I can’t remember our Denver house!

Below is an exchange I overheard between the boys in early January. I quickly scribbled it down but forgot to post it in a blog entry:

Liam announced in a panicked voice at breakfast yesterday, “I can’t remember our Denver house!”

Colin started a verbal tour of the house for Liam, “Remember the playroom was in the basement and your bedroom was next to the kitchen…”

“Oh, yeah. Okay, I remember,” Liam, said with a big sigh of relief.

The boys feel in between worlds. I guess I do too. They left their Colorado friends, family and school, but don’t yet feel settled here. Both boys have met some friends and had a few playdates, but still feel like the new boys on the outside of the group. I could feel Liam’s panic when he couldn’t remember his Denver house. Denver is still home in his heart, because Queenstown is not. Every person and experience is viewed in comparison to life in Denver. I keep reminding both boys that Queenstown will not be Denver. Queenstown will be a new experience. Someday life will feel normal here. And, when it does feel normal, we probably won’t even realize it.

Colin's class has a blog

Colin's class at Queenstown Primary School has a blog. You can check out what's going on in his class, if you want.

The photo shows Colin and some of his new buddies having a lunch break on yesterday's hike.

Colin's class and the rest of the Middle School classes hiked the Skyline track, straight up the hill behind the school. The students are getting prepared for Outdoor Education Week (next week). Both Colin and Liam will be going on overnight camping trips with their classes. Liam is going to Pigeon Island in Lake Wakatipu. According to Liam, he is traveling to the island by jet boat and his supplies are being airlifted to the island by helicopter. Colin is going to a camp in Bannockburn. They are both excited. Parents are invited to join the trips. Both Colin and Liam suggested that Doug and I could come on some of the day trips during the week, but they wanted to do their overnight without parents, just like at Logan. Colin did let me come on the Skyline hike today.

Duckling update

Our two remaining ducklings out of eight are almost all grown up. Their baby fuzz has turned to the mottled brown adult feathers. They splash and motor around the pond, quacking loudly, sometimes with Mommy Duck and sometimes just together. They can even fly right out of the water now. We sit and watch them as we eat dinner.

I love to travel, but there is also something magical and soothing about sitting still in one place and watching the season pass. The sun rises later. Mornings are darker and cooler. The yard and hills are fringed and splotched with browns. The light and colors are softer, less neon, than when we arrived in late October. The sounds too seem more muffled without the bleating lambs that accompanied our arrival to New Zealand.

I await the change to fall with some sadness. The boys are back to school and the weather will get colder. But, then thoughts turn to visions of crisp snowy mountains and skiing! We haven't had winter in a year with the timing of our southern migration.

In my day I had to walk five miles in the snow up hill both ways to school…

When Doug and I announced to the boys they were going to take the bus to school, they were thrilled. They have never taken the bus to school. The excitement fizzled when they realized they had to walk from the house down to the paved road to reach the bus stop and then up the hill at the end of the day.

Liam announced, “It is simply too far to walk.”

Colin said, “I won’t remember where to go.”

We countered Liam’s objection by calling Auntie Allison. She went over to Ojai and walked our childhood route. Which, like this one, was downhill to the bus and uphill home. Then I walked the boys’ route. The two routes took roughly the same amount of time. If Auntie Allison and I could do it, so could Colin and Liam. Allison also told the boys that she had to make it to and from the bus stop on crutches. I can remember watching Allison hobble up the hill after school with crutches and her big pack. I don’t remember taking her pack for her. I guess I was not that thoughtful of a big sister. Allison seemed to be on crutches for long stretches of elementary school. Maybe that’s where her incredibly strong arms developed?

To solve Colin’s objection we had several practice walks to the bus stop then home again. The route would be simple if I let them walk down the road through the station, but I won’t. The road from our house to the bus stop is a narrow, windy, slightly wider than one-lane dirt and gravel track. Cars, and especially trucks, come around the corners too fast. Instead, I have found connecting back tracks through the bush and sheep paddocks to reach the bus stop. After several round trips both boys were still reluctant about having to walk to the bus stop, but at least they were confident they could find their way.

