A few months ago, Shannon came home from work saying her boss, Igor, wanted to take a bunch of her co-workers and their SOs hiking on Mt. Ruapehu. Igor is a member of the Alpine Club and is able to use their hut up on the mountain not too far from the top. It sounded good to me. A time just needed to be hammered out when we could all go.

After several false starts, the weekend of April 1-3 was chosen. This was just two weeks after we returned from our holiday in the US. I had gotten really sick during our trip and wasn't back up to 100%. In fact, the Thursday before we were to go, I was home sick from work with a chest cold. We weren't sure we'd even go but we both really wanted to so I figured I could hike up the trail to the hut and then relax for the rest of the weekend. HA! If only!
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Yesterday, while Shannon and I were walking around downtown trying to decide on a place to eat, we entered an intersection that struck me as very odd. There were a lot of people milling around who seemed out of place. Guys in business suits (on a Sunday), skaters riding past cops, just a weird bunch. I commented to Shan that something didn't seem right. At that moment, we saw our friend Elaine walk by wearing a safety vest and carrying a walkie talkie. Turns out this was a holding pen for a bunch of extras! I knew it all seemed wrong!

We stood where Elaine told us we should to see something cool for about an hour before said cool thing showed itself. Up the street, we saw about thirty people carrying a giant 15-foot tall American electrical plug. I have no idea what they were filming or why it involved a giant plug but it was, indeed, pretty cool. I can now tick "seeing a giant plug" off my bucket list.

Shannon and I have discovered a love for Chinese hot and sour soup. We found this little restaurant in the neighborhood that serves an amazing soup in a giant bowl. Perfect for two. A month or so ago, we walked to the restaurant early enough to catch the Chinese grocery store next door still open. We wandered in and found the fixings to make our own hot and sour soup. \0/

I've been jonesing for some of that soup so today I walked over to the Chinese grocery store. It's not very big. About the size of a large 7-11. The shelves are full of unfamiliar packaging written in Chinese. They have a plethora of stuff I couldn't even begin to identify. They have a pretty large produce section and a meat department. A lot of the meat is also unidentifiable. You'd think a Chinese store would be playing Chinese music but this one plays 80s American pop tunes. So, today I was perusing the odd looking packages while humming along to Greatest Love of All by Whitney Houston.

I was not only looking for the usual ingredients this time, I also needed some rice vinegar. All the bottles of what I presumed to be vinegar were written in Chinese so I had to enlist the help of a fellow customer to find the right one. Good thing too because it turned out most of the "vinegars" were actually Chinese hot sauce.

Once I made my purchases, I headed out for my 20 minute walk home carrying a couple of plastic grocery bags. I got about halfway home when I realized I didn't have on my wedding ring. I distinctly remembered putting it on before I left the house so I had a panicked freak out and frantically retraced my steps looking for it.

Mine and Shannon's rings aren't particularly pretty but extraordinarily sentimental. One of the few things I got of my Granny's after she died was her wedding ring. It was made of white gold and contained seven diamonds. I also had my parents' wedding rings which were also white gold. I had the diamonds removed from the ring and the gold from the four rings melted down to make two simple bands. Eventually we'll have rings that contain the diamonds but for now we only have the bands and a solitaire I gave Shannon as an engagement ring. It makes me feel close to my Granny knowing I have this bit of her with me all the time and that even though she didn't get to meet Shannon, she is still a part of us.

I slowly retraced my steps all the way back to the grocery store but found nothing. My bottle of rice vinegar fell out of the grocery bag and broke all over my foot. I plopped down on the sidewalk and began crying hysterically. I called Shannon and was totally incoherent trying to tell her I hadn't found my ring. Shannon and I are so much alike but luckily we rarely freak out or fall apart at the same time. She calmly had me go over what I had done before I left the house. My ring fits pretty tightly and it would be hard for it to come off. I clearly remembered putting it on. She asked what else I did. That's when I remembered putting on sunscreen just before I left. I took off my ring to apply it and set it on the shelf in the bathroom. Sure enough, when I got home that's where it was.

Now I can enjoy my hot and sour soup.

