The 10th Month

I have been in New Zealand now for 10 months. It feels like I was just saying 6 months yesterday. The time really has flown by. Winter has just about come and gone. In saying that, I have realized how much I really like winter. When you are in the mountains the light on them and the snow and the green grass is unbelievable. I exaggerated a bit when I said it was like Antarctica. It's not that cold. I have work a hat, scarf and gloves all of maybe 3 times. Once my body acclimated to the weather, I was good as gold. The hours of daylight definitely did a number on me since I felt like I should be in bed at 8pm. The shortest day of the year has passed and it's still light out when I get off work, so I can't complain. We did get some reallly cold times, but I think my winter in Germany was more harsh than the winter here, which I always thought would be opposite.

So with 2 months to go comes the million dollar question: What do I do when my visa expires September 24th? Thoughts of this have given me serious anxiety. My mom has gotten so many emails that I am surprised she hasn't disowned me. The problem is, in Catherine time, two months is a long time and I will change my mind 4 million times. In real world/normal people time, that's nothing. In order to apply for an extension of my visa, I need at minimum 1 month. So yeah that means I should be making a decision right this minute. Over several sleepless nights, frantic phone calls and emails to Carol, lots of coffee and sprinting on the treadmill till I feel like I might faint, I have come to a conclusion. I want to stay in New Zealand until January. I think the only thing that really made me hesitant was spending the money on the visa and filling out 45 pages of paperwork. I found out that I needed an entire medical exam, which is close to 500 big ones. They want blood tests and x-rays and this and that. This is required after being in NZ for longer than 1 year. If you ask me, it should be done before even entering the country. Any life threatening illness that may be in my blood or bones will have been something I would have caught in the last 12 months in this country. But I'm no doctor or immigration officer or anything of the sorts and nor do I want to be, so I will just comply and grit my teeth while attempting a polite smile at the doctor. Don't worry though, I will quiz the doctor on why all this is necessary. If there is anything extremely important I feel you should know, then I will report back. I can only imagine how painful it would be for a foreigner coming to the US so I should just zip it.

One thing I am really missing at the moment is Mexican food. It was quite funny because my uncle sent me this link ( http://www.bootsnall.com/articles/12-01/10-important-life-lessons-you-learn-from-living-abroad.html ) and I couldn't agree more with several of the parts. Especially the part about the mexican food. Once living here, you realize you are long way from Mexico and that incredible queso goodness that Los Rancheros serves up. Every time I think of mexican I think of when I was about 10 and on the swim team at Woodlands. We always went to LR after meets and one day I looked at the man and said I wanted 7 soft tacos. He stared and looked at my mom. She confirmed this was correct and that I could devour every bite. Let me just assure you, I didn't let that fella down. Nor would I today if I ordered 7 soft tacos. One thing that never slowed down when my athleticism did was my appetite. However, after taking a month off from the gym I am back in action. I haven't had french fries in a week! I'm pretty sure I have turned over a new leaf. If I don't make mention of the french fries again for a while, it means I have caved and just don't want to admit it. I can't help it, I love to eat. And I must admit, I have become quite the chef these days. I cook atleast 5/7 nights of the week and have rarely repeated recipes. I get some amazing blogs, but the one I use for most recipes is Meme Inge's 'Living Well Kitchen'. She is from Mobile and is now a nutritionist in New Orleans. Sometimes the meals lack a bit of seasoning for me, so I just add chili's or Habanero Tabasco to everything I make. (Sorry Meme if I ruin some recipes!) You should check out her blog though, I promise it won't disappoint you. You can sign up and it will send them straight to your inbox. I now have a whole folder dedicated just to recipes. So get to cooking! http://memeinge.com/blog/

I know this post is sporadic, story of my life. So the central part of the country just had some earthquakes. Everyone around here is insistent upon the fact the Wellington is going to "get the big one" soon. It was a 6.2 magnitude that did little damage, but injured a few, rattled some buildings and definitely frazzled the locals. Speaking of Wellington....

