A week in the magic kingdom

Wow! Disneyland at last!

The chaos that greeted us at LAX airport was overwhelming - probably unimaginable if you have never experienced it. We had forgotten what it was like. But even so, somehow, we followed the instructions that our flight attendant gave us to get to the luggage carousel (in a different terminal!)and found the carousel, our bags, and then the Disneyland bus. Even the scene outside was frantic - four lanes of rental car shuttles, friends and family pick-ups, buses, etc, but yes, within the scheduled time the Disney bus arrived and yes, there was room for us.

Day one

Our hotel room is great - we could see the ferris wheel and the roller coaster over at the California Adventure Park and the Matterhorn at Disneyland last night when we checked in (at 11pm). This morning we are all up early and can't wait to get over there. First stop Disneyland, we did all the rides we could and had a wonderful time. Crashed early, after the 3pm parade.

Day two

We were really tired today what with the time changes etc so we took a break and checked out the shops at Downtown Disney. Basically just shops and restaurants set in a pretty Disney-style pedestrian mall. We did see a nifty gadget in the Lego store, a timer in the shape of a Lego head. You know, one of those yellow ones that you push onto the torso piece. It was large, and very yellow and had pirate-type faces on it. Cool! Needless to say we didn't buy it because of luggage considerations ...

Day three

By now the initial excitement had worn off but we were still raring to go. Lots of rides again, including Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters - this was really fun because you had to shoot things as you went along to get points and then at the end there were digital photos of everyone that you could email to yourself. Em and Al went on Big Thunder Mountain Railroad a number of times and we stayed late to watch the fireworks display.

Day four

Okay, today we decided to try the other Disney Park, the California Adventure Park. We liked this one because it was a lot less crowded than Disneyland proper, so we had much less wait to go on the rides. We went on heaps of rides, and saw the Aladdin stage show. Em and Al liked Mulholland Madness and the Paradise Pier boardwalk games - she won a plush seahorse and a dolphin. We came back in the evening to watch the Disney Electrical Parade - she loved this.

Day five

The big hit of today was the Grizzly River Run at the Adventure Park. This is like a log flume but 8 people sit together in an enormous rubber tyre - you get the spinning sensation as well as the falling sensation and yes you do get wet! Em did boardwalk games again and came away with another dolphin (pink to match yesterdays purple) and an angel fish. Al joined in with the bluegrass band (and I didn't have the camera!) and the Muppet 3D thing was pretty good. We are starting to flag though, and went home early.

Day six

We are all starting to feel a bit Disneyed-out. It's hard to feel the magic when you are surrounded by so many people you can hardly breathe, when it's so hot you could just lie down and melt, when every shady seat is guarded by a stony-faced grandma waiting for her enormous extended family, all of whom suddenly materialise right in front of you 5 minutes before the show starts so that you can't see after waiting 45 minutes to get a good spot. It's true, I am having ungenerous thoughts ...

There is so much sensory input at Disneyland. There's always someone wishing you a 'wonderful day' or ride or evening, and even in a quiet spot there will be a speaker in a bush, playing jolly Disney music. It's fun at first but after a while I long for some peace and quiet. Even the aircon in the hotel is really noisy - at night it sounds like a truck playing music with a really heavy base.

And the shopping! For all these days we have been surrounded with Disney merchandise. After a while you start actually considering buying it. I was tempted to buy a t-shirt but realised that I would never wear it, and there was this really cute bag - I picked it up and started to walk towards the cash register before I caught myself ... mind you it was really cute, it was green with purple piping and had these neat retro symbols ... AAaaargh! I'm doing it again!

Today we are catching up on the rides we missed and re-doing the ones we really liked. A small world, Peter Pan's flight, Star Tours... It's 4pm now and we plan to go over to the Adventure Park for a last look there before we turn in tonight. And I have to say that Em has loved our time here, she is really sorry to be going.

Tomorrow we are off to San Diego. I'm looking forward to a less frantic time there, some peace and quiet maybe and the zoos and animal parks. And hopefully we will have time to check out the bookstores ...

