New Plymouth

This week I found myself in New Plymouth again. I stayed at my regular hotel and decided to enjoy the spring weather and walk to dinner. Now on this map below you may be able to see Timanadra street (off of Hwy 3) just south of the cementaryand a small blue creek to the right of it. On my map there was a walking path market on the west side of the stream that when all the way to the ocean.

Well the path from the hotel was clearly a path, with stairs and bridge, although it appears to have not been used recently given the heavy layer of leaves covering most of it.

It lead to the loveliest section of bush kissed water.

But the path became hard to follow from that point. I ended up finding a stye that lead to some pathways through thick grass. I figured it must be the trail, although quickly I realized that the paths all went random directions.
So I walked to the top of the hill where I found a very clear path. I climbed the fence and started walking along it. It turned into an uphill concrete slab covered in cow pies. Soon I realized that it opened into a field of cows. I went over the fence into a field of grass to the left of the cows.
And then I was spotted. All of them ran towards me and the brown one with horns was particularly keen to get to know me. I could clearly see that there was a step stye at the end of the field, but to get there I had to go through the cows. I couldn't retreat as there was nothing between me and the cows for a good 1/4 mile. Now that I was spotted, I knew they'd follow me.

I stayed there for a good 15 minutes sorting out what to do, when the cows start to run away from me. Suddenly a jogger appeared an ran right through the field. I followed him, but the cows turns straight at me and ran with me.

I did survive though and climbed over the stye to find myself in a cemetary.


It was rememberance day and there were lots and lots of flowers... I wandered through reading the grave stones.Eventually I found my way back down to the river which had a very clear path. I followed it under roads, past a mini waterfall, and then came upon this swing.
It arced back and forth over the stream which was a good 10 feet below the river bank.

Then the path meet the sea and the Coastal Walkway. New Plymouth has won many awards for this infrastructure and heaps of people were out. Here is a shot of the water fountain.


Near town, the path is graced with a Wind Wand. That is where I left the sea walk and headed in to find some dinner.



I treated myself to a nice meal at a fancy restaurant complete with dessert... although the walk was itself felt so adventureous and sweet it could be argued that it was a dessert in and of itself

creation

A few years ago I turned 27. I was in a phase of chopping off my hair. I had just brought home a small Christmas tree on a plane from Oregon to Boston.
And for my birthday, I got dressed up and Traveler took me out for dinner somewhere in Boston:


When I look at this photo I see so many things about my life before NZ. The shirt was bought at Saturday Market and is only worn on special occasions because the seams only have a few wearings worth of strength. I remember the shelves we designed and made using a hodge podge collection of timber we had. I remember the spectacular Christmas wreath my father-in-law had mailed us.

And the tiny proper Christmas tree that year:
I also remember this very thick scarf my parents gave me. Living in cold climates when most of your loved ones live in milder one leads to a HUGE collection of hats and scarfs. I never could wear them all, but I loved how each one had a story.

Well this one now has a new story. One of my internet friends was having challenging time and I needed to create something. So I decided to try fancy up the scarf.
Then this friend posted a photo of her new haircut, and I thought black polar fleece didn't really go with her new snazzy haircut, so I decided that the scarf needed to have more fancy fabric too. It became a reversible scarf, pink for snazzy do's and black for cold Canadian winters (as I now am the one living in a mild climate sending winter gear to cold-weather friends).


I sketched out a few fern leaf shapes on to fusible webbing. Then ironed on the leaves to hold them in place while I carefully appliqued with my very limited sewing skills.

Ta da!

A new creation with stuff I had laying around my house. Not all of my attempts at creation recently have been so successful, but I rather like how this one turned out.

Open letter

I saw this open letter on Salon the other day... I think it captures another sliver of why this election means so much to me

Click over if you want to read it.

