my first kiwi birthday

Today I experienced my first autumn birthday. I love fall, as it means scarves and fireplaces and coffee and colorful foliage, and am more than happy to celebrate my 25th birthday in such a setting. Bryan and I celebrated last week, when we both had a day off and could spend our rainy afternoon watching movies and ordering in Thai food. He's working tonight, so I spent a wonderful, quiet evening soaking my feet in a peppermint scrub that I won at church a few weeks back and reading about poor pathetic Fanny Price in Jane Austen's Mansfield Park.

But the best part of the evening was when our friend Phil unexpectedly stopped by with a surprise gift - a block of chocolate with Smarties (not the sour fruity kind, the tasty chocolate kind) and a contribution to our Disney sing-a-long nights with The Rescuers, both of which he knew to be among my favorites.

What a wonderful birthday. Thanks to my thoughtful family for sending cards - it's so much more exciting to receive mail when it comes from overseas!

-Rachel

weird thing about new zealand #1

it's difficult to predict how the availability and cost of a specific item will differ in new zealand, dependent as it is on a complex jumble of supply, demand, legal issues, transport costs, and various other economic factors. along the way, we've found out that milk is cheap while cheese is expensive, that mexican food items are often difficult to find while asian and indian foods fill a full supermarket aisle, that fast food here doesn't usually mean cheap food, and, most recently, that contact solution can only be found in pharmacies, not alongside the other rows of toiletries and medications in supermarkets and big box stores. it doesn't require a prescription or anything, but somehow it's been deemed unfit to be sold next to toothpaste and shampoo and toilet paper and ibuprofen and hair clips and cough drops and hand sanitizer and nail polish remover. no idea why.

homesick.

since we returned from australia, i've been desperately homesick. not homesick in the sense of missing a particular place or person or thing (though those moments certainly aren't absent), but of longing to establish a home. in whatever country and city i find myself in, i want to invite friends over to sit on the couch that we picked out ourselves, to drink coffee from my favorite yellow mug, to borrow movies and books with no need to return them any time in the near future.

it's now been nine months since we arrived in new zealand, and we're becoming more and more aware of our need to make a decision about where we'll be two months from now, two years from now. and yet, feeling detached from the places that have been our homes in the past, the city and even the country that we'll end up in are now completely up for grabs. we have until august 20th to renew our visa (at a hefty price) or board a flight headed out of the country. where next?

-rachel

friends

it's been wonderful this week to look around us and discover a group of people who are quickly becoming great friends. i'd like to share some of them with you so that you can join this circle of wonderful people as well :) sorry about the lack of pictures lately...i've neglected my responsibility to bring my camera along with me.

sunday - last week, we joined chris and sarah for dinner at their house in rangiora, about 40 minutes north of christchurch. they're a married couple around our age that we met at church (as we have all of our close friends here), who met when chris was preaching on a fountain in the middle of town a few years ago and sarah and her friend sat down nearby to listen and (let's be honest) to make fun of him. she was eventually won over both by his message and by him, and was baptized in the church about a month ago. they live out in the country with their five horses, with which they want to start a program to teach special needs kids how to ride and care for the animals. they're a very cool couple.

tuesday - the church has a young adults group that meets on tuesdays evenings, to which has been added a late night disney singalong at the encouragement of our friend phil, who is also the church receptionist. he moved up from invercargill (in the far south; they roll their Rs very distinctively) in january to make a career change after a few years of working in the film industry. he was once served lunch by anthony hopkins on the set of "the world's fastest indian", which totally beats our best movie claim to fame of having the crew trailers from the coen brothers' "a serious man" on campus at north central.

friday/saturday - we spent all weekend at church setting up for the maximise conference, a music conference that city church hosted jointly with vision college next door. we had a great time serving with so many great people, like alice (the moped rider whom i've mentioned before) and her boyfriend ed (who just bought a motorcycle to keep up with her), and rebecca, who's just finished her course at the nearby college of tourism and travel, and josh, an avid tramper who has recently returned from a 12-day hike through the mountains from arthur's pass to lewis pass. the topic of ultimate frisbee was raised for the first time today, which excited bryan to no end. there may be some boy "dates" in the near future, as bryan's also been eager to get the guys together for a zombie movie marathon.

unfortunately, this weekend we didn't get to hang out with hannah, who left today for a five week trip to uganda to serve at an orphanage with a missions organization and very generously left us the use of her car while she's gone. we are, of course, planning at least one road trip in the next month while we have a free set of wheels. lake tekapo? mt cook? kaikoura? hanmer springs? all of the above?

