Nooz from NZ

Dear Family and Friends,

If ever there was a year to write a holiday letter, then this is that year for us. So much has happened in such a short time, it’s hard to know where to begin. Many people have been asking us for details about our trip, where we came from, how we got here, and what it's like to live here in New Zealand. In an attempt to answer, we offer this log of what happened in 2007. It's long, but we make no apologies. It accurately reflects the immensity of our most amazing year!

Chapter 1: Our Life in Colorado

We had been planning to immigrate to New Zealand for more than two years, and we knew as we began 2007 that this was the year that it would finally happen. There were so many things to do and we were all a bit stressed. Kayla got sick a lot, which made her senior year in high school much harder than expected. (She is all better now, by the way!) Gail convinced Zim to cut back his hours at NOAA so we could start building our own business, plus do some painting and carpentry in anticipation of selling our house. Time seemed to be in short supply for all of us.

In January, we drove to Taos, NM, one of our favorite places, to spend time with our friend Mark before we left. While we were there, we visited Earthship Biotecture, a group of visionaries who build off-grid houses from recycled materials. Check out www.earthship.net for info about them. We were very impressed with these beautiful houses, and resolved to learn more about them before we left the states.

It snowed an amazing amount in Colorado this year, and Levi loved to go out and play in it with his friend Livia.

We went to Boston to visit Zim's parents and grandma for Passover, and were joined by Zim's brother Rob and nephew Izzy.

Gail sang in a Jewish choir in Boulder, which she loved.

In May, Kayla graduated with fine grades from Pomona High School, and there was much rejoicing. She had a wonderful time at her senior prom with boyfriend Nate, and friends Sabastian and Taylor. We put the house on the market shortly after, with mixed feelings.

We took a break from packing to attend a three-day seminar in Taos to learn more about Earthships. When we drove down in early June, we were aware that this would be the last time we made that trip. And what a trip it was! We saw some of the most verdant scenery ever seen in Southern Colorado. It was a wonderful seminar, too: we now plan to build an Earthship here in NZ. We learned a lot about sustainable living, and met some amazing people. We also said goodbye to Mark, which was the hardest thing ever.

We returned to a flurry of activity: packing, sorting, selling our stuff, arranging for a cargo container to NZ, getting our legal papers together, and saying goodbye to as many of our friends as we could. (But don't they look happy to be rid of us?) If we missed saying goodbye to you, our sincerest apologies. Events overtook us. We sold and vacated the house at the end of June. It was weird to see all of our possessions in a big metal shipping crate.

After the sale, we took a week to drive around and say goodbye to Colorado. In Steamboat Springs, we visited the field where we had gotten married, and the hot springs where we had celebrated. We were saddened to see how things had changed: the beautiful lush meadow surrounded by deep green pine forest that we remember, had become crispy dry; and the healthy green of the pine trees had been replaced by burnt gray and dead red. The sustained drought and increased temperatures of the past decade has taken a serious toll on that area. There was extensive damage to the forest by fire and pine-bark beetles, which devour the drought-stressed trees.

We traveled on to Marble and the Crystal River, where we were glad to see there wasn't any sign of drought. We reveled in the beauty and majesty of the mountains. Unfortunately, the reveling was cut short when Zim slipped a disk in his back. We limped into Durango to spend some quality time with Gail’s sister JoAnne and her husband Ken, (not to mention several health care providers). We all enjoyed the 4^th of July fireworks over Vallecito Lake, and we even got to see the resort where their eldest son Nate worked as executive chef.

A bit weary, we returned to Denver because Zim needed to have a varicose vein stripped from his leg. Having initially planned for an easy outpatient procedure, Zim's HMO wound up denying coverage with that doctor, and gave him a different doctor, and a far more invasive surgery. (Gotta love those HMOs!) We had planned to take it easy for a couple of days, but instead it took more than two weeks to recover. Zim the invalid spent all that time on Fred and Isabelle’s couch -- bless their souls for their patience and good humour! The upside was that we had plenty of time to spend with them and their beautiful boys, Will and David. Everyone should have such wonderful friends.

Since it would take our cargo container six weeks to get to NZ, we had time to relax and take one last look around America by train. At the last minute, Kayla decided to stay in Denver and work for the summer, and join us again in San Francisco.