A learning experience at Honolulu airport

We did do a bit of shopping in Honolulu - not much, just a couple of pairs of shoes and a few t-shirts, oh and a couple of sarongs ... well anyway we managed to get everything stashed in the bags and proceeded off to the airport, fairly sure we were still within our 60kg weight limit. HOWEVER, at Honolulu they were not interested in the total weight or number of our bags, just whether any one bag weighed more than 50lb. If so, they were going to charge us $US50!! Fine, we weighed my bag, it was 1lb over, no problem - I just transfered the camera charger to Em's bag. Al's bag was nearly 10lb over weight however and we couldn't figure out how to redistribute. We had just about resigned ourselves to the $50 charge when we remembered the school backpack we had bought for Em (purple hibiscus pattern - gorgeous!). Out it came and the rest of the chargers, adapter plugs and a pair of men's shoes went in. Bingo - problem solved.

The other thing I learned is that you have to take your laptop out of your hand luggage and put it through the security x-ray machine separately if you don't want to be searched. I did hear Al burbling something to me as I blithely lobbed my backpack onto the conveyor belt but I was confident I was okay - heck I even took my shoes off without being asked. So of course I was pulled over by a very nice young man who went through my bag, checked the laptop and then x-rayed it all again. Embarrassing but not fatal. Still, I know now, you take your laptop out .... and sometimes it does pay to listen to your husband ...

Aloha and mahalo ...

Hawaii was lovely but it was all over too quickly. Day one finished with a stirring testosterone filled display by the King's Guard drill team, who were conveniently based opposite our hotel. Rifle twirling, thumping and tossing was accompanied by stamping and controlled shouting. Very impressive. We also ate some delicious Chinese food from a hole in the wall restaurant called Fatty's Chinese Kitchen.

Day two began with a swim in the sea, then Al and Em went on a submarine trip down to an artificial reef to fish-spot. By all accounts it was an interesting trip - they saw lots of small fish plus a smallish turtle - nothing large and dramatic unfortunately! I went on an 'Oahu Nature Tour' - I chose the waterfall tour because it fitted time-wise and also I thought I might see some interesting plants. As it turned out they had had a dry spell so most of the waterfalls were dry, and the tour guide didn't know much botany either ('John, what's this?' 'It's a geranium.' 'What's this?' '...Some kind of geranium...' you get the picture!) However he was so entertaining and interesting about Hawaiian life and history that it was still a really good trip. And we did see some good stuff - a couple of bright green geckos, bulbuls and cardinals, a couple of inner-city waterfalls in parks and a group of local youths jumping from a cliff into a deep (at least I hope it was deep) pool below.

I know we only saw a very touristy and probably artificial view of Honolulu, but it was just right for a relaxing warm-up blob. Would I go again? In a heartbeat!

Waikiki!!

We arrived in Honolulu late last night after a relatively uneventful flight. Well, when I say uneventful, there was the issue of the green immigration cards. Quite soon into the flight, an announcement came over the PA that flight attendants would be moving through the plane giving out US immigration and customs cards which had to be filled in CORRECTLY AND WITH NO MISTAKES OR CROSSINGS OUT. If we did make a mistake we were to ask for a new card. Oh the stress, the pressure!! OK, I got my card, and managed to fill it in correctly despite the discombobulating turbulence ... until I got to the very last line, the DATE, when I got the year wrong. I mean, doh! Ok, so I asked the nice lady for another card. Here we go again. I wrote the date in first. Name, passport number, date of birth .. oh no! Written in the wrong place! By now I was starting to really lose confidence that I could do this thing at all and I asked Al to get me a new card. The new card eventually came and I had another go. Got my name wrong on this one. (You can see I was beginning to be seriously affected). At this point I was starting to hyperventilate, imagining the border security officer denying me a visa waiver on the grounds that I was too stupid to fill in the immigration form. However on the fourth go, I managed to fill in the card, with Al sitting next to me coaching me (slowly slowly, name ... yes, that's right, now date of birth ...). Actually I didn't get it right even then because you are supposed to only put your first given name and I wrote both of mine, but I decided at that point that it was time to stop, and if I was deported on the grounds of idiocy then I would just go quietly.

