Father's Day

Ok, so Father's Day went a bit by the wayside, but at least I got to talk to daddy-o in the midst of my visitors. In true blog style, however, this is my tribute post to dads everywhere, albeit a little late. I love you daddy!!!

Guests!

We have guests. Kane's friend's sister, Angelica, got here today, and Carissa and EJ arrive tomorrow morning. Whoo hoo! Angelica only stays for a couple nights then comes back for another couple later in the week while Carissa and Elijah stay for 10 days. Should be fun!

In related news, we rented a car today, which I picked up and drove around solo while Kane waited for Angelica to arrive. Yes, me, gigantic Toyota sedan, navigating the streets of central Melbourne alone. It wasn't nearly as bad as I had expected - the left side of the road thing isn't actually the hard part. It's easy in urban areas since you just sort of follow everyone else. The thing that's quite the doozy is that the steering wheel is on the right side of the car. This means that everything is backward and that the bulk of the car is to my left rather than my right. So when I try to deftly swing around the car in front of me who is waiting for a parallel parking space, I need a significantly larger berth than my car-brain is allowing. I didn't hit anyone, but the first time I passed someone like that I proceeded to make a mental, if not verbal, actually, note to not get so god damn close on the left side.

The other thing that's funny is when I'm on a street turning onto another street with no light or stop sign. I look for cars both ways like normal, but I realize that I have no idea which way I'm supposed to turn or which way the cars are supposed to come from. It's funny what's ingrained in you and what can adapt easily. I also actually laughed out loud when I looked up to see the rear view perched on the "windscreen" (windshield) facing the wrong way! It's obviously angled such that the person in the driver's seat can see, but it looks backward to me, as thought it's facing the passenger.

Anyway, no casualties so far and I managed to pick up the car, get to Marc and Alana's, go to work, go to the grocery store, and come back home. All without getting lost, confused, or denting the car. Excellent. Carissa and Elijah arrive tomorrow at 9:30 am, bless their hearts for arriving at a reasonable time of day, and then the week of Aussie tourism begins. I'll try to post some pics next time of all of us. Until then, wish me luck on the left side of the road!

Dentist

I had my first visit to an Aussie dentist on Thursday. All went pretty well, but I have to say that I was wary about a new dentist in a new country. It seems that everyone pretty much feels the same way about the dentist: it's no fun but preferable to the alternative. Sort of like doing your taxes or showering. I guess it's just not fun for anyone, but with my overactive imagination I always seem to have these wildly awful daydreams about my dentist's secret sadistic tendencies taking hold and him randomly deciding to gouge one of his many sharp utensils into my delicate gums. Or him just slipping with pointy-stabby-stainless-steel-scraper thingie and embedding it into the roof of my mouth. Or the spinny-tooth-buffer-thingie suddenly malfunctioning and catching part of my lip in the rotor. Sorry to expose you to my insanity; I try to snap my mind away before these thoughts become fully Nazi or Quentin Tarantino, but what else am I supposed to think about at the stupid dentist? I can't exactly organize my weekend with him scraping around in there.

Aside from my ridiculousness, there were a few differences that I noticed at this dentist versus any dentist I have ever had in the states - which, granted, is only like 2 that I can remember, so may not be an indicative sample of my home country's dental practices. Firstly, the dentist himself cleaned my teeth. I've never heard of that happening. When I asked him about it, he says he feels like he gets to know his patients better this way - very cute. I did feel better having The Dentist cleaning my teeth rather than some random girl, although the random girls have been doing a decent job so far, never having succumbed to any of my gruesome fantasies (except that one time that the hygienist knocked out one of my loose teeth that I was taking extensive and painstaking efforts not to disturb as it hung quite literally by a strand of gum tissue, a ritual that I repeated for the exodus of the majority of my baby teeth, mostly because I'm a huge baby and get all freaked out by teeth related grossitudes, which probably partially explains my lively dental imagination, though I also have an inordinate number of stupid daydreams in most situations, which I would go into if this sentence weren't ridiculously improper already...).

Anyway, another thing I noticed was that he did the tooth-buffer instrument first, rather than after the tooth-scraping. I have always experienced scrape first, buff after, so this was new and strange. Also, instead of the standard sharp, curved, steel tooth scraper instruments that they normally plunge into the crevices of my teeth, pushing so hard that my thoughts wander to the contingency of the tip breaking off and lodging itself in my tonsils (yes, I still have tonsils), he had an ultrasonic sharp curved tooth scraper thing. It felt strange. It was nicer because he didn't have to really scrape the hell out of my teeth to clean them; he could sort of just glide this thing over and it would do whatever it was supposed to. But the ultrasonic-ness made for some weird sounds and felt almost electric-shock-esque when cleaning between my front teeth. So, I'm not sure if I would prefer it or not, but it doesn't really matter since I'm at his disposal in there.

The funny thing about this new technologically advanced instrument is that it pours out water, assumingly to keep it cool while it does it's sonic groove. Similar to how a concrete circular saw works, if you've ever used one. So, the dental helper girl has to hold the sucky thing in my mouth the entire time to remove all the water that is being dumped in there. It was like having serious dental work done, but with no pain and no numbing...it was kind of weird. I almost laughed at one point (but made a point not to so as to avoid inhibiting their progress) because the ultrasonic thing must have hit some sort of angle against my tooth and water just started shooting out all over my face for a good 10 seconds. While this was happening, the hygienist girl was frantically trying to counter the problem with her sucker utensil, but to no avail. It felt like there was a construction site in my mouth for a minute there. Then when the dentist took a break from sonic-ing my teeth, they both reached for my bib to dab my face at the same time. It was like something out of a three stooges routine.