Chapter 2: The Tour

We strongly recommend traveling by train. It's a lovely way to see the country and meet wonderful people. The trick is to avoid putting yourself on a tight schedule. (One concierge joked that Amtrak should change its phone number from 1-800-usa-rail to 1-800-usa-late.)

Our original itinerary included New Orleans, Memphis, Chicago, Glacier National Park, Seattle, Portland, Crater Lake National Park, Napa, San Diego, and Los Angeles. Because of Zim's surgery, we had to postpone our departure, and so we skipped seeing New Orleans entirely.

Our first stop was Memphis. We visited our cousins James, Myra and little Alexis, and experienced some true southern hospitality.

We also saw Graceland, which wasn't nearly as ostentacious as we expected it to be;

and the Civil Rights Museum, which is a very powerful experience that we recommend.

Then we took the City of New Orleans train (a/k/a the Chickenbone Express) to Chicago, which was absolutely beautiful! If we ever have to live in a big American city again, we'd be very tempted to make it Chicago. Of course, we were very lucky. The weather in both Tennesee and Chicago was just perfect. We've heard that it isn't always like that.

We took the Empire Builder train up along the northern border to Glacier National Park. Glacier has spectacular scenery, but it was really hot! It was 97 degrees there. In northern Montana. In the mountains. Weird.

Anyway, one day we took a very short hike along a trail (Zim was still recovering from having his vein stripped, so he wasn't up for long hikes yet). This trail was very narrow, and hugged the side of a steep mountain. As we were coming back along it, we found our path blocked by a Mountain Goat and her kid. And I mean blocked. She would not let us by. And she had some very pointy horns with which to enforce her wishes. After trying for ten or so minutes to convince her to move, Gail finally had to climb up on some rocks above her, and throw little stones at her and the kid. That did the trick. Rocks beat horns.

When we got past her, we went up the trail another twenty feet or so, turned a corner, and there was another Mountain Goat and her kid! This time, Zim picked up a slightly bigger rock and motioned threateningly with it, and the goat moved on.

Since we had very little time in the park, and we couldn't hike much, we decided to take a helicopter tour of the park. When Zim suggested it, Gail immediately agreed, without thinking it through very carefully. It wasn't until she was actually in the helicopter, lifting off of the ground, that she realized that people who are terrified of heights might not enjoy helicopter rides much. For an entire hour, she worked very hard to convince herself that tensing every muscle in her body wouldn't actually hold the helicopter in the sky.

Levi wasn't so tense. In fact, he fell asleep.

The tour was beautiful, but it was sad to see how small the glaciers are. Here is a picture of one of the healthiest glaciers in the park, although it's hard to get a sense of scale. The part you can see in the picture is about two football-fields wide, and maybe ten fields long.

But many of the glaciers in the park resembled this next picture. The last bits of pack-ice of this glacier had just disappeared in recent weeks, and all that was left were a few puddles of muddy snow. The park scientists had declared it "dead". The park has already lost two glaciers this year, and is predicting that all the glaciers will be gone by 2030. So if you want to see them, go soon.

After the park we went on to Seattle and visited with some friends, Paul and Charlotte and their kids. They showed us around town and let us relax with them after a hard day's travel.

We also met up with our good friend Wes, who introduced us to his giant friend, Mr. Lenin, who enjoys an occasional burrito in Fremont.

We enjoyed many adventures with Wes, who spent the next few days travelling with us on the next leg of our train trip.

We went to Portland, and then down to Klamath Falls where we saw Crater Lake, which is also spectacularly beautiful. As the name implies, it is a huge volcanic crater that has long since filled with clear blue water; truly worth the effort to see!

We walked down to the bottom where they have one spot set up for boat tours and swimming. The water was very cold -- just barely above freezing! But that didn't stop Gail from diving off a 15 ft cliff! So now she can cross cliff-diving into a volcano off the list of things to do.

From there we went to Napa to visit Zim's brother Rob and family for several days. Kayla flew out to meet us there. Coincidentally, an old friend from Massachusetts, Joel Herda, was also visiting, so we had plenty to catch up about.

