It has been a while since the last post. There are still many things to talk about, and perhaps one day those topics will end up on this blog.
While I missed 'home', I do find myself missing aspects of New Zealand.
Lifestyle. Many people told us that New Zealand is about lifestyle. They even have things called Lifestyle blocks! Lifestyle blocks are essentially big plots of land with room for livestock like sheep, horses, etc. The pace of life is more relaxed. Ever since we got back to Toronto, it has been go go go. Maybe this will all settle down, but in the meantime, it has not.
The traffic in Toronto is horrendous. Now, they say the traffic in Auckland is terrible too, but in Hamilton rush hour seemed to add no more than 15 minutes to your travel. Keep in mind that this is significant when it takes like 10 minutes to get across town. But, more to the point, it takes 10 minutes to get across town! Now, back in the GTA, if you drive 10 minutes we would be lucky if we hit our destination. But it is more likely that we have only hit the halfway mark.
New Zealand is beautiful, I will give it that. Canada is beautiful too...but Canada is quite spread out. Hamilton was very central to lots of places: 1.5hr from Rotorua, 30-45min from Raglan, 1.5hr-1hr45min to Auckland, 2hr to Taupo, 1hr to Waitomo...there were lots of places that we were able to visit. Although some attractions were quite expensive, much of NZ was quite accessible.
We left alot of things behind. One of them was a stroller. A Steelcraft Eden four wheel, reversible handle stroller. I wish we knew that it was free to take onto the plane. Now that we're back in Canada, we are finding it difficult to find a reversible handle stroller that we like. We miss it lots. We miss the four wheel drive, the large basket in the bottom. Sigh.
Good produce. It was expensive produce, but for the most part, it was generally quite tastey. Markets! There was always a market going on somewhere. And now that we have left Hamilton, we hear that there is a pretty good Nightmarket! http://www.stuff.co.nz/waikato-times/news/8663278/Hamilton-gets-first-taste-of-night-market. This would have been a 7 minute walk from where we lived! Oh well.
SPACE. No, not the final frontier. SPACE stands for Supporting Parents Alongside Children's Education (http://www.space.org.nz/). It was a great program, where other first time moms could gather with their babies and interact and learn. We sang songs, learned about some important topics (Emergency aid, baby movement, eating...), read to babies, let them play, learned about what types of play were good at different ages (ages = weeks). I can't reiterate enough, how great a program this was/is.
Shortland Street. That's right. Watching the evening soap opera centered around a fictional NZ hospital was a daily ritual. While we cannot watch it from Canada (it's blocked), we can still read about what's going on ...http://tvnz.co.nz/shortland-street/episodes-3341561.
Our friends. There were lots of good friends made in NZ. Many of them were actually foreigners. People in general, were pretty nice - foreigner or NZ'er.
What I don't miss? The lack of well insulated housing. Turn up the heat you say? Well, when most of the heat escapes, and you feel large drafts coming from the sliding doors, it feels pointless to turn up the heat. Besides, the underfloor heating that came with our flat was an expensive heating method.
I also don't miss Rugby. Mostly because I don't get the sport. It was still good to see the hype that surrounded the Rugby World Cup back in 2011. But it didn't get me hooked.
I still turn on the windshield wipers accidentally sometimes, when really I intend to signal a turn. My mind still thinks about driving on the 'wrong' side at times, but that habit is mostly gone.
Maybe one day we'll be back for a visit. But New Zealand is far from home, so it probably won't be any time soon. One day.
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