Safe harbor

At the request of some of my most diligent readers, I hereby announce that we have, in fact, arrived in the U.S. and are not lingering in limbo over the Atlantic Ocean as the long, awkward pause since my last post suggests.

We arrived in early August, just in time to celebrate my parents' and brothers' birthdays, as well as our fourth anniversary and Bryan's bday (August and September are not for the faint-walleted in this family), and to see my youngest brother off to college in Newport News. My parents are very generously allowing us to regress into a childlike state of dependence, living in a spare bedroom and eating my mom's yummy cooking (vegetables at every meal? crazy!) while we stake out our next place of residence. I'm even working part-time as a receptionist at the medical practice where my mom is the office manager while they look for a permanent employee, which offers me the winning combination of income with flexible hours and is hopefully proving to be equally beneficial to them.

Bryan has just started working as a substitute teacher's aide for the local school district and so far has enjoyed most of his placements with elementary schoolers, especially the special needs kids with whom he's been working most days this week. Last month he flew to Nebraska to spend three weeks with his side of the family, which as I understand it involved plenty of bowhunting and knife-throwing with his brother, followed by cuddles and bedtime stories with the nieces. They're redefining the image of manly men. Our long-term prospects are just as vague as ever - we'd be happy to settle down here in the States if the right opportunity presents itself, but we'd be equally (or maybe more) excited about another venture overseas. Just don't mention that overseas bit to our bank accounts; they might have a heart attack.

Living in the D.C. area as an adult is proving to be lots of fun. In the almost three months that we've been here, we've frequented a cool indie theater downtown, attended a screenwriting competition where the finalists' short films were read aloud and then voted on, backpacked at Great Falls and in the Shenandoahs (but that's a very wet, miserable story for another time), checked out an exhibit on the Etruscans at the headquarters of National Geographic, and have developed familiarity with this city's inferior subway system. The only major downside is the terrible traffic, aggravated by the constant construction that is, I'm sure, designed to alleviate this very problem.

Having not yet completely resolved the psychological issues related to our uprooting from the country that we felt at home in, we do pine for all things New Zealand, eagerly using "us" and "we" when referring to the All Blacks and their dominance of the recent Rugby World Cup, "forgetting" that uncultured Americans don't understand cool phrases like "sweet as", and ferreting out local distributors for Cadbury chocolate and Bundaberg Ginger Beer (thanks, World Market!). I'm sure my coworkers inwardly roll their eyes every time I casually make reference to my recent arrival from the Southern Hemisphere. But they'll get over it...because I surely won't. :)

Thanks for following us over the past two years - if we go somewhere else that's worth writing about, we'll let you know.

-Rachel (and, in spirit, Bryan)

germany highlights

as we'll be wrapping up our two weeks in germany tomorrow, i figured i'd share a few highlights from our trip so far: 

1) road trip with ann and josh! we spent three days driving around the former east germany with our friends from new zealand, camping in beautiful old dresden, freezing in unsummer-like weather at the buchenwald concentration camp, wondering where the heck everyone was in gorgeous and underrated erfurt, and admiring martin luther for having lived so long in the crap town that is wittemberg. in total we spent about 8 hours on the road, but drove through 5 german states - berlin, brandenburg, sachsen, sachsen-anhalt, and thuringen. that must count for something.

2) cycling through munich. our itinerary only gave us one full day in munich, but at the suggestion of the family friends who we stayed with, we rented bikes and were given a personalized tour of this very pretty (and cyclist-friendly) city. on foot we never would have gotten to the outskirts of the city to see the sunbathers in the english gardens, the still-modern silhouettes of olympic park, or ludwig I's schloss nymphenburg, modelled after versailles. 

3) seeing the south in our bmw. so we paid a fortune to get a last-minute rental car, but scored a free upgrade to a brand-new bmw, which is more-than-a-little fun to drive on the autobahn. from munich we drove down to the bodensee (lake constance), where we ate ice creams on the dock at immenstaad and looked over the lake towards switzerland, and then on to our quaint gasthof accommodation outside of the black forest town of freiburg. the next day we meandered through classic wooden-village-nestled-in-the-hills scenery, sampled schwarzwalder kirschtorte (black forest cake) according to the original recipe and pretended to like cuckoo clocks in triberg, and then found a little pension with an available room right off of the main square in heidelberg. spent a half-day showing bryan around the area where we lived when i was younger, but we couldn't get onto the military base without a military ID so we spent the rest of the day at the very picturesque heidelberg castle. 

tomorrow we'll fly to london, and two days later we'll be back in DC to do...?

