized. Which would have been easier if Dave hadn't misplaced the packing list for all of our boxes (bad Dave). But with that in hand the inspection finally got scheduled for Thursday.

In the meantime, I went about trying to secure some kind of transport from Christchurch to Dunedin for our stuff once it was cleared. The problem turned out that the shipment of good was just the wrong size and weight. I must have called about 20 moving, freight and courier companies. The moving companies had a minimum load size and wanted to charge their minimum fee of $500. The freight companies wouldn't do it because we didn't have an account with them and they wouldn't do one-off transports. And the courier companies after quoting me $300 changed their minds and wouldn't do it because it was too heavy. So come Thursday afternoon, I was so frustrated by the whole thing I was about to jump in the wagon and drive up there to get them myself. But luckily the last company I called (a company that specializes in hauling sheep to Christchurch from here) said they would do it no problem. For $46.38!!!!! Sweet! So now we have our goods, albeit smelling like disinfectant (from MAF spraying for bugs) and sheep (for obvious reasons). The weekend has been spent doing laundry and some extensive airing out of goods.

This weekend also included a couple of friendly get-togethers. We went to an Andrea's informal department work function where we dominated the one round of non-Dunedin-specific trivia and then got obliterated on the rest. We had a really nice lunch with our landlord and a couple (Erin and James) they wanted to introduce us to, Erin was from Andover, Massachusetts. So we had a nice time chatting with them and after it was over Erin and James took us on a little tour of the neighborhood. So that was cool. We also had our friends Brian and Mary and their kids over for breakfast Sunday morning. We whipped up some of our "now world famous" French Toast. Yum.

Other than all that it's been pretty mellow. We have a couple new words to add to the kiwi/english dictionary. If you are going to have "belgium for tea", it means you are having "bologne for dinner". And at work when someone comes around and offers you some square you should say yes. A square, or as I was offered "a triangle square" is a piece of cake. A triangle square just happens to be a triangularly shaped piece of cake. Go figure.

Today it's raining and as I was walking to lunch in the rain I...

tune in again soon...Same bat time, same bat channel!
cheers!

shipping and handling charges may apply

Hey All,

Sorry for the delay between posts. It's been a busy week. We went up to Christchurch this last weekend for a threefold mission.

First, Drea joined up with the Dunedin frisbee club to compete in the New Zealand Coed National Championships. Dave tagged along for the ride. Neither of us remembered to bring our camera's up with us (idiots!) so sorry for the lack of pics. The team had a lot of fun and went 3-1 on the first day that was marked by some pretty heavy winds. We were good with the sunscreen but I'm pretty sure we both ended up with a solid windburn at the end of the day. The second day of play was a little rough and The Dunedin Cortina (the team was named for a late model ford import that I'd never heard of) saw the worse end of a few close games. The team came to Christchurch with 9 able bodied men and left with 5. So you could probably attribute their lackluster finish to attrition.

Second, dave had scheduled (that's shed-juled in NZ speak) meetings in Christchurch Monday morning to meet with his counterparts in the OPUS office there. As part of the deal OPUS put the both of us in a super swanky hotel right off the main park in Christchurch, with an expense account (sweet!!). If we had known how nice it was we would have hurried over there right after the last game. They had free golf clubs for a free golf course, free spa, free food, free gym, free free free free free!! http://www.chateau-park.co.nz/

I got up early and wandered down to the office. Met a whole bunch of people that I'm going to have a hard time remembering the names of but I feel like I was able to make a decent impression on everyone I met. So that was good. I think Drea took a bath while I was out. (Free too!)

After the meetings and on to the third part of our grand plan. OPUS had set us up with a rental car to get back to Dunedin and we had received word from the shipping company earlier in the week that our goods had arrived and were available in Christchurch. So we were able to talk our way into a rental car big enough to transport all the stuff we shipped oversea. That's when things started to fall apart in our grand plan. It turns out the shipping company neglected to send me the cover letter that went with my shipments arrival notice. So I had no idea that I needed to schedule a MAF inspection (that's the ministry of Agriculture and forestry, damn you Ray Fort) and get approval from customs to collect my goods. I had assumed, and the form that said "your goods are available at..." led me to believe, that all this stuff was already taken care of. Well, after several trips back and forth across Christchurch we realized that this wasn't going to happen today. So, extremely frustrated, we drove back to Dunedin.

