In contrast to the wild weather of a week ago, this weekend was beautiful! Sunday after Max’s Japanese sword class (Iaido), we went out to the West coast, to the Waitakere Ranges Regional Park. We did several connected walks extending along the bluffs and through the bush from Piha to Karekare beach. We tramped along the Mercer Bay Loop, Ahu Ahu Track, had lunch at Karekare beach, and then back up the bluffs along on the Comans Track. Photos are here.
Last week we had some awesome wild weather! Previously I mentioned how cold it has been, and we’ve certainly been surprised at nights getting down in the low 40s (Fahrenheit), even a few down in the 30s (that’s below 4 degrees Celsius), for a place with palm trees!
On the other hand, when storm fronts come through off the Tasman Sea, we get some spectacular winds and rain downpours! Last week took the cake - an awesome thunder and lightning storm, including hail pouring down. This was the largest hail I’d ever seen: up to ~2 cm (~3/4″), with little spikes on it, like medieval maces!
Much of Auckland lost power from the high winds, and Navman shutdown early that day. We went down to Takapuna beach to check out the surf (and surfers) - the usually calm Pacific-side was quite different that day!
The South Island has really been hit hard (remember it’s winter here, and the further South you go the colder it gets) - the entire island blanketed in snow, and wide-spread power outages.
Okay, looks like we have Max’s school credit sussed - the Deputy Headmaster told me that they issue a School Report with grade information independant of the NCEA/Cambridge results. And they have written reports for students in the past who left or were out sick or injured. This means we will be able to get an official school report from Westlake to take back to Bainbridge High School for transfer credit, without having to stay through the internal examination period. And this means we will be able to return before school starts on Bainbridge, so Max won’t miss the start of school. (We’ll actually be coming back the week before Labor Day Weekend, which gives me the added bonus of being able to attend the Pig Roast, an annual get-together where I get to see friends from high school.)
I can’t believe it’s been a month since I’ve written! I keep meaning too, but keep finding other things that need to be done, or not in the mood, or stressed out about plans and changes. So what’s been going on? We were hoping for a move to a rental in Takapuna closer to the beach, but we had to find a renter for our place first, since we had a lease until October. The rental market is dead at the moment though, and we’ve had no bites. Plus the whole move has been overshadowed by other decisions. Sarah’s been here, which has been fun. We’ve done a couple caving trips, which I’ll write about next. I spent a number of evenings sorting through some old work files (which I also want to write about), we spent time planning a road trip for when Cindy’s sister visits, but the most stressful has been coming to terms with our decision to return to the States.
We told friends and family that we were planning to spend “a year or two” down here, one year so as not to upset family too much, two years allowing Max to finish High School down here without disrupting his schooling again. Cindy has been missing her family a lot, as well as the holiday seasons - Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas in the winter instead of in summer. Max has been doing fine academically in school, but has not been happy with the different school environment and classroom approaches, and has not really made any friends.
The decision to return could be easy, except that I really like it here, I was in no hurry to return to the same-old-same-old, and we put a lot of effort into coming down here in terms of time, money, stress, paperwork, moving, job change, etc., etc. Also, I have a year commitment to Navman (or repay moving expenses), and a year commitment to avoid paying double-taxes (have to be resident outside the US for a year to qualify for foreign tax credit).
So, we have struggled through many options, but have come up with a plan for the shorter term and the longer term. Coming here was to grab an opportunity to live and work abroad rather than just travel through a place on vacation, and an opportunity to get away from friends, family, Bainbridge, and America to gain perspective on it all, and clarify our thoughts and goals.
For years we’ve been planning our dream cottage, but didn’t know where to build it. Unhappy with the growth and changes on Bainbridge, but unwilling to move the kids out of school - it was almost easier to move 10,000 miles away rather than 10. One clarification we’ve achieved in coming here was where to go next, and that is Gig Harbor to be closer to Cindy’s family.
But we were going to focus on the experience here for the two years, so as not to disrupt Max’s schooling again. However, with his growing unhappiness and discontent, it seems the best option is to return to let him attend his Senior year back at Bainbridge High School.
This all came to a head over the past couple weeks, and our two year timetable became one year, with only a couple months left. Beyond the stress of coming to terms with this, there is suddenly a huge logistical load - figuring out transferring of school credits (since the school years don’t line up), moving, work, and a million little things like mail, phones, banks, insurance, cars, etc., etc.
The short term plan currently is to fly back up in the first week of September, which will allow Max to finish the classroom work for the year here, and complete his internal exams. We’d love to come a week earlier, both for Max to have a few days to settle in before starting school, and to do some activities over the Labor Day weekend, but to ensure transfer of credit he really needs to complete at least the internal exams. (The fourth term of school here for the upper level students is essentially study time for the external exams at the end of the year.) So this means Max will miss the first couple days of school, but so be it.
