Welly, Welly Good in Wellywood

It has now been four weeks, almost to the minute, since I arrived in Wellington. I can look back on a successful month: I'm in my third week of work at a job that gets more comfortable by the day, my apartment and flatmates are a major improvement over the hostels I spent my first two weeks in, and I have slowly but surely developed a pretty solid core of friends here. Even the weather has improved dramatically after last week's historically bad storm. So now that I'm getting comfortable, I figure it's about time I made some broad cultural observations about the differences I find between life in North America and New Zealand. Bear in mind, these are just things I notice and certain to be over-simplifications.


One thing I constantly notice is that New Zealand is a small country in many senses of the term. It only takes an occasional glance at a newspaper (which I get free at work) to be reminded that this country's population is a only a little over 4 million people. I remember moving from the US to Canada and finding that Canadian casualties in Afghanistan received far more attention from the Canadian press than American ones did in the US. It makes some sense when you compare the population sizes and military commitments of the two countries. The same trend holds here. With less than a quarter of Canada's population, the recent death of a Kiwi soldier in Afghanistan - one soldier - was above-the-fold headline news for a few days here in New Zealand.

I noticed something similar when I met my friend Bernie, who is a Kiwi from Dunedin. We sat next to each other watching one of the Tri-Nations rugby matches. Soon after finding out he was a Kiwi, I found out he had a second cousin on the New Zealand team! Nor was the player in question, Andrew Hore, completely unknown to me - he had recently left his club team and said something in an interview about how returning to his farm didn't seem like such a bad thing. I thought, "typical Kiwi." Little did I realize I'd be meeting a member of his extended family within a few months.

Being such a small country, I can live in its capital and not feel overwhelmed by it, this being the largest city and first national capital I have ever lived in. Sometimes I'm surprised to find the grocery store crowded and need to remind myself that this is a city of over 400,000 people. But living in a "big city" has its advantages: one of my coworkers was able to tell me about being at the world premiere of "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King," and yesterday I walked right past Orlando Bloom and his wife on my way home. I didn't realize what I'd seen because I was too busy convincing myself that it wasn't possible. By the time I realized it was possible, he'd disappeared. I think I was so surprised at the idea of having a celebrity encounter - you don't have too many of those in North Bay, ON - that I didn't even consider that it actually could be someone famous.


My Kiwi flatmate Marcus has told me New Zealand is one big community, and I can see what he means. At my level, I find that work has a very communal attitude, where no one is really more valuable than anyone else except by virtue of experience. People here tend to be fairly relaxed and friendly, although not unnecessarily talkative, which I appreciate. But general statements only describe so much, so here's one very specific thing I've noticed: I have heard more Kiwi women talk about flatulence than Kiwi men. At work the other day, I overheard a conversation two women were having about foods they enjoyed, and one of them dismissed something because "it smells like farts." Without batting an eye, another woman jumped in and added, "you know what really smells like farts? Pea and ham soup." In North America, the word "fart" alone is enough to cause giggling and even uproarious laughter, and I can count on one hand the number of times a woman has brought it up with me in conversation. But here it is apparently not an issue. It's a good thing they were talking in Kiwi accents - "smells like farts" becomes "smills like fahts" - or I might have just burst out laughing on the spot.

But as usual, it is the natural environment that intrigues me most. I have recently begun to work the Wellington waterfront into my daily routes around town, as it affords nice views of the harbor and the Wairarapa hills across the water. And today Marcus and I hiked to the top of Mount Victoria, east of the center but still very much in Wellington. The views were astounding, and allowed me a much better sense of where I am on a map.

Part of my street. Those two houses must have very fit residents.

Oriental Bay from the waterfront.

Sun in Wellington? Nah... This is looking over the harbor and downtown.

Looking east (I think) from Mount Vic towards Wairarapa.

Work, Winning, and Weather

My second full week in Wellington saw as many changes as the first. It was my first week of work at the café, which allowed for some regularity. Settling in has been pretty easy, partly because of the number of hours I worked from the start, but also because I've worked in a similar place before. My coworkers are generally motivated to get the job done well, but are very relaxed when business slows down. That being said, things were rarely slow this week. Chris, the owner, says the place was bankrupt about two years ago when he bought it, and it is now starting to turn a profit. Of the six days I worked this week, five were consistently busy. It is normal for Chris to be working alongside us, and it's a nice motivating factor to have the owner so close to the action.

