Year In Review: Teaching in a Public NZ High School

The year is finally over. February to early December is a heck of a year. I’ve learned a ton, mostly things I didn’t know I didn’t know. I’ve met a ton of wonderful people. I almost cried during my farewell speech. Those of you that know me will know it takes a lot for me to cry in front of boys. I am left with one overall thought; this is so much better than teaching in the States.

This year I worked in an Auckland public high school as a LTR (long term reliever). Basically, I was filling in for pregos. Most LTR’s will have you working for a stated term (up to a full school year) teaching a full load of classes. If you’re a foreign teacher trying to get your first NZ job most likely your going to land a LTR, that’s the life of an immigrant. Better than working pineapple fields.

There’s a rating system for schools in NZ. My school was a 4 out of 10 (or 12, what do I know). This means that there was an occasional chair thrown, and I learn to be happy with “Miss” at least its better than “Bitch”. If you’re working at a docile 1 school there has probably been a stabbing or three within the last few years. To compensate for you fearing for your life the Gov’t gives you lots of money for printing and office supplies. Judging by just how bloody hard it was for me to get a stapler (I love you Sue!) a little stabbing never hurt anyone. A docile 10 school is just stupid. Unless you’re keen on small classrooms with well-behaved students interested in learning, don’t bother. As we say in NZ, dry!

As a NZ teacher you get 5 hours of prep time each week. The down side of this is these five hours can be divvied out however the gods will. One of my good friends had four of her five hours on Wednesday. It may sound good for a minute, but we all know our attention span is equal if not shorter than our students. After about 30 minutes of her four hour prep she stalking the hallways looking for people to entertain her.

There is also no limit to when the workday starts and ends. The Social Studies dept. thought they would be awesome and have their meetings 8am on Tuesday, English 3:30 on Wednesday, Travel and Tourism 8am Thursday, Homeroom meeting 8:20am Thursday. God damn bloody hell, I tried my hardest to miss at least two a week. I’d like to think I have important things going on in my life that justify missing many of these meetings. There is no compensation for extra curricular actives except for the occasional free beer.

Classics Fieldtrip 2010

On the upside of things my grade book consisted of no more than 20 grades for the year. There is NO paperwork to be filled out for anything, and right or wrong there is no special anything for students with special needs in the mainstream classroom.

If your still having a hard time picturing yourself as a NZ teacher imagine your day without threat of a lawsuit, all major end of year national exams have huge impacts on the students future, and fieldtrips out the butt! I’m talking week long camping, museums, hiking, sand-surfing etc. Stuff no American youth has dared to dream of as a sanctioned school trip!

Education is still underfunded. Classrooms are starving for current technology, teachers are always asked to do more work than the day allows for. But my time is used to prepare and teach students. I found this to be a huge relief after teaching in the States for eight years.

Austin ain’t got nothin’ on Auckland

(written by Travis)

In order to understand why I’ve come to believe that Austin’s got nothing on Auckland I need to share with you a short history of my life’s search for the perfect city (and by that I mean the perfect city for me):

I grew up in bum-fuck Texas. The places I grew up (Paris, Texas and Jourdanton, Texas) were generally understood to be front runners in the contest for the most boring places in the world.

I literally witnessed a foreign exchange student weep openly about how boring it was in Jourdanton. Through tears she bemoaned to me what a letdown it was to be forced to endure having her preciously short life sucked away by the quicksand of eternity that was the city limits of Jourdanton, and to add insult to injury, she expected all of America to be like downtown New York or Los Angeles.

Leaving Jourdanton wasn’t the sole reason I joined the military, but it was certainly a motivating factor. Getting to see a part of the world that wasn’t boring as death was worth dying for to me. So I joined and saw the world. Then, when I got out of the military I was free to move anywhere in the world (more or less). And I chose to move to Austin, TX.

Why did I come back to Texas if it was so boring? Because to me, Austin wasn’t Texas. Austin was Austin. I’d idolized Austin like a Mecca ever since I was a kid. It was the capitol of my home state, which I’d been brainwashed into loving even if I hated Texas. Plus, it was nationally known as one of the most hip places in America. Not only did it have a reputation among travel magazines as being one of the most environmentally conscious and tattoo friendly places in the Western World but the weather never gets too cold, and the property and job markets were looking lucrative.

