Toasty the Sandman

Toasty the Sandman
Was a jolly happy soul
With a fern-like pipe and a carrot nose
And two eyes made out of broccoli (florets)


Toasty the Sandman
Is a fairytale they say
He was made of sand
In a distant land
And he came to life one day

There must have been some magic
In that old dead gull they found
For when they stuck a feather on his head
He began to tramp around


Toasty the Sandman
Was alive as he could be
And the children say
He could laugh and play
Just the same as you and me

Toasty the Sandman
Knew the sun was hot that day
So we hit the beach
With a wine glass each
To celebrate Christmas Day


Up to the mountains
A walking stick in his hand
Tramping here and there all around the hills
Saying catch me if you can


Thumpety thump thump
Thumpety thump thump
Look at Toasty leap
Thumpety thump thump
Thumpety thump thump
Over the hills of SHEEP!

Happy (End of) Channukah

Nothing reminds you that you're Down Under more than celebrating The Festival of Lights in the middle of the summer. We're not even getting sunset until 9 o'clock, much less the first three stars. And when you're lighting candles that late, it becomes particularly necessary to have ones that will only last an hour or two.

But where do you find Channukah candles in the lovely Christian city of Christchurch? Unfortunately, the one local synagogue never called me back. Luckily, there's a listing for candles in the yellow pages. Unluckily, it led us to a warehouse.

"Do you sell to the public?"

We were greeted by a stare and a hesitation.

"Not normally, but what are you looking for?"

Hurrah for New Zealand, the land of small towns and friendly people. The lady sold us two boxes of excellent non-Channukah, Channukah candles. That only left us with the question of where to find a menorah.

Luckily, there's construction on our road. This means that there's a nice pile of rocks a few houses down. No one noticed us pillage the pile in the twilight hours. That, a bit of fossicking at the beach, and some colored wax from the birthday candles I bought just in case we couldn't find Channukah candles, and we had a menorah!

Off the road again

There is a very important announcement which requires us to break our silence: we have flatmates! And flat-cats! And flat-wireless internet access (but Mekayla thinks this is less important).

We have been very distracted by the South Island these past weeks, and keep wandering away from Christchurch to go exploring in the mountains and discover locations to go for some multiday backpacking in the future.

We went for a real Kiwi style tramp this past weekend. We didn’t have to ford a river, but we did stay in a hut. We fell asleep to the bleating of sheep and the scurrying of mice. Next time we need to do more than one night.

The hut system in New Zealand is extensive. People wander through the wilderness for days, and spend their nights warming up and drying out in the huts. You have to have some place to dry out when your trek requires you to ford multiple rivers each day. The one we stayed in was a three room stone house built in 1919. Not too much had changed in it since it was built. Except that the old black and white photos of the place looked much cozier.

On the road again

Well, we have taken quite a hiatus from posting recently. Seems like every time I started to write a post the news would change before I got around to actually posting it. Today we are leaving Rotorua and heading for Christchurch. So let's briefly recap how we got to this point before something changes again:

• Arrived at Rotorua
• Journeyed briefly to Wellington and started worrying it might not provide enough access to the South Island.
• I shaved!
  
• Bought a car and tallied our expenses for the journey so far (camping is cheap!).
• Met up with friends in Otane and traveled around the East Cape
• Debated living in Wellington vs Christchurch
• House sat and looked after a cat while the Red Sox won the World Series.
• Explored thermally active Rotorua
  
• Started looking for jobs in Christchurch
• Mekayla presented some work to another design firm (networking!).
  
• Now we are leaving for Christchurch
  

We will be on the road again for a couple of days: camping, ferrying the car to the South Island, and exploring some of the Southern Alps. Then we have to find some jobs and some place to live for a few months.

It is amazing how fast a month can go by. Rotorua has provided us with some great downtime. There are still a bunch of things we would love to have time to do here, but there is so much more that needs to be explored.

So in the spirit of all great summary posts let me leave you with some pictures.


These guys were pretty impressive.


I had gotten a little scruffy looking in Australia, and then I got impatient with it when I arrived here, and it had to be removed.


How have I not posted any pictures of sheep yet? It is lambing season.


Hopefully it won't be another month before our next post. Talk to ya all soon.

New Arrivals in New Zealand

We have landed and settled down for a stay in Rotorua with some great friends of Mekayla’s Mom and Robert. We haven’t explored much yet, but the land is all volcanic and green. There has been a fair amount of rain in the 24 hours we have been here, but some of the clouds we’ve been seeing have been from the geysers and hot mud pools from around the area.

The posts today bring us up to date on most of where we have been. We’d still like to write a few more posts on Australian accents and some of the characters we’ve met, but it might be better to slow our pace so we don't overwhelm our readers.

More kangaroos

I said before that we were going to stop taking pictures of the squirrels. But then a clan of kangaroos showed up and our resolution broke down entirely.

Lastly, for all of the golf fans, we have the golf course in Anglesea, Victoria where a mob of kangaroos lounge on the golf course relatively oblivious to the golfers.

The Great Ocean Road

The Great Ocean Road was built to be similar to the Pacific Highway in California, but I would have to say it is a fair bit more spectacular.

And at sunset the red colors of the rocks really starts to stand out.

We were also blessed with stormy weather. I decided not to bore you with twenty pictures of rainbows. Why are there so many pictures of rainbows? Possibly it is because we saw eight in one day. It alternated between rain and sunshine every half hour or so.

Well, this one has a rainbow in it, but that is really incidental. There is also a dog!

It is rare that we end up with any pictures of the two of us these days and since there are parents reading this blog I will throw some red meat to the wolves in this post.