regenbogen

slept in and had brunch with josh at this fantastic little cafe in the southern suburb of schoeneburg; it's the bilder buch (picture book) cafe, where even at 11 am on a weekday a pianist was playing lovely little whimsical tunes to a packed room lined with bookshelves and filled with mismatched old furniture. it was all perfect save for the exceptionally rude waitress, who had zero patience for our pitiful attempts at ordering in german. most amusing was bryan's "ananassaft, bitte" ("pineapple juice, please"), to which she responded "orangensaft?" ("orange juice?") and immediately darted off with impressive speed before he could correct her. good times :)

berlin

somehow we've been in berlin for four days now and have barely done anything here. part of the reason is that we came here to visit friends, so we've been spending time with them, but the other reason is that we tried a new travel experiment, planning our trip on the go, but it's been a sad, sad failure. especially as we're here during the peak season, we're just wasting our time and money and stressing ourselves out. back to the hardcore advance planning in the future :)

we did spend all day yesterday in the city, mostly visiting museums as it was raining steadily outside and i'd recently thrown our last umbrella away in disgust when it failed to withstand the christchurch winter winds. we wandered around museum island (though the lines were so long that we didn't actually want to be in any of the museums), eating wurst with hot mustard and cheese pretzels from the street vendors in the shelter of the neues museum's long portico overlooking the river.

 after lunch we took the underground train (getting anywhere takes three trains...no matter how close it may be) back to potsdamer platz to hit up the film and tv museum...can you guess who was particularly keen on seeing that? the displays looked cool, but didn't actually give enough information for us to understand why this particular director/film/actress was important to german and world cinema. there was a big exhibit on fritz lang's "metropolis", a very small one on michael haneke's "the white ribbon", and plenty of information about marlene dietrich, but overall we were a little disappointed. that didn't stop us from seeing the final harry potter movie at the english-language kino next door, though, and overhearing this conversation in the row behind us, just as the film was starting (the cinema had assigned seats):

young man: excuse me, but i think this is my seat. i wouldn't normally say anything, but it's quite full and we've actually just had to move as well.
woman: i'm sorry, but i'm sitting here now. you'll need to find somewhere else.
young man: it's just that the theater's quite full, so there aren't any other seats together. i did see a seat at the back that you could sit in, though.
woman: i'm not going to move. the movie's about to start.
young man: what can we do, though? these are our seats!
woman: you could find a cinema employee and they could find you other seats.
it continued in this way for a bit, but the guy finally gave up and he and his girlfriend went down to sit in the front row. poor guy.

my highlight of the day was our evening visit to the gemaeldegalerie, which houses the paintings of the berlin gallery that survived the bombings of WWII and subsequent fires in the underground storage locations where they were hidden. in new zealand i'd had a copy of the berlin gallery guide from the early 80s that painted a bit of a pathetic tale about the then-current state of the collection, divided as it was into multiple inadequate gallery spaces on different sides of the city and having lost many of their principal works during the war, so it was exciting to see the collection back together in a new building, looking towards the future. i got to see andrea mantegna's "madonna with sleeping child", a lovely, delicate tempera painting that i'd admired in pictures but had never seen up close. travelling in europe is so much fun...

-rachel

prague

clockwise from top left: st vitus' cathedral, bryan eating pig's knee, view of prague castle from charles bridge, st agnes' convent, wallenstein gardens, aidan and franta fighting over the "missile launcher"

prague is a very cool city, and we have spent a fantastic four days here with bryan's cousin matt, his wife olivia, and their two boys, aged 6 and 8. they lead the kind of life that we aspire to - no car, top-floor apartment in a historic building in the central city, raising their kids to be comfortable in a foreign culture. it's immensely attractive and a lot of fun to be able to experience their lifestyle for a few days.

in the time that we've been here, we've learned that the hearty czech cuisine need not be bland (delicious goulash and the huge hunk of meat that is pig's knee are proof of this), we've seen evidence of the arts and culture scene that's been thriving here for hundreds of years, we've gotten sunburned while paddleboating on the vltava river, and we've been impressed countless times by the public transport system, which has never been overcrowded, even at the peak of the tourist season. will write more later - this is just a glimpse of a city that we're absolutely loving. leaving today for berlin...by train :)

-rachel

leaving already?

flying to prague this afternoon - how is it already time to leave london? we definitely didn't allow enough time for this portion of the trip, and will have to schedule a few more days here at the end.

yesterday was devoted to seeing london city, the old part of town with ancient roman walls and beheadings at the tower of london and such. it was...fine..., but i am now convinced that i will never again come to london in the summer. the tower of london was horrendously expensive (and they include a 10% donation in your ticket price that you have to awkwardly ask them to take off if you don't want to pay it...what crap!) but completely unenjoyable because you're stick in one endless line, pushed past anything you might want to pause to read about by the pace of the crowd behind you. seeing the crown jewels was like going on a theme park ride that seems not too crowded by the size of the line outside but is secretly hiding a much longer line inside the building. yuck. it was a little bit cool seeing the crowns (apparently there's one for coronations and a different one that is then worn for the procession out), and i think bryan liked checking out the armor and weaponry in another building, but otherwise i would have been happy walking around the outer perimeter of the building...for free. had fish and chips for lunch but didn't get any vinegar with it, which i had been led to believe was standard. hmm.

crossed over the river via the tower bridge, which was more colorful than i'd imagined it, wandered past the globe theater and the prison that gave the moniker "the clink" to the rest of the world, then re-crossed on the harry potter bridge (you know, the one that's destroyed by the death eaters...) and spent some time at the museum of london, learning about londinium and plagues and great fires and beatles and telephone booths. it's amazing to realize that this city has 2000 years of history behind it already - how much fun it must be to be an archaeologist here! maybe i'll go back to school...

