Driving on the other side of the road and other notable adventures!

We have officially completed our second full week in the land down under, the land down under! LOL We officially have our car, Katie, from Jay and Vanessa who sadly left to go back to Colorado on Thursday. sniffle. We already miss them and only knew them for a week! But at least we got a great car out of it and they even serviced it for us and left maps! They were so good to us. We feel incredible blessed.

Trey has also completed his first week of work. He seems to be enjoying it and tonight we are both going to the Staff Club I mentioned in an earlier post to have a drink with Richard who he works for. People have really been welcoming us with open arms.

On my work front, I had a meeting on Wednesday with a recruitment agency called Brannagins. They are trying to get me some temp work whilst looking for something full time or contract. I already got a call for a temp job, but sadly could not accept it because of a previosuly scheduled meeting with the woman in fundraising at the University. But it looks like things will happen for me here. They seemed very impressed by my experience and I scored very well on the Excel and Word tests that they administered. For your reference, I can type 48wpm. BOOYA!

As I said, I also met with the woman who is in charge of fundraising for the University where Trey works. She was extremely helpful and has offered to pass along my resume to colleagues at fundraising organizations as well as friends in even planning companies. A large one here is called VBase and they manage all events for the Convention Center, etc. downtown. They seem to have a lock on all that is events in Christchurch. Apparently, the woman at the University is friendly with the CEO there and has offered to help me out. Cross fingers. Additionally, there will be an event position opening at the University in October so if nothing else happens, perhaps I can temp until October and then do that. We shall see. Heaps of possibilities!! ;-)

Wednesday night we said good bye to Jay and Ness and drove.....yes, DROVE Katie home. The scene went a little something like this: Trey sat in the driver's seat (on the right hand side of the car) - I sat in the passenger seat on the left side and kept saying, "LEFT, LEFT, LEFT, LEFT, LEFT, LEFT" to encourage him to stay to the left side of the road. Then when we needed to turn, Trey kept flicking on the windshield wipers instead of the turn signal since those are reversed too. I bet the other cars on the road just saw the windshield wiper and muttered, ".....Americans....." :) ha ha We got home in one piece - no Holzwarths or Kiwis were injured.

We are really getting our bearings here and it is starting to feel like home. Food remains a bit challenging, but now that we have a car, we were able to do a "major" grocery shopping so we have plenty of fresh produce and things like that. FYI - some very odd things are expensive here such as black beans!!!! So if any of you plan on sending care packages, that would definitely be something to include. Trey and I LIVE off of black beans! They are $3.50 a can here!!! Also, boil in bag brown rice is non-existent. Bummer. Who knew beans and rice could be a luxury???

Also on the food note, I have discovered one thing that will be my absolute demise here......as I mentioned, Kiwis love their bacon and they put it on just about everything, but with this dish I can actually get behind it: sugary french toast with maple syrup, bananas and bacon!!! Sooooo delicious. I better get cranking on that gym membership!

This weekend we are planning another mini trip for my birthday. We are thinking of going about 45min-1 hour north of Christchurch to the Pegasus Bay Winery. Dr. Blaikie had recommended it and I thought it would be a nice way to celebrate my birthday - we may do this in lieu of going out to eat on my actual birthday. They also apparently have a very nice restaurant on the premises that was voted NZ Best Winery Restaurant in 2008, Mmmmmmm. Sounds like an excellent 30th birthday to me!!!!!

More to come............