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I didn’t think that we’d like Auckland as much as we do. We have been spoiled in the last month with music and socializing and eating out and attending lectures.
In the past week Dave and I have had some fairly significant milestones; Dave finally turned in his thesis (and is no longer absolved of his share in the household duties) and we both got word that we have been offered internships in Boston. After we stopped jumping on the bed and screaming about how happy we are, we started calling family and friends to let them know that we would be in the same hemisphere with them for June, July and August. Again, we’re doing our damnedest to arrange our lives in a way that we can have an endless summer.
Now my favorite refrain is, “what are you looking forward to most?” Next to the obvious things that we are both excited for (with one squishy little nephew being at the apex), we are both ecstatic that we have been given opportunities to work with organizations that we are truly inspired by.
So, beware - if you live within a four hour radius of Boston (either by plane or by car), we will be knocking at your door and sleeping on your couch.
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My time in the U.S. over the holidays was
excellent, but i’m not sure that I will ever get used to living my life in
these concentrated doses. It’s like the Brandeis quote: “A man may have six
meals one day and none the next, making an average of three meals per day, but
that is not a good way to live.” I grudgingly admit that most people live their
lives either in the past or the future; however, I would like to average out
the two at some point in my life and find a way to live mostly in the
present.
As we prepare to move to Auckland and I pack my life once again into
neatly (and not so neatly) labeled boxes, I marvel at the fact that over a year
and a half has lapsed for us here in Tairua. I wonder if we’re going to miss this
place and then, drunk on the ecstasy of knowing that our departure is imminent,
I think of all the good times that we’ve had:
Wah baptizing himself in the river at Te Moata or
finding out that Crazy Larry (the guy that tried to pick a fight with aaron)
has a vulnerable knee that we could use to our advantage in our next
altercation. Far too many of my good memories of Tairua involve Crazy Larry. I
don’t think that I’ve ever exchanged a word with him, but the image of him
riding a tractor through town towing a fishing boat has left an indelible
impression on me and I’m sure he won’t soon be forgotten. I might even miss the
cranky lady at the corner store.
We will miss the beauty of the Coromandel and the abundant supply of beaches, but like my dad says, I still haven't come across a part of New Zealand that isn't beautiful.
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Aaron and Lynsey had a Day of the Dead celebration that included
a 15 meter homemade cave that took a year in the making, handmade tamales with
smuggled ingredients from the U.S.,
and more chocolate treats than my belly had room for.
I love Halloween -
partially because I don’t think that I ever fully recovered from missing 6
consecutive Halloweens as a kid in Australia (and my mom giving the
neighbors candy in advance to give to us doesn’t count). The following are some photos to prove my overcompensation.
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We seek pitifully to convey to others the treasures of our
heart, and quite often feel overcome with how clumsy the tools we wield are.
There are so many things within the past few months that literally, at the risk
of sounding cliché, have taken my breath away. That sharp inhalation as you try
to register the beauty and the love, realizing the fleeting and transient
nature of both of them. Like a beautiful sunset, or time with your mom, or your
sister’s blossoming little belly, there is no accurate way to really capture
the essence of the beauty and the experience, and trying to put it into words
is frustrating at best.
The past few weeks have been, as Daði (our Icelandic friend)
would say about his obnoxious 80’s shorts, “full of awesome.” I turned 28, which by the way is a perfect
number (an integer which is the sum of its proper positive divisors), in
style. One of my closest friends from Iceland, Ásta, was in town and her very
presence validated me in such a profound and unexpected way. Her friendship is one of the treasures of my
heart that I can’t hope to try to accurately convey. For my birthday, Ásta and
Lynsey, and Aaron and Daði, and Amanda, went dancing in Auckland. For those that don’t know me quite
well enough to have had the pleasure/misfortune to see me dance, I will accede
that my dancing skills are lacking. Sometimes when there is a lack of skill I
think that people become inordinately fond of the skill in others and Ásta and
Lynsey have always inspired my admiration with their dancing skills – and to
have both of them dancing together on my birthday was so amazing that it was
hard to process.
I was able to go to Utah
and Boston for
a few weeks and spend some much needed time with my family and friends. I got
to spend some time with my sister and my mom in Maine
and Boston. I
continue to feel so nourished by the time that I was able to spend with my mom,
giggling on our plane ride to Boston
or with friends, crashing in to a staff meeting at Higher Ground, that it makes
the distance feel less onerous.
Before my trip back to Utah
and Boston, I was able to go with Dave, James
and Amanda to Wellington.
With only vague recollections of Wellington
as an 11 year old, I was pleasantly surprised by the rhythm and feel of the
city. There were too many good coffee shops and restaurants, and movie
theatres, and clothing stores; my stomach and wallet could only handle so much.
We are currently very busy planning for our upcoming wedding
and honeymoon, and we are getting increasingly more excited as the day looms
ever nearer. Our link outlines some of the details and don’t hesitate to
contact us if you have any questions.
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So, we spent Christmas kayaking off the coast and exploring
caves on some offshore islands. As ever,
New Zealand
boasts an embarrassment of riches in terms of natural beauty. I think that you’d be hard pressed to find a
more pristine and beautiful place in the first world.