All in all it went well, my teeth are cleaner, and I can rest easy until my next appointment in December. I am sooo glad that I had a friend to recommend a dentist though - one of the only things keeping my frightening thought at bay was that at least I didn't pick this guy from the yellow pages. He hadn't maimed Alana, so I'll probably be ok. Whew. So, there's the Aussie dentist, he's not a bad guy.

Wrong Side of the Road!!

I was walking down the street the other day, and I saw a car driving. I immediately thought, "holy crap, that guy's on the wrong side of the road!". But then immediately remembered that they drive on the wrong side of the road here. You think I'd be used to it, but I'm just not. Probably because I'm not actually driving. I still look all ways (left, right, up, down, behind me...) when I cross the road because I'm not going to be another casualty statistic from stupidity. I guess that's how most foreign tourists die here - not looking the right way and getting hit by a god damn car. Forget that. I've had a few close calls and now I just look all directions, not even knowing where the cars are supposed to come from. Why can't we all just drive on the same side of the road?

The other thing that's been hard for me here is the metric system. I have a decent concept of meters and stuff already, but it's still hard for engineering purposes. I'm trying to think in meters and kilonewtons, but It's like trying to think in Spanish when you've only taken a year of high school classes. It just doesn't work. So I sit and convert metric to imperial in my head (or with a spreadsheet) to see if my calculations seem right. Plus, they do everything (engineering-wise) in millimeters - so the numbers end up being huge! Not that you'd know what I mean, but the moment of inertias for steel members here are measured in the billions! It's ridiculous. I'm trying though, hopefully it will get better.

Work all this week, work in the day, work in the night, work on the weekends. I'm finishing up this one task for Thom (not that work won't come in after this, but this is pretty major and needs to get done), so it's taking up a lot of time. Anyway, better get back to it!

Million Paws

Today I volunteered for an RSPCA event called the Million Paws Walk here in Melbourne.

http://www.millionpawswalk.com/

I was one of over 200 volunteers manning (womanning, as it were) the booths that made up this fun event. They were trying to break the world record for dogs walked, but I'm not sure if they were able to. It was a nasty day, but at least it wasn't raining. I was in a booth taking sign ups for the dog competitions which were: Cutest Dog, Dog-Owner Look Alike, Best Trick, and Waggiest Tail. I got to see all sorts of furry characters (dog and human) pass by.

Other than that, I've just been extremely busy trying to get a job done for Thom while (whilst, in Australian) working overtime for my job here. Kane is yet to be given actual work to do at his work, which has made the days rather grueling so far. He/we have higher hopes for next week. And so another week begins, the madness never giving rest to relaxation. But, most certainly, another day, another dollar.

Shout out to Uncle Jeff before I get back to work today - I hope you're feeling better!

Happy Mom's Day

To all the mothers on Mothers Day: we love you! Above is a collage of many of the sweet mothers that are in my family, and below are the mothers of the mothers...we miss you! Above sort of left to right top to bottom: Terri with her three babies below her: Cassie, Puff and Ginger; Robby with momma Kim; Jane and Tiff; Me, Jen and Mom in the middle, Kane and Rhonda bottom left; Adele, Monique, Justin with momma Denise above them. AND Monique is now a momma-to-be...huge congrats! Below: Grandma Dorie with my mom and me (three generations of blonds); and Grandmam Clarice on the far right with her four babies: Jane, John, Jim, Jeff.

Happy Mother's Day to all the great mothers in the family (and mother to be). Our family has been truly blessed with some of the kindest, most caring, fun, funny, smart, beautiful mothers that this earth has to offer. We literally owe you our lives and take this day to thank you for everything you have done for us (just one day?). I love you Mom!!!

My apologies for the lack of bloggery - I just don't have the time! I've been doing better and better at work, volunteering to come in this Saturday to help get a project done that is way behind. Good news: Kane did get a job and started Thursday. Bad news: he's not sure if he likes the place he's working. He's going to give it some time and see if it pans out. Until then, I'm totally swamped and at least he's working. So, have a great mother's day everyone and a great upcoming week. And will someone please hug my mom for me?

The Groove

I'm gettin' into it, the groove that is. Working a pretty consistent 8:30-5 day with half hour lunch, taking care of stuff at night, talking to Thom at 6am (yargh), relaxing on the weekends. And, most of all, I can certainly get used to a chunk of money being dumped into my bank account every Thursday. Yes, life is back to normal and is good. A typical work week in Australia is actually only 37.5 hours; 7.5 hours a day, which is sweet. I may take my extra half hour when I get into it a little more, but I'm still trying to work as much as I can to get up to speed as quickly as possible. Learning, learning, learning...there's lots to learn over here. Different building codes, which are actually mostly similar to ours, new office standards, different construction practices, etc, etc. I think I'm catching on quickly though. And, I get to hang with actual Australians all day. With their funny accents and all. Yep, getting the full experience now.

My favorite two terms that I've come across are: squizz and traveling. These are used in this way: Hey, we're going to go visit this site later today, why don't you have a squizz at the file to get familiarized with the project; and, How you traveling on those calculations? It cracks me up; I love it.

Kane went on an interview Friday that seems promising. They do mostly custom houses (sound familiar?) and Kane liked the guys that interviewed him. They make an offer on Monday, so maybe he'll have a job as soon as next week! The only down side of this place is that it took him over an hour to get there on public transport, blah. But, we're looking into getting a car and if he took the train instead of the tram, I think it would go faster. So, if they offer him a reasonable amount of moo-lah, I think he'll take it. Yeay! Then we'll be normal people again with jobs and an income, etc.