-rachel

art, how i have missed thee!



frans hals' "young man holding a skull (vanitas)"



i used to be a frequent visitor at the institute of the arts in minneapolis. my trips there were usually alone, often when i'd taken the day off of work or in the evening when bryan was working late, and i was familiar enough with the collection that i could head right for the one piece or area that best fit my mood for the day. since living in christchurch, where the small and fairly mediocre art museum has been occupied by the city council since the earthquake in february, i have had to resort to guidebooks for other great museums in an attempt to satisfy my artistic longings. the one that was most dear to me was the companion guide to the national gallery in london, which depicts and describes their 200 best paintings in detail, and which i read cover to cover during the months that i was unemployed.

so with that bit of background knowlege, maybe you'll understand how exciting it was to get to visit the national gallery today and see nearly all of those great works in person. while the crowds clustered around the monets and van goghs, my heart was thrilled at the sight of a few favorites by slightly lesser-known artists - frans hals' "young man with a skull" in its wide black frame, fra filippo lippi's "the annunciation", slightly smaller than i'd imagined, and robert campin's beautiful portraits of a husband and wife that feel much more modern than their 15th century creation would suggest. two hours there just wasn't enough...but it was for bryan, and it was for me when the crowds really started pressing in, so we had to move on. now i really can't wait to hit up the great galleries in d.c. over the next few months...

-rachel

we're here!

arrived in london this afternoon, exhausted yet exhilared after 27 hours of nonstop travel. we were farewelled by 16 amazing friends at the airport on sunday night, which couldn't help but be a tearful encounter, and took the midnight flight on budget airline airasia x through its hub at kuala lumpur to london. being wedged into the center seat on both 12-hour flights, i slept barely a wink but somehow am functioning well this evening and hopefully won't suffer the horrendous jet lag that lingered for days in auckland. we didn't think we were going to make our connection to london, as the plane was an hour late and check-in was closing minutes from our arrival, but we speed-walked through the surprisingly small transfer terminal (it doesn't look anything like the international hub that it is) and just made it. saw a couple of palm trees and lots of military-looking airport officials, but that's the end of my impressions of malaysia. disembarked on the tarmac instead of directly into the terminal, though, so i'm glad to say i have stepped foot on asian soil. was a bit freaked out by the announcement made over the PA system upon arrival in kl, "passengers should be aware that possession of illegal drugs is taken very seriously in malaysia and carries a mandatory death sentence", as i had just finished a bag of lollies and was concerned that the sugar left in the bottom might look a bit suspicious. guess they can tell the difference between cocaine and candy :)

arrived in london at 3:30 pm but didn't get to our hostel way-the-heck-on-the-other-side-of-town until almost 7:30, involving a scenic train ride through the english countryside, a frantic transfer to the tube in the middle of central london's crazy rush hour, a second transfer up to willesden green station on the jubilee line, and a 10-minute walk. looks like it will totally be worth it, though, as the hostel's in a really quiet and beautiful residential area and seems to be very well managed. we are finding london to be crazy expensive, as everyone has said, but we'll enjoy the time that we have here and hit up lots of those free museums. already wondering if we can work out a way to come here for a year or so...great history, lots of walking tracks and great tramps within a few hours' drive, steady supply of cadbury's chocolate...

-rachel

our little bundle of joy :)



last fish and chips from the local shop, 1040 takeaways,
eaten in a very empty apartment



anticipation...

so we haven't really planned much of our europe trip, despite the fact that we'll be there in less than a week. that's out of character for me, who usually delights more in the planning than in actually experiencing the trip, but we've been so busy wrapping up things on this end that we've just run out of time. we realized our mistake when we popped online this afternoon to check out hostel prices for london and realized that most of the good hostels no longer have availability for the days that we'll be there next week. fearing a terrible experience like our arrival at the city groove hostel in auckland two years ago, we reserved our beds immediately when we finally did find one that looked halfway decent. from our budget accommodation experiences in new zealand, we've learned that the main things we're looking for are, in this order, cleanliness, size (the smaller the better), location and price. our booking with palmer's lodge - hillspring got us what we wanted on the first two items, if not the last two, so i think i'm happy. it's a good ways out of town but close to the tube, so we'll just have to plan to go into the city for the whole day and not be able to pop back in at the hostel for lunch. free breakfast, free internet, interesting old building...there are plenty of opportunities for this to be a good experience. we'll just have to wait and see, won't we?

-rachel

winter tramping

last night we returned from a two-day tramping trip out at mt oxford, our last trip out to the wonderful nz backcountry for a while. we still have a long list of great tramps left undone - the st james walkway, the tongariro crossing, the harpers pass track, the kepler, mt. somers - which will just have to wait for our next trip to new zealand. though i'd been working hard to keep this weekend open, for a while it didn't look like this trip was going to happen as we don't have a car or even driver's licenses that are valid in nz (our ability to drive with overseas licenses expired in may), so i was thrilled when bryan arranged on thursday for our friend phil to drop us off and pick us up from the wharfedale track on the weekend.