We did eventually arrive in Honolulu, and after a bit of a wait in the line at immigration, a very pleasant and courteous Hawaiian officer looked at my card, then CROSSED OUT my second name! We only need the first one, he told me nicely. Then he took my fingerprints and my photo and stamped my passport and I was in. So I guess it's ok for the immigration officer to cross stuff out ... I'm confused ...

We love Hawaii,even if we are only seeing Waikiki. The smells (soft, warm, fragrant), the warmth (balmy with a light breeze), all the jandal jewellery ... Al did really well with the hotel booking - we are a block away from the beach, and our room is on the corner of the building facing the ocean, so we have sea views from the balcony (the lanai!) and from the side windows. We hit the beach this morning. It was pretty darn crowded, but we found a place to sit in the shade and we all went for a swim. Pancakes with coconut syrup are my new favourite food and the hash browns are the size of a plate and made with real potato. (I haven't lost any weight yet ...) I wish we were staying longer than 2 days ...

And it's goodbye from him ....

And so it's goodbye to dear old Auckland. I always find the idea of location difficult to comprehend. That I can be here, on the beach, one day and the next day I cannot be there.

I had to get up really early to write this as we are packing up the wireless modem to send off to France today. It's nice, sitting here in the dark, while the rest of the house is asleep, feeling very transient. Transient in life as well as location.

Today I am going to unpack my bag - somehow it has got filled up and I need to make space for en route purchases. Then it's a quick tidy of the house - it's all been cleaned this week, actually it's so nice and clean that I feel like moving back into it! A couple of last minute admin jobs and then morning tea with two of my favourite neighbours and after school a last minute visit from a couple of good friends. Em has threatened to cry up large this evening - I hope not, I may join her.

I'm excited too. That's partly why I am up so early - in the memorable words of SpongeBob "I'm ready!"

Now I have to go. It's 7am, and time to get the school routine going. Next blog will be from the USA - hopefully from Hawaii!! Can't wait to get some of that sunshine!

"...even so, it is well with my soul ..."

Hamilton photos

Here are the promised photos from our Hamilton trip. They were taken on a sunny winter morning, after the fog had lifted. The sun was low in the sky and it was chilly! The first is the road outside my sister's house - another Long Pathway - we walked up to the top and back, gazing at paddocks full of cows (second picture).





And this is the view from my sis's kitchen window. The pond at the bottom of the picture belongs to them, and is full of pukeko and ducks. In the mornings it is quiet, the cool stillness punctuated by the occasional hoarse croaking squawk from the pond. One neighbour keeps alpaca, another has highland cattle, all hair and horns. I love it down there - I always return home feeling renewed and refreshed.

Eye to eye with the chimps in Hamilton and others

E and I had a lovely trip to Hamilton last week to visit my sister and her family. To the uninitiated, Hamilton is a pleasant smallish city in the fertile Waikato farming district about 150km south of Auckland. It has lots of the amenities of larger cities without the traffic problems. Sis and her family live on a block of land just outside the city, which is idyllically pretty but (she assures me) lots of hard work to upkeep. They keep chickens and a delightful duck who thinks she is a chicken, plus a handful of sheep to keep the grass down. I'd love to show you the view from her kitchen window but I have busted my data cap again and can't upload the thumping great photo that I took.

Sorry? What's that? Why don't I reduce the size of the photo file? Yes, well, I do know how to do that in Windows but the other big excitement of the week (apart from the fact that we'll be in Honolulu in THREE DAYS!!!)is that I have bought my first computer and it's a MacIntosh. A little cutie, a sweet white Macbook but the guy in the shop said that Windows users have to forget everything they know and relearn the Mac operating system. Anyway I've clicked every button and searched everywhere I can think of and I can't figure out how to reduce photo size in iphoto. So the pictures will have to wait until I figure that out. Why did I get a MacIntosh you ask? After a lifetime of Windows usage it felt like time for a change ... and Macs look so pretty... although I was terribly tempted by a raspberry pink Sony Vaio ...

