Arrival in Middle Earth

"Each time you fly from North America to Australia, and without anyone asking how you feel about it, a day is taken away from you when you cross the international date line. I left Los Angeles on January 3 and arrived in Sydney fourteen hours later on January 5. For me there was no January 4. None at all. Where it went exactly I couldn’t tell you. All I know is that for one twenty-four-hour period in the history of earth, it appears I had no being."

-In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson

I know that the Bill Bryson quote above is not about New Zealand, but I love it.  It is a great description of the experience of flying across the Pacific Ocean.

Ross and I arrived in New Zealand on June 17th, having left Colorado on June 15th.  We will be in Wellington for about three years while Ross completes his PhD in geology through the Antarctic Research Center at Victoria University in Wellington.  I will try to provided some interesting facts about New Zealand but this blog will mostly follow our travels around New Zealand and the south Pacific, as well as chronicle our experiences adjusting to and living in a new country. 

Prior to traveling to New Zealand, we had a massive garage sale in St. Paul and got rid of all of our furniture.  We parred down our stuff to the items that have sentimental value.  These we drove to Colorado for storage for the duration of our time in New Zealand.  

Because we flew to New Zealand, we could only take what we could fit in suitcases.  We have a couple boxes that we will be shipping that contain non-essential items.  Leaving from Colorado, we flew first to LA, then to Auckland, and finally on to Wellington.  The vast majority of the flight was at night, so views were minimal.  We were, however, treated to a great view of Mt. Taranaki peeking through the clouds on our flight to Wellington.

We spent the first week and a half that we were in Wellington looking for housing, setting up banking, and getting cell phones/getting ours to work with the NZ sim cards.  We lucked out on the housing front and found a nice one-bedroom apartment with great northern exposure right away in the Brooklyn neighborhood.  We are at the top of a hill and so have a decent view of downtown Wellington and can even see a bit of the harbor.

A couple quirks of New Zealand architecture that we are still getting used to are the lack of insulation, and central heating in the majority of the buildings.  Due to this we have a space heater that we move to whichever room we happen to be in, and then close any doors leading out of that room.  Our apartment also has single glazed (paned) windows.  This results in a lot of condensation build up on the inside of the windows every morning or in the kitchen whenever we cook.  We eventually found this helpful post (http://www.communityenergy.org.nz/there-is-a-lot-of-condensation-in-my-house-the-window-sills-are-covered-in-water-every-morning-how-can-i-get-rid-of-it/) and subsequently keep our windows cracked most of the time.  Our problem was made significantly worse initially because the clothes dryer isn't vented outside.  We tried closing the kitchen door and opening the kitchen windows when running the dryer but it seems to be a lot simpler to wait for nice weather and then hang our laundry to dry outside.

Ross has gotten settled into his office at Victoria University (Vic) and has an excellent view of downtown.  Honestly, I'm not sure how he is going to get much work done with a view like this...

We have spent a lot of time exploring Wellington and spent 4 days in Rotorua at the end of June.  I will write blogs about these experiences in the next couple days.  I had just been putting off starting this blog and needed to get something down.

Please feel free to post comments about your experiences or to ask me questions.  I will do my best to respond promptly.

Thanks!