the wharfedale track is part of a series of connecting tracks through the mt oxford forest, located in the foothills of the mountains just behind the town of oxford, an hour northwest of christchurch. having flexible transport meant that we could be dropped off at and picked up from different locations, so we planned a hike that would take us up to the summit of mt oxford, drop down to the wharfedale hut in lees valley, and then follow a low ridge out to the view hill carpark a few miles to the west of our starting point. the big draw was hiking above treeline on mt oxford, which would give us more then just beech forest to look at along the way. i don't know if bryan will ever forgive me for this decision.

we were on the trail by 9:15 am on saturday morning, having been dropped off at cooper's carpark, maybe 200m above sea level, aiming to reach the 1365m summit of mt oxford by lunchtime. it's the dead of winter here, which means mild temperatures on the plains but plenty of snow on the mountains, and by the time we emerged from the dense forest about 11 am, there was plenty of snow and some ice underfoot. the views were incredible - we could see bigger mountains to the west, the plains and the ocean to the east, and the port hills to the south. having become quite friendly with our couch in recent months, neither of us were in particularly great shape so the climb was strenuous to say the least. as we continued to rise, the snow became deeper and we were thankful for the footsteps of someone who'd been up before us, leading the way and saving us the effort of sinking down with every step. during the last hour we made the next orange marker pole our goal, resting two or three times between each one, counting down to the final pole just below the top of the mountain.

 at 1 pm we finally reached the trig at the top and sat down on some exposed rock to have our lunch. this much-needed break gave me new energy, but the sight of our ham and crackers made bryan nauseous and he expelled the contents of his stomach over the side of the mountain, surely the most dramatic place he's ever vomited. we didn't linger long here, since we still had quite a ways to go (though at this point we weren't entirely sure how far - 3 hours? 5 hours?) and not many daylight hours left. unfortunately, bryan started feeling even worse as we began heading down the western arm of the alpine ridge, complaining of leg cramps that were obviously causing him excruciating pain with every step and which didn't respond to efforts to stretch them out. the snow was also terrible at this point, being about knee-deep and covered by a thin crust that could almost hold a person's weight but always snapped through at the last second. progress was slow, and i began to worry about our decision not to bring a tent with us on the journey. we always bring a tent, even when we're planning to sleep in a hut, but decided against it this time in order to save weight. later he told me that running through his mind at this point was "i can't be helicoptered out because of leg cramps...that's lame!".

to our great relief, bryan gained more control over his lower limbs as we reached the shallower snow levels at lower altitudes and we were almost enjoying ourselves as we turned onto the mt. oxford route that would take us down to the hut next to the river. for the first hour of this part i wondered why it was classed as a rough route and not a standard tramping track, and found my answer on the second part when the path descended so steeply that we opted to slide down on our butts for much of the way. at times when we thought we could stay on our feet, the muddy path usually intervened and sent us down in a seated position anyway. just as the last rays of sunlight were departing from the mountaintops, we arrived at wharfedale hut where four mountain bikers already had a roaring fire going. good on them. in bed by 7 pm.

day two was much better, since we'd already done all of the difficult ascents and descents on saturday, and only had a gentle climb to a low saddle and then a gentle downhill meander to the view hill carpark. we made great time and emerged at the carpark at 12:20, leaving us with more than a 2 1/2 hr wait until our prearranged pickup time of 3 o'clock. the views were nice but the wind was chilly, so we used the weak cell phone signal to text phil for an earlier pickup time. in the end this didn't save us any time at all, since his car couldn't ford a stream at the beginning of the mountain road and we had to walk about an hour to meet him after all. oh well - just part of the story i guess :) we'll definitely miss these kiwi tramping adventures, though i suppose there are some good ones to be found in the states as well.

-rachel

wet and wild in greymouth :)

so this is very old news by now, but i thought i'd post about a day trip to the west coast that we took shorly after we'd decided to move back to the states, when "one last time" and a little sigh were being added to every proposed outing. for a reason that i can't quite pinpoint, we chose dreary greymouth over the alpine beauty of lake tekapo but still found plenty of dramatic scenery and windy roads to keep us awake for the 8-hour return journey.



We all look hideous in this photo but it's
the only one I have of the three of us.

we headed off in phil's car on a saturday morning along arthur's pass, the high road through a mountain pass that connects christchurch on the east coast with greymouth on the west coast. in the morning we could look out over the pacific ocean and imagine south america far beyond the horizon, and by lunchtime we were gazing towards australia over the tasman sea. i love living in a small country. our first stop was not, unfortunately, for "world-famous pies" in the town of springfield, but at the scenic and remote lake lyndon, where these first few pictures were taken. we weren't far enough into our road trip to need much time away from the car, so we walked down to the lakeshore for a quick glance, trying not to disturb the fishermen whose tranquillity we were interrupting, and popped back on the road, trying to beat the impending rain.



bryan at lake lyndon



phil at a rest stop along the pass, admiring the hugeness of the glacial valley.



half an hour beyond lake lyndon, having passed only access roads to one or two skifields not yet in season, the hills flattened out and we pulled into a packed little parking lot by the castle rock formations, a series of exposed rocks that have weathered in such a way as to make them resemble castle ruins on a hillside. we'd seen pictures of these before from a trip that the youth group made out here last year to do some climbing, but we weren't quite as ambitious and only managed a brief wander after a single halfhearted attempt to scale a large boulder, which proved to be much too slippery for our tennis shoes. we couldn't believe how many other travellers had stopped here as well, as the roads were nowhere near crowded and tourist season was clearly coming to a close. could be the effect of nothing to see in christchurch since the earthquake.





