Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas from the first country to see the sun each morning! While it's still Christmas Eve in most parts of the world, Christmas is already in full swing here in New Zealand, which means... well, not quite what you'd think, really. It's a much more subdued affair here. Storefronts, streetlamps, and indoor shopping malls have decorations, but most homes don't put on the light displays typical of American suburbia. In some ways it's nice, because you don't have to drive down the street and pass the homes of overzealous rednecks who drove to Wal Mart and bought a dozen three-story-high inflatable snowmen and reindeer to fill the neighborhood with the incessant roar of industrial-strength fans. Not that I have a problem with tasteful decorations, but there's a line that shouldn't be crossed.

I get the impression that Christmas here is more akin to our Thanksgiving in that it's the time for the whole family to get together, consume a boatload of rich food and alcohol, and fall asleep by three in the afternoon. Also, since summer's starting, Christmas barbeques are quite popular. Over the past few days at the grocery store, the Kiwis have been buying immeasurable amounts of charcoal, meat, and alcohol. Oh sweet dancing Jesus, so much alcohol--all I want for Christmas is for one of the customers to randomly invite me to share in this glorious tradition. We're talking shopping carts filled to the brim with Speight's, Mac's, Monteith's, and Tui (the main NZ beers), and whole cases of wine and "bubbly" (champagne). Apart from the odd shopper just in for a few things, I've been ringing up tickets anywhere from $150-$600. Sorry. Forget what I said about Christmas being more subdued here.

My booze-filled fantasies aside, Alexa and I actually have been invited to a Chirstmas barbeque. Our landlady's having one on Saturday. Since we live, oh, about a dozen feet away, we figure we'll probably take up the offer and check it out.

As for today, we're probably going to head downtown and see what Queenstown is up to for Christmas. A touristy, hoppin' town like this is bound to have something going on. Sadly, after three nine-hour days at work staring longingly through the windows at glorious sunlight, it's cloudy, raining, and miserable on my day off. Figures, right? Still, we'll find something to do. At least it's not snow! Later on we're going to have pretty much the fanciest Christmas dinner ever--we bought a whole chicken!

We already exchanged presents this morning. I gave Alexa roughly $5000 worth of lavish jewelry, clothing, lotions, and a week-long vacation to the world's most famous spa in Switzerland. All she gave me was a dirty, used sponge to do the dishes and a sock. It's true. Don't believe whatever she writes in her blog. Seriously.

Anyway, we're going to head downtown. I have the next three days off, so we're probably going to go white-water rafting or river-surfing tomorrow or Saturday, depending on the weather and what's open on Boxing Day (whatever the hell that is). I'll keep you posted!

Merry Christmas or Happy Chonnnjnucka' (Alexa says there's so many ways to spell it, I can spell it however I want, so I thought I'd use four n's and a silent j).

Oh, and happy Kwanzaa, Chad.

That's two shout-outs. You have to pay for the next one.

New Zealand's largest Christmas tree. It's up in Hamilton.

We're in Queenstown! And I am cracked out on caffeine!

Well, we made it to Queenstown, and it is awesome!

It's been a while since I've had a chance to update, so the next few posts are going to be a bit disjointed. Here's the plan, so you can keep it all straight: I'm going to write this post just to talk about our move to Queenstown a bit and what we've been doing the past couple days. The next post is going to be the Tongariro Crossing-dedicated post I promised a couple weeks ago. Finally, there will be a third post (which I will probably not get around to today) that will pick up from Hamilton and take you through the rest of our trip to Queenstown. From then on, my posts will be less postmodernly-nonlinear and more normal.

Here we go:

Two days ago we arrived in beautiful, stunningly-scenic Queenstown. Queenstown is a smallish city near the bottom of the south island. Despite its size, it's quite a bustling place. It's one of the top tourist towns and the adventure capital of New Zealand. Here you can skydive, bungy jump, parasail, white water raft, jet boat, river surf, street-luge down the side of the mountain, paraglide, ski (in the winter), go mountain biking, and pretty much any other insane activity the Kiwis can dream up. It's also a good base for exploring the many national parks that are only two hours' drive, or less, from city center.