So I moved there and got most of what I was looking for but also got a sour taste in my mouth.

Austin is a city with its own catch phrase: “Keep Austin Weird.” Those three words express a popular public sentiment among Austinites that Austin should be a fun, crazy, colorful place. The fact that the city coined that kind of philosophy is what attracted me to Austin, but I only ever found a soft shell of that idea bubble in reality. Most of Austin was dominated by ubber-strict professional, corporate businesses, overpaid and intellectually lazy government pensioners, underpaid and overworked immigrant/criminal laborers and intellectually lackadaisical psuedo-Christians. And then there were the ever present gangstas and bums. And I mean literally on every street corner there was someone who you weren’t sure was going to shoot you or ask you for money. Objectively speaking, for a lot of reasons, Austin was a pretty unsafe place.

There were a lot of kick-ass Mexican and BBQ restaurants and good swimming holes around Austin though. Plus there was a vibrant music scene if you were into that. But that was all basically underground. The mainstream reality of the city was that it was an Orwellian/Office Space monster in denial of it’s suffocatingly evil nature.

Turns out Auckland is what Austin wants to be. Talk about weird. Auckland is so weird there isn’t a word that measures its caliber of weirdness. First of all, Austin mainly is mainly made up of white, black and Mexican Americans, and they all know exactly where each other stands. That’s three cultures that are 90% the same bickering incessantly about the other 10%.

Auckland is full of ancient Maori island warriors, British Commonwealth refugees, European convicts and religious derelicts, Indian entrepreneurs, Asian wanderers and thrill seeking riff-raff from every corner of the globe celebrating each others differences. I’m a Texan living with a Yankee, 2 Aussies, an Argentinian and an Ethiopian. I work with Russians, South Africans, Kiwis, Aussies, Americans, Indians, Maoris and Fijians. There’s a Turkish cafe within walking distance of my house where I can buy a truly ethnic meal from halfway across the world for under $6. In fact, within a 20 minute drive I could probably sample a dish from a 1st generation chef from 30% of the cultures in the world. And with all that diversity I’m not scared of getting shot or beat up when I walk around town. I’m not saying there aren’t any places I wouldn’t go after dark, but my safety isn’t an all-present concern like it was in America.

And it’s not just the skin and the food. It’s the stuff you can do here. For example, I”m going to make a list of things I can do within a 3 hour drive of where I live. Write these down and put a check next to each one you can do within a 3 hour drive of where you live. I’m not making this list to brag. Hell, I haven’t done most of the stuff on this list either. I’m trying to prove the point how cool Auckland is. Anyway, here’s the stuff you can do within a 3 hour drive of Auckland:

snowboarding

surfing on water

surfing on sand

glow in the dark minigolf

drinking at a bar made of ice

hiking through rain forests

white water kayaking/tubing

spelunking through caverns with glow worms

whale/dolphin watching

coral reef scuba and snorkeling

genuine global gourmet dining

sailing, skydiving, bunji jumping and zip line-ing

seeing world class theater and concerts

Celebrating public festivals from every Asian, Russian, Middle Eastern, European and American holiday

gambling and having sex with prostitutes without fear of legal repercussions

driving a car without insurance

I’m telling you. Auckland is the egalitarian melting pot that America wishes it still was. There’s something wild and crazy on every street corner here. The shops are random like an acid trip, and so are the accents. The sense of unknown and adventure in Auckland is as exhilarating and humbling as shaved testicles.

I guess what I’m trying to say is…

Auckland is as exhilarating as wintergreen gum for the testicles where as Austin is like a slightly rough “good game” pat there at best; Austin is a fantasy in theory but rougher and more violating than you’re comfortable with in practice.

That’s why Austin ain’t got nothin’ on Auckland.