arthur's pass is a fun road to travel along, as it is soon flanked by steep snow-peaked mountains and high waterfalls flowing down the wide riverbed carved out by glaciers many moons ago. i don't particularly enjoy driving its blind curves, always aware of the thousand-foot drop close at hand, but observing from the backseat with a safe and confident driver is a pleasant thing in this part of new zealand. at times the landscape eases into grassy hilltops dotted with sheep or skinny lakes rimmed with golden trees, and at those times you wouldn't want to be anywhere but in the car on a drizzly autumn day with a few bags of chips and a comfy pair of sweatpants.



the aqueduct diverting rainfall over the road, just past
the highest elevation of the pass

bryan and i had travelled along the western half of arthur's pass on a side trip while driving down the west coast in 2009 with our german acquaintance, david, whom we'd met in a cheap hostel after finishing the heaphy track, so reaching the tiny town of arthur's pass halfway through our drive with phil marked the completion of this route and the beginning of familiar territory. we opted not to stop in arthur's pass, as there's not much to see and it was raining too hard to make even a short hike very attractive, and drove on through to the west coast in miserable weather. the west coast is known for unfathomable quantities of rain, so we rejoiced to see greymouth in its element and actually did enjoy the rugged splendor that a low fog and misty weather lend to the largish town at the mouth of the depressingly-named grey river.   



we didn't last long in greymouth, stopping for less than an hour to restock our snack supply, read about the massive floods of the mid-90s that led to the building up of the river's retaining wall (above), and hit up a good sale at toyworld. the highlight of the day, however, was finding the lookout point above the turbulent meeting point of the wild tasman sea and the powerful grey river, where the waves crashed violently against the rocks and reinforced why the west coast is no popular swimming spot.

on the way back i convinced phil to take a detour along what my map had indicated was a paved road, but turned out to be mostly a rough and muddy gravel track instead. the dense, jungle-like west coast foliage eventually thinned out and revealed little gems like this tucked-away lake that justified (in my eyes at least) the extra time that we spent traversing this wild country. the rest of the trip back was uneventful, since we'd stopped at the few sights on the way in and wanted to get out of the mountains before nightfall, but the setting sun did allow for some pretty, if blurry, shots through the window on the way home.

next up: photos from the two days that we'll spend in queenstown next week...as long as the ash cloud from chile's volcanic eruption doesn't continue to ground domestic flights :(

-rachel

a difficult decision.

i mentioned in my last blog that bryan's job here will end in about a month, creating massive complications for our work permits here. after familiarizing ourselves again with the immigration nz website, it looks like it would be a long shot (not to mention a long and expensive process) for us to gain new zealand residency or any sort of work permit, and so we've decided that it's time to move again, most likely back to the states. we've just purchased tickets with air asia (reportedly worse than jetstar...uh-oh!) to london in july and plan to spend about two weeks in europe, mainly in germany to visit our friends ann-kristin and josh in berlin and hopefully duck down south to rheinland-pfalz to show bryan where we lived when my dad was stationed there with the army.

we really love christchurch, and it's difficult to imagine leaving, especially so abruptly. with much of downtown being closed to the public or demolished as a result of the earthquake, it feels like we'll be leaving without a proper goodbye...without one last chicken soho sandwich from the new york deli on new regent st, without catching one last movie at the tiny arts centre cinema, without a final visit to the central library where i've spent so many hours in the past year. i suppose that just justifies a follow-up trip in a year or so to check out the rebuild, huh? :)

i'll leave you with a glimpse just outside our flat of the gorgeous autumn weather...and also a little reminder of home. strange to imagine that we might be back in springfield, virginia by the northern fall.

-rachel

happy easter!

happy easter, everyone! it's been a long 40 days of lent, and i'm thrilled to be able to partake in all manner of sweets again :) my aunt and uncle sent us three amazing boxes of american food last month, some of which we have managed to save until now, including the package of easter oreos that will go down so well with a tall glass of chocolate milk and the velveeta that we're going to make into a spicy cheese dip this afternoon. yum!

long weekends are only appreciated when you actually have a job to take a break from, and so this is one of the first holidays that's felt like a true holiday for me in new zealand. the company that i work for makes, among other things, chemo drugs for cancer patients, so the hospitals have been stocking up before the weekend and i've had plenty of late nights at work over the last two weeks. everyone here is grumbling about anzac day (memorial day for war veterans) falling on easter weekend and robbing us of another holiday, but in general it seems to me that this country takes every opportunity for a day off.

the disappointing bit about this easter for us is the knowledge that it's probably our last easter in new zealand. bryan found out a few weeks ago that the church would not be able to keep him on staff beyond the end of may, as the earthquakes have meant a drop-off in attendance, a pricey rebuild of our main building and renovation of the small youth hall that we're meeting in, and the loss of car parking revenue from neighboring businesses. so with our visa being tied to this job and our chances of getting residency looking pretty slim, we probably won't be able to stay here beyond the end of our current visa in august :( we're more than a little disappointed, as we'd been planning to stay for at least another two years and had been so thrilled that i'd finally found full-time work just a few weeks earlier. we'll give more updates as we figure out what we're doing and how much time we have left in our lovely city.