I'm not working full-time, however, and Wednesday saw my first pub trivia night in Wellington. In a strong debut performance, my team took second place and I personally won a little keychain (with a TV on it that makes noises like the one in the movie Poltergeist). The bar in question was fairly alternative - in between the rounds of questions, the quiz master gave away "spot prizes" to the person who could identify which song he was playing on his trumpet, and the team with the best name won a prize, which ended up being Whoopee cushions.

This week also saw my housing situation resolved. One of the apartments I had looked at contacted me to say I had first choice if I wanted it. When I explained my financial situation, they were still eager to have me. We've worked out a deal that will allow me to move in and pay later, which is a huge load off my shoulders. I moved in this weekend after my two longest shifts at the café. The new place is not centrally heated, which presents some interesting challenges, but I have a large room to myself and three friendly flatmates in a nice location.

There's a certain amount of irony in my move from a centrally heated hostel to a barely heated apartment this weekend, as New Zealand is currently being blanketed with snow. Wellington's climate doesn't really allow for the snow to settle in the city itself, but the cars coming down to the city from the nearby hills tell a different story. The precipitation can't seem to decide if it wants to be snow or rain, which makes for pretty nasty conditions. My reaction has not been entirely negative, however. When I arrived, people told me it was winter and it really didn't feel like it. Now that it finally feels like it, I have put on my mental snow tires and long underwear and actually quite enjoy it. However, it is odd to think that a little less than a month ago, I was barely able to move due to the heat in Chicago. From one of North America's worst heat waves to one of New Zealand's worst winter storms in less than a month...sounds like a book.

If you want to read more about the weather - which I believe is historic - check here:

http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/5442971/Wellingtons-once-in-a-lifetime-polar-blast

http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/snow-reaches-auckland-winter-blast-bites-4351436

The Non-Routine Routine

My first week in Wellington saw plenty of positive progress. My job search yielded an interview within two days, and two more within five. Unlike my previous job hunts in Kingston and North Bay, I was able to stop handing out resumes within a week. I have accepted two positions - one as a casual employee of the retail services at Westpac Stadium (where Wellington's Rugby World Cup matches will be held), and one as a dishwasher at a café much like the one I worked at in my last year of university. Despite the pressure I felt to find work (see previous post), this job hunt was less stressful than any others I've undertaken. I think my previous experience prepared me for the number of rejections I was bound to hear, but the intimidation factor of unknown bosses is much lower here. In two of my interviews, the interviewers almost seemed apologetic that they couldn't pay me more or give me more hours. Maybe it's because I'm overqualified; maybe it's a Kiwi thing. Either way, finding a job was much less stressful than it has been in the past.

My search for housing has been less straightforward. Many people in Wellington live in the suburbs (which are more like neighborhoods separated by the mountains around town). Although many people still walk, it can be quite an adventure to find these places for the first time. While walking to the suburb of Hataitai, I found myself halfway up Mount Victoria when the road ended. Some friendly groundskeepers confirmed that I was headed the right direction geographically, but needed to walk through the Mount Victoria tunnel to get there. Another apartment in Wadestown literally required a hike. Many of the streets were pedestrian-only and consisted entirely of switchbacks. Needless to say, these kind of experiences have helped me focus my search on the nearer suburbs while allowing me some fantastic views of the area (see below). Although it would be quite a statement if I had to climb over a mountain - literally - to get home, I think I'd rather spare my legs a little. One of the rooms I recently looked at was in a house with a woman from (flat) Christchurch, who said she hadn't developed her "Wellington legs" yet.

Meanwhile, living at the hostel isn't the purgatory I might have assumed it to be. Many people are in my situation, which makes networking much easier than it was in my early days in Logroño, and ensures that there will always be people to talk to after dinner. Although wireless internet is not included, there is a nice TV which has allowed me to watch my beloved Boston Red Sox on two occasions. So while my housing search has not been as instantly successful as my job search, it is also far less urgent.

Looking east over Hataitai from Mount Victoria.

Wadestown.

Wellington harbour, viewed coming back from Wadestown.

Black and New

In my experience, the first few days in a new place always feel very long. As there is no established routine and even basic things are new and different, it is that much more interesting and challenging to navigate through a full day. So, naturally, I have spent my first few days doing the things that will allow me to establish a routine and become familiar with my new surroundings.