Apparently the dolphins that we’ve seen off the Tairua coast
aren’t fooling around – check out the front page news in the New Zealand
Herald:
Since we wrote last, we’ve moved to a new home on laceType w:st="on">Mt.laceType> laceName w:st="on">PakulaceName>. The views are amazing – including out to laceName w:st="on">SlipperlaceName> laceType w:st="on">IslandlaceType>, the site of the aforementioned
dolphin revolt.
We had the pleasure of a visit from Beverly and Jonathan
shortly after our move. It was great fun
showing people the lay of the land; we’d love to show other people around if
they’d like a cheap tour guide. While
Bev and Jonathan were here we had a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner replete with
local staples (and admirable Thanksgiving stand-ins) kumara and blue pumpkin. No luck with the Tofurkey, however.
The weather has been beautiful – sunny but not too hot, and we’ve
had to adjust to people saying, “Have a happy, hot holiday.” It still doesn’t
sound quite right.
Despite our homesickness, we enjoyed a few days off from the
café (and each of our respective jobs). David quit his job at the IT firm, and
got hired on with the District Health Board; he’ll be starting the beginning of
January.
For Christmas, we received some beautiful boxes from my mom
and dad and enjoyed the treats all day. Our cupboards will be full for a while
yet. Aaron and Lynsey bought us all a much needed vacuum, and the feminist side
of me cringes at how much joy their gift brought. 
The influx of tourists has definitely begun. The café is busier (as are the roads around
the Coromandel). We are looking forward to enjoying this beautiful summer and then another summer again in Utah – it seemed
like we had one very long winter and we want to drink up as much of the sun as we can.
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We have started running a café on the weekends and have
become a registered partnership and legal tax entity under the name of
Pollinate Partnership. Our café mascot is a little honeybee, and in choosing
the honeybee it seems like we are inadvertently paying homage to the beehive
state that we love and miss.
We are having a lot of fun with the café: creating the menu,
choosing the drinks, finding the local fruit and vegetable vendors, and
organizing and beautifying the place in general. The café is adjacent to a
small winery that specializes in fruit wines made from kiwis, feijoas, and
manuka honey; we have created a menu that would complement that, and enjoy the
expanse of land that the winery and café is located on.
 Lynsey is incredibly
adept at making beautiful signs and creating delicious plates. Aaron has made
the gardens look incredible, and Dave has created complex algorithms that compute
the cost and profit of every item that we serve (even factoring in the cost of
the ten toothpicks on our fruit plate). I have been saddled with some of the
tedious accounting and company details that I have my dad to thank for my
ability to deal with. Although there was an extremely steep learning curve when
we got here, my dad’s company has required me to navigate through all this
stuff before and I have had the insight from many series of audits to know what
to do (and what not to do). It has been an interesting convergence of all of
our different skills.
One of the main appeals of our café, in addition to our
local and organic menu, is the outdoor seating.
The gardens and outdoor area are covered with a canopy of kiwi vines and
we spent a good portion of the day yesterday propping up kiwi-laden vines with
bamboo. (I wonder if there is a provision in the food and safety guides
regarding ripe kiwis dropping on café patrons. I don’t know how many countries
there are in the world where that is a legitimate hazard concern.) 
When we originally signed up for this project we didn’t
realize how much time and work it would take, and we certainly didn’t realize
the amount of love and attention a place that had been neglected for years
would need.
What had originally struck all of us as quaint and sort of
picturesque – cobwebs on the wall, homemade benches, and old bottles – has now
lost a bit of its charm and we have attacked the cleaning with a
vengeance. We have saved a couple of
things for Dave to do upon his return – we want to make sure that he feels
included in this project as well. Dave gets back this week and we are anxiously
awaiting his arrival.
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The weekend before Dave left, we participated in the K2. Described as
2,300 metres of screaming descent and possibly the most scenic and
challenging one day cycle race in the Southern Hemisphere.
The event is named after Kuaotunu, an enchanting community on the wild
eastern coastline of the Coromandel Peninsula. In Maori, the name Kuaotunu
means “to inspire fear in young animals” ! The 2 represents
the almost 200km that the ride will cover. By coincidence K2 is the 2nd
highest, and probably the most difficult to climb, mountain in the World.
It travels in an anti clockwise direction covering the entire
peninsula. Starting in Coromandel Town and going on to Thames, Tairua,
Whitianga and back to Coromandel. We, however, carved our own K1 and
did a 100km loop from Coromandel to Thames and back.
I remember going on a long and arduous ride in Utah last summer with
Dave and telling my mom when we got back that I had just hit a wall
about 3/4 of the way through the ride. I meant that I had hit a
physical wall and felt like I couldn't go any further, but my mom
thought that I had actually hit a wall. Again, I felt like I hit a wall
about 85km in and allowed myself to be persuaded to hitch a ride with
some lovely women that i'm sure felt very sorry for me.
In some ways I think that the experience was somehow analogous to
childbirth -- me yelling at Dave, "What did you sign me up for?" and "I
don't think that i'm going to make it." And of course there were the
requisite expletives in response to Dave's sweet support; I am sure
that my behaviour did not elicit much confidence in Dave.
Dave is in Utah at the moment and I am sure that he is relishing all
the time with family and friends. We are missing him quite a bit here
and a few times every day Aaron, Lynsey or I will whine, "Is Dave home
yet?" We, of course, are also missing our families and friends and hope
that Dave has enough time to squeeze in all the hugs we sent.
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