A walk in the woods

The following day a group of mostly ex-pat therapists went for a walk in Kaitoke (aka Rivendell)

Wainuiomata Walk

Traveler and I went on a walk together a few weeks ago.. We first drove down the Coastal Road from Wainuiomata till we found the sea and this unique set of signs:






Then we opted not to do the walk we planned because the road was covered in a foot of water. Instead we found a mild-mannered walk in the town of Wainuiomata itself.

Gardening

A couple days ago we had another hail storm. Rarely can you capture percipitation on film, but this time it was easy:

Today we went out to more closely investigate how the garden fared. Traveler took a very thoughtful approach, occasionally lifting up leaves from the broad-leafed plants that had huge holes right through them from the hail.

I decided to take a lazy approach. I am so sore from rowing that I can't really do much useful in the garden, so I went out and took a quasi nap in the garden.

I did get a bit of weeding done and then took my mustard green weeds to the goats kids.

voting

It's been a week of voting and results and politics.


It started with casting my absentee American ballot. I emailed a form to request my ballot and followed it with a hard copy with my signature. A few weeks later my ballot arrived along with this insert:

The insert informed me about a website where I could get information on how to send my ballot back home. No worries, the website's chart had New Zealand lists as 'free' and '1-3 day delivery' with Fed Ex. I printed a docket to take to the airport FedEx office and 2 minutes later my ballot was off. I even received an email tracking confirmation that my ballot was received. It was MUCH easier than when I voted in Boston in the last presidential election.

Meanwhile, I spent my week working which involves driving through rural New Zealand, which also had an election this week. The two main parties are National (a bit more consertive, but probably more liberal than the center in America) and Labour (the more progress main party). There is much less spent on election campaigning here. This year it seemed that most of the money was mostly spent on billboards.

Here is one of National's,

on the back of this sign there were two tick boxes with the words "National" and "Guy" like this Labour one that was further up the road.

Under the current Labour government several former state assets returned to the State. Awhile ago, New Zealand experimented with selling off key state assets to private companies with some very mixed results. Now the citizens have had to buy it back (after much of the infrastructure was poached) and there have been worry that a change in government might mean another attempt at privitization.

But then came the US election day. It was big news on the radio here, although some complained that Kiwis should be paying more attention to their own election.

I spent my lunch hour glancing at CNN's website to watch the US map slowly get coloured in red and blue. I really was missing the evening of watching the results come in. This is such an event. The last two elections where not the most enjoyable for me. I stayed up very very late both nights, then I cried.

This year I had rowing practice when the election was called for Obama. I happened to be following the Ambassador's offical car when I drove to rowing practice.

The car was flying the 2nd US flag I had seen that day.

During rowing, an American friend here texted "Obama!" and when I checked my phone after getting off the water, I saw it. That is when I knew. I drove home and caught a 2 minute clip of the acceptance speech on a local music radio show. My eye's welled up with tears as I drove up the hill. It's been an emotional few weeks, and it was nice to have something hopeful to tear up about.

When I got home I saw the 3rd American flag of the day. My neighbor had raised the flag in honour of the election. He said that it was the first time he felt right flying it alone - normally it flies with the Kiwi flag or the All Black flag or the Silver Fern flag - but the night of Obama's victory it flew proudly alone on a bit of Kiwi soil.

It also happened to be Guy Fawkes day - basically an odd celebration of an attempt to blow up the British Parliment - so to celebrate the election results we went and watched fireworks during the only week you can buy and legally fire off fire works in NZ.

The NZ election is on Saturday, which seems very civilized for those of us who work. I always found voting very difficult to juggle with my school-based jobs in America. Also in New Zealand you can vote where ever you wish. If you live in Auckland, but are on a business trip in Christchurch, you simply drive around until you see an orange 'VOTING' sign and then pop in. We voted at a church at the end of our road. It took even less time than dropping off my ballot at the Fed Ex depot. Two ticks, one for the party and one for a representative. That was all.

National won. I really hope this doesn't mean we'll lose too much in the way of government services. It also looks like a man will be prime minister again - I kind of liked having a women in charge:)

Where were you when you heard the election results this year? Have you ever had a change to vote in another country?