After arriving in Auckland early on Thursday morning, I spent the day riding the bus from Auckland airport to Wellington. Although I was worn out, I was excited to take the opportunity to see the North Island from the ground. The ride passed by plenty of green hillsides, the absolute beauty of Lake Taupo, and sheep. Lots of sheep. I passed the time by reading, enjoying the bus driver's accent, and talking to the Samoan-Maori woman sitting next to me about all things New Zealand.

Friday was my first full day in this country, and I quickly set about making myself at home in Wellington, where I plan to spend the next few months. After successfully setting up a cell phone (say that with a lisp), I started a bank account with ANZ bank. The good news is the staff were as friendly as Kiwis are famous for being and I now have a bank account here; the bad news is that my money order is not going to be accessible for a month while my check clears. That obviously puts severe constraints on my activity, and the teller was considerate enough to ask me if I'd be able to last that long without it. I was being completely serious when I told her yes. I was already planning to look for a job here; now it's just a little more urgent.

One major difficulty was spending a weekend here so soon after arriving, as job hunting is better done during the business week. But thanks to the free internet connection at McDonald's – the only place that has one here – I was able to do plenty of research on housing and jobs in Wellington. I've since moved into a hostel that rents by the week to avoid the extra costs of deposit and bills that would come with renting a room in an apartment, and sent in numerous job applications via the internet. Monday was my first day of job hunting in earnest, and it was certainly more encouraging than similar hunts I've done in North America.

But I didn't just come to New Zealand for its friendly job market. The challenges of being in a new place are what make it interesting, and although I've been kept busy making myself at home here, I have been able to notice the things that make this place different from Canada and the United States. One unavoidable topic of interest here is the Rugby World Cup, which begins on September 9^th. Rugby in general is always in the news, as I expected. Here's a brief anecdote to help explain just how rugby-mad this country is:

Prior to the World Cup, New Zealand's rugby team is competing in the Tri-Nations, an annual competition between the three major rugby nations of the southern hemisphere (South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand). They played their first match of that tournament here in Wellington on Saturday night, but that wasn't the only first on Saturday. As stores all over town had been advertising, the team revealed their highly-anticipated World Cup jersey in that match. The new design was the subject of a major ad campaign and much speculation. That amount of fanfare for a jersey is common in sports, but the nickname of the New Zealand rugby team is the All Blacks. I wondered to myself how much one could modify a jersey that fit the specifications “all” and “black”. The major topic of discussion in Sunday's newspapers? The white collar on the new jersey.

Landfall

I have arrived in Wellington, New Zealand after a long journey involving a thirteen-hour flight and a 12-hour bus ride. Every time I leave for a new place, I have last-minute doubts and wonder why I'm leaving behind everything I know. This time, any such worries were quickly dispelled when I watched the Air New Zealand safety video. I was nearly laughing out loud in my seat, and only realized afterwards that I had just enjoyed an airline safety video.

I was further bolstered by the flight attendant who asked me to "give 'er a nudge" when the woman next to me was too preoccupied with her meal to give him a drink order.

There will be more detail to come, but for now, I'm just happy to have arrived somewhere I can put down my bags and sleep in a bed.

That Wasn't So Bad (Getting to New Zealand, parts 1 and 2)

As I sit at my gate in San Francisco International Airport, looking at a 747 that will soon take me to Auckland, I feel a bit rushed to review the past 9 days of travel before I get caught up in a new city, country, and hemisphere. But let's see how I do.


My previous post may have given you some idea about the train ride that my Dad and I took from Chicago to Richmond, CA. It was unlike any train ride I had ever taken. Although I had been on sleepers before, this was more like making the train my home for almost three days. Dad and I knew we were in for the long haul, so we settled in pretty quickly, beginning a best-of-3 series of rummy 500, making significant advances in our respective books, and learning the ropes of life on the train.


There were numerous delays in the schedule throughout the ride. This being Amtrak, we had expected the ones that affected our arrival time. What we had not expected were the struggles with mealtimes. Our meals were included in the ticket price, and the food was pretty high-quality for the circumstance. But it did get a bit frustrating to wait until 9.30 PM for your 8 PM dinner reservation to start. Fortunately, the food was worth waiting for and mealtime delays merely made the ride go by quicker by giving us something else to think about.