Other than that, it was a pretty uneventful week. Even with managing work from SLO, my regular job and other stuff, I didn't feel nearly as overwhelmed as last week. Probably because work will get easier each week just because I'm getting more used to it. So, that's our life update. And now that winter type weather has set in, I get to freeze my ass off every day on the way to, at, and after work. Basically any time I'm not sleeping I'm cold. I thought I was getting away from this crap, what the heck?

Busy Week

Well, I've finally found a job, started work, and am way too busy. I've said it before and I'll type it again - when it rains, it pours. I started my new job Monday at a small firm a few miles outside of central Melbourne, only to get an offer on Tuesday from another company that I had also interviewed with. Sheesh. I haven't turned down the offer, but I probably will next week - they really didn't offer me a very high salary in my opinion. Plus I like the work the smaller firm that I'm at does. My bosses are really nice (two guys own the firm together) and the office is nice and easy going. I'm still managing work from Thom, which basically takes up my (early) mornings, nights and weekends, though that work seems to come in waves. We'll see if I manage not to explode from all this - so far so good.

Kane is still on the hunt for a job. We talked to a guy at the Engineers Without Borders meeting on Thursday who said he'll talk to some friends of his to see if any of their firms are looking for people. We'll see how that goes - Kane longs for the structure that a job adds to your life. Apparently video games all day every day aren't cutting it. Imagine that.

So, that's the only news here, really. Work work and more work. I'm still managing to juggle EWB meetings, a book club that I recently joined, volunteering for events with the RSPCA, and our American Expat meetup group along with actually doing fun things with our friends. I'm also going to sign up for a photography class at the local Center for Adult Education, just to make sure I really plug up all the possible free time that I may have. I wish I were one of those people who only need like 4 hours of sleep a night, I could be so much more productive. As it is, I succumb to the request of a full 8 hours and sleep away a third of every day. In exchange, my body rarely gets sick - it's rare if I get a cold in a year's time. So, there's trade-offs I guess.

Ok, now I'm just rambling without anything especially interesting to type. So, I bid you adieu until next time. Pictured: "professional Angie".

Jogging and Jobbing

The issue has been raised as to Kane and my dedication to, and the possibility of fraudulent claims of us being joggers. History has delicately placed me into a long and traceable lineage of innate, adamant non-joggers. Some postulate that the name "Sommer" is derived from the Latin sumarius, which is an adjective form of the word "molasses". And like molasses, a Sommer only happily moves slowly, and really would prefer to stay put altogether whenever possible. I believe my great, great, great uncle, William Sommer, has been quoted to say, "Take away my freedom, my dignity, my country, but do not ever try to force me to jog".

However, with the intention of continuing to fit into my overpriced, fancy work suits, in addition to balancing out my love of Nutella (and anything chocolate for that matter), I have begun an extremely rudimentary and considerably pathetic workout regiment. We looked into joining the gym here, but were swiftly deterred by the $40 per two weeks fee - the only thing I hate more than being out of shape is being out of money. So, we were left to our own devices and decided to start the doing the cheapest workout around: jogging.

We started by just jogging down the street and back, walking when I start to overheat. We're up to around 1.5-2 miles each morning of pathetic, trudging, huffing and puffing jogging. Sometimes Kane eases into a fast walk next to me just to show how exceptionally slow we are actually moving. But, I keep to it, slow and steady - there's something a Sommer can relate to. We can win the race, just as long as you're easily distracted...

So that's the skinny on the jogging. Or perhaps the "average sized" on the jogging, as it were. To answer cousin questions: I do dislike exercising, but am embracing it as a necessary evil, like politics or nylons. To report my findings, my suit pants do still fit well, which I know because I have recently gone on two job interviews in said pants. I will say no more about it because the jury's still out and I wouldn't want to post all sorts of stuff on the internet since sometimes companies do a quick google search on you nowadays. Just know that all is well and that a follow up will commence next week. (Email me if you're too curious)

We Need A Car

Pictured: a tram in downtown Melbourne.

Public transport around Melbourne is excellent. It creeps through all of downtown and spreads its tentacles far outside the city center with trains, trams and buses. It's relatively clean, decently priced, and seems to have enough capacity to support this city.

I am, however, sick of it. There are two main issues that I have with the public transport: it takes forever to get anywhere, and public transport people. Kane and I went to a meeting at the RSPCA (Royal Society for the Protection...) on Tuesday, which is about 15 miles from our house. It probably would have still taken us a while to drive since you have to go through downtown (lots of lights, traffic, etc.), but it surely wouldn't have taken us an hour and fifteen minutes.

And then there are the crazies. Why do crazies, of any nation, seem to love public transport so much? They flock to it like moths to a streetlight - and like the moths, it seems to get worse at night. On our way back from the RSPCA meeting, we rode with crazy headphone-listening, singing-along, air-drumming guy who approached two other strange looking passengers and then commenced to stare at them for the duration of the ride, only taking breaks for impressive air drumming solos. Who are these people? Can't they keep quiet for 30 minutes while the ride the tram with the rest of us? I suppose that asks too much.

The funny thing is, we got off the tram when the air-drummer relocated to the seat right next to us, only to encounter crazy, drugged out, screaming-at-the-air-right-next-to-her lady on the street downtown. As she approached from behind, I felt uncomfortable being within audible range of this "fight" this woman was having, obviously with someone dear to her, over the cell phone. I then felt even more awkward to discover that there was no cell phone involved. Maybe I don't like big cities, sheesh. Or, maybe I just need a car to acquire the level of isolation from these crazies that I'm used to. Then there's always: if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. I think I would be a rather talented air drummer...