We returned the rental car the next morning and had a little excitement on the way back. Drea drove the rental car and I was following in ours. We stopped for gas about a kilometer from the rental agency near the airport. Drea jumped in the rental and took off and I jumped in mine to follow. As i get on the road I see Drea in her car half a km away on the wrong side of the road. AAAHHHHHH!!! So I race after her with the horns blasting and the lights flashing as she goes around the corner. She goes another half block before




Gotta run but I'll finish this post later. Couldn't save it as a draft so it forced me to publish. so here you go...

National Jandals Day

Hey all,

Happy National Jandals Day from the land of wacky holidays!!! For those of you who have no idea what a Jandal is (I had to ask), it's a flip flop. So here it is, Friday December 7th. National Flip Flop Day. So here at Dave's work things have gotten even more casual than normal. I personally didn't think it was possible. Just about everyone here today is wearing shorts, t-shirts and flip flops. If you don't believe me you can see for yourself... http://www.nationaljandalday.co.nz/ Of course, I forgot that I had a meeting with the Regional Transit agency this morning. Luckily I brought a pair of back up shoes.

Also to get everyone in the festive spirit here at Opus, they have instituted the 12 days of OPUS Christmas. I'll have to figure out a way to post the schedule on here but it includes a BBQ (yeah, summer Christmas), gift giving, and a coloring contest (who can color (sorry, colour) the best picture of David Hasselhoff, not kidding!)

In other news, Drea and I witnessed a rather bizarre episode last night. There was an ambulance driving slowly throughout the neighborhood with its sirens blaring every few seconds. The ambulance personel were jumping out of the ambulance and running up to every house and knocking on doors. We were a little disconcerted until we found out what it was. Any guesses??

That's right, it was a canned food drive.

Anyway, we're off to Christchurch where Drea is going to compete in the NZ national coed ultimate frisbee championships. I, unfortunately, am still on injured reserve. In exciting news, I did go for my very first run since my ankle sprain last night. And it has never felt so good to run.

Love to all,
Dave and Andrea

ah the internet!

Hey all,

So we've finally got the internet running at the house. Once telecom got around to putting us on their database and then having one of their service crews come out this morning to fix the wires leading to our place (hope nobody tried to call the last couple days as our phone's been dead) then we were in business. I'm going to try and throw in a few pics that show some of the things we've tried to describe.

Andrea's brother Mark made the very apt observation that our previous video showing the chicken capture reminded him of Rocky 2,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBEDwm0Xu9Q

See any resemblance? Apollo Creed watchout! I'm training hard down here.

Last night turned out to be Dave's company Christmas party. It was held at the Glenfalloch Gardens out on the peninsula. It's strange having a Christmas party where it's light out until 10. We did a fair amount of wandering around the gardens before dinner. They were beautiful with lots of cute little paths winding all over the place. There was a band playing all your favorite 70's hits and a pretty decent buffet that both of us ate too much of. I don't think either of us has the right mentality for buffet style eating. We forgot to bring the camera with us so there aren't any pictures of Andrea's fancy dress but hopefully someone at work got one and I can post it here later. She looked fantastic (take my word for it, this is Dave typing in case you were curious)

Today we woke up late since we were waiting around for the technician to arrive. Once he fixed everything up for us we got up, made pancakes and then heading into town. Today turned out to be a big shopping day. We went to the farmers market and bought some veggies and a pie (pies are the quintissential new zealand dish here and we've heard that a lot of people have pie every day, after eating our pie this evening we will not be that type of person). We ran a couple errands and then went to the art store. Dave has really enjoyed the art class that we've been going to and wanted to buy himself some paint and brushes and things so he could continue with it. Drea had to talk him down from buying a couple hundred dollars worth of art supplies. So after much deliberation we walked out with $70 worth of stuff and felt pretty good about it. Here is a picture of the two of us with our work. All you art critics out there be kind, it's our first work since third grade.

And in case you were worried that we weren't going to talk about birds in this entry, don't worry. We had a minor scare last night as our beloved (back to beloved status) Coco somehow got out of the coop and dissappeared. After a restless night of worry we were all set to go door to door around the neighborhood and post fliers, but she turned up in the morning looking for food.
Also in chicken news, after a short getting to know (and peck) you period, our two chickens have now totally bonded. They are rarely seen apart and have started doing choreographed dance together. See the following series:
Here's a picture of an Albatross!!!

And here's the view from our house at sunset!!!