Today I sent email to, and got replies from, the acting CEO of New Zealand On Air, and the general editor of Te Ara (the Encyclopedia of New Zealand). I love that these people are so accessible.

Today’s accomplishments: moved the dead cars out of our garage so the emptying of the house can begin in earnest; planted more plants; cleaned windows. I’m throwing myself more into this house and property than I have ever done with any house before. I think feel this one is important.

Today Jenine helped out at William’s school, and we learned that there’s quite the gulf between the grouchy old woman teaching his class and the sweet old woman who taught him in Colorado. This one is bullying, dismissive, and belittling. This puts us in the awkward position of being new to the school, yet dissatisfied. Jenine will talk to the head of the PTA and to the principal. I do not want my son to have three years with an inadequate teacher.

I’d forgotten how amazing New Zealand’s weather is. We’re just a thin strip of island in a lot of water, close to Antarctica. The weather’s always shifting: some good stuff, some crap, some good stuff, some crap. A strip of concentrated crap floated in last night and dumped a ton of rain on and blew 60 knots. The wind howled in the trees, the house shook, the rain rattled on the tin roof, the kids crawled into bed with us, and the pounding continued today.

I’ve been stuck into work, and it’s interesting how the cycle of the day is different here. I only overlap the West Coast of America’s work day for five hours–by 2pm my time, they’re all heading home. So I email furiously in the morning, and get replies, and spend the afternoon clearing out the inbox so that it can all begin again the next day. I really love the afternoon when every message I send doesn’t generate two in response, and I can feel like I’m getting through them. Of course, email is a sorry excuse for actual work.

It’s wonderful how easy it is to see a doctor over here. Our local GP, Elspeth, had a busy day but still managed to fit Jenine in. Jenine was dizzy, which was diagnosed as nothing more than a virus affectin gthe inner ear: walk around, get the brain compensating, all’s well. Less than an hour in the waiting room and we’re out. In Colorado, that’d have been a nurse visit (the nurse checked Jenine, but didn’t try to diagnose), a scheduled visit to the doctor for a few weeks’ time, or a trip to the ER.

Another full day: we drove to Auckland to collect a fridge we bought on TradeMe, I cleaned the rusty grill, and began the rehabiliation of teh house. I hosed off the front wall and windows, digging out spider webs with the brush, and swept as much of the dirt, dust, and leaves out of the garage as I could reach. We have two cars in there (a dead Honda that Dad’s selling on TradeMe, and an Austin that Uncle Zom keeps threatening to fix up).

Finally we went to the beach today (Sunday). It was good to walk on Omaha again, white sand crackling underfoot. The kids could have spent all day there, and I’m sure they’ll spend many days this summer there. Looking at them running into the surf, digging sand castles, and burying my legs with sand, I thought: this is why I brought them back here! Every kid should grow up doing this stuff!

The problem with flying to New Zealand from America is that if you get a well-timed flight, you don’t really have jetlag on the first day. You get this fantastic feeling of competence, because you’ve flown halfway around the world and are fizzing and popping with energy. That lasts until the next day.

I woke around 7:30, puttered around until 9. Then we went into town to make our first shopping run, including gas for the car. Holy Jesus H Christ on a Crutch: NZ$65 to fill the tank! I’m absolutely useless at making sense of the metric amounts, I’m so attuned to American miles/gallon and so on, but I know that a shitload to fill the tank isn’t good. I guess that’s why there’s now a “give me $20 worth of petrol” button on the pumps–the wallet’s the limiting factor, not the tank.

I don’t know whether it’s the equinox or the move, but it feels like there’s SO MUCH TIME in the day. I wove flax with the kids, my parents arrived down the road from us (they’re also moving back to NZ from the US), went out on the boat, caught up on email, gathered seafood, ate the seafood, yarned with my uncle, played music, and watched a Colbert Report. I’m hard-pressed to get through my inbox when we’re in the US!

Flight summary follows. Qantas: very good. Kids: great. Sleep: taken where it could be got. Customs failed to care about our coffee:

Customs: What are you declaring?
Us: Coffee.
Customs: Any honey or fruit juice?
Us: No, it’s coffee.
Customs: Ok, through you go.

I swear, you could be declaring the bloody Hope Diamond and all they’d ask is, “any honey in it?”

I had to push my family to come, and it wasn’t easy. They all had comfortable lives in the US, but I knew that I really preferred New Zealand and that if I stayed in the US for much longer then I’d never escape. I was losing my accent, losing my idiom (“honey, I’ll put the trash in the trunk”), but not really happy with what I got in return: debt to buy a house, free and easy credit card debt, a too-fast lifestyle, and participation in an economy that supports politics I don’t believe in.