Day 126: A Kiwi Thanksgiving!

Today was our big Thanksgiving celebration! It was a bit haphazard in the execution, as we had a few late RSVPs, but everything worked out.

Claire and I had spent the previous few days pre-cooking some of our meals, so most of the day was spent on the more frivolous aspects of Thanksgiving. Namely, we spent several hours making handturkey decorations as well as a home made turkey centerpiece:

Masterful.

The day was a bit odd, in that while we were painting and taping paper to balloons, a real estate agent was wandering through, taking measurements and doing some sort of property assessment. It was one of those twinned moments of worrying about how we were going to deal with our flat being taken away from us a few weeks in advance combined with the excitement of preparing for a big dinner to feed nine people.

For the most part, though, the day went extremely well. A few days prior, Claire had prepared her delectable tourtieres, which made the house smell like Christmas, so all we had to do was bake them. We'd also made our classic pumpkin cheesecake with gingersnap crust, this time with bonus handturkey outlined with brown sugar, and we were well in hand with a vegan version of baked rice and pumpkin pastries.

Claire and I did end up having a last minute gravy emergency, though, which was possibly the most stressed either of us have been in any of our cooking ventures. We had mashed potatoes and American biscuits on the menu (although our Australian friend and her Kiwi sister-in-law were making them), and I demanded excellent - or at least palatable - gravy. It took us a few batches of last minute panic, but we got there in the end.

Anyway, we had aimed to have guests arrive at around seven, and just on time was a person we had never met before. It turns out that he was a friend of our third and absent cohost, but we started him off on handturkey-making.

Now, it was actually really interesting to have these guys do handturkeys, because this ubiquitous American public school activity had no analogue in New Zealand. Because no one celebrated Turkey Day in New Zealand, none of our guests had made a hand turkey before or had even heard of them. Claire and I had to explain that your hand was a turkey, your thumb was traditionally the head, and you got to decorate it however you wanted. Quite a few of them ended up being a bit stumpy because we forgot to mention that feet generally happened beneath the bottom of your palm. A few of our guests were a tad nonplussed ("What does a turkey look like?"), but we emphasized that this was an activity traditionally done by enthusiastic five year olds and ultimately looked like they were fingerpainted by elephants.

Despite the unfamiliarity, or perhaps because of it, the results were spectacular. In addition to a few abstract hand turkeys, we had a steampunk zombie turkey, an Indian chef turkey, a strange stag-rooster-turkey, Art Deco turkey. I was so pleased.

How can you not love this?

After everyone arrived and everyone created their hand turkey, we ate in the tradition of Americans, which is to say long past satiety and with many sighs and loosened belts. It was most excellent.

We sat around and talked for a good long while and the easy comfort of the moment was a really welcome break from all the other thoughts we'd been going through.

The evening ended with an endless game of Carmen Sandiego, where by the end we all started to slump over with the weight of our bellies and the hour.

Our guests staggered out at around two in the morning, and Claire and I looked at the culinary warzone in our kitchen and smiled, because that was precisely right.

Excellent company, excellent food. Many hand turkeys.

Day 117: Our Crazy Landlady and Her Partner's Sicilian Parents

A friend from back home has mentioned to me that there are some people in the world that you simply cannot connect with. This isn't necessarily because you dislike them or because you don't try, it's simply a fact of life that you will one day meet someone you just cannot comprehend as a human being. For her, it was a professor. For me, it is our landlady.

Our landlady, though a perfectly pleasant lady, is into a variant of scientology and (possibly consequently) is someone that I am just incapable of holding a conversation with. All of our efforts end in prolonged moments of tea sipping and hmm-ing. Our relationship is certainly not helped by the fact that she is a rather mediocre landlady with a slight passive aggressive and entitled bent.

I've been trying to avoid negativity, but recently she's been really pushing the envelope on my tolerance. She called us up recently to announce that she'll be renting out the house in December and that we can't live here if people are renting the house. But don't worry about the fact that we would be flatless for three weeks! -- "You may have to find a place to stay for a little while. Oh, certainly not a month. Just a few weeks." -- Thanks, landlady.