After that it was down to San Diego, to visit our Aunt Marion for a few days. While we were there we went to Sea World, where, by the strangest of all possible coincidences, we ran into our friends Liz and Ralph (and kids). Gail used to teach with Liz at Westy, but they moved back to New York about seven years ago. We had no idea they were going to be vactioning in San Diego, and they had no idea we were. So you can imagine our surprise when we're walking through Shamu stadium, and hear, "Gail! Zim!" from the crowd. It was lots of fun, and we got to spend the next day at the beach with them too.

After that we just had to go to Legoland. Levi had been looking forward to that for the entire six week trip. He had a blast there. But by the time we had finished there, we were about all amusement-parked-out. Twice in one three-day weekend is a lot!

We spent the last two days as Americans in LA with our friends Stephanie and John, and then said goodbye to the USA.

The day we left it was about 98 degrees, or around 39 degrees Celsius. When we got off the plane in Christchurch, it was 5 degrees Celsius (about 40 Farenheit), and raining. Cold rain. Really cold rain.

Chapter 3: Getting situated

It's quite a feeling, arriving at the almost-empty airport at 7:00 in the morning, sitting in the lobby, hungry, cold, tired, with our backpacks and nothing else. We had nowhere to live, nothing to do, no one we knew, no car, no warm clothing. Remember this feeling. It is the meter-stick by which to measure our progress.

The day we arrived was a Friday. We rented a car and got a cabin for the weekend. The first hurdle we attempted was getting a cell phone. This proved to be a little more difficult than we thought, because we needed to have a street address to register the telephone. We used a payphone to ring a friend in Auckland to ask if we could use his address. He agreed, of course, but then he gave us the bad news.

He told us that our shipping agent had called, to say that our cargo ship was arriving a week early. This meant that we had only seven days to figure out what to do with our container contents.

After consulting with a customs agent and making some phone calls to storage areas in Christchurch, we soon realized that our best bet was to have the container delivered to a house, and have the customs inspection done there. The customs agent assured us that there were agents up and down the coast who could travel to any residence to perform the inspection during unloading. All that was required was a garage with a solid cement floor.

We needed to find a house quickly! We had thought about living somewhere warm and sunny, but not hot and dry. We don't want our new home to suffer the same droughts and fires as Colorado. We consulted the climate maps, and decided on the east coast of the South Island.

We spent the weekend looking at cars to buy. The car rental guy had recommended that we try buying a car at auction, so after looking at used car lots and newspaper ads, we went to the auction house to see what would be offered. This was a great experience. There were fifty cars available to inspect and test drive. A pamphlet had thorough descriptions and price estimates for each car, which were based on the auctioneer's experience. Three cars caught our attention, and all were expected to sell for about half of what had expected to pay a used car dealer.

The auction was really fun. Each car took about two minutes to sell. Gail and I made little bets about whether the auctioneer's price estimate would be accurate. Most of the time, he was right in the ballpark. Of course, for the three cars that we liked, he had estimated too low; but we still bought one for a good deal less than what we would have paid elsewhere.

The next day, we started to drive down the coast, toward Dunedin. We stayed in Ashburton for a night, and looked around at a few properties there. Nah. Then we checked out Geraldine, and just loved it -- a quaint little town, nestled into the hills between the coast and the mountains. However, there was only one rental property in town that suited our needs, and it was right next to a trucking depot.

We drove to Timaru, which is a bigger town, right on the coast. There were three properties that we saw, each of which we liked, but nothing that we wanted to jump on. We spent the night in Waimate (why-MAH-tee), which I had been looking forward to. It's in a great location, close to rivers and mountains, and Zim was hoping that we would fall in love with it. Although it is a lovely place to go hiking, none of us liked it much; the town seems very coarse, and the school didn't seem very exciting.

The next morning, we arrived in Oamaru. There was an odd smell in the air, like pumpkin stew. I asked someone what it was, and he said it was "sea-tulips", a kind of seaweed that grows nearby, and after a storm, sometimes the wind carries it onto the beach. Zim thought that was lots better than the perpetual rotting fish smell of the east coast of the US. By mid-day, the smell was gone.

