Week 6

2/14/12

Valentine’s Day in NZ is much like the states – special dinners, flowers, cards, chocolate.  For us – a nice walk to the gelato store!

2/15/12

Coffee in New Zealand – it’s just not the same!  Coffee to them is expresso and way too strong for our tastes.  In the quest to find coffee like the states, Terry went in search of Starbucks Via (excellent instant coffee).  He inquired at Starbucks and found out they don’t carry it in NZ.  Terry’s colleague knew of an American store where they might have it.  She inquired about it.  They said no they didn't carry it but they might be able to get it.  We never asked them to order it.  In the mean time, Terry figured out he was ok with the instant coffee we have and that he could wait until Kara came to visit and brought us more.  Then, last Saturday we got an e-mail saying the Via had arrived and we could pick it up.  So, today I took a 45 minute bus ride, then walked 1.2 miles to the store and picked up the Via.  Kind of crazy but that is the way things go when you are in another country.

2/16/12   

In general this has been a good week for reading.  My favorites include A Heart for Freedom by Chai Ling and Hotel at the Corner of Bitter and High by Jamie Ford.  The first is memoirs of a student leader at Tiananmen Square in 1989.  The second is a historical fiction set in Seattle in 1940s during WW2. 

Also took a looong walk and toured a historic home named Alberton.  I climbed to the summit of Mt. Alpert (another dormant volcano) and then wisely took the bus home.
Terry is making progress on his research.  The creative wheels are starting to churn and he is able to focus on possible papers, proposals and research.  And the experiment in the lab finally started working the way it is supposed to.

2/18/12

Today we went on a winery tour on the west coast of Auckland.  Once you get out of the suburbs there is beautiful countryside.  We enjoyed meeting up with some people from San Francisco – Dave and Sue and Sue’s 90 year old mom – all traveling around NZ for 3 weeks. 

2/19/12

Church at Auckland Baptist Tabernacle was good.  Had a very pleasant talk with Karena, a Marketing Officer at University of Auckland.  She and I will get together for lunch this week – looking forward to that!  In the afternoon we walked down to the harbor to watch boats, people and go out to dinner.  We ended up having a very interesting conversation with a Maori woman named Noti who is from the Tuhoe tribe.  Her tribe is in court with the country of NZ fighting to win their sovereignty and return of land they have lived on for many, many years.  There is a lot to NZ politics that I don’t understand but was interesting to learn a little bit about it.