It hasn't really helped that a few days ago, she arrived with her partner and her partner's Sicilian parents, and they have been spending the past few days doing renovations that she really should have taken care of much earlier. The nonexistent cat door now exists and no longer blows cold wind into our already cold room; there's some insulation lining the door; and the window in our room can now close. While I appreciate the changes, the fact that we won't be around to appreciate them dampened my enthusiasm quite a bit.

Anyhow, today we ended up in the kitchen with our landlady's partner's Sicilian mother and spent a surprising and eminently enjoyable few hours talking with her. She didn't speak any English and neither of us speak Italian, but it turns out that we all speak food. Armed with high school Spanish (me), French (Claire), Italian (her) and elaborate charades (all of us), we managed to discuss recipes and get into our family history and how we ended up in this house on this day. She was an adorable little lady with beautiful earrings and an amazing smile, and for a few brief hours, I completely forgot about the banging and crashing and chopping going on in the house. Instead of thinking about the DIY construction or our future homelessness or the fact that my siblings are coming soon, I was completely in the moment, thumbing through her tiny English-Italian dictionary and giving up searching for words in lieu of increasingly absurd gestures.

It was such a lovely surprise. All of the recent negativity to do with our landlady has been getting me a bit stressed, and it was just good to take a break and re-realize that the world is full of beautiful people.

Construction goes on as planned, though. Ick.

Day 112: A day of random!

Today was ridiculously wholesome day and completed a weekend of good times.

I woke up quite late and was absolutely convinced that we only had half an hour before the farmer's market closed. I was in the car within ten minutes, bleary-eyed and morning-breathed, waiting impatiently for Claire to get going going going! Because she contains infinitely more patience than I do, it took her until we were on the motorway to say, "You do know the market closes at one, right?" and I said, "Er, right. Yes. Yes," and stopped speeding.

In either case, because we had more than ten minutes to trawl the market, we both had time to stop by our favorite stalls. It turns out that we are bonafide regulars now. Roti Man's Brother asked me why I didn't show last week, and Salami Man made a joke to Claire about how she probably didn't need the little salami information half-sheet (this week we got the hot chili salami. Oh my goodness, so delicious.). I think Wolf Sausage Man recognizes us, but he seems perpetually harried, so we don't really talk much.

Anyhow, after we made our rounds, Claire's robot gears broke down a bit, and we ended up heading to Te Papa to make sure she wasn't going to fall apart. After some routine maintenance, we decided to go up to the balcony we had watched fireworks from on Guy Fawkes Day. It turns out that the balcony is just a tiny part of this awesome and expansive exhibit called Bush City. We walked onto the balcony, only to turn left and realize that there was an entire jungle ecosystem in the middle of Wellington Central. It was such an amazing feeling to walk through this dense forest and then walk through the darkness of a cave and touch a huge rock wall and know that the rest of the city was a shout away.

Then, after we were entranced by the giant squid exhibit (again), we went back to the quay and to the horrifically named Kaffee Eis. Unlike the name (why not just call it "Cafe Ice"?), the gelato is fantastic. I feel like I have had more ice cream in the past three months than I have in the past three years, and the quality of everything here has been infinitely better than anything back in the States. Indecisive as ever, I tried several samples (tiramisu - delicious but too sweet for me, sour cherry - extremely tasty but not quite what I wanted) before settling on the lemon yogurt (perfectly tart and cold and melty). Claire went with the old standby of strawberry. Then, we sat out by the harbour and ate our ice cream in the sun.

The day was already wholesome enough, but then as we walked back to where Zigfrond was parked, we noticed some Stormtroopers making their way down Cuba Street. It turns out that we were walking past the very end of Wellington's very own Santa Parade.

Despite the name, the parade was much more focused on general parade revelry than on Christmas. There were the oddly ubiquitous bagpipers and ethnic dancers as well as a giant Jigglypuff and Pikachu. Girls in brightly coloured dresses danced down the street and the local high school's gymnastics team did flips and handstands down the way. Just to make sure that everyone was on the same page, though, the occasional float would drift by, blaring "Feliz Navidad."

The parade did end on a fantastically over the top Christmas display, with Santa resplendent in his red coat and white beard, his sack of toys carried in his (plastic-) reindeer-driven sleigh. He waved to the children and ho-ho-ho-ed.

This was made wonderfully absurd because we could see palm trees across the street and everyone was wearing shorts and tshirts.