-rachel

excellent developments on the job front

just wrote a long blog all about my new job - only to have it post a blank one and delete all of my writing. fantastic.

summary: i found a full-time job. it's sweet. it's as a lab assistant in a pharmaceutical company. this means we can stay in new zealand. hooray!

maybe i'll rewrite it when i'm not quite so annoyed.

-rachel

deconstructing church

Here are some before and after photos that our senior pastor snapped yesterday of our church building getting demolished. Apparently they've just instituted some new policies today that would require a longer permit process for demolishing a building, but yesterday these weren't yet in force and it was taken down, as I hear it, in a matter of minutes. The auditorium that was torn down hasn't been used since the September earthquake, when some bricks from a supporting wall came crashing through our offices, but it had been hoped until last week that it would still be able to be repaired. Actually, the insurance company was still hoping this - the rest of us wanted the old converted building to go so that we could rebuild one better suited to our needs. We've been using our much smaller youth hall building for the last six months, which has proven to be impressively earthquake-proof; this is what we expect to move back into in a month or two. The plan until then hasn't yet been finalized.


After: Just the Youth Hall

Before: Youth Hall (left) and Auditorium (right)



-Rachel

earthquake update: part 2

In the days immediately following the quake we stayed at home, never straying far from the TV where the news coverage gave round-the-clock updates on the rescue and recovery efforts with frequent briefings by our well-spoken mayor, Bob Parker, on whom I have a bit of an older-man crush. We listened especially for information about the CTV building, which had caught on fire after its total collapse, where Paul, one of the elders from our church, had been working on Tuesday morning. Having not had any live rescues since Wednesday afternoon, just 26 hours after the quake, the media were especially sensitive to any possible signs of life and issued reports on a few trapped survivors that were later found to be not true. On Thursday or Friday we were all discouraged to hear the USAR (Urban Search and Rescue) chief declare 100% certainty that the building was no longer a survivable environment and began to acknowledge that we had lost a valued member of our church and a man who had been a good friend to us.

Paul and his wife Nancy were the first people that we met at City Church last January, and if it weren't for their kindness we probably wouldn't have stayed in New Zealand as long as we have. They took us out for lunch at their favorite restaurant, drove us up to the Port Hills to introduce us to a bird's eye view of our new city, and helped us sort out Bryan's internship at the church. At Christmas, knowing that I was still unsuccessfully looking for work, they gave us a lovely gift basket of tasty food as well as a very generous monetary gift that bought us groceries for multiple weeks. We had just invited them over to our place for lunch to repay their many kindnesses to us, but as we were waiting for the school year to get into full swing (Nancy's a teacher), the opportunity hadn't yet come around. As far as I'm aware, his body hasn't yet been found or identified, which isn't surprising, as work at the CTV building has been progressing slowly because of the extent of the damage there. 



Towards the end of the week we began meeting at Westside, one of the other churches in our movement, to arrange food distribution, help shovel liquefaction off of lawns and driveways, and sort out any other needs of families in our churches and in their communities. Bryan headed up the team that hosted sausage sizzles at a couple of water distribution sites on the east side of town, and I went out with them on Thursday to Cowles Stadium in Bromley, where one of the welfare centres was beginning to wind down as the newly homeless sorted out longer-term accommodation options. Our two BBQ stations were swamped with kids and adults who hadn't had hot food in days, most of the residents in that area still being without power and water, and many of them filling their couches and floor space with friends and family whose homes were even less inhabitable.

On Sunday we had a combined church service at Westside with the 4-5 other churches of our denomination in the Christchurch area, the most energetic Sunday service that we've had in a long time. We were surprised at the number of families that decided to venture out to the far side of town, and threw together a kids program at the last minute. We'd originally been expecting to just support the kids programs that Westside was already running, but we found that we quickly outstripped the resources that they had available, especially with many of the normal volunteers needing to sort out their own family's needs as well as recover psychologically from the experience.

Today our pastor will be sorting out the building situation for our church, trying to find a place that's closer to the city as we expect to be out of our building for a month at the very least. One of the options is having an afternoon service at a church that's half a block away from where we live, which would really help us with our lack of transport as the bus system doesn't seem to be anywhere near up and running. We'll see what happens.

-Rachel

earthquake update

Bryan and James shoveling liquefaction from our driveway

So this Tuesday was supposed to be a fairly quiet day - Bryan had gone down to the church to help with a BBQ that we were putting on for the students of Vision College, next door to our church, and I slept in, lounging around in my pajamas until lunchtime. I was trying to talk myself into heading down to the library to do more job searching, but a good book about Scott's Discovery voyage to the Antarctic kept my inside - which turned out to be particularly fortunate on this day.

Just before 1 PM, as I was still in my second-floor bedroom, engrossed in my book, we experienced an aftershock that was particularly startling and felt even more severe than the original earthquake that we experienced in September. I could hear things crashing to the floor downstairs and darted to my earthquake position in the doorway, feeling only slighly more prepared than last year. Though I was immediately able to get a call through to Bryan and knew that he and others with him were all right, I started walking down to the church right away. There's something helpful about being able to see others and share the experience with them that outweighed the potential dangers of leaving the house.

