hotdogs and heartburn

a new zealand hotdog is very different from an american one.
i found this out when i went to the 'town' for lunch the other day...

i wnated a bit of home you know...so i saw hotdog on the menu and ordered.

i sat down and waited for the thing to be ready, i was called to the counter, handed my dog, sat down to find a very large sausage lightly battered and deep fried...and i don't mean like a corndog either.

and to top it off...ketchup was two bucks!

i've been making sure to pack lunch since then!

Finally

not a great photo, but this is the sub-division. I like it.

the landscape behind the elementary school.

yay!!! Pacific architecture, I love it…sometimes kitschy…but this is the architecture SCAD-enites only see in textbooks. Before you even think it…the helmet is because the scooter was the transportation mode for the day! No ‘T’-Rex tee shirt underneath…making the effort to look normal.

Sim and I at Oriental Bay the mainland, I guess, behind us.

Oyster girl here on the coast along Oriental Bay, I am staying somewhere up the hill behind me. Thank goodness I opted to make the coat fit in the suitcase.

17 september 2005

Okay, I didn’t get this posted when I thought I would, so here’s the update. First, apology to my family, I was calling, going by the time on my computer…them I realized I was calling at 4 30 AM..so I stopped the call. The pictures above are from my favorite day in swellington yet. The weather was fantastic! Cool and windy, but given the past two days….it was great. So, we did some site seeing on the scooter, fun, had brunch, a cheeseburger….open-faced, and I learned that chili refers to something made from chilis…no ketchup, meat and beans. But good.

Today, Monday, I continued the search for work in offices, seems there might be some contract work…which I am growing accustomed to. In the morning I went on a field trip with Sim’s class to a town called Seatoun, precious town. This is where a lot of Hollywood types are relocating their families (king kong, lord of the rings, etc…being filmed here). There is an incredible development going up, this is a subdivision I don’t mind! These perfect little homes by the sea (looking towards a beautiful mountain across the bay) starting at $860,000.00 NZD (roughly half million USD I guess). Then to the actual field trip, Seatoun Elementary School, it was great, actually built successfully and functionally with praise from the community were things professors always told me…’that’s not right, you can’t do that’!!! It was a darling school built on a former military base, and the kids really sweet, really encouraged to learn, no padded time-out rooms here. It was really similar to The States, t-tiney chairs in the media center, reading well, crappy diagrams on the windows, and foursquare on the ‘black top’.

Then, I was off for more interviews and phone calls. But on the way to retrieve my agenda on top of ‘Mount Everest’ (which by the way, the other day when I arrived at the top, I discovered I had a bloody nose)…I was just so curious, so I thought I would do some cultural research at KFC…Kiwi For Chicken, much to my dismay NZ KFC does not search biscuits or cole slaw…sigh. Then, harangled (I just made up this word) by many other sales people…I suppose because it was a very slow, very cold, very damp Monday afternoon. Needless to say, I am very perfumed, moisturized, my eyes are done up like Tammy Faye Baker, and yes, I even managed to get Dermalogica samples.

So, this is where I am now, talk to you soon…m