It was so perfect.

Day 111: Cape Palliser, an entry in photos

So we have been meaning to go to lighthouse at Cape Palliser for weeks, but for various reasons we only got around to do it today. By which I mean, every time we planned to drive over, we'd wake up, stare blearily out the window at the grey clouds and light drizzle, decide not to go and then fall back asleep. Today, for whatever reason, we decided that today would be the day and resolutely got up.

To be quite honest, it turned out to be one of the best life decisions ever.

Route of Death with most terrifying chicken wire fence.

It started off a little bit dismal. It was rainy and grey, and our driver's side windshield wiper is occasionally not what I would call the most effectual. Also, I didn't realize that our route to Palliser also included a jaunt through my favorite 13 kilometer stretch through the Rimutakas, this time on the perilous outside of the road. Happily, Claire is not a driving wimp and took the reins on this one.

On the plus side, I think the Rimutakas have some sort of mystical power (perhaps geological) and once we paid our tithe in terror, the skies cleared and we entered the realm of Gorgeous Weather All The Time. Eventually, the road turned and the insane blue of Palliser Bay crept up on the horizon, and each curve of the road towards the lighthouse brought a new incredible view. (I just want to say now that I have done nothing to these photos; they are precisely as the camera took them and almost as beautiful as it was in person.)

In which we leave the clouds behind.

Palliser Bay

Wildflowers!

Finally, we got to the lighthouse, climbed up the (terrifying) 250 steps, and marveled at this fantasy world of lapis lazuli seas and gently lapping waves.

There's a sign just to the left that says,

"WARNING: USE THESE STEPS AT YOUR OWN RISK"

View from the top of the lighthouse.

After we had our fill drinking in the scenery with our eyeballs, we went down those 250 steps. I actually had a moderately freaked out moment about a third of the way down. Those are the most rickety and with the most space between steps, so you can see the drop to the slope between each footstep. For those of us with morbid imaginations, the ferns peeking out from between the stairs did not help. I had to clutch onto the single side rail for a bit before getting myself under control and staring only at the step in front of me. But I did get down eventually, and life was good!

We walked to the water to have ourselves a picnic and ended up at this craggy outcrop. There was an incongruous bunch of sheep huddling in the shadows, and we watched them scoot around the rocks to avoid us.

Requisite sheep. Baaa.

But onwards we went, until we found a nice flat perch by the water. As Claire bounded across the terrain like a mountain goat (and I, like an arthritic bear) I spotted what I thought was a shadow of a rock roll over and scratch itself with a hind flipper.

We had come across some members of Cape Palliser's seal colony.

So, to top off our crazy gorgeous day, we picnicked on the rocks in the company of seals.

This seal stared us down the entire time.

The seal up top was such a bro.

In addition, we saw all sorts of interesting birds at various points of our journey. Claire and I would take turns going, "Ooh! Ooh! Look!" and pointing to a distant graceful flight. At one point, we were driving along and one swooped down onto the road then fanned out its wings, floating above us. My brand of ornithology pretty much extends to "Look! A bird!" but I think it was a kahu, or harrier hawk. Later, I'm saw what I'm pretty sure was a spotted shag hanging out at the side of the road.

By the time we drove back into the mass of clouds that is Wellington, we were sun warm and full of joy.

View from Cape Palliser

Day 105 - 106: To Napier!

Our first road trip!

As per plan, we swung by the Porirua Early Morning Market on Saturday in some really awful rain. However, it was both productive and fruitful (puns kind of intended), and we drove away laden with delicious things to eat.

At around noon, we headed out in our faithful Zigfrond to Napier. As an Illinoisan, I am used to flat lands as far as the eye can see, so New Zealand has been a wealth of scenery for me. For a short stretch of land, maybe 10 or so kilometers, Highway 1 traces the west coast, and you can see the waves crashing up onto the rocks at your left with the land sloping up to your right. I've been up and down that way a few times but it never ceases to arrest my attention, and Saturday was no exception. It certainly didn't hurt that the weather started to clear up, and by the time we were heading towards Palmerston North, the sun was out and making the entire landscape look like a magazine spread. (But better, because it is real life!)