Adele Island

Adele island is a small island off the coast of Abel Tasman National Park in the North-West corner of the South Island of New Zealand. We kayaked by this place only to find that it was named after the discoverer's wife because of its semblance to a woman's profile. I tried to label the picture above (you have to use your imagination a bit) to see the woman laying on her back in the ocean, her head at the left down to her bust on the right. Yes, she has a bit of an adam's apple, but they're made of trees; what are you gonna do.

I bring this up not because the island was anything extraordinary, but because my beautiful cousin, Adele, is. Today (well, depending on how you look at the time difference) is her wedding day, and I am unfortunately not able to attend. I have requested the favor of the most pictures possible from family members; but I know no picture will be able to capture the sheer radiance she emits on this special day.

Therefore, this post is to you, Adele, a tiny dedication on surely one of the finest days of your life. I miss you and I love you and I wish you and JJ all the best things in the world during your long life together. You guys are a beautiful couple and nothing makes your family (me included) happier than to witness your love for each other and to celebrate it with you. I am truly sorry I could not be there for this day, I hope it was everything you ever hope for and more. Huge hug to both of you.

And, BCF, Adele. Should we sing one of our songs? Nissan, Nissan, dun dun dun duh duh duh...

The Wind

It's windy today. You think, so what, it's just wind. But this is actually wind enough to blog about, in my opinion at least. It has nothing to do with me being bored as well...nothing at all.

We left our window open last night in hopes of somewhat avoiding the funk with which a night of two sleeping humans seems to fill a room (or apartment). As a result, we awoke at something-early-am to the sound of our blinds being relentlessly whipped by the early gusts. "What is that," asked Kane. "It's the blinds, we left the window open," I respond. We can typically sleep through anything, but it really sounded like someone had broken into our home and was spastically frolicking in a mountain of Hot Wheels toy cars on our living room floor.

We went for our morning jog and were met with a mean head wind on the way back - so rude. We saw plastic bags flying 50 feet in the air around us (and yes, it was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. American Beauty, anybody?) I thought it would die down, but it's been pounding on our building all day. We first noticed the extremity of the situation just before our jog; I re-opened the sliding glass door to air out the place while we were out and my ears popped just as the door cracked open. Then, as I went to exit the apartment, I was almost unable to open our front door due to the ridiculous pressure coming in through the window, holding the door shut.

Throughout the day, it has sounded like a veritable hurricane is passing through our apartment (this is with the windows shut). I swear, it's worse in here than it is even outside. I'm not sure if it's because of our A/C being connected by a fan to the outside, or if our balcony draws some sort of magnificent wind eddie, or if our building is just the most non-aerodynamic structure in the world, but it's freaking loud in here.

So, the wind has been blowing on and on all day long, but it's really the booms and the creaks that are the scariest. We're on the 14th floor, so I'm not sure how much sound, and wind for that matter, gets exaggerated at this height, but every once in a while there are huge booms that come from inside the building somewhere. Sometimes the sound is smaller and appears to come from the ducts in the walls/ceiling of our apartment. In these cases it sounds like there is a kid with a Nerf baseball bat trying to get out of an aluminum box in our ceiling. It's not scary just more strange, especially when you add that picture to it.

Then there are the big booms that must come from somewhere else in the building like the elevator shafts or giant ducts in the hallway or something. These sound like the kid in the aluminum box has been dropped 7 stories onto an immense aluminum bass drum. Then there are the cracking noises which sometimes sound like the expanding or contracting of glass or steel mullions and sometimes sound like the concrete slab of our floor yielding to the storm and dropping us, along with our building, neatly into the harbor.

I swear, I must watch too many movies, but with every *pannng* or *bwooonk* of the building I get some sort of Die Hard-Matrix-Indiana Jones scene playing out in my head. It typically involves the dramatic structural failure and collapse of our building (spalling concrete crumbling, yielding steel creaking, sparks, steam, flickering lights: the works) and subsequent, improbable yet completely possible, valiant action-hero escape of Kane and I to safety. In these daydreams I always remember to grab my laptop, just as Will Smith grabs the cat at the last second as the house is demoed in I Robot. Memories are precious, people.

So that has been our day. Oohing and aahing (and flinching) at the sounds of our building screaming in the wind. We look outside to see that the city is covered with what looks like smog, but since it has only showed up today, we assume it's the dirt and crap that has been kicked up by this gnarly wind. Since it's Melbourne, I anticipate completely different weather conditions tomorrow, whatever they may be, and I look forward to them.

NZ Summary & Pics

Well, we are back in Aus as of Friday morning. Friday and Saturday were marathons to re-integrate ourselves back into our boring Aussie lives. Cleaning, putting crap away, setting everything back up, grocery shopping. Last night we had Marc and Alana over for dinner and a movie...ahh we're home again. I have managed to post the best NZ pics on my picasa website for all to see. Alana was surprised to see that I posted over 200 pictures in three albums, but she and everyone else should know the restraint I applied to not post more. I took over 2000 pics; 7 gigs worth. Isn't digital great? So, please feel free to view the pictures (if you haven't already been accosted by my mass email with the link) at this site: http://picasaweb.google.com/angiesommer. Hopefully, sometime, I'll be adding a fourth picture album of panoramic pictures after I Photoshop them together.