Miranda Rights

(Written by Travis)

My family in Texas has been complaining to me via Skype that the weather is hot as the devil’s armpits right now, but on my side of the equator it’s 3 months into winter. And since the roughneck architects who designed this country didn’t see the need to put pansy insulation in houses and my flatmates don’t believe in space heaters I’ve been fantasizing about 104 degree weather.

Texas winter’s are odd. Sometimes the weather will forget that it’s supposed to be winter and will lapse back into summer for a week of scalding heat and then drop back to freezing temperatures for a week, give you a day of 80 degree weather just to get your hopes up and then drop to 55 for a month. New Zealand will warm up a bit around lunch time, but other than that the weather is pretty monotonous, and since I work the night shift I don’t wake up in time to enjoy the 2-3 hours of semi-warm weather each day. So I decided to seek out alternative ways to beat the cold.

What New Zealand lacks in range of weather it more than makes up for in range of geography. One luxury offered up the earth here is an abundance of hot springs. There’s even a beach with hot springs bubbling out of the sand and flowing into the ocean, but that was 2 hours away. So we did a Google search for a closer hot spring and found one 50 minutes outside of Auckland in the almost nonexistent beach town of Miranda.

One of the things I’ve come to love most about New Zealand is that in addition to there being cool things to do everywhere, the drive to get those attractions is as enjoyable as the attractions themselves. You remember the cool scenery in Lord of the Rings? That wasn’t one little slice of New Zealand. The whole country looks like that. So everywhere you drive is like driving through a quaint picturesque fantasy world. Add to that the wide diversity of races and cultures here and you’re guaranteed to have a wide variety of delectable dining and snacking opportunities along your journey. Plus, people build a lot of weird shit here.

So on our 50 minute drive through Middle Earth we had Italian ice cream at an Asian farmer’s market, stopped at a beach made entirely of sea shells and found a giant metal bird.

The hot spring in Miranda used to be a hot swamp in the middle of nowhere, but the swamp was drained, a town was built over the swamp and named after a British warship that was used to oppress the Maoris, and a modern swimming pool was built over the spring.

The facilities were kind of run down by mainstream corporate American standards, but I rather like that about New Zealand. It doesn’t put on airs…or charge for them either. The hot spring was just a giant outdoor swimming pool that just happened to be steaming hot and smell faintly of sulfur. The people running the pool all wore jackets and toboggans while the visitors wore

swimsuits. Children ran from the water trailing steam to the trampoline you wouldn’t find at an American public swimming pool because the insurance rates and liability would be too high. And like everywhere in New Zealand, the radio blasted American music from 20 years ago.

Best Pizza in Auckland

It’s hard to put in words, but the best part of the trip was…nothing. We didn’t do anything. We had a lazy trip to a lazy hot pool where we loitered for about 4 hours before we hopped back to Auckland and picked up a hot pizza from Hell’s Pizza on our way back to our familiar electric blanket warmed bed (but of course, not before taking a long shower to get the faint smell of sulfur off our relaxed bodies).

Some Footnotes: Relationships and Moving to Another Country

I first want to say that I understand my situation is mine and may not be of interest to most people.  On the other hand when things were at their lowest I tried to find how other couples dealt with moving to another country and wasn’t able to find much on the web.  Most people said it was hard, some said the relationship would strengthen, but very few offered any real life experiences.

My partner has posted his suggestions to making a relationship work during a move, reading his blog might offer a good alternative text to my observations.

I had dreamed of moving to NZ for four years before I was able to get on the plane.  That might not seem like a long time but I’ve had quite a few dreams, first Japan, then Jordan with the Peace Corps. Considering everything four years was a chunk of time.  I had decided that I would move to NZ by myself if needed, I understood that it is unfair to expect anyone to move across the world just for a relationship.  Most Americans want very much to stay in America.  But from the beginning I REALLY hoped my partner would come with me.

I tend to be the paper pusher in the house, so our relationship was spared most of the stress until the actual packing, a huge blessing I suppose.  I had ideas that it would be somehow romantic to sell off everything we own.  Spend the last few nights in our house empty of everything but our cats.  I definitely watch to many movies.