Oamaru is a small strip of a town on the main road. It has a population of about 15,000, but it also services another 12,000 people who live in the surrounding area. This means it has quite a few restaurants, hotels, B&B's, appliance and hardware stores, supermarkets, service industries, etc. It also has a hospital, a nice swimming pool complex, a skate park, bowling alley, botanic gardens, and a very famous Historic District.

We saw three properties. One was big enough, but on the main highway. One was quite nice, but not big enough.

And then there was this one -- three bedrooms and a large living room upstairs, plus a full basement. One room in the basement is finished nicely for a laboratory. Another is a perfect workshop. There is also a garage, laundry room, darkroom, and storage room downstairs. The view out the kitchen window is fantastic. There is plenty of space out back to have a veggie garden. The primary school is three blocks away, and is recognised as one of the best in the region. If that wasn't enough, there is a large nature reserve at the end of the street, with walking paths that wind through woods, native bush, and pasture, with views of the harbour and the ocean. There is a wonderful beach five minutes down the road, and there are two penguin colonies. From the front yard, snowcapped peaks are visible in the distance. We contacted the landlord and he agreed to hold it for us for the weekend.

Further down the coast, we saw one more property, in Palmerston. That one was a bigger house, with a bigger garage, for slightly less money. The town was nice, and more rural, which Zim liked. When we talked to the Palmerston School principal, she mentioned that a lot of the residents are only there for a short while, working at the gold mine up the road. We went back to look at the house again, and there was a transient sleeping in the laundry room. It was then that we decided on the Oamaru house.

We drove down to Dunedin to see the University of Otago. While we were in Dunedin, we visited the customs agent who handles this region. He said that the agent in Christchurch didn't know what he was talking about, and there was no one in Oamaru who could do the inspection. We eventually found a moving company that agreed to unpack our container at an interim facility in Christchurch, then have a customs agent inspect it there, and then re-pack the contents into a different container for the drive to Oamaru. We even bought some appliances online and had them delivered to the moving company in Christchurch, and they threw those into the truck for free.

Chapter 4: Our town

The move-in went very smoothly. After all the frantic fuss, we are all safe and happy. As you can guess, we love our new house, and all our stuff has found its rightful place. Levi has been befriended by just about everyone. Most of our neighbors came over to introduce themselves within the first month. It has been very easy to make friends here. It feels like home.

At first, Kayla was lonely and had trouble meeting people, but then she got a job working at the swimming pool as a lifeguard, receptionist, and swim instructor. Now she has even more friends than she had in Denver. She often goes to the local dance club, which gets hopping by midnight and is still going at 3:00am.

Kayla has gained between ten and fifteen pounds, and she looks terrific! As a 19th birthday present, she got a fairy tattooed on her back, and she has since colored her hair red. Her persistent health problems have all disappeared. She feels happier and healthier than ever before.

Of course, New Zealand doesn't celebrate either Halloween or Thanksgiving. We decided to just go ahead and have our own Thanksgiving dinner, because we certainly have plenty to feel thankful for. Our friends Glenn and Sven joined us.

Instead of these familiar holidays, Oamaru has had several interesting cultural events not found in Denver.

Guy Fawkes' Day is a very important event that all subjects of the Crown should celebrate, although for different reasons. Some background: In 1605, there was a plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament in London. The plot was foiled at the very last moment as Fawkes was holding a lit torch to light the fuse which would detonate dozens of casks of gunpowder. In England, they celebrate that he was caught. In New Zealand, they celebrate that he tried. Appropriately, they erect huge bonfires and light fireworks throughout the country, much like the 4th of July in America.

Heritage Week is an annual event that celebrates the Victorian history of Oamaru. People dress in full Victorian costume and attend many events throughout the week. The festivities commence upon the arrival of the penny-farthing riders. A penny-farthing is the old-fashioned bicycle with the huge front wheel -- a death trap. The riders arrive after a four-day tour from Mount Cook.

Then there is a parade of old cars, people in period costume, penny-farthings, coracles, and lots and lots of bagpipes. (Oamaru was settled by bands of Scottsmen.) After the parade, there is a penny-farthing race through the old section.

The next day, there is a huge "fete" or street faire, with costumed people providing entertainment of all sorts, from stone-sawing competitions to magic shows and juggling acts. Music and food abound. The local theatre group performs many Victorian-themed plays throughout the week, and the final event is a formal costume ball in the extensive storerooms of the local whiskey bar.