To briefly summarize NZ: it was good. The trip was well planned, it went smoothly, the weather was mercifully (and unusually) nice, and it was a good length and intensity. New Zealand is an interesting and beautiful country, and I recommend it as a travel destination to anyone who loves the outdoors, or just likes to photograph it. I feel it necessary to include a short list of "goods" and "bads" in this NZ summary to pointedly and/or humorously mention a few of the fun or annoying oddities that we experienced on our south island tour. I'm sure each trip would reveal something different about a country, but this is the stuff we noticed:

The Good Stuff:
1. Lots of land, not many people. Therefore, un-congested towns and highways (in general) throughout the island.
2. The NZ accent - I'm putting this under "good" because I find it funny and cute. The most noticeable accented words are "ee" words, example: head, bed, pen, pin, penguin, etc. They use a very heavy ee sound on these types or words and say "heed" rather than head, "peen" for pen, etc.
3. Money - this is the best money scheme I've seen yet. In America we do pennies - I can't handle that, what's the point? In Aus, they've gotten rid of the pennies but all the bills are different sizes and the sizes of the coins don't correspond to the value. In NZ, the bills are all the same size (different colors), the coins are in logical size order, and they don't use pennies OR nickels! They round to the nearest $0.10 which makes my life so much happier.
4. No tipping at restaurants.
5. The road signs - the train crossing and truck crossing signs look like pictures of trains and trucks from a children's book. So cute. I put a picture of a train sign in the online albums.
6. Wildlife - They have a really neat assortment including fun and pretty birds, dolphins, seals, penguins, and (of course) Kiwis, which we didn't get the chance to see.
7. Better exchange rate than Aus, $1US = about $1.20NZ.
8. Avocados are cheap. Kane was happy.
9. Speed limit on the highway is 100kph (70mph), even when it probably shouldn't be.
10. And the very best thing about the land of New Zealand is (...and I somehow forgot this when I first wrote this post so had to go back and add it later, which means no one will read it, but I had to do it anyway...) Hokey Pokey ice cream. This is surely the most heavenly frozen treat that exists on this earth. It is basically vanilla ice cream with little bits of caramel-toffee-honecomb-type pieces that combine into the most delicious food ever made. Hail to the Hokey Pokey.

The Not as Goods:
1. People turning right get the right of way against people turning left (they drive on the left, so that would be like people turning left getting the right of way in the US). It's not really bad, just confusing to foreigners...
2. Lots of smokers, seems to be the norm outside of CA =(
3. Ocean is freaking freezing.
4. Gas is expensive - $1.77NZ per liter = $6 or $7US per gallon. And Americans complain...
5. You can't use your Australian bank card as a debit card for purchases, even when they have the same bank over there...WTF?
6. It's rather expensive to travel there, even when you go cheap. Our final tally was over $5300NZ = about $4400US for both of us for 18 days. And that was staying in hostels and eating mostly grocery food.
7. Sand flies! They bite and it itches worse and longer than a mosquito bite!
8. One lane bridges. For some reason they decided to save money on bridges (since there are so many rivers) and make them only one lane. So you have to pay attention to the little sign before the bridge to see if you have to yield to oncoming traffic or if you have the right of way. At one point there was a one lane bridge that was for both ways of traffic and both ways of train tracks!! Ridiculous!
9. And last but not least (most, actually), is the Departure Voucher required to fly out of the country. This is my only actual complaint and it is the stupidest most red-tape, bureaucratic, irrational piece of bullshit that I've encountered in a long time, even for an airport. When you leave the country, you have to get a Departure Voucher. Now you think, ok, this is basically a mandatory tax, so just include it in the price of my ticket, right? Well that's what normal countries do. But in NZ, you have to pay for this voucher at the airport. This means you have to stand in a huge line, separate from the huge check-in line, to give them an additional $25 each before you can leave. Stupidest thing ever. And since we couldn't use our Aus bank cards, we waited in the ATM line to buy the voucher first only to find that it doesn't work. Grrr...

Anyway, all in all, NZ was great and we had a really good time. You can actually comment on the photos on the picasa website if you see one that particularly requires it. You have to click the picture so that you are looking at only that one (not the list of thumbnails), then there will be a comment box below it.

Now we return to our regularly scheduled programming of sitting around and playing on the internet all day. No, seriously, we have the work visas now, so we need to get jobs. Thom (our boss in SLO) just presented me with a Hilton Hotel project that he wants me/us to do...and we're still doing a bunch of other work for him, so at least we have some income in the interim. Stay tuned to see how it goes.

Seal Swim

Well, this trip has seemed both long and short at the same time, and now we're at the end of it. Our final activity on our extensively planned itinerary was to swim with the seals in Kaikoura, our last stop before returning to Christchurch to fly back to Melbourne. I thought it sounded fun; I love animals, so does Kane, we'll get up close to them and oggle, fun right? As seems to happen more than I'd like it to, there were other obstacles that I was either unaware of or just didn't think of that were significantly detrimental to the fun that I thought we'd have on this particular adventure.

Kane took some of my crazy Thai Dramamine equivalent tablets this morning in hopes of warding of any potential sea sickness. I had envisioned that we'd board some large boat, put on wet suits and take a dip when we saw some seals swimming around, then re-board the ship to hunker down and shake off the chill of the water on our way back. It went sort of like that, but not really. We arrived at the seal swim store and were outfitted with wet suits, fins, masks and snorkels on the spot. We had to leave all belongings at the store or risk them getting wet. Cameras were even recommended to stay, so I don't have a single picture of this endeavor. We then took a 10 minute bus ride out to the beach and hopped into a speedboat. There were a dozen of us in total on this trip, mostly people our age-ish and one man with his two young boys (10ish?).