For now Doug and/or I walk with the boys. Jolie needs the exercise; anyhow, I usually walk every morning. Two trips a day should help her drop the quarantine bulge and it can't hurt me while the weather's nice.

After the first day on the bus Liam was indignant with the inefficiency of the bus route. Liam explained how bus leaves the primary school and does a loop that reaches about half way to our house and then returns to town to pick up the high school students. With the high school students and remaining primary kids it does the same route again and then continues further out of town past our house. Liam says he wasted 30 minutes having to return to town for the big kids. We explained that if we drive the boys, we use gas, a round trip takes us 40 minutes, and we have to do two round trips a day. So either Liam has to waste time 30 minutes or we waste one hour and twenty minutes plus gas. Liam finally conceded, “True. It’s the best for most people, just not for me.”

To break up the walk each day we pass through our neighbors’ driveway and check to see if the chickens have laid any eggs. Now Liam and Colin want chickens. After the early morning wake-ups in Greece and Turkey, Doug has banned roosters and burros. We’ll see about the chickens. We suggested that the boys offer to take care of our neighbor’s chickens for a while.

The little kids sit at the front and high school kids take the rear of the bus. Because we are near the end of the line, there are only a handful of kids when Liam and Colin board the bus. As the bus pulled away Doug and I both noticed in the last row a morose, goth-looking teenager dressed in all black. His/Her hair was bleached blonde with a patch dyed turquoise. We cracked up. We could have been looking at one of our classmates a generation ago. Being a morose teenager looked so tiring, almost unbearable.

Domesticated Bliss

Saturday was the one week anniversary of Jolie's arrival. She and kitten Ollie are becoming buddies. I walked into the kitchen after lunch to find this scene. Both were sound asleep before I snapped the photo.

Poppett arrives!

Poppett (full name Bonnie Arrow) arrived at noon yesterday. I spent the whole afternoon with my new girl. She is sweet and beautiful. She’s an eight-year old mare, a 16.2 hh bay, tending toward the reddish browns, with two white socks on her rear legs, ears tipped in black and a thin crooked blaze.

Her sire is Lone Arrow, a paint crossbred (half Thoroughbred, one quarter stationbred and one quarter draft horse). Her dam is a thoroughbred cross.

She comes from a small community called Moa Flats about 3 hours from here, on the way to Invercargill. Her previous owner is off to university and she needed a new home with lots of attention – me!

Poppett had a huge day with three hours in the float and then stepping out into a new world. She was very worried about the alpacas in the paddock across the road from her, prancing up and down the fence line, neck arched and tail lifted. I walked her by the alpaca on a lead first. She was at complete attention, nervous but curious. She and the black alpaca hesitantly nosed each other, both uncertain and quivering. When we rode past the alpacas later she watched intently, quickened her pace, but kept her cool. I was so impressed and proud of her composure in the face of such a strange creature. I too am slightly spooked by the looks of the alpaca.

The whole afternoon she was carefully checking out her new digs. We spent some time in the arena just getting to know one another then we went for a ride along the lake with my friend Judi and her horse, Tom. She spent the ride up the lake turning her head watching the ridgeline above the lake then scanning the lake, just taking in all the new sights, smells and sounds. She even turned her head all the way around to look at me with an expression that asked, “Who is this on my back?” By the time we head back home she had relaxed and walked calmly.

I feel like I am twelve years old again. I have my very own horse. I have been dreaming for years, like decades of years for a horse again. Actually I have been dreaming of a horse since I was eighteen, the day my Cat Ballou left Thacher for retirement at my friend’s Alex’s ranch. Some people count sheep when they can’t sleep; I make up horse names until I lose consciousness.

I barely made it home in time for guests arriving for drinks. As soon as our guests left I took Doug, Liam and Colin up to meet Poppett. I almost slept in the paddock with her when I went to check on her at bedtime. As I was going to bed, I realized that I never ate dinner. The boys had to fend for themselves and had cereal based on the bowls in the kitchen sink this morning.