Not that we needed much else to think about once we reached the Rockies. Crossing the Midwest took a little less than 24 hours, and it was exactly as I expected - more corn and soybeans than you can imagine. We reached Denver just before noon on the second day, and from there, I entered a part of the United States that I had previously only seen in movies (Westerns, primarily). The Rockies were incredible, particularly the Colorado River. It seemed to be unable to decide what type of waterway it would be - a wide floodplain or a violent whitewater. About every 20 minutes, the train would enter a new gorge and the river would go the color of paper as it narrowed and the rocky bottom resisted its advance. At times, the waves appeared to move backwards. Soon, though, we would enter a wider valley in which the river became more like a lake with a current. Apparently the river is high this year, which made this whole process even more fun to watch. To top it all off, the train was mooned twice along this part of the route - once by a man balancing on a whitewater raft. A nice addition to the scenery, particularly during dinner time.


Utah passed mostly in the dark, but Nevada's desert was another sight unlike anything I've seen before. Although our route was flat, the scenery was far from boring. The mountains in the distance seemed to randomly change color and shape, and the scrub and sagebrush slowly degraded into salt flats, a phenomenon I would not have identified on my own (thanks, Dad). It was on this part of the ride that I saw a wild rabbit, the only wild mammal I would see in three days (mooners excluded).

Our final climb happened as we entered California near Lake Tahoe, and then we descended on a miniature version of our entire trip - scrubby desert, then farmland, and finally the industrial surroundings of San Francisco. 

Our time in the Bay area was fairly scattered - between the Napa Valley, San Jose, San Francisco, and Oakland, I feel like I've gotten a pretty good feel for the entire region. As scenic as it all is, I was overwhelmed by the amount of traffic, in which I was fortunately only a passenger. The sprawl also soured my introduction to California. For those of you already saying "Don't go to LA," don't worry, I'm not planning to. I did enjoy San Francisco, although I hadn't given it too much thought before my arrival. The hills were a bit trying at times, but the public transit is not only good, the operators are entertaining. I heard bus riders asked to "be like Moses and part so these people can get on," and operators yelling, "this is Ghirardelli square - if you want chocolate and ice cream, get off here." It's not worthy of live stand-up, but it was nice to have a little personality behind the wheel. San Francisco also includes historic trolley cars as part of their transit network, which is cool in so many ways. They've even been brought in from other cities that no longer use them, so you could ride a trolley car from Washington, St. Louis, Chicago, or Milan. Yes, that Milan, in Italy.


As usual, I made a point of trying the local culinary specialties. I particularly enjoyed the clam chowder in a bread bowl, which was as good as it is on the East coast. Our tour of Chinatown took us to a market with live seafood on sale (including frogs), but neither of us was brave enough to try any. It was entertaining enough to watch the delivery guy use a net to unload fish into the store's tanks. But the food could not top one of my favorite parts of San Francisco: the pier 39 sea lions.

San Francisco has been fun, but New Zealand has been at the back of my mind the entire time. As much as it's a great monkey to have on my back, I'll be happy when I finally arrive in Auckland.

Woke up at 3 AM to get a photo of the 4th of 6th new states that I visited.

The Pier 39 sea lions.

How do you know you're in the gay district? A Grease sing-along, that's how.

The plane I'll be boarding soon.

That Wasn't So Bad! (Getting to New Zealand, parts 1 and 2, introduction)

The first two parts of my journey to New Zealand are now complete. My Dad and I departed North Bay, ON on Sunday and spent the night in Goderich, ON, with my aunt and uncle. Monday was a long day of driving, all the way from Goderich to Chicago, with a quick stop in Valparaiso, IN for a visit with two other relatives who I was meeting for the first time as an adult. We spent that night in Chicago with my aunt. After a day of sightseeing in Chicago, we left the Windy City at 2 PM on Wednesday afternoon and began a 54.5-hour train journey to the Bay Area, which we completed only 3 hours ago. You can imagine how tiring this whole thing has been, so please forgive me if I save the verbal description for later. Here are some photos to whet your appetites.

The Mt. Pleasant, IA train station. Pretty much as I expected it would be.

The Colorado River, probably my favorite part of the ride.

The sight I woke up to on the last day of the ride. Somewhere in Nevada.