We boat out only about half a mile to a large rock in the water where a colony of seals likes to perch during the day (they feed at night and bask and sleep in the day). The seals we were going to see are eared fur seals; they have external ears and are kept warm by their fur rather than blubber like a true seal. Apparently, this type of seal has more in common biologically with a dog than a common seal, which I thought was interesting. They were hunted to near extinction over a hundred years ago, but now they're protected and are doing better. We even saw some tiny dolphins on the way out to the big rock, they swam and jumped just in front of our boat. They were small and cute and so close we could have touched them. Maybe it was a sign that I should try swimming with the dolphins instead...

So, we get to the rock and are allowed to "deboard". This consists of sitting on the edge of the boat and essentially falling backwards into the water, which has always scared me. I like to ease into the freezing water, thank you very much. But, no choice, so I flop in. The water is freaking freezing. It's the same ocean that stalks the coast of CA, and it felt about the same temperature as it does in the Bay or SLO. Ocean people think it's fine, but it's numbingly, hyperventilating-ly freezing to me. I find that in situations like this I tend to cope with bouts of uncontrollable laughter. I laugh hysterically on roller coasters too, and probably while snowboarding, etc. I get in the water just after Kane and I can't stop laughing. I start with the gasping from the shock of the cold and continue straight into insane, involuntary, body wrenching laughter. The other passengers are happily (seemingly happily, anyway) floating along looking for seals while the guides are trying to point out where we should look for the seals from up in the boat.

I couldn't care less about a god damn seal at this point. I am completely freezing and hysterical and seals are really the last thing on my mind. In realizing this fact, I laugh even harder, appearing even more insane. After about 5 minutes I calmed down and started trying to snorkel. When you're not used to it, trying to plunge your face into freezing water and convince your brain that it's ok to breathe normally through a stupid tube attached to your head is a bit of a challenge. I don't think it's quite as bad when the water is warmer for some reason; maybe there's just less to get used to. So for the first 15 minutes or so, I basically can't put my head underwater without starting to hyperventilate - short, quick, labored breaths through the stupid snorkel for about 10 seconds until I would surface to see where I was.

So I do that for a while. I saw a seal swim by once or twice, but hardly noticed. I look up and Kane is making an awful face; he's clearly feeling sick. The waves weren't crashing on us, but the water was swishing us around quite a bit and he was not doing well. I floated with him for a bit, trying to be comforting (not much else to do), then he decided he'd better ask to be taken to shore to avoid swimming in a puddle of his own vomit. He went to the shore and I stayed in by myself (with the others, but with no one particular person to hang with - sad face).

It was good he went shore, because shortly after that, we all got back in the boat and moved to another side of the rock where there were a few more seals swimming around. This location was seriously rockin' in the tide. The swells would move us up 6-10 feet and side to side even more, he wouldn't have stood a chance here. I was even starting to feel queasy by the end of it. Although being banished to sit alone on the shore in the wind while soaking wet for 45 minutes probably wasn't his favorite thing to be doing for the rest of the trip either, poor Kane.

At this new location I actually saw some seals as they swam around and under the group of us. They were very cute; about 3/4 the size of me or so (on average) with huge round eyes. They would come rather close to us (we were allowed to let them touch us if they wanted to, but I was fine with them just being close) and swim with unmatched agility and ease. They would play with each other, swimming all tangled together and biting at each other's faces. They're pretty cool animals and I was happy to have gotten some close up views. I did find it funny the juxtaposition of humans swimming and seals swimming - we're all in our gear flailing at the surface bumping into each other with flippers and stray elbows while they swim with grace and precision anywhere they want. It cracked me up, but lord knows I didn't want to start laughing again...

The other thing I wasn't really ready for was the seaweed. I'm not sure why kelp is one of the most terrifying substances in the entire world, but it is. And being carried helplessly toward a giant mass of slimy plant tentacles makes me react like someone would to a seething monster in a horror movie. I really felt like Scooby-doo escaping a man in a ghost costume. Stupid seaweed. I swear the only comfort in all of this was thinking about blogging about it later. The worse time we have, the better the blog entry, which I guess is a nice silver lining.

So, retrospectively, it was pretty much a waste of $80 each for us, but that's yet another thing you don't know until you try it. Next time we will rethink the water sports with Kane - and I'll make sure the temperature is more favorable before I pay someone to freeze my buns off for two hours.

Tomorrow we drive to Christchurch (which they abbreviate Chch, which I love) and verrry early the following morning we fly back to Melbourne to resume our uneventful couch potato lives. Thank goodness, I'm exhausted.

Pancakes and Kayaking

Pictured: Top: Me at the "pancake rocks" in Punakaiki as the ocean splashes up through a huge hole in the really cool rocks that you can't see too well in this particular picture. Bottom: Our kayaks on the beach in Abel Tasman National Park.

Easter Sunday was taken up entirely by the longest drive of the trip: about 500 km (300 miles) from Franz Joseph Glacier to Abel Tasman National Park at the very top of the South island. We stopped in Punakaiki to see the "pancake" rocks, which were really cool rock formations that have a whole bunch of layers of rock all stacked up on each other. They don't know how they were formed, but they look really neat. The rocks have also been eroded in a very fun way, making caves and tall islands of rock that the ocean dances around with each breaking wave. Glad we stopped there.

We arrived in Marahau (tiny, and I mean tiny, town at the foot of Abel Tasman Nat'l Park) at around 5:30pm and were greeted with probably our crappiest accommodations yet. The nearby YHA in Motueka (yeah, try to say that) was full, so we were left to whatever the internet could provide. At least we got the (yes, "the" as in there is one) double room, though the walls were so thin that we may as well have just had a curtain separating us from the adjacent bunk rooms.