Moving sucks, selling everything and then moving is a hundred times worse.  Selling the small stuff was somewhat tolerable, we posted adds on Craigslist and just camped outside with beers while strangers went in and took whatever they wanted for pennies.  Selling the truck and motorcycle were the beginning of what would be nine months of worrying about money.

I didn’t have that many friends in Austin, this was part of my reason for wanting to leave so badly.  But even my partner, whom had called Texas home for most of his life was having to deal with finding out just who of his ‘friends’ can’t make it to say goodbye.  It was clear that most people thought we were crazy, or at least didn’t understand why we were going.

By the time we cleared out of our house and moved in with my partners mother for the last two weeks before our flight we had lost all romantic ideas.  We were still presenting a unified front, but private time tended to be a struggle.  There was a longing for the whole thing to be over, just most to NZ and we would be happy.

I will never move to another country without a job again.  I had dreams of working as a substitute teacher for the last few months of the year, before picking up a permanent job in January.  Looking back it only took 2.5 months for my partner to pick up a job, and four months for me.  Considering we came on a visitors visa and had no contacts, we did pretty well.

These first months where hell.  Every dollar spent was painful.  But so was the boredom.  We started to resent each other.  I felt guilty for buying a cup of coffee, and then angry when my partner would buy some beer.  There seemed to be this unstated rule in the beginning that under no circumstance should we talk about how shitty we felt.  Since we weren’t really seeing NZ, because that would be a $5 bus fare, we weren’t doing anything fun, having conversation with any interesting people, or otherwise engaging ourselves in anything but our growing discomfort with each other.

As the months went on my partner talked of going home.  Out of those conversations came the idea that we would both stick it out for four months, then part ways if things were still not working.   I’ve heard many times growing up that some extremely high percentage of marriages end due to, or during financial hardship.  Looking back I don’t know how that percentage is not 100%.  Being broke sucks, but being broke with another person is much worse.

Not my Dream Home

About a month into the move we met another American couple that had made the move the same time as us.  They also seemed to be at the same stage of a troubled relationship that we were at.  It was great to talk with her.  We were experiencing many of the same problems, the money, drinking, boredom, general annoyances.  Though as time went on I became certain that my partner was attracted to her.  I knew then that it was just that he wasn’t going though all the stress with her, but I still couldn’t get it out of my head.

When my partner got a job it only made things slightly better since we were not spending so much time together.  But again money issues were always there.  He was making the money so it made sense that he got to spend it.  I was making nothing, so I should sit down and shut up.  We never brought it up in discussion until months later, but that’s what I felt like at the time. I thought once one of us got a job things would begin to improve but that was not the case, until both of use were working, spending time away from home, and had our own money to spend things continued to suck.

It has now been nine months since my partner and I moved to NZ.  We have had many conversations about splitting up in that time.  In the end it came down to us forgiving each other.  To say that we treated each other horribly during our moving experience would be an understatement.  Neither of use had ever been through something so stressful, and we both cracked.

Before the move I read a bunch of blogs from people that had moved to another country.  Many of them mentioned it taking at least six months before things settle down.  I thought this was ridiculous. Even during the hard times I thought I was settling in faster then those people.  I was wrong, it has taken me nine months.

I won’t say that this move has made my relationship with my partner stronger.  The only thing that has gotten us to this point is the decision to stick it out for at least four months.  We have both since agreed that all wrongs during that time were do to extreme conditions, conditions we will never allow ourselves to be in again.

Moving to another country sucked.  Moving to another country with my partner made our relationship suck.  But things become normal again.  There was a light at the end of the tunnel, it was just much further away then I first imagined.

How to Speak Kiwi

“sweet as.” – This is like saying, “Cool.” Also, you can substitute “sweet” with any adjective.

 “Living in New Zealand is sweet as, bro.” or “That shirt is expensive as.”

“tog” – a bathing suite

“Grab your togs. We’re going to Hot Water Beach in Coromandel this weekend.”

“getting pissed” or “getting on the piss” – getting drunk

“My mates and I were getting on the piss a bit at the pub last night.”

