From New Zealand, With Love

It is Tuesday morning for me and it is about 815 in the morning as I am writing this. I am at the new house waiting for the Cable Guy to arrive so that I can post this blog for everyone to read. The new house is incredible. As I sit and write this, I have a perfect view of the mountain and all it's glory. There are still some morning clouds and I would put the temp in the high 40's. I can still feel a chill but not bad enough to warrant me sitting inside to write this.

It has been an interesting couple of days in this unfamilar land. Things are quite different here, but at the same time strangely familar. What I guess I really didn't realize when first arriving is that Cass's mum lives in the middle of nowhere. I feel like I am in the middle of North Carolina writing this. The population of the town we are in is about 10,000. Well that is how many living, breathing mammals are in this town. If you want to break it down to people, I think we might be pushing 200. I feel like I am in some kind of parallel universe. I am on the other side of the world, but almost every Jeff Foxworthy joke applies here. We had to turn off the paved road to get to the house. Words like Chevy and Dodge are replaced with Holden and Chysler. The V8 supercars that they watch are glorified stock cars. Rugby is their football, which they sit around on sundays at the pub and watch. I have come all this way to witness rednecks with a comepletely different accent.

I am being told that this situation is only temporary until we can find work in the city. I thought there would be more work for me here, but I seem to be incorrect in this. Tomorrow, we are going to hammer out the details of my visa so I can get back to work again. I right now have a chance to redo it all. My career, my money, my cars, everything. I now have to look deep inside myself, been given the chance to make new choices in life and not repeat the mistakes of my past.

I will be posting new pictures as soon as I get the camera from the old house cause I want to get as many shots of the mountain in as I can beofre the snow starts to melt.

Until next time,

Shawn

A New World

So it is 7 AM local time here in wonderful Ohakune, New Zealand. I thought I would go ahead and take this time to document the travels and first impression on this new country.

For those of you that have never traveled overseas, the flight is ungodly long. The flight from San Francisco to Auckland was 13 hours. The good thing is that they served dinner and breakfast and you get to watch as many movies as you want. The trip through customs was surprisingly short, no ripping bags apart or anything. So after all that time in the air, we had to go through a 5 hour car ride to the house. That wasn't bad at all because everything is so new, it is almost overwhelming taking all of it in. We got to the house around 2pm local time so in all it took us about 31 hours of travel to make it here. The area we are staying reminds me alot of the North Carolina/Tennessee mountains. Land is very hilly and extremely green. Everywhere you look there are sheep or cows. The roads are like paradise for me. Constantly twisting and turning, cruise control would be completely useless for anyone here.

So what is diferent here....Let's start. The furnance is running to heat the house, we drive on the wrong (left) side of the road. The food is so much better here, yall would be shocked how good it is. Everything is fresh and nothing is imported. They are not allowed to give anything to the animals to help them grow. Everything in the grocery store is organic. It is incredible. The people here are very friendly, people that you have never met will strike up conversation with you and you are not treated different for being foreign. I am still learning new words everyday and though it is English, in many ways I am learning a new language.

I will write more as time progresses here. Most likely every 2-3 days as time permits. I have to go get all my Visa stuff worked out and still not what I am going to do for a perm job. Time will tell. I am hoping that the weather clears up over the next few hours to allow for me to shoot some photos of the land.

Until next time everyone, take care.

Shawn