Yesterday we kayaked up the ocean along Abel Tasman, which was really cool. I think that was a really good way to see the park. We did a bit of hiking, but the trails just seemed to be a way to get from beach to beach, which was easier to do by kayaking. And it was a beautiful day, so all was well...or maybe I should say most was well. As you may know, Kane gets sea sick rather easily. We snorkeled in a bay in Hawaii once and had to get out after 15 minutes to prevent Kane from yacking all over the sea turtles (which were rather impressive, by the way). The water was pretty much as glassy as it could be, but even the slight rocking aggravated his sensitive stomach. He was feeling queasy when we stopped for our first break, but shook it off mostly by the time we headed back into the water. Then, as we were almost to the end of the kayaking part of the trip, we stopped a few times and just floated in the water to look at birds and have the guide tell us stuff about the flora, etc. It was the lack of paddling and subsequent isolation of the wavy movement that got him. We were in a double kayak, so I had to lean left to counter his lean right so that we didn't flip over while he gracefully fed the fishies. The release made him feel better (or good enough to get to shore at least), and we were fortunate to have been in a position such that none of the other members of the group saw or heard (or should I say that they were fortunate).

After we got to shore, we had lunch (now that he was on an actual empty stomach) and did a couple easy hikes before a water taxi (speedboat) picked us up at the end of the day. All in all a good time, next time we'll paddle like we mean it to avoid the yack-itude.

Today we drove to Kaikoura which is a small beach town on the east coast just north of Christchurch. I like it here and am really looking forward to swimming with the seals tomorrow. I hope I can handle the ocean temperature...it's not exactly warm water here...but at least there's no sharks or poisonous things. Australia had the courtesy to keep that crap to itself.

Icee Cool

Yesterday and today we finally saw real glaciers. Not these dirt covered unrecognizable mounds of crap that we saw near Mt. Cook, but real glaciers like in a magazine. It was neat. We did a guided tour up Franz Josef Glacier today, which was really cool. The thing I hadn't realized is that to get on a glacier you actually have to climb up the glacier. I had expected some circuitous route along adjacent mountsides that lead to a graceful walk onto the ice. Nope, you just climb up the face of the stupid thing with your crampons, sludging through little ice steps that the guides carve with their ice picks. It was vigorous, but well worth it. I'm tired, so no long explanation. Look at the dang pictures.

Long drive tomorrow, kayaking at Abel Tasman Nat'l Park the next day. The final leg of our journey approaches...

West Coast is the Best Coast

(Pictured: Me next to the Skyline Restaurant atop a 2000 ft mountain that overlooks Queenstown)

Yes, this is even true in New Zealand. Perhaps arguable in Australia however...

The west Coast of NZ is surprisingly different from the east coast. The first many days of our trip really didn't have any landscapes that don't exist in California or Oregon. The west coast is a different story. There are massive and expansive forests perched precariously along the steepest solid granite mountain ranges you can imagine. Much of this area is temperate rainforest that gets 6-9 meters (20-30 feet) of rain per year - often a meter or more in one day! The landscape can change dramatically with one day of heavy rain by flooding areas, creating waterfalls, and raising rivers and lakes to levels that make them unrecognizable. It's pretty incredible. Just driving up to Milford was probably the best part of our trip so far. It's just really amazing scenery. Too bad my photography skills are not really good enough for me to take the caliber of pictures that this area deserves.

Our Milford Sound boat cruise was really nice and neither of us even got sea sick, which is amazing in itself. The scenery was awesome, blah, blah, blah, now on to the coolest part. We saw dolphins!! Our guide pointed them out as our boat approached, then they casually rode in front of our boat for like 10 minutes, just like in the movies! It was really cool, dolphins are awesome. That's the closest I think I've ever been to them - they're bigger than I thought they would be. We could see them (there were three of them) swimming sideways under the water, weaving all around, and jumping out of the water about 6 feet away from us. It was so cool. We also passed some seals perched on a rock and later that night had a few encounters with a Kea bird, which is a fairly large native parrot-type bird that has a bit of a funny personality (birdality?). I'm glad we've met some of the "natives", the animals here are fun.

We were in Queenstown yesterday, which is a very cool place as well. It's like the extreme sports capital of NZ, which we're not really into, but it makes for a nice touristy town. Lots of places to stay and eat, quaint downtown, and the whole town is nestled in the mountains next to a large lake. Very nice. And it was about 30 degrees (Celsius - uh, 86 degrees F?) the day we were there, which was as unusual as it was pleasant. We rode a gnarly gondola up this huge mountain adjacent to the town to see the tourist-trap venue at the top which featured: overly expensive buffet restaurant with a killer view, bungee jumping, and two luge tracks which are like little unmotorized go-carts that you ride down a concrete track. The whole experience was very fun and even worth the ridiculous cost.

Today we're in Wanaka, a tiny town just north of Queenstown. I guess in NZ terms, this would probably be a city since they have like 3500 residents. There seems to be a hierarchy of city sizes in NZ that is a bit different than I'm used to: village 0-200 people, town 200-1000 people, small city 1000-3000 people, city 3000-50,000, huge raging metropolis over 50,000. Of course this is approximate but that's mostly because I made it all up. Still, so many towns we pass are little more than a main drag with a few buildings. Imagine Nevada but green, without all the hicks, and not so crappy and run down. Ok, that's not easy to imagine, but try.