Kapiti Island from Highway 1

We drove through plains with mountains in the distance, rolling hills, and river gorges. The sun came and went and came back again, and I was in a state of suspended rapture. It's trite aphorism that the adventure is not in the destination but in the journey, but this was a perfect example of it. The entire ride was so amazing, it was almost an anticlimax to finally arrive in Napier.

And now, fact time! New Zealand sits on a faultline, and it's bit hit by several major earthquakes in recorded history. On February 3, 1931, a 7.8 earthquake hit about two miles north of Napier. As there were no real building codes, much less in case of an earthquake, Napier and much of the Hawke's Bay region was devastated. However, as it was also the thirties, Art Deco was in fashion and many of the buildings were designed in the style.

The Art Deco-ness is played up in some places -- you can apparently take a tour in a vintage car if you so desired and there's an Art Deco Festival each year -- but for the most part the charm is in the casualness: the curl of a railing or the color of the brick. There are really lovely details in the most surprising of places, and many of the billboard advertisements posted around town are written in a wonderfully stylish font.

In front of the Daily Telegraph building in Napier

I don't want to detract from that bit of cultural history, but I have to mention the most peculiar and unexpected point in our journey. For the most part, Napier is a really lovely sea side little town with Spanish Mission and Art Deco buildings. However, if you walk up Marine Parade towards the city centre, there is a large shop window with the seemingly inexplicable name of Opossum World.

It turns out the Opossum World is exactly what you would expect. On the storefront, it advertises in bright yellow both opossum garments and an immersive educational environment on the history and biology of opossums. Claire thinks the signs are mostly earnest, I think it is at least partially facetious. It's difficult to say for sure.

In either case, once you enter, you come across a giant statue draped in opossum pelts and racks of quite nice shirts, jackets, hats, and gloves (of possum wool, naturally). If you walk further, past the slightly odd display of possums dressed in anything from flapper dresses to aviators you enter the immersive educational environment. It has a cool little fake forest with trees and light up displays of possums terrorizing kiwi birds and so on. Once you get past that, you come across a museum-like display of the life cycle of opossums complete with bizarrely taxidermied opossums. I would hate to be wrong, but the quality of the taxidermy is such that I have a hard time believing in good faith that the store is entirely earnest. I have never seen such terrible taxidermy.

Let me say now that I am not a person prone to contemplating the stuffing and mounting of dead animals, but the quality was distractingly awful.

I mean, really.

If you keep walking, the exhibit on possum trappers included the back end of a red car with five stuffed opossums standing on top, songbooks clutched in their little hands. If you press a red button, a song starts up. (Surprisingly, the possums do not sway or dance or move at all. Perhaps the taxidermist couldn't figure out how to wire them?) Also, by the tyre of the car, someone had placed a felled possum, accompanied by another one with a sling and a cast around its leg. Again, I would hate to be wrong, but with that body of evidence, I have to believe that it's at least a little bit facetious. Surely.

Anyhow, we did not end up buying any quality Merino Possum, but we did learn about the history of possums and that there is such a thing as Merino Possum. (Merino Possum, to inject a little learning into this, is a blend of Merino wool and possum yarn. Apparently it is smooth and soft and warmer than Merino wool alone. Interesting!) It was also an unexpected break from the general classiness of Napier and the Hawke's Bay region.

(Unexpected enough, it turns out, to write about at length.)

Sunday turned out to be a day of eating. For lunch, we went to Ujazi Cafe and spent about an hour and a half making incoherent noises at the food. My flat white was actually a little bit disappointing, but the meal more than made up for it (and Claire's chai latte was amazing). We split some sort of Moroccan chicken sandwich and a seafood chowder. I don't actually remember what the sandwich was called, but it was enormous and suitably filling, especially when supplemented by the extremely rich soup. I am reasonably sure that the meal could have comfortably fed a third person, but I am a glutton.

A terrible picture of some wonderful food.

Later, we passed through Hastings and stopped by the amazing Rush Monro's ice cream parlour. I am not an ice cream connoisseur by any means, but it was amazing. 100% natural ingredients, hand-churned, and made of sunshine and happiness. Yum. Among its many other excellent qualities, New Zealand really does ice cream right. (Kapiti Island up above, by the way, also produces ice cream that makes me rethink my usual ambivalence towards the stuff.)