-rachel

family game night!

here's the advertisement for our next family ministries event, a game night with massive board games that we've got to figure out how to construct in the next week. the top secret but very awesome game lineup includes:

-hungry, hungry hippos (the balls will be balloons falling from the ceiling)

-battleship (with human battleships that will get "fired upon" with water balloons)

-jenga

-snakes and ladders (also known as chutes and ladders)

-twister

-candy land

we'll have themed snacks as well, which we still have yet to plan. at the moment we're thinking about gummi snakes (for snakes and ladders) and decorated brownies that will look like dominoes. any suggestions?

so far, we've had the movie night, which was a huge hit, and a mother's day event that involved us watching the kids while the parents get a night to themselves. we're having a blast volunteering with the family ministry, and can't wait until we're in a place where we can get paid for this!

-rachel

google earth is not helping.

google earth must be conspiring to make me homesick for minneapolis and for NCU, with pictures of pretty summer days on campus, like this one.

-rachel

sydney highlights

I think it's time to talk about Sydney. This is a city that I'd visited on a family vacation when I was 13, and while I remembered it fondly, I didn't have any particular desire to return. Thank goodness for the prompting of my husband to include it in our itinerary, because I quickly found that I'd been under-representing it to myself and others for the last 12 years. On the night that we arrived, we walked down to Circular Quay and were awestruck by the size and grandeur of both the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge. We were giddy with excitement, both because of these iconic Sydney landmarks and because of the inexpressibly magical quality about nighttime on the waterfront in a foreign city.

On the final day of our trip, we enjoyed a special lunch at the restaurant Waterfront, where I had what must be the best fish I've ever had in my life...and I'm no stranger to seafood. This was an excellent snapper, and Bryan shares the same sentiment about his swordfish. The view from our table roughly corresponds with the pictures above - bridge on the left, opera house on the right. Our only regret is that we didn't brush up on our dining etiquette before popping in at such a nice place. (Incidentally, I have since learned much from Wikipedia - apparently sushi is to be eaten in one bite, is not to be dipped in soy sauce, and should be eaten upside-down from the way that i've been used to enjoying it.)

Our second day in Sydney was devoted to Darling Harbour, a precinct on the west side of the city that is home to more interesting museums than can reasonably seen in a day. We devoted our limited time primarily to the Australian National Maritime Museum, where visitors can board a replica of Captain Cook's famous Endeavour and browse plenty of engrossing exhibits, including one about mythical creatures that seemed only loosely tied to the museum's nautical theme. My favorite was a series of photos and excerpts from the journal of a young American who joined a ship's crew for the 4-month voyage from New York to Sydney around 1905, part of a larger exhibition about the relationship between Australia and the US over the past 240 years. The above left picture is from our brief stop in the Chinese Gardens on the south end of Darling Harbour, where the surrounding walls keep out the construction sounds surprisingly well, though the skyline remains as a reminder of its urban setting.

And though this is most certainly not a highlight, I just can't conclude this blog without a reference to the hordes of bats that haunted our visit to Sydney. They live in the Royal Botanic Gardens (above), hanging from the trees during the day like heavy raindrops that seem likely to fall on passers-by walking underneath. We also had the pleasure of their swooping and screeches overhead at dusk as we passed through the Gardens on our way to the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Yuck yuck yuck.

It's just occurred to me that I've left out two of my favorite places and will have to leave them for you to explore yourselves - the excellent Hyde Park Barracks Museum, where extensive archaeological probing has yielded evidence on the barracks' occupation by transported criminals, Irish girls orphaned by the potato famine, and a women's asylum, and the historic buildings of The Rocks neighborhood under the shadow of the bridge.

There's much to love about Sydney.

-rachel

melbourne highlights

Rather than thrust upon you an overly detailed account of our Australia trip, I've decided to mention a few highlights of each city. First up is Melbourne, where we spent our first 4 or 5 days (depending on how you count those travel "half days") in Australia. For those unfamiliar with Australia's geography, Melbourne is located in the state of Victoria, in the far southeastern corner of the country, and is just a quick hourlong flight from its rival Sydney just up the coast. Both cities are more northerly than our current home in Christchurch, which roughly shares a latitude with Hobart in Tasmania, so we experienced a welcome increase in temperature that provided the proper atmosphere for our vacation. We've wanted to visit Melbourne for a few years, as its riverside location, appreciation of historic buildings, and artsy culture make it feel like the cool older sibling of our beloved Minneapolis.

It's really a great city for walking, save for the congested shopping streets during peak times, and one of our highlights was a long stroll through the Royal Botanic Gardens and back downtown via a path along the Yarra River. In the gardens we came across the magnificent Shrine of Remembrance (below), built at the end of WWI to commemorate Australia's sacrifices during the war and later updated to honor WWII veterans and later peacekeeping missions as well. It's interesting to note how the locations that feature most prominently in Australia and New Zealand's war histories vary from those that I'm most familiar with as an American: Normandy and Iwo Jima replaced with Gallipoli, the North Sea, and the Cocos Islands. The dappled red facade of the visitor center beneath the memorial is actually a representation of poppies, an appropriate symbol of warfare as poppies were often the first signs of life to emerge from the blood-soaked battlefields. We just recently learned about their significance, as April 25 was ANZAC day and many New Zealanders wore a poppy pin in commemoration.

