December 13th

We've got a week long trip coming up Friday. Should have lots of pictures to post. Looking forward to kayaking in Abel Tasman National Park, riding the TranzAlpine Railway over the Southern Alps, riding the ferry from the North Island to the South, and hiking at Arthur's Pass among other things.

Visited a new church yesterday which we liked. Also met very friendly people there, as well as neighbors who live 2 houses down.

Ralph was off for the weekend and we stayed "home". Got to watch Tennessee defeat Pittsburgh in basketball which was great. Go Vols! Did a lot of shopping. I think that by the time our 6 months here is over I will just be learning how to live and shop here. Found a great store, Davis Traders, that has food ingredients not found elsewhere in NZ. And we found a pizza place that is closer to what we are used to back home. It's called Hell and the pizzas are named after the 7 deadly sins. We enjoyed Lust, a meat lovers pizza. You have to tell all pizza restaurants here to NOT put on BBQ sauce, which I find disgusting on something that's supposed to be Italian.

A typical block in most NZ towns will have several cafes (great food and coffee generally), a couple of takeaways (usually fish and chips or Chinese or both), and Kebab restaurants. The Kebabs are Middle Eastern type places . There's a choice of lamb, beef or chicken for the meat and various topping like at a Subway and 4 or 5 great sauces. They wrap it all up in pita bread and they are delicious. Reminds me somewhat of the gyros that our son Scott loves so much in Budapest. What you don't find in NZ are Mexican restaurants. We have seen just one and it was in Wellington and very high priced. Mexican type foods make it onto a few menus in trendy places, usually quesadillas or nachos. The grocery stores have flour tortillas but no corn tortillas, and a few sauces and that's it. I think it may be growing in popularity slowly. Also don't think I've seen a single Hispanic or African (American or otherwise) person. There are many ethnicities here but they are largely Asian or Polynesian or Middle Eastern. I think the country is 14% Maori, the indigenous people, and the main population is of European descent.

We're getting old hand at driving on the left now except for the occasional bout of what I call "driving vertigo". And that's when you come upon a complicated intersection that you weren't expecting and suddenly---who's got the right of way? where am I? Oh no, what lane am I supposed to be in? That's only happened to me a couple times, but it's pretty scary!