Good News Tuesday

Hello All,

It's been a while since I have had the opportunity to post as it has been Mark having all the adventures. Since Mark leaving in April, I have been teaching, coaching and tutoring. I spent the summer and fall visiting friends in Wolfville, Ottawa, family in Cape Breton and friends in Saint John. I also took a week to coach at our provincial synchronized swimming camp, and a week to laze around in the sun on the traditional “Wilcox Ocean Park Week”.

When Mark had left, I was still unable to apply for my work visa due to my recent health issues. We were instructed by my physician to wait until late August to ensure that I was healthy before applying for my own work visa. Everything came back with good health, and the first Friday in September I sent off my application to Washington to be processed at their North American Embassy. The visa itself was a while to be approved as it had to be sent on from Washington to New Zealand for additional screening and potential approval.

The good news is that the work visa was approved!!

 

I have since booked a flight to New Zealand, leaving 30 days from today, on December 12^th and I will be arriving in Auckland on the 15^th of December - just in time for the Holidays! I am very lucky to have much better flights/connections than what Mark had on his flight. To start with, my flight leaves Saint John at lunch time rather than 5:30 in the morning and each of my layovers are no longer than 2 hours (where Mark had a 12 hour lay over on the west coast).

The next 30 days are going to be a whirlwind! I am going to continue teaching until the end of November, and I will be coaching until I leave for NZ. I have started my “to-do” lists, and I have even crossed off a lot of items in the last week. I am currently looking for employment in NZ and am hoping to get into a few school relief teaching (supply teaching) once I arrive.

Mark and I can not even begin to express how excited we are about my arrival in Auckland, nor can we express enough gratitude for all of our friends and family that have made a very difficult 18 months a whole lot easier with love and laughter along the way.

A week in review; site selection, cooking, and Halloween

Greetings again. It has been a bit of a slower week with the holiday Monday so I had a lot of time on my hands last weekend. It has been quite a while since I just went exploring so I hopped in the car and took a tour to Wellsford, Kaipara Harbour on the west coast, and then back through Warkworth for some Groceries. There was not much to stop and do along this particular route, one walking trail that I will try out next sunny day I have off, but otherwise it was just a nice weekend drive. The road to Wellsford is a winding roller coaster ride through beautiful forested areas with large conifers and silver ferns.

Wellsford was essentially some houses and shops along a stretch of road, but the area around it was what makes this area so special. Numerous rolling green hills, broken occasionally by a clump of trees. Sheep and other cattle dotted the landscape everywhere.

As I approached the west coast, I was treated to a single lookout, these continuous rolling hills that eventually dipped down into the enormous harbour that is the Kaipara. I am working on stitching the pictures together to get a nice Panoramic shot!

The rest was low lying fields with small shoulders that didn't really allow for stopping and taking pictures. There were also a large number of motorcycles around, enjoying what I suspect to be an otherwise quiet road in the nice weather. As I turned back to Warkworth, the road remained very narrow, but headed back into forest. After some much needed groceries I wandered back to campus to get some cooking done, which turned out to be very fortunate since a field course showed up Tuesday, ultimately taking over much of the kitchen. For those of you that worry about me eating well, I wouldn't. I made a weeks long feast of butter chicken (not pictured), a spicy curry, Singapore noodles with honey garlic chicken, and a big stack of naan bread for the curry and dinner at Jan's (where we enjoyed some very nerdy discussion about Star Trek).

The majority of the rest of the week has consisted of planning my small scale experiment and getting equipment ready for the large scale experiment off of Rotoroa Island. Wednesday I did manage to get out to Jones Bay to look for my next site, and I may have found a nice shallow embayment to set up a few experimental beds. It is not a sandy beach for lounging in the sun, but I can think of worse places to work, and I mean that with a large dose of sarcasm.

Thursday was Halloween, which is a poorly celebrated even here in New Zealand. Mind you, it isn't what it used to be when I was young in Canada either. Either way, we had a "Halloween" themed poker night last night. So I quickly slapped together a cake and decorated it accordingly. I donned my star trek uniform in a minimum effort to dress up, and headed out to lose 2 dollars and have some social interaction. It was a fun night including Leo's pumpkin (squash) that he carved. The effort was really nice and hopefully he can experience a fall Halloween instead of a spring one so that he can carve a real pumpkin. I brought my own Jack-O-Lantern.

And to finish off the week, I went today with Jan and Ben to Pakiri to get some mussels. Didn't need any myself, just went along for the walk. It was nice to get my feet wet and enjoy the feel of soft sand under my feet. Hopefully the weather will get better for this weekend so that I can enjoy another venture out!