Highlight number two was a day spent at the melbourne zoo, apparently the third oldest zoo in the world and home to plenty of cuddly (at least in appearance) creatures native to Australia that Bryan had especially been looking forward to seeing. Their kangaroo exhibit allows visitors to get surprisingly close to the animals, as you can see in this picture of Bryan and his 'roo. We'd taken the tram to the zoo, but as the increasing number of strollers edged us toward the exit, we decided to walk back into the city in order to take advantage of a welcome opportunity to indulge in decent Italian food, abundant along Lygon St, and to pass through the University of Melbourne on the way. Back in the city, we ended our day at the Old Melbourne Gaol, where the famous outlaw Ned Kelly ended his days as well, to view his death mask and famous body armor. This appealed a bit more to Bryan than to me, but I found plenty of engaging anecdotes to retain my interest, such as the poor immigrant who, as a result of not speaking any English, didn't find out about his own execution until the morning of the event.

My final highlight is our brief exploration of the National Gallery of Victoria, a world-class art museum with such interesting artifacts as an ancient stone lion muzzle, with which I was much enamored. I used to think that I'd like to discover a cylinder seal while on an archaeological dig, but I've now upgraded this desire to a genuine lion muzzle instead. I'm also a big fan (though a complete amateur in my knowledge) of Japanese painting and calligraphy, and found much to admire in this one, Walking through a Pine Forest in Moonlight, Kuncan (1660). How can you not love Japanese scroll art? If I had Mary Poppins abilities, this is the kind of scene that I'd leap into. Those craggy mountains, the tumbling water, the little buildings settled right into the midst of it all...I admire the imagination of these artists.

It was a great trip, as you can see, and should we find our time in New Zealand extended we'll hopefully find our way back to the adorable laneways of Melbourne. We know we've missed out on things that we really should see, like the seaside suburb of St. Kilda, but they'll have to be saved for this future trip.

-rachel

why my friday night is awesome

bryan's at church tonight playing capture the flag with the youth group, all of our flatmates are out, and it's been two full years since i first discovered jane austen. i think that means that i'm officially beginning my first round of re-reads, starting with emma. better go put the tea kettle on...

-rachel

australia!

we've just returned from a fantastic week in australia, so as we sift through our pictures and organize our notes, i thought i'd share with you a couple of things we did differently on this trip that made it rock especially hard.

1. stayed in an apartment-style hotel room with a kitchenette, eating out for one meal per day and cooking for the other meal. in our house, breakfast doesn't really count as a meal (sorry, karen and joel - i know it kills you to hear that!), so we snacked on breakfast bars or stopped for coffee in the mornings.

2. packed lightly - just a daypack each plus a shopping bag between the two of us. we could get away with this for 8 days because our hotels had in-room washer/dryer units, so we packed for 4 days and wore each outfit twice. this method worked overall, but was a bit frustrating when the dryer in melbourne failed to work and we had to bring wet clothes along on the plane to sydney.

3. chose a hotel that was central enough to let us come back frequently throughout the day for naps and snacks. i was trying to avoid my typical grueling, museum madness "vacationing" this time around, and i think it worked.

4. explored by night - we arrived in sydney at dusk and contemplated waiting for morning to head downtown, but were later glad to have spent that evening by the light of the city and not the light of the hotel tv. the views of the opera house and sydney harbour bridge were breathtaking at night, and bryan claims that first evening as his favorite part of the entire trip.

5. visited two cities. we hope to return to australia soon, but if that doesn't happen for a while at least we've gotten a taste of a couple of different places. besides, bryan wanted to go to sydney and i wanted to go to melbourne, so this kept us both happy.

6. enforced a "no american restaurants" rule to make us explore beyond mcdonalds and subway. this resulted in some wonderful meals, most notably a very fine snapper and swordfish on the waterfront in sydney and an incredible artichoke pizza from +39 pizzeria and degustation in melbourne that's making my mouth water as i type this. mmm.

7. bought things we actually wanted as personal souvenirs. we enjoyed an exhibit at melbourne's acmi (australian center for the moving image) museum about the claymation film mary and max, so we bought the movie and watched it in the hotel one evening. in sydney, i bought a cute skirt that was on sale, knowing that when i wear it, i'll remember where it was from. sorry about the crappy postcards that the rest of you are getting :)

what are your great travel tips?

-rachel