Geographically, Queenstown sits on the edge of the massive Lake Wakatipu and is surrounded by the Remarkables, a large mountain range. Yesterday we rode the gondola (a ski-lift but without the skis), up to the Skyline. The Skyline features an impressive (and expensive--$60 for lunch!) buffet restaurant, a large observation deck and viewing center, and also serves as a base for street luging, bungy jumping, and paragliding.

Here's the view of Queenstown from the observation deck. The little orange blip towards the right is a paraglider.


We originally took the gondola up to do some luging. There are two 800 meter tracks, which wind halfway down the mountain through tunnels, over bridges, and around bends. We did each track once, and it was pretty awesome! Here's some other people coming down the track so you get an idea of what it's like:



While we were at the Skyline, we noticed the paragliders. I'm not quite sure how it happened, but I managed to convince Alexa to "think about" doing paragliding at some point during our stay in Queenstown. If convincing her to think about it seemed impossible, then what happened next was nothing short of a miracle. We went to the kiosk just to enquire about the price and what the experience was like in case we wanted to come back at some point, but the skilled salesman convinced us to do it that day! That's right, we pretty much jumped off a mountain! Paragliding is basically skydiving, minus the free-fall and from a much lower height. I told Alexa the next natural step is skydiving, but she's not having it, and there probably isn't any convincing her of it.

Here's photographic proof of our paragliding, though:

It was tandem, in case you're wondering who the two insanely-enthusiastic guys are. Apparently they just can't let you jump off a mountain on your own.

Aside from pulling insane stunts like riding luges down the side of and jumping off of mountains, we've been doing the mundane tasks of apartment and job-hunting. Incredibly enough, we've already had some success!

I'm writing this from the comfort of our new studio flat. Our very OWN flat. It's not shared. There is no Ornery and there is no Silly. It's clean and it's comfortable, and we can see the Remarkables from our living room window! We have our OWN kitchen and our OWN bathroom and our OWN everything! The only other person around is the quiet, friendly landlady who lives upstairs. It may not seem like a big deal, but after three months at the Pickled Parrot it's pretty amazing to have our own space. What's even better is that we're not paying much more rent than we were in Wellington, so it's quite a bargain. It also came fully-furnished and included a bunch of sweet kitchen gadgets.

Check it:

On the job front, I applied for a job the day we arrived, interviewed for it yesterday, and I start on Monday. Not too shabby, eh? What's more, the job has 100% less toilet-cleaning than my job at the hotel. What, oh what, could this glamorous job be, you ask? Am I a copy-writer for the local newspaper? Am I an assitant at one of the many extreme-sport kiosks in town? Am I a taxi driver? Did I open my own business? Am I the CEO of a brand new, up-and-coming multinational business?!

I'm afraid not. I'm also afraid I don't know why I included taxi driver in the list of glamorous jobs. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

As of Monday, I'll be a cashier at Fresh Choice, the only grocery store in town. Woooooooooooo!!!

On the upside, I'll have between 40-45 hours a week right from the start, unlike in Wellington where I was barely scraping together 20 hours for the first month and a half, and I'm making a bit more per hour than I was making in Wellington. Plus I get a 5% discount on groceries. Yeah, I know, big whoop. 5% is sales tax in Maryland. Still, I'll be hauling in a lot more money than I was in Wellington so we can live a bit more extravagantly. Last night, for instance, I cooked actual food--chicken parmesean--instead of some combination of gross meat, pasta, and frozen vegetables. We even bought wine and beer. Oooh. Ahhh. Having our own fridge where we don't have to worry about Orneries and Sillies stealing our food is a plus too.

Alexa's prospects are looking good as well, as she's landed an interview at a nannying agency on Monday.

