Monday

I can’t tell you how much I love it when someone comments. It feels so odd, posting this out there in web-space and not knowing if this is actually interesting to anyone else. That being said, I should credit Cory as the photographer – I don’t actually know how to even hook up the camera.

Lauren asked about gas prices, which was a timely comment, as we put about ¾ of a tank in the sweet new ride on Saturday – that was all our 80 NZ bucks got us! The going price is about 2.00 NZ dollars a litre (4 litres in a gallon = 8 NZ dollars a gallon). An NZ dollar is about 0.80 US dollars.

And, speaking of conversions, I’ve got the time conversion down (for us here, back 12 hours and then another 5 to get central standard); I can usually do the miles-kilometers (or “k”s as the car dealers refer to them) and the Farenheit to Celsius. I’ve got nothing on the smaller measurements or the volume, but so far Cory has come in very handy for this!

However, as Cory started work yesterday (poor thing) I am going to have to start taking care of myself again. We realized that we’d been hanging out, full-time, for 2 whole weeks and hadn’t killed each other yet, which was a good sign. That is the longest we’ve ever been around each other without the interruption of work. I always joke that not seeing each other is what makes our marriage work, but I guess we can make it through two weeks together.

With Cory going to work yesterday, after dropping him at the hospital, I headed off on my own. I’d only driven alone (without someone to verbally remind me “stay on the left”, “yield to the right”, “GET OVER TO THE RIGHT!”) one other time, when we bought the car and needed to return the rental. I really do have to pay attention and I’m not really sure anyone would want to ride with me, but I do okay. I can now navigate, without the aid of a map, from the hospital to home and from the grocery store to home. Small steps…

So, I dropped Cory off, made my way back home (aka the temporary apartment), had some tea, showered, and got up the nerve to call the local high school, Mount Maunganui College. (There are a lot of different labels here that I am slowly picking up on. I’m making a list, which maybe I’ll include soon for your perusal.) I was hoping to offer myself up as a volunteer, but the secretary I spoke with transferred me to the reliever coordinator, reliever being the label for substitute. Conveniently enough, the reliever coordinator wasn’t in. I subbed for a month between finishing undergrad and starting grad school. I subbed in Muscatine, where I knew all the schools and knew some of the teachers. I subbed on a continent where I knew the common terms, didn’t struggle with the accent, and had a first-hand (both as a teacher and as a student) experience with the culture of schools. Even then there were times I was uncertain… Should I check to see if the first graders washed their hands? In the “new math” of second grade, when I’m demonstrating regrouping, where do I start crossing off? (The answer is “NOT THERE!” Don’t mess with second graders.) Do you think that they normally check their homework in class? Hmmm… So when contemplating subbing here in NZ, I start to get a little panicky. Back to the point – the reliever coordinator was gone, so when I got transferred back to the secretary, I attempted to re-establish the fact that I would like to volunteer on a regular basis. She said, verbatim, though you can’t hear her cute accent, “Oh, how sweet!” Really, is it that sweet? Am I using the wrong word for volunteer? Do they not need/use volunteers here? I’m not really sure. I did think that perhaps a follow-up email was in line and shot an email to the principal (whose email was in the phone book). We’ll see…

I really hate making phone calls; I don’t know why. But once I finally had that taken care of, I thought I would reward myself and check out the local library. I have a list of topics I wanted books on and, after having barely gotten over here with our luggage, I’m trying hard not to buy too many. The library was one hoppin’ place! I guess I expected it to be a little quieter on a Monday at 10:30 in the morning. Now, I’d heard that Maunganui was a retirees’ haven, and this may explain how busy the library was. About half the library is large print books and they appear to be very popular. Ah ha! The library was fairly small, but offered up most of what I was looking for. Cory and I desperately need a book on rugby, as I’m drawing off knowledge from over a decade ago as a wing (my only job was the catch the ball and run). I also wanted a good New Zealand cook book. Helpfully, they identify books by NZers with a cute little picture of a Kiwi (the bird, not the fruit) above the call number. So I settled on a few cookbooks and a “rugby for dummies” book.

I headed to the grocery store next. I was inspired by the cookbooks, but didn’t want to buy too many staple ingredients – one more thing to move at the end of the week! So nothing to exciting on the list: milk, OJ, cocoa, tea, apples, tomatoes, and ice cream. Remember it is winter here, which really is pretty mild, but folks drink cocoa, tea, or coffee for breakfast and then throughout most of the day. When in Rome... In addition to that exciting purchase, I had to get the famous NZ ice cream – hokey pokey. Cory and I had it after dinner last night. It’s pretty fantastic, though it would be slander to say otherwise. It is sort of a vanilla base with butterscotch undertones and then small, delightfully crunchy, butterscotch pieces. It isn’t hard like toffee or firm like a nut, but sort of brittle. Pretty good stuff…

And I bought a kumara! I almost forgot! A kumara appears to be an NZ-only vegetable, a tuber similar to a sweet potato. So tonight, if Cory is not working his “late night”, I’ll bake some kumara.

While I was off driving on the left side of the road, Cory was at his first day of work. It was sort of an orientation day, really, but today (Tuesday) he’ll get going for real. He has clinic in the private hospital in the morning and then trauma call this afternoon and maybe this evening. He is schedule to work 4 “regular” days (which means he show up at 7:30 a.m. – talk about sleeping in for him!) and one “long day”, where he’ll work until 10:30 p.m. (I know, those of you who are in residency think the idea of that as a “long day” is laughable. So did Cory, but no complaints, mate!) He did get scheduled for his first long day for today, his second day of work! A scheduling clerk said she would try to get it changed, so we’ll see. I know he’d be fine, but talk about baptism by fire!

And, hopefully, on Wednesday we'll have an update on the housing situation. The woman who runs these apartments, Lindy, had some options for us for a long-term stay. We really love this apartment and hope that our budget can afford something similar. We'll see!