I will spend a month to get Cindy and Max get settled, to visit family and friends, and then return to New Zealand to finish out my year commitment. As the weather will be getting nicer at that point, I hope to do some type of South Island trek before heading back to what will then be winter in the Northern Hemisphere.
Longer term plan will be to buy or build a place in Gig Harbor, once Max is out of school. This gives us the school year to figure out if we keep the Bainbridge house as a rental or sell it, fix it up accordingly, and scope out options in Gig Harbor.
Tomorrow I buy plane tickets.
Last night cracked the 6 degree limit - 5.8 degrees Celsius, or about 42 degrees Fahrenheit. Brrrr! The norm here in Auckland is houses without insulation and single-pane glass, so let’s hope this isn’t typical!
Of course, it is also 4:45 AM - We’re off to pick up Sarah at the airport, coming down here for her “summer” vacation from college. Let’s hope she brings some of that warmer weather down with her.
We actually looked at another rental the other day - with heated floors! Might be a change-of-address in the offing!
So, I’ve been writing this blog for friends and family back home. Spending my precious rainy weekends on it. Writing, proof-reading, re-writing, editing, polishing… (yeah, right!)
Does anyone actually read it? Leave some comments behind! Tell me how poorly I write! Tell me what drivel it all is!
Max has been running a Dungeons and Dragons (”D&D”) campaign every couple weeks for the past few months with a group we met at Laserforce. He’s created an amazing world for the adventure, and now I get to have a small role in it - My character Thorkill is your typical dwarven fighter who has been digging mines in the mountains outside of Dis on the Second Level of Hell, until he got chased out by various devils and fire demons. So now, he’s looking for a few good fighters, a wizard, and perhaps a rogue or a druid, to help him get his mines back. And guess who stumbled into his house the other day, while they were escaping from some pit fiends recruiting for the Devil’s army in the Blood War against the Demons?
I haven’t played D&D for a few years (since college…), so we’ll see how it goes - wish Thorkill luck with his future damage rolls!
When we first moved into the house, there was some crazy bird with a call that went on and on - no idea what it was. Then for the last month we’ve had a fantail (or piwakawaka) flitting around in the garden - it eats flying insects, so maybe we’ll have fewer mosquitos! Then in the past week, we’ve had a tui in the tree! (no, not the beer!) Tuis make a huge variety of sounds - quite astonishing!
We’ve seen hedgehogs a few times at night as Cindy has written about on her blog. Just the other day, as I arrived home from work, Cindy and Max were following one up our driveway! Very cute, toddling along on his little feet. We escorted him safely across the street, and off into the bushes. (They don’t move very fast, and are not frightened, so unfortunetly become roadkill far too easily.) They are not a native species, and have caused problems, but not nearly the devastation to native birds that other invasive species ( stoats, cats, possums) have done. Still cute though.
Luckily not, as it turned out! I woke up early the other day, and checked my email before heading off to work, and there’s a message from Kim Bottles on Bainbridge forwarding a CNN News Alert at about 5:00 AM our time: “– Tsunami warnings issued for Fiji and New Zealand after earthquake measuring a magnitude of about 8.0 shakes southern Pacific Ocean.” It was due to hit the east coast at Gisborne first, at around 6:21 AM our time. Luckily, the alert was cancelled at around 5:30 AM once they had additional information.
Many people here heard about the alert when friends and family abroad heard the news, and phoned New Zealand in the early morning hours. Many people in Gisborne fled for the hills. The scandal here is that the Ministry of Civil Defence failed to notify people in Gisborne about the alert! It is true that they were monitoring the situation, but from the time the alert was issued by the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center after the earthquake hit near Tonga at 3:27 AM our time until the alert was cancelled at 5:36 AM our time, there was a two hour period where they should probably have been reacting as if a tsunami was on the way. If it was due to hit at 6:21 AM, there would’ve been only about 40 minutes to alert the people of Gisborne to get to safety…
Apparently here in Auckland it probably wouldn’t have been too bad, because the Hauraki Gulf and Waitemata Harbour are relatively shallow, such that any large wave would break way out around Great Barrier Island. I have heard that they have sirens to alert the public here, and besides, we live near the top of a hill.
So, for now we can relax about tsunamis, and get back to worrying about the fact that Auckland is built on an active volcanic field…!
Max’s writeup on his trip to Japan has been added to Max’s landmark month, and his photos are on Flickr here.
Also, I added several special categories to my photos on Flickr, for those who don’t want to slog through all the sets:
> Family, which has photos with us in them that family and friends might like to see.
> Favorites, which are some of my personal favorites from the sets.
> Architecture, which has some interesting architecture or architectural details. (Sorry, I get it from my father and grandfather!)