“taking the piss” – mocking or harassing someone. It can also be used to describe “pulling someone’s leg.”

“One of my mates got bashed at the pub last night for taking the piss at this hori fellow.” Or “My friend told me he slept with a sweet as girl from the pub last night, and I told to stop taking the piss out of me.”

“hori” – an adjective to describe someone who is trashy, unkempt, and low class and uncultured. It’s the New Zealand equivalent of calling someone trailer trash. It used to be a derogatory term specifically directed at Maori, but anyone can be a hori now.

“My mates and I were getting on the piss at the pub last night and we were taking the piss out of this hoary fellow because he was wearing togs and smelled like sheep.”

“pie” – a meat pie

“For lunch I got a pie at the dairy.”

“dairy” – a convenience store

“I’m going to run down to the dairy to pick up a pie and cigarettes.”

“tea” – lunch

“Want to join me for tea? I’m going to McDonalds.”

“full stop” – a period (the grammatical kind)

“You need to put a full stop at the end of that sentence or it will be a run-on sentence.”

This next word isn’t different from English, but if you want to sound Kiwi, try to use it at least twice in every conversation:

“heaps” – a lot

“Don’t take heaps of luggage when you travel. It’s heaps more trouble than it’s worth.”

“Capsicum” – bell peppers

“Would you like capsicum on your salad?”

“Smoko” – a smoke break

“I can’t talk now, but my smoko is in 15 minutes.”

“Fanny” – A women’s private parts.

“Does this dress make my fanny look big?” “No. It doesn’t make your vagina look big.”

“Torch” – Flashlight

“Make sure to bring your torch on the night hike.”

How to Experience Living in a Foreign Country

You can live in a foreign country for 1-3 years pretty easily. All you have to do is get a working holiday visa. It’s staying in a country permanently that takes a ton of paperwork and thousands of dollars in fees.

I’ve met hundreds of people from all over the world who have taken 6 months to 3 years out of their old lives to live and work in a foreign country, and frankly, some of them were pretty damned dumb. It’s really not that difficult. If you can move from one city to another city in your home country you’d be surprised how capable you are of moving to a city in another country. The general public just doesn’t seem to grasp how realistic an option working temporarily in another country is.

I’ll explain the steps to living and working temporarily in New Zealand, but this advice is pretty universal.

Step 0: Get a passport If you can’t figure out how to get a passport then don’t worry about moving to a foreign country. Despite what I said two paragraphs ago, you’re too dumb to survive in a foreign country.

Step 1: Fill out and submit the paperwork to get a working holiday visa. A working holiday visa to New Zealand was $120 NZ last time I checked. You can afford that. You’ll also need to get a medical physical done. Do you know how to schedule a physical? You call your doctor, set an appointment, take 30 minutes out of your day to have some blood drawn, and then you wait for your results. You might pay around $200 for your physical for a working holiday visa. You might pay $500 for your physical for a permanent residency visa.

Step 2: Buy a plane ticket. Once you get your working holiday visa all that’s left to do is buy a plane ticket. If you keep your schedule open, watch the prices of flights and don’t leave at the busiest travel time of the year you’d be surprised how cheap you can get around the world. $900 will get you almost anywhere if you can wait. Otherwise, $1,500 will get you anywhere if you book it just a little early.

3. Go there. Go to the airport. Then go sit on a plane. Eat a hot meal, watch a bad children’s movie and then get off the plane. Walk out of the new airport you find yourself in. Walk to the street curb and hail a taxi.

4. Get a place to stay. Tell the taxi driver to take you to the 3rd cheapest hostel in town. Trust me, no matter what city you go to you don’t want to stay at the two worst hostels in town. Go cheap, but don’t stay at a death trap.

In New Zealand a very popular alternative to staying in a hostel is to buy a camper van or station wagon that is fully furnished to live out of for backpacking/camping purposes. There’s always a few for sale on http://www.trademe.co.nz. Chances are your hostel will have fliers posted from travelers trying to sell the camper they bought for their trip that is now over. I’ve met one or two people who sold their travel van for a profit at the end of their vacation.  Note: this may not be safe in every country….but it is in New Zealand.

