The Bay of Plenty – Arrival in NZ

We finally got one of those little USB-port thingies that allows you to carry around gobs of files, so now I can finally post some blogs. I'm going to lay them down in order, which means for once, I'll actually be AHEAD of myself when it comes to keeping up on blogs.

The Bay of Plenty – Arrival in NZ

The name alone – Bay of Plenty – brings up images in my mind of abundant everything – fish jumping right into your little boat; kiwi fruit growing like weeds, fat and juicy on the tree, and if you take a short look around, an ample supply of both beef and lamb. But, also knowing that the early explorers named giant chunks of ice “Greenland” to increase its appeal, I was a little bit wary. Not to mention, my new husband Beau had a good 5-6 weeks of time spent there ahead of me, and himself a lifetime avowed “country boy” from the vast wilderness of Montana, spoke of our new home as “really remote,” and “isolated.” I am the avowed “city girl,” so…uh oh.

But I had been to New Zealand years earlier and had promptly declared it the most beautiful place I had ever seen, and I’ve been fantastically lucky to have seen plenty of places. Even the chilly magnificence of Scandinavia or the misty ruggedness of Laos were beaten in this competition. Ever since that initial visit in October 2002 I have been vying to get back here. Tried and failed during my last year in Thailand, and now, piggy-backing on Beau’s teacher’s credentials, here I am, just shy of four years later.

After a 12 ½ hour Air New Zealand flight across the Pacific which required one trashy novel, three magazines, two lithium laptop batteries, several meals and drinks, four catnaps, one American and one New Zealand movie, and plenty of Jedi mind tricks to prevent myself going fucking berserk at the unnaturalness of the long-seated journey, I arrived in Auckland, just before dawn at the dawn of September. As usual, customs was long, hot, somewhat pointless, and …necessary. Upwards of an hour later I was pushing my overflowing cart of baggage sluggishly through the terminal, minutely following “the blue line” they ordered me to, lest I be seized and carted off to the other area, where that particular group of people were told to follow a different line – a line with men wearing surgical gloves and lots of open bags and unhappy people. I had forgotten about my cat’s brush stowed in one of my suitcases (though I was specifically asked if I had it – they knew I had brought my cat along). This criminal act covered up, I continued on and out into the crowd of waiting visitors, which felt like reaching the surface of the ocean when you felt your lungs would burst. Do I dramatize? Surely not!

At first, not seeing Beau was a bit unsettling. I knew he was there, somewhere. He had called me from the road, like 17 hours before I was to land, while I was standing in line with the mean ticket agent at LAX. He was leaving so early to reach Auckland before dark, which his small town folks had advised. I just figured his face would be one of the first I’d see in the sea of expectant individuals. But, feeling as if I was at the end of sled in an Alaskan dog sled race, I pushed on, just trying to get to the end of this long throng of people. Sure enough, there he was and I pushed the cart with a concerted umpf to get it away from me just enough so I could attack his chest full-on. What a relief.

After briefly lingering in the airport itself, though I just wanted to get OUT of it like it carried some sort of danger or disease ‘til I was free, we were outside and I was hit with the clean, crisp, coolness of an Auckland morning. Fantastic. I was raised in Arizona, which would make one think a warm climate was my preference, but perhaps being born in Milwaukee stuck more stubbornly in my blood, for though I am no great lover of long, cold, dirty snow winters, I do like it cool….preferring it to be between 50 and 75 degrees Fahrenheit at all times. 80-85 if a beach or other similar day. As a whole, that is New Zealand – temperate and cool. Here I was, standing in the parking lot feeling “chilly” (it was probably about 60 degrees), and knowing that currently it was the NZ winter. I love this.

After depositing my monster luggage, we went off to the side where we leaned against a fence and watched the sunset come up. Not one for early mornings, this is not an activity I have done often in my life, though there were brief…very brief…moments when I though perhaps I should make the effort. Loving sleep and late nights as much as I do, you can image which desire won out.

The next morning, with jet lag doing its awful black magic, I was awake before dawn again, and begged Beau to take me to the water for that day’s sunset. Lucky for me he is a happy early riser, and though I think he would have stayed in bed a bit more, he agreed. Then it was a race to the sunrise as we made our way from our hotel in the airport area down toward downtown Auckland where the water and the thousands of sailboats are. Well okay, WHEREVER you are there is water, which Beau kept pointing out, “How ‘bout here? That’s water.” But I really wanted to be at the main shore where I remembered it four years ago. We almost made it.

We did end up at a beach though which was still officially Auckland, but in our confused frenzy to get to the main boating area, had crossed a major bridge and was on the other side, and ended up in fairly nice section. At first we were the only ones, but it wasn’t long before walkers were out to stroll the beach. One highlight was seeing a very old, slightly bent-over man just in his swimming trunks (we were in jeans and fleeces), clomp steadily toward the water. “No way,” I said. Fascinated, we watched as he continued his march, only slowing down slightly when reaching the area of his family jewels. “He’s not going to go in any farther,” Beau said, commenting on the state of the old man’s pink bits. “Yes, he is!” I championed.

Sure enough, he seemed to get over his initial pause and dived him. “Why that little shit!” Beau exclaimed, “He did it.” A few minutes later the old man exited the ocean. I felt like clapping.

We stayed on in Auckland just two days. Enough time to visit an Asian grocery store, and a whole street lined with bed stores. We have been having intense sticker shock in NZ. When we were packing up for NZ (for when he left six weeks prior to me), I lectured repeatedly, “There’s almost nothing you can’t just buy over there that you can buy here. Don’t worry about it.” Especially every day items seemed silly to pack or ship, so we weedled our worldly possessions down to as few as possible, selling, giving away, or simply tossing out gobs of stuff. Shoot, there wasn’t much I couldn’t get in Bangkok that I could get in the U.S., and we all knew that NZ was even more “advanced.”

