by Angela

We arrived at our rental home a week ago. What the place lacks in nice furniture and decor, it makes up for with a spectacular view. When I wake up in the morning and look outside, I stand in awe for a moment or two. I hope I don’t get used to this. But wanting to make our place nicer and get everything ready for the kids for school, has taken my attention most of this week. 

We spent half a day wiping down who knows what stains in the kitchen drawers and cleaning out what had been left behind. I kept thinking about my mom and how uncomfortable she would be with her need for cleanliness. I inherited some of that too. She is planning to visit in April so I have a bit of time to make it presentable. I ordered household items from Temu, they will arrive later this week. Oh how I miss amazon prime! The shipping, the invaluable reviews. Apparently I can’t cook rice well without a rice cooker (we had one back home) so we bought one here only to find out it is a piece of… well it sucks. I’m going to have to get another one. I also bought a can opener, the packaging said, “more than 2 million sold worldwide.” I looked it up online only to find nearly all 1-star ratings so I returned it without even opening it. It is reminiscent of my childhood, if you want something right away you have to go to a store and buy it only you may not be getting the best deal or the best product. I’m struggling. 

Not only did our new home require some TLC but there is no central AC. Central heating and air conditioning is not really a thing here; I guess the temperatures don’t necessarily demand it. Don’t get me wrong, the weather is amazing in the upper 70’s most days now middle of summer, but upper 70’s and sunny makes for a hot home by the evening. We have one working wall unit in our bedroom but it fails to cool much of the house beyond our bedroom. We open the windows but guess what? They don’t do window screens here either. They make friends with flying insects in New Zealand.

The kids will be attending public schools here. While I homeschooled the girls back in Kentucky, I decided this is the best way to make friends and gain a sense of community. Also, it being just 6 months, I figured it is way to test the waters and see how they feel about traditional school after being homeschooled. Audrey and Maria will be at Maraetai beach school (K-7th) a 15 min walk along the shore away and Charles will be at Howick College (8th-12th) which is a 20 min drive away in the neighboring town. We were able to tour both schools which has helped mitigate anxiety. Math is called “maths”. They don’t have grades here but “years”. So we have a year 3, 7, and 9 in our house.  

The most noticeable difference so far about the schools without them even starting yet is the uniforms. I had no idea. They are MORE- more specific, more regimented, more expensive. And again, this is public school. I spent over 900 USD on 4 days’ worth of clothes for 3 kids. I had to buy new shoes and socks for all of them, the shoes have to be plain black, no white on them at all. And Audrey and Maria are required to wear bucket hats. While shopping for shoes, we stopped for lunch (which by the way included fish and chips and a Korean hot dog) and wouldn’t you know it, there was another McDonalds. And this time, to our excitement, the McDip was available so we got them of course! My McDip review- pretty tasty but very messy. Poor Danny wasn’t with us, so the kids seem to think we need to go get them again.

We travelled across town today to try out a rock-climbing place since it was rainy and windy. The automatic belays did not disappoint. The kids got their harnesses and were able to clip themselves into different climbs and they had a blast. My cautious and non-agile little one who complained that she didn’t want to go even made it to the top (proud mom moment).

We stopped at Sal’s pizza for dinner on the way back. Sal’s pizza is a chain in New Zealand specializing in New York pizza. Being from NY, I am also on the lookout for a good NY style pizza to win my respect. I was curious if they could pull it off here. And by golly they did! It was actually quite good. I read about Sal on the wall sign. Basically he learned how to make pizza in NY then brought it here. The fascinating discovery about Sal was that he was born in Corato, Italy. I was curious so I mapped it via google and was pleasantly surprised to find that Corato is right next to Bari in southern Italy. Bari is where my grandparents immigrated from. A serendipity! Who knows, maybe Sal’s parents knew my grandparents.