We flew out last Saturday and we weren't nervous at all. Plenty of people have been asking how we felt, but I think we both felt excitement, relief and joy, but definitely no nerves or trepidation! Mum and Dad on the other hand....... will probably wonder where all that extra food, money and spare time is coming from now! We landed in Dunedin (direct flight - yeah!) in the afternoon and the weather was about 5 degrees and calm. It wasn't so bad but in hindsight I think we counted out chickens a bit too early. The weather only got colder over the next few days as we rediscovered the magic of electric blankets and thermal underwear. But as soon as Pete started work, the weather seemed to fine up and I was mostly quite happy for the rest of the week and the weekend just gone.... but just as I started to think that this place wasn't so cold after all... a cold front has just swept through this afternoon and up at Macraes where Pete's working, it's snowing hard and they're worried they might be stuck there tonight!Other than the weather, which seems to take up a substantial part of the news each night, for now-obvious reasons, I've been cruising around the shops in my current role of hausfrau. The supermarkets here are by and large just like supermarkets anywhere else in the world, but I have been very excited by the weekend farmers' markets held on the platform of Dunedin's historic train station. The leeks, the venison, the spuds, and oh, the lamb! All so fresh and delicious. I'm a little hampered at the moment by our sparsely-equipped temporary kitchen but already I've prepared some really yummy meals.
The knives that were initially provided in our kitchen were woefully blunt, so we splashed out $7.99 for a sharper Wiltshire knife at the supermarket. It was certainly sharper, but only enough to lull me into a false sense of security. The other night I nearly sliced the tip of my ring finger off trying to chop potatoes... actually the incident was almost identical to the one in Tom Price where I saw ligaments, a lot of blood and my own bone mometarily! Budget or no budget, I decided the very next day to really splash out on a knife and I came home with a much sharper, much safer Scanpan knife.As well as trying to amputate my digits, I'm also trying to find work, a house for us to live in, and another car. The details of all of the above are unfortunately closely related and I feel quite overwhelmed at the thought of sorting it all out. Hyphen, the cat-that-won't-die is also coming over here to live once we have a permenant residence, which I suppose provides motivation to get our housing situation sorted out soon.
I've included a couple of photos of our apartment for all to see, it's nothing exciting and it's actually quite grubby, but you can't see that in the photos. The floor needs a good mop but they havne't provided us with one. It's quite small but it does get a nice dose of sunshine throughout the day, on the days when the sun decides to peek out from behind the clouds, of course. That last photo is the view from our front window. We're in a slightly dodgy part of town, but the architecture is still beautiful!
I'm off to prepare some scraps for dinner tonight - big shopping day tomorrow! Pete is on his break as of tomorrow and he can help me carry it all back from town in this antarctic gale! Hope you're all well. x
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