Everyone was out on the streets, and as I got closer to the city I started meeting people who had walked up from the city center. One man told me that he'd been in a conference in the Town Hall when the floor split in two. I passed a corner pharmacy that had suffered minor damage during the last quake and moved to a new location; good thing, too, because the second floor had completely collapsed in on the bottom floor where their store had been, leaving interior hallways and doors exposed for all to see.

At the church I discovered that a 30-ft wall looming over their BBQ spot had partially collapsed just as they were about to start, and a few people had been snatched away from the wall by friends as it began to fall. No one there was hurt, but some friends hadn't yet been able to locate family and were becoming more and more distraught, not sure if their phone's silence meant that their family members were caught in the rubble or simply that the cell phone network wasn't working properly. Finding nothing to do at the church itself, I drove a friend in this situation towards her house on the east side of town, not sure if we could get through but determined to find out if her house, which had been damaged in the last quake, was still standing and if her mom was there. We finally abandoned the car a mile or two from the church after 45 minutes in stand-still traffic, and walked the final mile along roads buckled with pressure and clotted with liquefaction, soil that's been compressed by the pressure and turns to mud, which seeps up through the cracks and holes that are available to it. Fortunately, we found her family safe and well, though their house has moved off of its foundations and they've since moved in with family in other parts of town.

Knowing the traffic to be impossible and expecting the buses not to be running (I had since heard of buses having been crushed by falling buildings in the city), I headed off on foot towards my home, 3 or 4 miles west, at some points finding the streets underwater to knee-level. Most of the homes I saw in this area seemed to be in good condition, as some of the most fragile ones had come down last September and almost none of the chimneys had yet been replaced after their tumbles from last year. I arrived home to find our small back pation area covered with inches of liquefaction, a stream of water running through from an outlet I couldn't pinpoint and slowly filling the area even more.

Throughout the afternoon and evening we sat glued to the TV, amazed at the difference in damage compared to the last earthquake, which was larger on the magnitude scale (7.1 compared to a 6.3) but, being farther from the city center, shallower, and occurring overnight, didn't result in anything near what we were seeing this time around. We had power but not water, and dutifully set out every large pot and unbroken bowl onto our balcony to collect the rain that was now starting to come down.

More later.

-Rachel

german night: session 1

You may remember from previous posts the Lewis Pass tramping trip that we took in the snow six or so months ago with Ann-Kristin, our German friend, and her boyfriend Josh, a Kiwi. Since Ann returned to Berlin in September, Josh has been planning his own overseas trip to visit her and has finally purchased his tickets for a six-month trip leaving in April. I'm sure he'll have a fantastic time visiting his Liebchen, working, sightseeing, and maybe even doing some climbing...but the only problem is that Josh doesn't really speak German.

And he's not the only one wanting to learn - being overseas is a constant reminder that knowing only one language is an intellectual and cultural weakness and that I am in the minority for it. I brushed up on some vocabulary with Ann while she was here ("Der Schmetterling? The butterfly is a masculine noun?"), but am eager for opportunities to move beyond my kindergarten speaking level and develop the language into something that I can legitimately put on a resume...not to mention that trip to Germany that Bryan and I intend to take...eventually.

Thus begins an official series of German Nights, in which Bryan, Josh and I work through a chapter of exercises in the book that Ann so hopefully sent him for Christmas, sample a menu of "traditional" German food from a library book of Central European cuisine, watch a movie set in Germany (lots of war films to choose from), and play some Settlers of Catan. That last one doesn't have any cultural significance, but it should always been included in any enjoyable evening.

As we have only recently instituted the German Nights program, we have so far only met once for this purpose, but I believe we could easily call it a success. We mastered the alphabet, were introduced to the idea of formal and casual pronouns, and heard over and over from the dialogue sound clips that "Aynur" is a Turkish name.

But the highlight of the evening was the success of our meal: Schnitzel with Spaetzle (inconveniently similarly named for our group of beginners). Being on a budget and acknowledging the danger of spreading our limited cooking skills too thinly, the Schnitzel was the frozen kind that we merely threw in the oven, while the Spaetzle with bacon, mushrooms and poached celery was fully homemade. Spaetzle are a sort of knobbly pasta made by scraping little bits off of the wet dough into a pot of boiling water, an art which I cannot yet claim to have mastered, as many of mine came out in big dumpling-like clumps that weren't all that appetizing. Fortunately, we had enough decent Spaetzle to go around and were all pleasantly surprised to have genuinely enjoyed our new dish.

With these two dishes we've exhausted the good-looking recipes in our Central European Cuisine book, so we're now taking suggestions for future meals. Maybe next week we'll skip dinner and go right to dessert - German chocolate cake? Apple strudel? Black forest cake? Plenty of options in the sweets category...

-Rachel

an awesome valentine's day card

so this is the card i gave bryan for valentine's day. it's blank inside. i don't have a clue why this card needs to exist, but i think it's hilarious and i'm hoping that he did too. it's made by the korean company mmmg (millimeter milligram), who office above the cutest little urban coffee shop. apparently the "you are not ugly" slogan also comes printed on a canvas bag or on a button featuring a redhead with braces, available through telegram paper goods. :)

-rachel

crossing our fingers...