Well, advanced as it may be, it’s fucking expensive here. Now I wish I had packed away our forks and spoons, more clothes, dish towels, shit, anything. And I sent a LOT of boxes that cost a LOT of money. Beds here tend to range from about $900-$3000 NZD. That’s about $700-$2500 USD! The bed I bought back in NYC, which was no prize pony, but was a pretty decent full-sized bed, cost about $500 for both the mattress and box spring. It’s enough to depress the hell out of you when you know you came to the country with enough money to get started, but that money is not actually as much as you thought it’d be. And not knowing if we’re going to stay in the Bay of Plenty for long (Beau’s contract is for six months and it’s looking shaky now whether he’ll want to stay at this school), it’s hard to make these big-ticket purchases.

We did go ahead though and splurge on one thing – a duvet. Getting down the NZ bed lingo was not easy. In America we have our mattress pad, our sheets, and then a blanket or comforter on top. Here it is different and confusing. In general they recommend a woolen “underlay” which is basically a thick slab of wool which you use somewhat like we would use a mattress pad. Then they cover that with a protector or sheets of sorts. Then a “duvet” which is basically a blanket often made of wool or feather & down is placed either on top of you or also under you for more cushion. I am a goose down worshipper and find it to be ecstasy when it’s a good down blanket or pillow (and bad ones to be agony, particularly if there is too much “feather” in it to occasionally find its way loose and poke you in the cheek). But beds here are built for warmth, since a good household heating system seems to be something not yet adopted in NZ. It’s so strange how a country can be so temperate and beautiful, and yet you can feel so chilly so much of the time. Your bathroom is cold when you go to take a shower, your bedroom is cold when you go to bed. It’s an illusion that makes it seem colder than it is, since the reality is that the house probably never goes below 60-some degrees F at a time. Beau has bought two small space heaters which I agree with him do little more than “take the chill out of the air.”

Anyway, a friendly salesman in Auckland helped explain in detail how the bed system all worked (and naturally suggesting the most expensive, “comfortable” options along the way). And there they had a duvet that was kind of like a double down comforter. A top layer was thick and padded with an 80% down to 20% feather – nice! This was the layer that you could just lay under and never emerge from. The second layer was a 50-50 ration and was also rather thinner. The two are connected by a series of snap buttons along the edge of the blanket(s). The concept is that you can lay under both when it’s really cold (we are just emerging from winter into spring as I speak), and then pull them apart as it gets warmer, either laying on the fat one with the thin one over you, or whatever. As of right now, since Beau and I are sleeping on a somewhat shitty pull-out bed with a mattress about as thick as Harlequin romance, I put the entire duvet under us, which is pretty nice, though it doesn’t keep us from waking up feeling somewhat bruised from the bed. We’re happy to have it, since basically we don’t have ANYTHING, but a bed will need to be purchased, soon, and it’s going to feel like giving a kidney. And when we do have that bed, we’re going to have this glorious duvet to go with it.

I’m sort of at that point in my life where I’m getting tired of moving around. Ha ha ha, you say, since I just moved across the entire globe to NZ in a city I may not stay in past January. Well, yes, okay, but I always knew that I wanted to settle soon and so since Beau wanted to teach abroad (and I can’t possibly blame him for that), I wanted us to go somewhere where we both really wanted to be and would be happy. Moving to a new country is beautiful and fun and gets you hundreds of glorious photographs to show friends, but it’s also exhausting, confusing, expensive, and enormously more difficult than you ever could have imagined. The adjustment takes so long and you find yourself fighting your new culture with the power of your own culture, which naturally, is ALWAYS the better one in terms of how to do anything. So, when in your new country and you see how something is done differently than your own, your first instinctive impulse is to reject it as wrong, and of course YOUR way to be better. You eventually get over that arrogance, but it takes awhile.

Anyway, I’m tired of going through all this over and over again, and it’s actually somewhat hard to see Beau going through it for the first time, because I think moving to another country is a very fragile thing. I have heard stories of individuals arriving in a foreign airport and being so freaked they literally get back on a plane and go home (true story). I also have my own story of a friend who came to Bangkok to teach and within a week had me motorcycling her to the travel agent to buy her own ticket home. I know that the constant difficulty in adjusting to a new home, a new location, new people (and if applicable, new language) is a lot to bear, and I have this constant fear that Beau, for whom a part of him still dreams of moving back to Montana and living out his days, will just go, “You know what, fuck this!” and want to leave.

I’ve done this before, and so I know that the things that are tough get easier and you begin to relax, accept, and enjoy, but I also know that that is not usually a quick process and I live in a constant state of fear that Beau will want to bolt. My third year in Thailand was the most enjoyable year, work-wise, of my life. I adored my students and loved teaching them. But Thailand was also the most difficult job I ever had (god, I sound like a Peace Corps advertisement), and it took a toll on me. My god, I would SO do it again if given the choice. Thailand was a fascinating place, and though it was hot, crowded, and dirty, it was also fun, strange, and cheap. Every single meal was delicious, and I got to travel all around Asia (as well as come to Australia and NZ four years ago!), so I got so much back in return. And, I learned that I love teaching, something I did not expect. I thought I’d be good at it (and over time, I came to be), but I really really loved it, and I miss it right now.

Unfortunately for Beau, his school has a strange philosophy that he is having a difficult time wrapping his mind around. Goal-oriented with his lessons, and into structure, he finds the constant shifting schedule (and frequent cancelled classes due to his students doing cultural or sport activities) to be frustrating, not to mention the complete lack of homework or studying on the students’ part.