Long time, no speak

First off, apologies. It's been a while. Forgive us. We've been getting on with life over here, and that includes our first tranche of visitors.


So what's happened since our last update?

Well, we've had two more lots of visitors. Firstly, and slightly impromptu, was our darling friend Suzanne. Lucky for her (and us) she had a last-minute excuse to visit Jetstar in Melbourne. Given that she was flying all that way, it seemed criminal not to spend 3.5 hours on a plane to visit us. So she duly did.

Cue many squeals of delight and feelings of incredulous surprise as we didn't think we'd see Suzanne again for a long, long time. we showed her some of the lovely sights such as Mount Vic lookout, Brooklyn wind turbine (the first wind turbine in NZ) and a walk along the ridgeline to take in the views. We watched dolphins frolick in Lyall Bay and enjoyed some quality time in the late summer sun.

It was joyous to see her and sad to see her go, but promises to visit again (and try hard to get another trip to visit Jetstar!!).

Next it was the turn of Annalie's parents. They seemed to cope really well with the jet lag and got into the Kiwi way quite quickly. There was some diving to be done for Colin. Some shopping and eating for Mum. Plenty of walking. A trip to the Wairarapa for some wine tasting and a cruise to the South Island to take a look at Picton.

Sadly we couldn't take any time off though. The holiday laws in NZ mean you don't actually receive any holiday until after 12 months of working somewhere, even though you're accruing it. So you're kind of given it retrospectively. But Ian's shifts saw him home a couple of days. And unlike the States, at least there's decent public transport here and you can walk to places! So they got independent and found their way around.

All too soon the two weeks was over and it was time for another goodbye. Now there's more uncertainty about when we'll see people again. In the US we had the knowledge that flights to the UK were affordable, or that Annalie would travel a lot through the UK, or that air miles would easily get us home, or that RR would pay. Now those trips are a lot harder, which probably makes the farewells harder too. Still, that's a consequence of the move. Maybe we'll just have to convince everyone else to make the move over here too so that we don't have to keep doing that!