The way back, we took a different route, and I was boggling the entire route. Hawke's Bay is wine country and the climate is perplexingly different from the often grey weather in Wellington. It's also really beautiful. (On the other hand, Hawke's Bay is also across Rimutaka Range, which boasts a thirteen kilometer stretch of TERROR. Given that I am used to flat roads and a much smaller car, maneuvering Zigfrond through kilometers of twisting highway skirting the edge of mountains freaked me out a tad. But back on the original hand, it was also really beautiful.)

All told, it was a great weekend and a really fun trip. We even ate crappy gas station food, not out of hunger, but to signify that we have indeed Road Tripped.

I know, I know. Belaboring a point. But seriously.

Day 104: Guy Fawkes Day!

It's a little after midnight, and I am just filled with a sense of satisfaction from a day well lived. I'll rewrite this blog entry to put it in a bit more detail, but basically, I was productive during the day and then had a surprisingly awesome evening.

I met up with Claire to go to what we anticipated might be a slightly awkward workplace barbecue at Te Papa, only to find that it was actually a full-on Event. Given that I was expecting a rained-out barbecue and maybe a free can of Coke, I was completely astonished to find ushers at the door insisting that everyone have tickets because Te Papa was closed for a private function. When we special ticket-holders were weeded from the less worthy, we were admitted into an alternate universe, where women all wore wearing dresses and men wore ties. and everyone was drinking free wine and eating tiny gourmet burgers. (Plebes, like me, also ate hotdogs.) It was such a pleasant surprise!

After a few hours of schmoozing, we were ushered to another place, which, Claire realized, was actually a hallway that we had seen from the outside and, for the past three months, had wondered how to access. It turns out that the mysterious hallway leads to a little balcony from which you get an amazing view of the waterfront and, if it happens to be Guy Fawkes Day, the fireworks display.

The fireworks were really wonderful. The display wasn't as ostentatious as some I've seen (and Claire harkens from a city that hosts an international fireworks festival and could watch half-hour displays twice a week if she so desired), but it was possibly the most fun I've ever had. Everyone was super into the display, and some older ladies next to me were genuinely cheering the fireworks, saying appreciative little comments like, "Ooh, that was quite a nice one, eh?" or "That's a lovely sight." There were also children pressed up against the balcony edge, just bouncing with excitement. After a sufficient amount of ooh-ing and aah-ing (and some on-off hijinks with the music speakers blaring Queen), the fireworks display finished and we reconvened with the rest of our little group.

We chatted with our friends, and somehow it devolved into an impromptu swing dancing lesson. I can now say with some authority that there are few places more suited to learn the twenties Charleston than in the lobby of a national museum. Try it out, kids, you won't regret it.

As it was pushing ten, we then split up, because L has work tomorrow, and I wanted to cast my eye on the festivities along the waterfront. Claire and I seriously considered going on some rides, but we ended up not doing it because tickets turned out to be a bit more than we were anticipating. Nonetheless, it was a lot of fun seeing everyone really into the spirit of the evening. It felt a lot like the Fourth of July, except that there weren't actual barbecues and I didn't see a single beer can. (A part of me kept being surprised that no one had sung the national anthem and that people weren't waving little flags. Yes, yes, ethno- and egocentric. What can I say? I am American.)

Then off we went to the Watusi for Gangbusters Night. Full Swing was hosting an evening of dancing, and it was just a ton of fun. They had cleared out a little dance space, which was small enough to be comfortable but large enough to fit everyone who wanted to dance, and most people were familiar faces. I was filled with a pleasant amount of wine and tiny gourmet burgers, and I spent the rest of the evening being twirled around by ridiculously adept dancers. My version of swing dancing is to basically fumble around until someone stops me, and I didn't stop fumbling for about two hours. I was literally the least experienced dancer in the room, but the calibre of the leads was such that I could be my fumble-footed self and they would just roll with it. Swing dancing, you guys! It is so great!

Once we had our fill of good times, Claire and I walked back to our car in the light drizzle and made our way back to our humble abode. Tomorrow, we are going to the Porirua Early Morning Market (which apparently isn't kidding about being early morning as it starts at midnight and ends at 10 am) and then we are adventuring to Napier.

And now, sleep beckons, my friends. Good night!

PS. And look at that! We have made it to over a hundred days in New Zealand!