5. Get a job. If you stay at a hostel you might find fliers for people looking for backpackers to do seasonal work. Otherwise, you’ll probably meet someone who knows where to find it. If you were smart you would have found out where all the work is before you arrived. If not you can spend your days walking down the street with a stack full of resumes giving them to every shop on every street. Or you can pay $2 per hour to surf the internet doing Google searches for “Seasonal Work” “Fruit Pickers” and “Kitchen staff.”

And that’s it. That’s how millions of people travel the world and live in foreign countries. You just submit an application for a visa, buy a plane ticket, go there, get a place to stay and then find a job. It doesn’t take a superhuman feat to accomplish. Regular people are quite capable of this. Once you’ve got the hang of it you can just hop from country to country for years without stopping. Note: You probably won’t be able to save any money for retirement during that time though. So think carefully about how long you do this for.

The hard part about spending 1-3 years in a foreign country is paying for it. But let’s break down the cost and see how much it really is:

$120 for the visa.

$200 for the medical physical

$300 for backpack and travel gear

$1000 for a plane ticket

$400 per month rent

$100 per week for food

$300 for things you’re going to ignorantly pay too much for before you learn the ropes in the new city you’re in

$100 per week for having fun

So basically it’s going to cost about $2500 to get into the country and get a roof over your head. Once you’ve accomplished that you just need about $1000 for every month you expect to be unemployed. However, that can be reduced by $400 per month if you live in a camper van. However, you’ll have to bring an extra $1500-$4000 to buy the van.

Assuming you don’t buy a camper van, it’d be ideal to allow yourself 3 months to find a job. It shouldn’t take that long unless you procrastinate, but it’s better to be safe than sorry, and this will allow you to be a little pickier about what job you take. So plan to bring $3,000 for living expenses.

That brings the total cost of moving to a foreign country to $5,500 (assuming you can find a job in 3 months).  Through in traveler’s insurance, emergency money and the possibility that you might have to prove you have at least $5000 in your bank account before you’re granted a working holiday visa and we’ll just call the grand total $7500. Of course, the more you bring the more options and less stress you’ll have. Actually, this whole price list is moot because in order to qualify for a working holiday visa you have to prove you have $10,000 available in your bank account. But the immigration board set that requirement because it’s a few thousand dollars more than a frugal traveler realistically needs.

So here’s what it all comes down to. I can’t say if you should move to another country for 1-3 years or not, but if it’s a dream of yours then the only thing standing between it and you is $10,000 and a round trip plane ticket. How much is that really? You can save that much. If you don’t have that kind of money, ask yourself what luxuries you could sacrifice to get it. You’re probably pissing most of your money away on frivolous things anyway. Would it be worth sacrificing some of those unnecessary indulgences for 6 month to 1 year to have the experience of a lifetime?

All I’m saying is that it has been done, and you can probably do it too if you tried.

Easter Weekend Route 1S

The next day we headed South East towards Ruakaka. Along the way we stopped at a native Mauri’s farm to visit the glow worm caves on their property. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to get any pictures of the glow worms as photography was prohibited, but if you’ve ever seen the Milky Way galaxy in the night sky then you have an idea of what we saw. I’m glad I finally saw them, if for no other reason then I can stop mentioning them to locals.  While glow worms are cool, I have a feeling they are as impressive to locals as petting zoos are to people that grew up in Wisconsin.

After the glow worm cave we stopped in Whangarei for a quick lunch, and a photo op of a waterfall that our Lonely Planet guidebook described as, “The Paris Hilton of New Zealand waterfalls: not the most impressive but certainly the most photographed.”  It was great, a 30 sec. walk from the parking lot.  Just the kind of hike I was looking forward to on day three of our road trip.

Whangarei Bay

We then took a leisurely stroll around the Whangarei harbor to look at all the sail boats.  There was on old man in some dorky looking clothing walking the piers with us.  I think he was really rich, and was looking at the boats less in awe and more as an investor.  It would have been funny if he fell into the water.