Anyway, back to Hamilton. What have the chimps got to do with anything. Well, while we were there, my sis and I took our offspring (ages 10, 10 and 12) to Hamilton Zoo for an eye to eye encounter with the chimpanzees. They have a small family group of chimps there, who used to live at Auckland Zoo in a smaller enclosure. They moved down to Hamilton a couple of years ago now, and look like they are thriving in the larger enclosure. The main viewing area is from a bridge a few metres overhead so it works for zoo visitors as well.

Two keepers escorted us downstairs into the food preparation room (after appropriate disinfection procedures) and we distributed plastic milk bottles of Milo and of sago pudding in the dens, and scattered popcorn. Then the keepers opened the gates and after a moment or two the troupe wandered in. They wasted no time in unscrewing the bottle tops to get to the yummy drink inside, and just tore open the sago bottles with their jolly sharp teeth. Prehensile toes are very useful for holding your pudding bottle while you drink your Milo! When every last piece of popcorn had been eaten they hung out with us for a while, just to be social. One of the older females jumped up onto the wire so that she was eye level with me and nodded in greeting, which I thought was extremely gracious. When most of the others had gone back outside, we hand-fed bananas to one of the older females (hopefully the nodder). She was a real doll, and ate everything, skin, stalk, the lot.

There were builders in another part of the building and every now and then they would do something noisy like drill a hole. The young male took this as a direct challenge and responded by banging the metal doors, thumping the walls and shouting. Not in anger, just in a very blokey "oh yeah, you and whose army" sort of way.

I did take my camera to the 'encounter' but I was so interested in what we were doing that I didn't want to stop to fiddle around with the camera and maybe miss something. So no photos of that one.

Back in Auckland we are in winding down mode. The house is looking a bit bare - we have packed away a lot of stuff so that the housesitters will have somewhere to put their stuff. We've also given away quite a bit - the City Mission truck came yesterday and now we can fit both cars into the garage!! Our bags are all packed - I'm a bit concerned about mine - it's a bit fuller than I would like, bearing in mind that it will have to accommodate en route purchases. I might try to sneak some stuff into Em's bag ... The hand luggage is going to be heavy too - Al bought me 'Wicked' by Jilly Cooper to read on the plane but the darn thing weighs a ton, plus I've got to carry this Macbook as well now.

We're counting the hours rather than the days at this point. Al's in major organising mode, paying bills and organising money things etc and we are enjoying various social engagements with our friends. We are all excited. I've started waking up with butterflies in my tummy and I haven't done that for quite a few years now. It's good to know I can still get too excited to eat!!

2 weeks and counting ...

Whew, Em and I had the mother of all colds last week. We were flat out for the first 3 days, didn't even leave the house. By day 4 we were both bored rigid and so began to make tentative forays into the outside world. She managed a playdate and I walked to the shops and back, only 30 minutes of very gentle walking but I needed a cup of tea and a lie down when I got home. A week later we are still a bit snotty (eeuuww!) but feeling a LOT better.

And of course E's passport arrived back from the French consulate complete with visa. I guess we'll have to get used to a country where "I don't know, you'll have to wait" means "don't worry, it's all under control". Here in NZ a comment like "I don't know, you'll have to wait" generally means something like "we've lost it, and will deny ever receiving it."

In the meantime we are trying to eat up the remaining food in the pantry - enjoying dinners like baked beans, beetroot and frozen corn cobbettes. Tonight we couldn't face another pasta bake - we got takeaway roast. Besides, I've cleaned the oven and I don't want to have to do it again before we go ...

The other big news is that Em has started a blog of her own. It's called 'A life of sweet lollies'. It's hard for her to leave her friends and her school etc for nearly a year, and I think she plans to talk about her experiences and thoughts in the blog. Cool.

Last but not least I have to say that I just finished the latest Janet Evanovich novel - Twelve Sharp. Oh, it was a riot!! JE books are like a theme park ride for me, you jump in, you're off, laughing, screeching, never a dull moment and then suddenly it's over. I love those books - they're funny, fast and ALWAYS too short. I gulped this one down in just over a day, reading it every minute I could. Oh well, another year to wait for the next one ...