She is actually on trial for the next week. We have a vet check next Tuesday. Doug keeps reminding me not to get too attached until then. Ohhhh, I’m trying!

Can you find it in New Zealand?

One question I get asked when I chat with friends in the States is “Can you find it in New Zealand?” The answer is "usually." You have to be creative and you must know where to look. I am trying to be creative and I am learning where to look.

There are two items that have completely eluded me thus far: soynut butter and Bona floor cleaning products. I have found all sorts of nut butters, but not soynut better. Colin is allergic to peanuts and tree nuts. Wow. I was just looking for a link for the Bona Company to make sure I spelled it correctly and I happened upon a distributor in Auckland. Now, there’s just soynut butter to find. Beware, we plan on asking visiting family and friends to fill their suitcases with soynut butter.

Typical of tourist spots, shopping is particularly expensive in Queenstown and selection can be limited. I looked at riding boots for the boys at a local shop and found them online for about a third of the local price. Ouch! I bought Mennen pre-shave gel for Doug at a pharmacy in Queenstown and it cost about NZ$12 (US$9.50). I came home and found it priced in the U.S. for $3.69. I understand we are off the beaten track, but that seems like a steep mark-up.

We have been following local advice and making lists to order stuff online or for a shopping trip to a bigger town, like Christchurch. Making a list and having to wait a bit are actually quite helpful. While waiting to purchase some items, we’ve learned to make do and then realized we don’t need them after all. Or, we’ve found something else around the house that works well enough. The waiting and list making slows down the “gotta have it and gotta have it now” mentality.

Grocery shopping is particularly challenging for me anywhere because I try to buy local, organic and recycled. I have come up with a three-stop grocery circuit for a complete list. I have one big grocery store, New World, for the bulk items like cereal and toilet paper (recycled paper even) and it even has some organic produce and coffee. My second stop is Destination Organic, a little organic shop for grains, tea, interesting flours, like quinoa flour, and good bar soap. It also has some produce, milk and meat, but selection can be limited. My last stop is Mediterranean Market that also supplies grocery items to restaurants. It has fish, meat, lots more produce and some fresh baked breads. I don’t often actually go to all three grocery stores on one trip. I just stop in whichever I am passing and get what I can. I just heard about a butcher that is great for meats and cheeses that I have to find. Being summer there’s also a farmers’ market on Saturdays and lots of roadside stands selling fruits, veggies and fresh fish.

There are lots of little specialty shops for items that would be found in big grocery stores in the States. One little shop has flax seed oil, while another has protein powder. There is no contact lens solution at the grocery store. It is only sold at a pharmacy. I kept looking for it at the grocery store. I knew it had to be somewhere because Kiwis wear contacts too. Finally I asked and was told, “It’s at the pharmacy, of course.”

The whole month of January I couldn’t find limes anywhere. Limes are practically a food group for Doug. He uses them for his G&Ts and Corona. At one point I was told by a Med Market grocer, “There are no limes on the South Island.” I had to break the news to Doug, who looked at me like I couldn’t be serious. We had to resort to lemons. Limes returned in February.

Alcohol purchases are Doug’s department. He has figured out where to buy wine and beer for selection and price. Now that the boys are at school we plan to head out to nearby Gibbston Valley for an afternoon, or two, of exploring the local wineries. Central Otago is known for its Pinot Noir.

Today Doug found a mail forwarding service called Access USA. It could be helpful for anyone outside the U.S. wanting to shop online at U.S. retailers, because many retailers will not ship outside the U.S. We can purchase stuff online in the States and have our purchases mailed to this service. Access USA waits until there are enough packages to fill an appropriate sized box and mails the group of packages to us at one time, minimizing our overseas mailing costs. Purchasing some stuff in the States and shipping it overseas could be cheaper for us than buying it in New Zealand, even with NZ taxes and shipping costs. Having it mailed all together also make environmental sense as only one shipment will be sent long distance from one location. In the end of the day, unfortunately, many items available in New Zealand get shipped to New Zealand.