We're here!

(Jon reporting) Greetings from down under. Three days in and it seems overwhelming and
awesome. Welcome to trying to establish instant life in Christchurch.

On the good news front, we’ve lost all semblance of American time. I look back at
American websites and have no idea when the events of the day are happening. On
the bad news front, we lost Thursday altogether coming over. Good thing we didn’t
have anything scheduled.

On the overwhelming side, it only seems appropriate that since we’ve arrived on
the opposite side of the world, you should drive on the opposite side of the road
and after three days of experience, I haven’t killed anyone. Apart from a minor
brain fart making a left turn into the wrong lane (mercifully there was no oncoming
traffic) there haven’t been too many squeamish moments though I’m sure Beth will
tell you differently.

At this point, every time I go out driving without incident, I chock it up on the
positive experience meter. I’ll know I’ve settled in to driving in New Zealand when
I go to the driver’s side of the car first time when I get in (instead of the passenger
side on the left side of the car) and my head doesn’t hurt when I get out as I continue
to navigate roundabouts and obscure traffic laws unique to New Zealand.

It’s kind of amazing when you convert your life into a new culture. Throw down
your life savings in traveler’s cheques and hope it’s a good day for the US dollar.
Apparently today was a better day than Friday (the day of our conversion)
but so it goes. We’re now liquid in New Zealand and the floodgates are open.
Telecommunications, the internet, shopping, everything is an adventure. That’s
what we came for.

In a weekend of firsts, we had our first walk on the west side of the Pacific, our first
visit to quarantine (yes Sammy and Tatum have survived the trip) and our first
earthquake.

Starting with the west side of the Pacific (the awesome), the world is a pretty big
place. I can’t even imagine being an explorer and sailing from Europe around to
parts unknown.

On the dog front, Tatum, timid little flower that she is, has lost none of her yap and
she has plenty of barking company in quarantine. Sammy is along for the ride and visiting them in quarantine is like seeing them in jail. All in all, jail doesn’t seem to be too bad for
them and after the trip they’ve been through, we’re happy to see they’re not worse
for the wear.

Saturday night here was our first earthquake experience, though Beth slept through
it. 4.3 on the Richter scale makes it a small one and it didn’t last more than a few
seconds. The bed started vibrating without quarters and the windows rattled and
I thought to myself, this is an earthquake. On the good news front, I was able to
absorb that fact and be back to sleep within five minutes. Jet lag can be a good thing
and there are many more to come, but at least this one is out of the way.

That’s it for now, life is good…

Countdown!

Sitting in LAX waiting for our flight to NZ in 3 hours. We arrived in LA yesterday evening with our pups, Sammy and Tatum. It was their first plane trip and they did amazingly well! Dropped them off at the pet transporter this morning to get all their paperwork in order for immigrating to NZ. Just got word that they're checked in, ready to go. They'll go straight to quarantine in Christchurch after the flight but we'll be able to visit them during the 10 days they'll be there.

We'll be staying in a university transit house until the "kids" get out of jail and then move into a house, which we hopefully will have found to rent by then. It'll be unfurnished but one of our suitcases is packed with housewares to at least get us started. Our other belongings will arrive by ship hopefully sometime in April.

It was all a lot of preparation to get to this point, but we are now very excited!!

Next post, hopefully from the other side of the world!

Love, Beth and Jon

On our way!

Well friends, Our adventure to New Zealand has been a long time in the planning but amazingly, it is about to happen! Stay tuned for updates!