So we've pulled out our (thick) file of immigration paperwork, and today we're submitting a variance request to INZ with the hope that they'll grant us two things:

1) Our current visas expire in August, and we're hoping that by submitting our police checks (which we hadn't received from the FBI when our current visas were being processed), they'll extend our visas for another two years, the maximum allowed under our Missionaries and Religious Workers visa. I'm thinking it might also help me with the job search to be able to prove my ability to work in the country for more than just the next six months. What's really cool is that when we attempted to photocopy our background checks for our files, the copy came out with "UNAUTHORIZED COPY" printed all over it in. That's some pretty sweet technology.
2) Bryan's also applying for the ability to work with a program called Wise Up, teaching social and behavioral skills to primary school kids. He would only be working 5 hours/wk at most, but the program is very much in need of male facilitators and it would give us a little extra income as well as more experience working with kids. His current visa prohibits him from working anywhere but the church, so we're crossing our fingers that they'll be lenient on this one, since it's only a few hours and it's kinda related to his field of study.

Wish us luck! We've been needing to get our act together on this for a while, so it will feel good to have all of our paperwork finally in and step into the part of the process that's out of our control :)

-Rachel

one big january update

So I realize that I haven't posted anything in the last month, which I will be blaming on the beautiful summer weather but which is actually due to my slothfulness and the large quantities of movies that I've been watching lately - it is, after all, the heart of Oscar season. So, in an attempt to make up for this long silence, I will recap the highlights (and lowlights) of my January and you will pretend that I blogged consistently all the way through. Agreed?



Bryan (best man) and Dave (DJ) at the wedding



Highlight #1: Celebrating one glorious year of our residence in Christchurch!

Lowlight #1: Still no job, one year on.

Highlight #2: Attending the wedding of our friends Simon and Sara in an adorable little stone church outside of Geraldine.

Lowlight #2: Contracting food poisoning at the wedding reception and missing my last two days of seasonal work  :(

Highlight #3: Watching our tiny veggie/herb garden grow. Still not sure what to do with the silverbeet (swiss chard), which I've never cooked before.
Lowlight #3: Discovering a solitary strawberry growing amongst the ivy, only to watch it rapidly wither and die.

Highlight #4: Hemming my own jeans for the first time - by hand! This has now created the possibility that shopping for pants could be...possibly...fun.

Highlight #5: The arrival of Oscar season! Our nominees list is color-coded and we have our movie watching planned for these few weeks leading up to the ceremony. We'll have watched every best picture nominee, at least one nominee from each category, and, if we can find a (legal) way to see Biutiful, every multiple nominee. I love January.

-Rachel

the heart of the great alone

One of the things I love about Christchurch is its identity as an Antarctic gateway. It figured as the last major port of call for many of the heroic era Antarctic journeys, and a person looking to remember the legacies of the great explorers will find plenty of monuments, artefacts, and personal connections to maintain their interest in the subject. This is one of the ways that Christchurch has developed in a way that differentiates it from the rest of New Zealand - Auckland and Wellington rarely find their names in the annals of Antarctic history, but Christchurch seems to find itself on the opening and closing pages of every heroic southern adventure. And as Christchurch finds itself directly north of the Ross Sea, where the US and NZ have their primary Antarctic bases, our little city is still the last stop for those heading to the ice today.

So while it was no great surprise to see an the Royal Collection's exhibit of Ponting and Hurley's photographs from the Terra Nova and Endurance expeditions on at the Canterbury Museum, it was still an exciting occasion for someone like me - someone with, admittedly, a bit of a crush on Ernest Shackleton. If only I'd been born 100 years earlier.... Having read Shackleton and Scott's diaries of these expeditions, Frank Hurley's lovely words and pictures describing his experience as Shackleton's expedition photographer on the Endurance, and accounts from members of their scientific staff and crew, the gallery seemed full of familiar friends, retelling a story that I had long ago made myself a part of. Here are some of my favorites:







"A night watchman spins a yarn" (Hurley)
A classic image, and a beautiful one.





"The HMS Endurance crushed
beneath the floes" (Hurley)

The Endurance got stuck in pack ice and, after
months of anxious waiting, was crushed by its
massive force. Its slow demise makes for some
stunning pictures.

"Vida" (Ponting)
One of the dogs from Scott's expedition.
I don't think Scott ate as many of his dogs
as Shackleton did...





"Captain Oates and Siberian Ponies on board Terra Nova" (Ponting)
Scott invested heavily in ponies, hoping that they'd offer
significant benefits while hauling heavy sledges to the pole.
It didn't really pan out for him.



Neither of these two pictures of Tom Crean
were part of the exhibition, but I like them so
much that I had to include them anyway. He
was part of Shackleton's Endurance expedition.



Where can I get a hat like that?

As soon as the library reopens from its weeks-long holiday siesta, I'm going to renew my efforts to find some Antarctic classics - most notably Cherry Apsley-Garrard's "The Worst Journey in the World" - and maybe pay a bit more attention to the pictures :) If you haven't read Shackleton's "South"...don't you think you might want to get on that?

-Rachel