- It is called Windy Welly for a very good reason. It can be one of the scariest plane rides in because of how bumpy the landings are.
- The Te Papa Museum (one of the pictures below) is a free museum that will give you all of the history of NZ and just about the world. Anything you could ever want to know about NZ you can find here. We could have spent the entire day there, but instead just spent 4 hours. That's a long time for a museum. They also had a Warhol exhibit on while we were there, which was very cool and Warhol-y!
- The 'Bee Hive' is the Parliament building pictured at the bottom. You can literally walk up to the front door. I couldn't quite grasp my head around that. Can you imagine walking up to the front door of the White House? So cool!
- Wellington has some incredible restaurants!
- Wellington has a lot to offer, but has nothing on the mountains of Arrowtown!

Quick pics

I spent a quiet weekend doing a whole lot of nothing. Here are some beautiful pictures of the sunny weekend we had here! There is also a picture of food. I know, no one wants to see food when they don't have any idea what it tastes like, but this was the easiest and best meal I've made in ages.... Goat cheese and pesto stuffed chicken wrapped in bacon and stir fry on the side. Odd combination but its what I was in the mood for! Let me know if you want the recipe. I spent a weekend in Dunedin and spent a weekend in Wellington, so I promise to update pictures and stories next.

Abel Tasman National Park

I'm not sure why that last post had such huge pictures, but I will have to do something different this time. These pictures are a flashback to my parents trip. The Abel Tasman National Park is in the very north part of the south island. It is absolutely stunning. Breathtakingly beautiful. It's hard to stay near the park, so we found a place called The Waters that was a bit out of the way, but on a peninsula all by itself on the beach. It was extremely peaceful and relaxing. This is one of my most favorite places in New Zealand.

1st Snow of the Season

Random Tidbits

So it's getting cold. And by cold I mean it's basically Antarctica. We had our first snow a few weeks ago. The forecast suggests it will start snowing tomorrow and snow for a few days. It's so beautiful when it snows. I didn't buy a pass for skiing because I didn't think I would get good value out of it. The mountains are much smaller and have very few runs in comparison with the skiing I have done in Colorado. I would like to go up a time or two though just for the experience. I am pretty sure I would be quite the hassle to go up the mountain with though. I complain about my fingers being cold, even in mittens. My ears are cold because my hat just barely covers them. My toes are cold and my socks are wet because I wiped out and got snow all down my boots. My hands are stuck in the straps on the poles as I'm trying to get on the lift. I mean lets be honest here, I'd rather be sitting at the bottom eating french fries. I blame my mom. She is the same when she skis (sorry Carol for calling you out).

One thing I am not used to is having to warm my car up. I got up at 5 the other morning for the gym and luckily remembered I had to do that. Good thing because when I went out the car was frozen and my frozen I mean when I opened the door it wouldn't stay shut when I closed it. The lock was frozen. So I left my car door wide open, blowing bought air out onto the streets of Arrowtown. The windows were frozen shut and everything was iced over. We definitely don't have that problem in Alabama. I won't spend much time driving a car in winter because I can't be bothered with snow chains and driving real slow. Luckily, my dear friend Bennie is a taxi driver so he will be on speed dial.

I got my first manicure in 8 months. It was amazing. I walked in this place in Queenstown and this little Balinese woman got my all comfy with a little pillow under my knees, offered me an iPad to play on and then told me I could order from the cocktail list or the spa snack menu. This was no fancy spa, this was just a walk in day spa I walked in desperate for a manicure. The day before I also got my first haircut. That was incredible too. I used to get my haircut every 6 weeks, but it was so easy when I was at home and had my great friend Valerie as my hair stylist. My hair was so long now though, no one could mess up this cut. Greatest part, it was only $20! I went to a junior stylist and apparently that makes all the difference in price. Score!

One thing I HATE to admit is that I am in love with TV. Seriously. It's so strange, considering that I haven't owned a tv since college. I have always been quite anti. However, I now plan my evenings around The Big Bang Theory, Modern Family, X Factor, Grey's Anatomy and really anything else I can get into. One thing about NZ soaps is that they come on at night! Oh yes they do. So I now watch Shortland Street at 7pm Monday-Friday. It is a hospital soap there is always some serious juicy scandal going on. I love it. I'm still having withdrawls from Homeland though and am counting down the days until it starts back!


More to come soon!