It's our last day in NZ today - an early flight back to Christchurch from Auckland this morning. Found I was happy to be back here - it's a much prettier place than Auckland. Our hotel is better here, too. In the Auckland hotel I could hear the lifts shushing up and down the liftwell, endlessly. It was a soft sound, but an oddly mournful one (although I'm not sure why).
We visited a school last week that ended each day with the students (grade 5 kids) typing up a blog entry. There was a formula to it - what I learned, what problems I encountered, what my next step will be to solve these problems. A few students wrote their entry in a paper notebook, but most used blogger.
Will be glad to be back - although the next chore on the list is packing up our house. Have been doing a bit of writing - am three chapters into the next kids' book - it's a race to get it done (and possibly one other one) before the Oct 22 deadline.
Yesterday T. and I flew up to Auckland for week two of the NZ tour. It's much, much warmer up here - we didn't actually get out of double figures with the temperatures last week. We spoke to a local who was complaining about the cold, but to T. and I it's positively balmy here.
We are curious to see if the North Island restaurants have the same three ingredients that seemed to feature on every Southern menu: Brie, cranberries and bacon. It was astounding to see how these items managed to be worked into the most unexpected dishes. Cranberries in your porridge. Bacon in your muffins. Brie in everything else. We started to wonder if perhaps there was some legal requirement to have at least one of the three represented at every restaurant.
On the weekend we took the hire car out to do some sight-seeing and even out of Christchurch the BCB combination prevailed. It was curious that the countryside wasn't filled with pig farms. Instead, the only crop we did see growing was kale. I've never really been sure what kale is. Seems leafy and green.
Lots of kicks from the babe of late, which is very reassuring. I left my ultrasound video with the parents. I wonder how many times they've watched it?