And yes, we do notice the different accent they have here, as opposed to Aussies (in response to Monique's comment). We mock them constantly (sorry Marc) because it's funny and I'm pretty sure it's required. Some of them are very hard to understand and mockery is our only defense.

Today and yesterday have been sort of relaxing: not much driving, easy schedules, less rugged atmosphere and activities. Tomorrow we head to the glaciers (Fox and Franz Joseph) which had better be awesome.

Milford Track

(Pictured: K & A overlooking Lake Te Anau from the Milford Track)

Hello all, your comments are very funny. Annie, I hope you can get your account straightened out - and if you can't, I'm still happy to see you on as "anonymous". Rhonda, they do drive on the left, and Kane is a pro now. It's actually not that hard to get used to, and I find that the one thing I get confused about is which way we are turning. To explain: when I, as the navigator, tell Kane to take a left turn, sometimes I find that I actually meant to take a right. I'm not one of those people that doesn't know left from right (although I do mix up the colors pink and yellow, a whole other story), but I have found that I seem to associate the direction of the turn just as much with whether or not you cross traffic as I do with the actual direction of the turn. What I mean is, does the turn require driving across cross traffic, or can you just turn onto the adjacent street? In that respect, a left turn is similar to a right turn in the U.S.; you can turn left on a red light because you don't have to cross oncoming traffic. Anyway, I was surprised to find this association in my brain, and I'm trying to work it out.

And as for the 8-person bunks, they were interesting, but not too bad. We had a pretty good group both nights and the only really crappy part was that the bunks were very creaky and quite rickety. And no one set of bunks were available when we got there, so Kane and I were each on the top bunk of two separate bunks with strangers underneath us. Kane complained that the guy below him on the second night seemed to be doing some sort of earthquake simulation (which can be easily caused by simply rolling over in these janky bunks) which was bothersome to him. Other than that, we dealt with the nighttime toots, bad breath, and the bustling starting at 7am. I know, sounds like hell, but it really wasn't. We do prefer the rooms to ourselves, but not much you can do when they're full and we're cheap. We have bunks a couple of other nights, hopefully those will go smoothly also.

The following night in Dunedin was excellent accommodation. The YHA there is a converted old house. And I do mean old and I do mean converted. The remodel on this place must have been heinous. So many rooms tacked on, doorways blocked, stairways crammed in, low ceilings, short doors, converted basement areas, winding passageways, etc, etc. It was sort of like the Winchester Mystery House - I liked it a lot. We got a room with a double bed and a view of the city which was sweet. Last night and tonight we are in a very small room with two twin beds in Te Anau. Which brings me to the title of this posting, which apparently will not be the majority of my writing...

We hiked the Milford Track today on a guided tour. The Milford Track is known for being one of the most beautiful hikes in the world: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milford_Track. You begin with an hour boat ride (on a sweet boat that can hold like 60 people) up Lake Te Anau to the start of the trail. The full hike is 54 kilometers (about 40 miles) and takes 4 days/3 nights, though we just walked the first 5.5 kilometers and back today. It was very flat, very well maintained and very pretty. They provided a nice lunch, and all in all it was very nice. Rhonda, you would love it; we imagined you ooohing and aaahing. We didn't see much wildlife up there, but one fact we did learn is that there are no land mammals native to NZ, so all the native birds are very curious and friendly because they have no natural predators. So, a little bird walked all the way up to our group and almost hopped on my foot to say hi. It was adorable, not even scared by our talking. I wished we had seen more, but I guess the introduction of land mammals by other cultures has really messed up the native wildlife here. They're trying to fix it. Anyway, the bird was cute (I wanted to pet it).

I did get to pet the calico that roams the parking lot - yeay, kitties!

Tomorrow we're off to our boat cruise (I use the word "cruise" lightly) around Milford Sound. More later, keep commenting friends and fams!

Tramping

(Pictured: Mountains behind the trail to Hooker Glacier, I am the tiny blue speck on the swing bridge)

Tramping is what they call hiking in NZ, which I think is funny. We spent a good chunk of yesterday tramping around the trails of Mt. Cook and ended up with sore feet and legs. Mt. Cook is a strange town. I had expected it to be up at high altitude, near the mountain that shares its name, but it is rather in a valley near the foot of the mountain. The mountains in that area are like huge lumps gracefully popping out of an otherwise flat landscape, which I found sort of odd. It turns out to be awesome because it means that most of the hiking trails are relatively flat - bonus for lazy me.

The town of Mt. Cook has like 100 people or something ridiculous, and they don't even has gas piped in. They also don't have a supermarket or gas station and are basically a glorified campground. We have been blazing a trail around the NZ YHAs (youth hostel) and left from the Mt. Cook YHA this morning to arrive at our third YHA this afternoon in Dunedin. We had a good day of driving today, Kane has gotten the hang of it, and, since we're prepared for the distances and aren't on a super strict timetable, the driving isn't bad. Not like the drive between SLO and Hayward which seems to take forever because you just want to get where you're going.

So, it's been nice. So far, the scenery isn't anything you can't find in California (save one particular lake that is a gnarly neon teal color - naturally), so if you want to save some cash, take a road trip around the Golden State instead. The west coast of NZ should be a bit different; we'll be heading over there tomorrow. Until then, we actually have a room with a double bed tonight, as opposed to the 8 person bunk bed room we were in last night - yowza, so we will sleep well in Dunedin.

Work and Holiday Visa

Well, in short, we have them (for Australia). We applied online last night, didn't even submit any paperwork or anything (birth certificate, passport, transcripts, etc). Approved like 2 hours later. Done and done!

Now we can get back and get to work...but not before exploring NZ...