Anyway, Alexa is growing bored with my blog-writing and wants to go out and find the Remarkables Shopping Center, so I'd best be on my way. For now, enjoy all the sweet pictures. I was quite generous with pictures for this post, eh? It probably has something to do with the metric shit ton of coffee I drank this morning. Enthralled by the shiny new coffee press in our flat, I filled it to the brim and consumed enough caffeine for about ten people. Weeeeeeeee!

Thanks for reminding me to get my absentee ballot...

So apparently there are still people in other countries who not only love America, but are also under the misguided notion that president Bush is doing a good job. No, that isn't the punchline to some sick joke; it's true. Last night at Domino's there was a customer from Sri Lanka, wherever the hell that is, who recognized my accent and asked if I was from the USA. After I confirmed this, he went on to say he had lived in four countries (Sri Lanka, the US, Scotland, Japan, and New Zealand--I guess he couldn't count) and our beloved America was the greatest of them all. And then he said "I support your President Bush," and gave me the dopiest grin in the history of all simple-as-shit dopey grins. Unfortunately, I was not as gratified as he expected me to be, so I just shrugged and said, "Well, I don't."

Wrong answer, I guess. He suddenly became all serious and went off on a tirade about how great Bush is, and how he is a bright ray of hope for the world, and how all the presidents, prime ministers, kings, and princes of all the countries of the world wished Bush would stay in power for at least ten more years (BARF!) since they had such a great relationship with him. Ummmm.... what?

I guess Sri Lanka gets a different slant on the world news. Maybe Fox News on Steriods or something. At any rate, he concluded his speech by telling me, "Just have faith in your president. You are very lucky to have him," and grinning stupidly again. It's not my place to argue with customers, so I just smiled, chuckled, and said, "Yeah, I guess. He's not going to be around much longer anyway." Zing.

Anyway, things have been going along pretty well. As you may have read on Alexa's blog, we went for a couple hikes last week. One was in our neighborhood and it took us through some pretty wooded areas and around the back of the zoo. We hiked for a kilometer or so along the zoo's fence and were able to see inside a bit. We got to see the top of an ostrich's head, for free! Take that, zoo. The other hike was up the side of Mount Victoria, one of the highest points in Wellington with a great view of the city from its lookout point. It was also the location of the outskirts of the Shire in The Fellowship of the Ring. We weren't able to find the filming sites, but eventually we should be able to find the place where Frodo yells "Get off the road!" when the Nazghul first appear, as well as the forest the hobbits run through to get to the ferry and escape the Nazghul. Nerd alert.

Also, things are going okay at Domino's, but I'm still on the lookout for a day job so I can actually start earning a decent income. Today I had an interview at The Organic Grocer, a little Trader Joe's-esque store, and I think it went well. Besides that, about a week ago I sent an email to the zoo asking if they needed any staff for the gift shop, and when I got back from my interview today, I had an email from them saying they had job openings for gift shop/admissions. I'd prefer to work at the zoo, but I guess I'll have to wait and see what the hours are like and how soon they get back to me.

On a sad note, we are now 17 hours apart instead of 16. Sunday marked the beginning of Daylight Savings Time for New Zealand, and once you all in the US head back to standard time in November, we'll be 18 hours apart.

But I think I've rambled on for long enough. In a bit I'm going to meet Alexa in town and we're going to see Eagle Eye. It's the same as the US version, except some guy with a Kiwi accent dubbed over Shia Lebeouf. Seriously.

I was going to post some pictures, but the internet is being a jerk, so that will have to wait until later. Que triste.

In the meantime, you should all go check out this article. It's a very insightful and well-written look at white privilege and the upcoming election, using a lot of examples from the farce that is the McCain/Palin duo (or as I like to call them, Dumb and Dumber--zing!): http://www.redroom.com/blog/tim-wise/this-your-nation-white-privilege-updated

EDIT: Here's the pictures.

This is Alexa being very happy/enjoying the weather at the botannical gardens:

A scary sign along the zoo's back fence:

Wellington, as seen from Mount Victoria: