The Darwin finger puppet

You'll be pleased to know that Al arrived back safe and sound yesterday, tired, groggy and hungry but otherwise good! After 10 days in the US summer he couldn't believe how cold it has been here, and spent the day in his thermals, taking his temperature and declaring that he was sick - he had the chills. (I'm so cold, I can't get warm ...) No sweety, you don't have the chills, it's just REALLY cold!! My sis phoned last night and told me that there had been snow on Pirongia, which is a small mountain a couple of hundred miles south of here. Now that doesn't happen very often.

The entrance to Central Park

He has kept us entertained with stories of the wonders he saw there, especially in New York. He stayed in the Lower East Side, which he loved, because of the diversity of people there. There was the burly guy with the beard and mustache strolling down the street wearing a latex French maid outfit. Al was obviously quite taken with him because although the 'maid' was walking with a friend, Al can't remember how the friend was dressed. Heck, he can't even remember IF he was dressed.

He was also very impressed with the Museum of Modern Art, and came back with many photographs of indescribable Jackson Pollock pictures (can you tell I'm not a fan!!). The American Museum of Natural History was also a highlight, with magnificent displays of animal taxonomy (see photo below).



He was too stingy to visit the Darwin exhibition although he did visit the Darwin Shop. And it was here that he spotted what must be the highlight of his visit to New York - the Charles Darwin Finger Puppet. That's right, your own little Charles Darwin!! They also have Darwin dolls, but somehow the finger puppet seems much more appealing. I can't believe he didn't buy me one!

Where we are now

We know where we are heading, but let's take a look at where we are now. This is a photo of Murrays Bay School, up the hill from our house. This is really just the administration block, with a few classrooms to the right. There are several other classroom blocks and some sports fields out of view on the left. The photo was taken from the grounds of Murrays Bay Intermediate, which adjoins the primary school. If you look closely at the taller building you will see the school symbol, the wheeling seagull.

Beyond the school are the islands of the Hauraki Gulf, and the Rangitoto Channel. There's even a ship heading down the Channel to the Port of Auckland. The large landmass at the very back is the tip of the Coromandel Peninsula, Mt Moehau (892m!!).


Now we head down the path (a long pathway!!) towards the beach.


And here we are at the beach. This is Murrays Bay Beach. To the left is the wharf, popular with local fishermen (apparently you can catch squid there) and also local teenagers, who come in hoardes to jump off the end of it in summer. In fact, part of the graduation tradition from Murrays Bay School is to jump off the wharf - a rite of passage, marking the transition from primary school to intermediate, from childhood to young-personhood.

The island in the distance is Rangitoto, Auckland's iconic island. It looks the same, wherever you are in Auckland. It's a dormant volcano, formed around 600 years ago. Auckland is built on an active volcanic field - Rangitoto is the youngest of the 48 volcanos in the region. Is this a problem you ask? Well, scientists do tell us that there is a 1 in 20 chance that there will be another volcanic eruption in the Auckland region in the next 50 years. And, it's likely that any future eruption will occur in a new, unknown location, not from one of the existing volcanic cones. Who said living in New Zealand isn't exciting!!

The darndest thing

Em and I got our passports back from the French consulate today. Neither of them had visas but our friends in France assured us that while the French system is slow and complicated, mostly people are 'gentle and willing to help'. They told us not to worry, that the situation could be resolved 'by talking'. Sounds good.

The really interesting thing is that inside my passport was a letter, from the Consul, to whom it may concern, certifying that I do not need a visa while I am travelling with my husband, who has a scientific visa. Huh.

Unfortunately we don't use the same surname so hopefully it won't cause any problems. I will make sure to take a copy of my marriage cert, just in case.

Emi, however, does need a visa, so we will have to send her passport back to Wellington when it is ready. Actually Al reckons he is going to fly to Wellington with her passport and wait while they put it in!

Speaking of Al, he's back from New York tomorrow morning - yippee!

Wailing and gnashing of teeth

So anyway, our visas and passports have still not arrived, so we decided to send a pleasant 'how are we doing' type email to the French consulate in Wellington. Al quickly got a reply - an automated message telling us that the visa officer we had been dealing with (there is only one) left on 16 June, but giving the email of her replacement. Ok, we sent off an email to her. And lo!! An almost immediate reply, despite it being the weekend. Gosh they are hard workers, these French consulate types, we thought. But no - it was another automated message. The new visa officer is away, en vacances, until 24 July. Ooops, we plan to leave on the 22 July. But hang on, this message says that her emails will be opened by other consulate officials. Whew! And in due course, this morning, we receive a message from a staff member, telling us that 'we do not know at this stage' about the progress of the visas. Pardon?

By now the blood pressure is rising a bit. Al emails back giving more details. Again the prompt reply, well if the previous visa officer said it would be okay then it will be okay. Somehow we don't feel reassured, so Al rings the Consulate and speaks to the email writer. No, they don't know how long it will take. No, they don't know where our passports are. 'You'll just have to wait,' says our less-than-helpful Frenchman.

Now we are in limbo. Admittedly we do still have 3 weeks before we go, but we need to know now if we have to change our arrangements. We have already paid for tickets - incredibly, the institution that Al is going to visit in France required us to have bought tickets before they would issue the paperwork that started the visa process. We have already paid for our leased car.

The funny thing is, for a long time I didn't want to go on this sabbatical. I didn't want to have to put my life on hold, I didn't want to go through the upheaval of moving us all somewhere else, then moving us back. I didn't want the stress of settling Em into a new country, a new school where she would have to make new friends. I didn't want to leave my friends behind here. But now, I do want to go. I really want to go. I really want to go to France.

We do have other options, if it all turns to custard, but it will take a bit of time to organise properly. We could go to Singapore, or Seattle, or even to Canberra. Al's keen to go to Oxford, but we couldn't afford to stay long there.

Hopefully things will work out. Hopefully the passports will turn up in the mailbox tomorrow morning. Fingers crossed.

4 weeks to go

Just four weeks to go and Emi and I still don't have our visas. Oh well, there's still time, I'm not going to panic yet. Maybe I'll start panicking next week. I don't like the uncertainty of it. The visa officer told us that she could not foresee any problems, but until those visas and our passports are in our hands again, it doesn't really seem like we are going anywhere. I don't like not having my passport, anyway.

It looks like Emily will have to change her name - we had a charming letter passed on from l'ecole d'Aniane, confirming the enrolment of l'enfant Emilie Rodrigo. Actually I like the French spelling. Maybe she will decide to keep it, I don't mind.

It's a good time for her to be leaving as things have turned to custard in the playground. Her two best friends have decided they loathe and detest each other, and Em is caught in the middle. Hardly a day goes by when we don't have tears of frustration on the way home from school. They are all nice kids, learning to get along with each other. It's hard to watch though.

Al's in New York now. He had a good conference in New Jersey, and is having a couple of decompression days in NY before he flies back.

I still have lots of things to do before we go but I'm feeling really unmotivated. I rarely watch DVDs but this week watched Chocolat (recommended by one of the teachers at school because of its French village setting), Bright Young Things, and The Importance of Being Earnest. Em and I also watched Mrs Doubtfire. I really liked Bright Young Things, and of course Earnest is always good. Colin Firth is such a hottie, and I'll watch anything with Judi Dench in it. Chocolat was sweet, but I got sick of all the chocolate! Judi Dench was good though but it was sheer fantasy really - I mean, who could eat all that chocolate and still be so tiny-waisted as Juliette Binoche!

Speaking of tiny waists, I keep thinking I should try to drop a few kilos before we head off. Our friends in Mexico have promised to put 2kg on each of us in the 2 weeks that we are there, and I am sure I have put on all the weight I lost when I gave up sugar for Lent. I've tried to give up sugar again, but without success. I guess I need the spiritual incentive - giving up sugar for 'ordinary time' seems a bit lacklustre.

4.75 weeks to go

Another week has gone by and Emi and I have not got our visas or our passports back from the French consulate. Al's passport and visa arrived over a week ago, and he is off today to New York, via Honolulu. He's got a conference at Rutgers and is going to have a couple of days break in New York and a day lying on the beach in Honolulu as well. He reckons it's too early to worry about our passports non-arrival yet and that they should turn up in the next week or so.