We eventually made our way to Ruakaka and set up camp at Ruakaka Motor Camp.  I was less then impressed.  The camp was rock covered by a thin layer of sand.  Setting up camp had more to do with finding big rocks to nail the tent stakes down with then anything else.  The lady at the front desk said something about peoples’ tents blowing away during the night.  I was damn sure that wasn’t going to happen to us, we strapped the tent to the car!

We played with some ducks for awhile. Feeding them the bread I had imagined we would have been using for peanut butter nutella sandwiches.  No matter how much I  try to pack 3 square meals a day for our camping trips we always feed the bread to the ducks and finish off the cookies and chips with the beer.

There was an open air church tent set up outside our camp with a variety show going on that night. Travis went down to check it out and hear “Amazing Grace” played on the bagpipes. He says Amazing Grace, I think they were giving lessons to 10 year olds.  Next up was a group of 9ish year old girls performed a choreographed dance to a Chipmunkette’s

version of Beyonce’s “If you liked it then you should have put a ring on it”.  I found this bad for everyone, children, adults, birds, worms.  I should of had nightmares that night.

Goats Island

The next day we took some photos of the morning sunrise across the bay and scooted down to Goat Island. Goat Island is a marine preserve with world class snorkeling that beats anything Hawaii has to offer. Unfortunately, the waves kicked up too much silt to see the underwater attraction we came to see. Even without being able to see the firework display of fish we still had a fantastic time playing in the ocean and sunbathing on the beach. We plan on going back next weekend just to camp and enjoy the scenery on land.

After taking a break at Goat Island we headed back home to Auckland where we still have a luxurious view of one of the many bays.  It was back to work for Travis but I will continue to enjoy my 2 week break from school between terms.

Easter Weekend Route 12E

The next day we took our time packing up our gear and headed further north and deeper into the forest. We stopped to take a short hike to see the 7^th oldest Kauri tree in New Zealand and pick up a post card for my aunt. It was a pretty damned big tree. A cool thing about trees that big in New Zealand is that they literally have other plants growing off of them (not growing up the, but growing off of them).

7th Oldest Kauri Tree in NZ

After getting some photos with of big trees we pushed on North to Opononi to the famed sand dunes.  As we emerged from the jungle in our little blue go-kart the ocean opened up before us and provided an awesome view of the dunes across the bay. Not willing to miss a photo opportunity we stopped for pictures. We got the pictures, and left, unbeknownst to us we left our camera at the scenic vantage point.

After leaving the vantage point we headed down into the town, had some greasy burgers for lunch and checked out the visitors center for souvenirs to send home. While we were at the visitors center a lady accosted us frantically asking something about a photo. We didn’t know what she was talking about. Travis thought she was a well dressed homeless lady short some marbles and told her to get lost, she wasn’t going to get our money.  I had a feeling she was just deaf and confused.  Turns out we are just assholes.  She brought back her husband who spoke English, turns out she was German not homeless. He explained that they’d found our camera at the vantage point, saw Travis’s picture on the camera, put it in a plastic bag and hid it. They had then gone around town looking for our car, and ultimately the person he saw in the photo. Germany: 1, America: -14578675. Thank you awesome German couple.

We got our camera back, which was hidden, I mean by sitting on the ground completely out in the open with people walking by (and yet nobody took it). Then we went down to the docks to get a ride across the bay to the sand dunes. There’s only one old guy who shuttles people across the bay in town, and he was out shuttling when we got there. So we (not reluctantly at all) stopped at a pub for some beer and waited for him to get back.  Travis complained about the price, and then the taste before finishing his and my glass. Pricey and tasteless is still beer.

We caught our ferry to the dunes. The cost of the ferry included being lent some boogie boards to ride down the dunes on. And…we spent the next hour or two surfing on dunes. It was pretty cool. To be honest after the thrill of running up the hill and sliding down, we spent most of the time splashing in the ocean and throwing sand at each other.  Both activities much easier then climbing up a large sand hill.