Books down here are quite expensive. Our local version of Walmart, The Warehouse, had a rack of books marked "priced to clear" that were marked at $15 and higher. That's not what I consider "priced to clear." So, when I discovered that Borders had opened an outlet store downtown with books from $5 to $8 I was super excited. I had to walk by it everyday on my way to the bus stop which was like a crackhead walking past the crack dealer everyday. I just couldn't say no. Then one day about a month after it opened, it was gone. I walked by to see the store empty and a cleaning crew vacuuming the carpets.

Shannon and I both agreed this was odd. Why have an outlet store open for only a month? We figured it was because they had a large back stock of items which had now sold and we were back to spending $15+ a book for "clearance" books.

Monday, after I got off work, we went to see Shrek 4. If you haven't seen it, you seriously have to! The Carpenters, Enya, plus "And then my donkey fell down your waffle hole." I haven't laughed that hard in a while. Anyway, after the movie we were walking down Queen Street to our bus stop when what did I spy? Yep, the Borders outlet store.

I asked the woman behind the counter if they were going to be staying at this location and she said they only had a one month lease and then they'd move on. She knew the store would move to another location but she didn't know where.

So, if I want to continue getting my fix of $5 books I have to play Where's Waldo with the Borders outlet! I haven't had to work this hard for a bargain in ages! Books are my crack, though, so I'll be trolling the streets downtown looking for the dealer.

I caught a cold the other day. Not that big a deal except finding medications down here isn't as easy as it is in the US. First of all, everything is different. There's no Nyquil or Sudafed or any of the other medicines I know. They have equivalents down here but I actually have to work to find out what they are. So, I go the medicine aisle in the grocery store where I work and don't see what I'm looking for. I see the Sudafedish ones and the Tylenol Cold types. But there's no Nyquil type stuff or really much of anything else. Turns out that you can't buy most kinds of medications at the grocery store. You have to go the pharmacy. This stuff isn't prescription. It's just not available anywhere but at the pharmacy.

Having grown up in the Walmart culture where everything under the sun is available at a one-stop shop, this baffles me. Why would you only allow certain meds to be sold at the pharmacy but not the grocery store? I don't really know except maybe they can charge more for them. It's expensive to buy OTC stuff down here. Once you get at least a two year visa, you can get on the national healthcare and prescriptions are very cheap. But until then, we have to pay top dollar for the OTC stuff.

My cold is better but I sure do miss my Nyquil. That stuff'll kill any bug.

The other day I was on the bus riding to work when I saw the cutest VW bus. I wasn't able to take a very good picture on my phone so I'm posting this just so you can get an idea of the size of the thing:




The van is seriously not more than six feet long and five feet tall. It's the tiniest VW bus I've ever seen! It belongs to a magic shop here in Auckland. Maybe it's a Harry Potter van and is bigger on the inside? :)

I had intended to post in here on a regular basis but since it's been three months between posts, that plan's not really working out.

Winter has descended on us down here which means lots of rain. It hasn't been particularly cold just wet, wet, and more wet. It's really weird too because it can be clear blue sky one minute and then grey and raining the next. I now take my umbrella with me every time I leave the house because you just never know.

A few weeks ago, we decided we were going to get out and hike no matter how bad the weather. We got up early and hopped the bus for Mangere Mountain. This is just one of many volcanoes here but it had been used in a lot of Xena/Hercules filming so I really wanted to check it out.
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Last Friday after I posted my last entry, Shannon and I hopped a bus over to another neighborhood called New Market. The Rialto theater is hosting a documentary film festival and we had tickets for one of the movies called Kiri Wai Inner Skin. It's about a westerner exploring the significance of the Maori tattoo called a Moko. The Maori (pronounced mawri) are the indigenous people here in NZ. It was a really good movie and Shannon and I decided that we might like to get a small moko tattooed on our ankle or something like that. We'll see though.
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I had intended to post a lot more frequently about getting acclimated to life here in Auckland but I had no idea how much I'd be working. In the last eleven days, I've worked about 75 hours. My store is perpetually shorthanded so we sometimes have to work 15 hour days. And let me tell you that is just brutal! 6am to 9pm is harsh.
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When we finally got through immigration, customs, and biosecurity in the Auckland airport, we found Brendon waiting for us on the other side. Brendon and Dillie were Shannon's flatmates when she was going to grad school here in 2008. Once we found out for sure that we were coming back, they began looking for a house large enough for the four of us to share. So now here we were finally back and eager to get started on our life here.

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