As you were reading the previous paragraph, you might have stumbled on the word "coracle." This deserves a bit of explanation.

An acquaintance of ours named John Baster was a model-builder for the Lord of the Rings movies, and he fell in love with the small boat that Frodo uses. This is a traditional Welsh poaching boat called a coracle. A few years ago, he and another friend of ours, Adam, who is from Wales, but had no idea about coracles, decided to have a coracle competition. They posted instructions about how to build a coracle in the local library. People from all over town started collecting willow branches, canvas, and roofing tar, and by the time of the competition, there were seventeen boats at the harbour.

Because of the rounded bottom and lack of a keel, they are notoriously unstable. To make matters worse, using the paddle tends to make you spin in circles. Out of seventeen entrants that first year, only three made it to the finish line without capsizing. This has turned into an annual event, and this year, they added a kid's race and a jousting competition, wherein the boat captains try to sink each other with buckets and foam "noodles." The winner received the "Royal Cake" which unfortunately rolled in the sand twice before being awarded.

Perhaps most amusing was the Friendly Bay Cheerleading Club, which dressed in funny costumes and cheered the coracles from the safety of the beach. Instead of waving pom-poms, they performed synchronized dances while waving tufts of grass.

The local radio station attended and narrated the whole affair. Adam had an extra boat this year, and asked Zim to compete. Next year we will make our own.

Besides the cultural events, Oamaru has provided many other unusual experiences for us. On any given night, we can walk down to the harbour and meet as many penguins as we care to see. The Little Blue Penguins, which are actually quite rare in the world, infest downtown Oamaru like rats or squirrels, only cuter. They come ashore at night, and have built nests in basements and under porches, as well as in the native bush. You can hear their peculiar gargling noise from quite a distance.

While walking along the beaches near our home, we can see Yellow-Eyed Penguins, sunbathing sea-lions, oyster-catchers, and on one occasion, a beached, two-meter-long, Broadnosed Sevengill Shark. Pictures of him were very popular at Levi's school, and helped boost his popularity even more.

Within a twenty-minute walk from our house, there are beautiful botanic gardens, lovely walks in the woods, and fantastic coastline.

We have become good friends with Richard and Christel Vinbrux and their family, who raise Icelandic horses on their farm. They have taught us a lot about adapting to life in New Zealand, and have introduced us to many wonderful people. The Jewish community of Oamaru, which consists of the seven Vinbruxes, two single men, and us, meets fortnightly at the Vinbrux's house for Shabbos dinner. (In case you're thinking that Oamaru is unusually devoid of Jews, here's a useful statistic: in the last NZ census, there were 63 Jews south of the Waitaki River. That's an area the size of New York State!)

This year, Levi turned seven. After spending the morning playing in the waves with his new wetsuit and boogie-board, he chose to have sushi for his birthday dinner. The whole family went to the rocky beach at the bottom of the hill to collect four different kinds of seaweed for the seaweed salad. We prepared fresh, locally-caught fish (gurnard and groper) for the sushi.

Chapter 5: Looking forward

Kayla loves living in Oamaru, but is even more excited about living in Dunedin. For the first time, there is fire in her eyes when she talks about going to college. She will be studying Communications and Economics. She has been accepted to the university, and offered lodging in the international student house. She plans on driving down to spend some time looking at the apartments before she makes a decision about where she will live.

Our business is going well. We have been pretty busy fulfilling contracts for NOAA and building new systems for our distributer and friend in Auckland. We are starting to receive phone calls from scientists throughout New Zealand, asking for products and services. It's slow progress, building a business, but it's going better than we anticipated.

Sometime in the next year or two, we plan to buy a few acres of land and build our Earthship. We want to develop a sustainable lifestyle, which we hope to enjoy for years to come.

We wish you all very happy holidays and a wonderful new year. If you want to visit New Zealand sometime, we love visitors!

Best wishes,
Zim, Gail, Kayla and Levi

Nooz from NZ

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Wednesday, January 2, 2008

Alf's Imperial Army saves Oamaru and the Earth

Friday, December 21, 2007

2007 Year in Review

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