After we were ferried back to our car we headed East towards the Bay of Islands. However, in between the sand dunes and the Bay of Islands we stopped at Ngawha to soak our road weary, sandy bodies in the natural hot sulfur springs.

Ginns Ngawha Spring Pools

Man, what can I saw about Ngawha Pools? If Barter Town from “Mad Max Beyond Thunder Dome” had a day spa, this is what it would have looked like.  In other words, it was awesome. They had about 13 different pools varying from lukewarm to scolding hot, and the whole thing stank of dead baby farts. 15 minutes in those pools and my back ache was gone as well as the wart on Travis’s left foot. They say it’s good for arthritis too, but I’m not old enough to put that to the test.

After spending about 1 hour there we left reeking of sulfur and headed to the Bay of Island Holiday Park. True to New Zealand fashion they had all the bathing facilities we needed to rid ourselves of the pungent odors we’d collected along the way.

We set up camp next to a serene babbling brook and immediately struck up a friendship with our camp neighbors who were an American and South African couple. We spent the evening and the next morning comparing our experiences and chatting about the culture we gladly left behind.

Ten Things An American will get Used to After Living in NZ for Six Months

Driving: Driving on the left hand side of the road for the first time is more terrifying than you’d think, but you’ll get used to it within a week. That or you’ll die in a fiery, head-on collision. Eventually you’ll stop having anxiety attacks every time you drive through a roundabout.

Your co-workers wearing the same shirt as you: That’s because there is one mall. And in that mall two stores that you buy clothes from.  These are the same two stores for all twenty-something women that you work with.

Snubbing your nose at grocery store veggies: You get them fresh from the farm of course. Plus, in the winter the vegetable selection at normal grocery stores get real sad and real expensive.

Your new diet: Nobody tells you this, but when you move to a new country you have to adapt your diet to what food is available locally. When you change what goes in your body you change what comes out of your body.

Chemical withdrawals: Cigarettes cost $13-$19 per pack. Beer costs $11-$19 per six pack, and liquor is something you only buy on very special occasions. Since you just spent all your money moving to a foreign country you can’t afford to be an addict.

Going to bed at 9pm: Because everything is closed by 7, and two hours of staring at you partner is enough for anyone.

A diminishing dislike for cops: You can go weeks without seeing a cop, and when you do see them you don’t have to be afraid of them, because unlike the cops in the United States, their motto isn’t, “To terrorize and fleece.”

Seeing people not wearing shoes. They’re everywhere, and that’s fine.

Real ethnic restaurants: Made by real ethnic families, with real ethnic atmosphere.

Calling NZ home: it may have taken six months but now remember your phone number and address.

And one more for fun: You’ll finally accept that you’ll never be able to pronounce local words with your American accent.  There might have been hope if you were only up against a local language, but in NZ it’s the British version of the local language.  Look away and mumble.

Moving Day Again

I have to say I am a pro at moving. In October Travis and I moved from Austin to a crappy Auckland hostel.  A week later we moved to a very expensive but empty apartment in the city.  Within a month the apartment was sold. So we moved into a college student dump outside of the city.  Our sub-lease quickly ran out there.  Then we moved ten minutes away into a lovely little house with some not so lovely roommates.  Now just a short 4 weeks in, we are moving to Manukau City (just south of Auckland) on Friday.

Both Travis and I have high hopes for the new place.  We will be living with an older couple and a few random roommates.  The old man is trying to start Fish N Chips Friday lunch (that’s what they call dinner here).  Travis and I both gave him our full support.  When we went to look at the room there was an Argentinean couple camping in the backyard for a few nights.  I didn’t get the story behind their plight since they didn’t speak much English, but they joined everyone for fish n chips none the less. There is a maid that comes once a week, and two very friendly, and most importantly clean cats call the house home.

The new place also has the benefit of being a 5 minute commute to work for both Travis and I.   Because I have to cross a big bridge to get to work it looks like I will be getting to take the car to work most days while Travis bus/bikes to work.  But I’m not a cruel person, I anticipate we will be switching off who gets the car and who takes the bus/bike once winter sets in.

We hope everyone is doing well.

Amber and Travis