We heard recently that Emi's enrolment has been accepted by her school in France - she is now enrolled and they are expecting her on day 1 of the new school year in September. She's a bit nervous about going to l'ecole d'Aniane - she had a nightmare the other night that she got hauled up in front of the headmaster there and couldn't understand a word he said!

It's weird with Al away - there's no-one here reminding me of 'jobs' that still have to be done, no-one going through checklists, no-one running around in a panic trying to find things. Although he did leave a 'note' on the desktop with some instructions on it. I miss him!!

We dropped a car-load of stuff off at the Auckland City Mission yesterday - mainly books and toys that have been sitting in the garage for 3 years since we did the renovation. They were pleased to have the stuff, and I hope Emily's unplayed-with dolls find their way to little girls who will enjoy them. There are probably 2 more car-loads to go, so we will take those down when Al gets back. Our 'house-sitters' will need somewhere to keep their stuff while they are living here so I had to get the garage cleaned out! Dear old Al had a dream recently where he was able to park his car in the garage - getting close to that dream, babe!!

The other riveting bit of news this week is that we have used up all our internet bandwidth yet again before our 4 weeks are up - we only get 1GB for the princely sum of $39 a month, and it's never enough!! Yet we are too stingy to pay an extra $10 for 4GB more. Well, it's hardly worth it for just another month. so I have to live without my podcasts, and we are back to dial-up speed for internet use. sigh. Sometimes NZ seems impossibly backward ....

A couple of good books

Now I've started blogging I'm not going to be able to stop.

So anyway, I've read a couple of good books in the last week. The first is 'Married to a Bedouin' by Marguerite van Geldermalsen. It's an intriguing story of a 22 year old NZ tourist who fell for a Bedouin souvenir seller in Petra in 1978. She married him and spent 26 years living with him and their 3 children, initially in a cave at Petra and later in a purpose-built settlement amongst the Bedouin community, only leaving after his death. It's a fascinating account of the lives the Bedouin led, a far cry from her life here in Nelson, but one she embraced with practicality and good humour. It's well-written and easy to read, too, with photographs.

I've also just finished 'The wonder spot' by Melissa Bank. A bit wistful yet optimistic, this is a real girly book. There's not really a 'story' as such, more snippets of the heroine's life. You pop in and out of her life, like you are catching up with an old friend. It sounds odd, but the characters came alive for me, and I couldn't put it down.

Righty-o then

I started this blog to chronicle our family's adventures while we are on sabbatical in the US, Mexico, France and Singapore from July 2006 - June 2007. There are three of us. Me, my husband, and our 10 year old daughter.

We leave in 5 and a half weeks, on July 22. We've already had some exciting moments, like waiting for the arrival of crucial paperwork from France. Of course it arrived, and Al has his visa already - Emi and I have to wait a bit longer as our visas are dependent on his being issued. Emi is going to go to school in France, and she had to have the Mantoux test and BCG vaccination for TB before she could enrol, both of which, she assured me, were excruciatingly painful.

The itinerary is approximately thus:

22 - 24 July: a couple of days to warm up on the beach in Honolulu.

24 - 1 August: Anaheim - the deal sweetener for Emi is a trip to the Disney Parks

1 - 10 August: San Diego - the deal sweetener for me is San Diego

10 - 26 August: Cuernavaca, Mexico, where Al is running a 2-week course at the University of Mexico

27 August: one night in Paris then on to Montpellier, where we pick up our leased car and drive to Aniane, where we will be staying for the next 9 months.

The plan is to return via Singapore, where we will stay for 3 weeks while Al catches up with colleagues there.

I'm hoping to catch up with friends in the UK and also to finally meet my German penfriend, Gila. We have been penfriends since we were 13, and we have never met!!

Some days it seems like forever until we go, it's like waiting for Santa. Other times departure day looms ahead like a root canal appointment. We still have lots of admin things to get through, but we have accommodation organised, a car leased (a Renault Clio! I hope it's a red one!), and our air tickets booked.

Writer's Block

Hello? she said. She said it, but nobody heard it. A bit of spider web landed on the keyboard. She blew it away gently. I must dust the ceiling, she said to herself, knowing she wouldn't do it.

Her fingers rested on the keys.

a s d f.

j k l ;.

Waiting for something. Waiting.

After a while she got up and walked away.