Tuesday, 30 September 2008

Finally...

Our internet is connected. It turns out that Telecom NZ (the former monopoly national carrier, like Telstra or Telkom) connected up the wrong cable in the exchange (or something like that...) which meant that our internet took an extra week to get connected. Hence the lack of posts recently... we've still been relying on the library for internet.
But now, it's connected, so feel free to skype me... do a search and we should turn up :)

Monday, 29 September 2008

What has Mel been up to...

Well I have been back in Oz for over a week now. QCS marking was a really good experince, I felt like I was on holidays. I got a break from the kids, got provided with great food, got to sit down all day and got paid to do it! I only had to mark up until the Wednesday in the end, so I got a couple of extra days to spend with my parents (that's where we were staying). I'm now staying at Peter's parents and have a week worth of social mornings planned, which I am looking forward to.

Saturday, 20 September 2008

Nice walkies...


For those that might not know, Mel and the kids are currently in Australia. Mel had organized to mark the Year 12 QCS tests before we left, so when we left, we decided she may as well fly back and still do that.
Seen as she's away and our container still hasn't arrived, I thought I may as well get out and go for a walk today. Mt Pirongia Forest Park was the destination. I wasn't sure how far I'd go seen as I only had running shoes and didn't really have any idea what track was like. I'd asked a guy at work and he'd recommended heading up to Ruapane lookout, and I could keep going to the top of Mt Pirongia if I felt like it. That sounded good, so I headed out early this morning... and started walking at about 6:40am. I'd got to the lookout by 7:20am, so I figured I may as well keep going! The track past there got progressively muddier... this is NZ after all. Still quite pleasant though. From the summit (959m apparently) there were pretty impressive views - Mts Ruapehu and Taranaki were clearly visible - and they're a long way away. Having a nice clear day was also good :) I'd reached the summit by just after 9, so I figured I may as well keep going... there was a hut about 30min further apparently. So, 20min later, I reached the hut, to have some lunch. At 10am. Oh well.

I had at least an hour relaxing at the hut. The walk back seemed a little more muddy and slippery than the way up... I think gravity has something do with the slippery part anyway. And then home for a wash - the shoes were mudcakes by the time I got back to the car. So, all up, a very enjoyable day out!
Some photos are now on flickr... so head on over to them if you want to check them out!

Monday, 15 September 2008

Much news...


Well, this might not be quite as much of an update as I thought – I’d forgotten about doing it earlier in the evening, so it will have to be short or I’m going to be tired at work tomorrow!
So, what is there to talk about? Work first I guess… I started at my new job on Wednesday. The people there seem nice enough – it’s a really specialized sort of company so it ends up being a very internationalized workplace. A group of us went out for lunch on the first day, and my boss was the only New Zealander among the 6 of us. In terms of the work, I’ve spent the first 3 days trying to work out a little bit about their products before I can get my teeth into doing some real work for them. Hopefully I’ll be able to start contributing meaningfully soon!
What’s next… church I guess. The first week we went to an old inner-city church. The people were a friendly enough bunch, but the kids struggled a little – the service only started at 10:30, so they were getting cranky, ready for lunch by about the time the sermon started. Not having any other kids at the church didn’t help I guess. This week we decided to try somewhere different – a newish church in the outer suburbs. Again, people were friendly enough (always a good thing in a church!), they started at 10am rather than 10:30, and had a really fantastic crèche. The teaching wasn’t quite as good as last week (not as much meat to it!), but it’s hard to tell what it’s like from just one week. I’ve come to appreciate how important it is to make sure kids are looked after during church though – if they’re not, it makes it very very hard for the parents to stay there!
What else? Ah, that’s right. We had been getting a little depressed by the state of Hamilton’s house rental market – a number of cheap houses are around, but all of them seem to be horrible dumps. On Friday we went to look at a house in Chartwell which is about the same distance on the opposite side of the city from where we are now (have a look at Google maps if you want to know exactly where it is!). It turned out to be not too bad – certainly better than the others we’d looked at, so we’ve decided to take it. It’s a 4 bedroom house, so there’s enough room to house some visitors as well (hint hint!). The current tenants are moving out next weekend, which should tie in pretty well with when our container will be arriving. The only trouble is that Mel and the kids will be in Aus then, so I’ll have to do all the unpacking and tidying up myself.
Anyway, that’s a plenty long enough post for now – hopefully I’ll update our flickr page with some photos as well!

Sunday, 14 September 2008

quick update...

Sorry for being a little slack in posting this past week - not having internet at home means it's a bit hard to post regularly! Thanks to Hamilton City Libraries, we are able to post sometimes though. The kids are at home (hopefully sleeping!) right now, so this will have to be very brief. I've copied some photos off the memory card and on to my USB drive, so I'll try and write a post complete with photos this evening which Mel can then post tomorrow when she comes to the library.
And in other news... we have a house to live in from next week sometime. The current tenants are moving out next weekend, so we'll be in there sometime after that. Which actually means I'll be in there by myself - Mel will be in Aus then! More details later though... (i.e. tomorrow!)

Monday, 8 September 2008

Ahhh.... freedom

We have a car. As of Friday. We haven't been able to blog about it because we haven't been able to get back to the library to get internet access. But we no longer have to stand around with grumpy tired kids waiting for a bus to arrive! And now that we have a car we've been able to start the great house hunt - trying to find a nice rental at a nice price seems to be as hard here as in Brisbane!
Anyway, the car is a 2003 Mazda MPV, which we're pretty happy with in the first few days we've had it. Pictures will come sometime soon - I've just noticed that this library computer has a card dreader, so we should be able to upload some long-overdue photos soon!
Anyway, we need to get going to try and find a bike for me, and then go and look at a house (hopefully two actually!).

Wednesday, 3 September 2008

Busy busy busy...

Life is busy. And tiring. We went out to try and find a car this morning - which ended up involving lots of walking before we finally got to a strip of car yards. We looked at a whole lot of cars and tomorrow we can do some more detailed looking now that we've decided what we want. Hopefully.
The kids are surviving pretty well and sleeping well, which is at least helping! Ben's been a little cheeky and testing, but I think that's just the big changes. Anyway, time to run home for dinner - the only internet we have is the local library! We'll post some more details and news when we have more time... whenever that is.

Tuesday, 2 September 2008

We have arrived...

Just a quick note to let you all know that we arrived safely in NZ. The trip went well and was uneventful. The house we are in is very nice and we all slept well last night. We have lots of jobs to do today so we need to go now as we have to catch a bus into the 'city' to open bank accounts etc. We will write a more detailed entry later.