32 posts tagged “dunedin”

That I am in fact still here.  I don't have an ergonomic computer setup at the moment so I'm not doing much typing, lots of surfing, but no typing.

In my virtual absence, life has been going along quietly here.  It's spring and the rhododendrons are blooming.  Petra and I walk round our garden most mornings looking at the flowers.  I haven't had a garden for 10 years and had forgotten the deep satisfaction to be had from pottering amongst the plants even in a garden as tiny and down at heel as ours.  70-odd years worth of over-ambitious gardeners have crammed it to bursting with too many, too big, too close together trees and shrubs.  Our gardening efforts so far have been very Costa Rican - we've taken to the bushes with saws, loppers, and secateurs, and have removed three trees so far.  And I plot further destruction in my walks with Petra - she smells flowers while I pick shrubs for the chop.  All the camellias and a couple of sad-looking rhododendrons are on my condemned list, and I plan to prune the hell out of the remaining rhododendrons next autumn.

    

This is the longest time between posts since I started blogging here in late 2006.  Back then I was newly-married and had just moved to Costa Rica.  Travis and I were on a kind of extended honeymoon.  We explored by day (when Travis wasn't working) and went out by night - the typical expat thing.  I miscarried and we went on a consolatory vacation to the Dominican Republic where I was charmed to have one of the local guides talk about "Sir Francis Drake, the English pirate."  In my anglo-centric history lessons, he appeared a great explorer.

Things are very different now.  We live in my home town in our very own house.  I've barely even left town, let alone the country since we got here.  I'm travelled out for the moment, although I'm still collecting places to go (Norway, Jordan, Tunisia, Greece, back to France and Spain...)  It's Saturday night and instead of going out I'm sitting in my dining room listening to spring rain hit the window.  I'm someone's mother, which still surprises and delights me after almost two years. 

Life is unexpected, but good.

The weather has been fabulous, amazing, stunning - 20 degrees today and August is usually the coldest month in this part of the world.  Lambs frisk, our camellias and irises are in bloom and the rhododendrons and daffodils aren't far behind.  We've visited beaches and gardens, spotted albatross on the peninsula, and shown Petra around the town.  I'm loving it here.

Here are a few photos from our outings.

 

The South Island was struck by another polar air mass overnight.  Last time we had hail and frost; this time we woke up to snow.

Dunedin shut down for the day.  All the roads out of the city were closed all day.  School was cancelled, businesses opened with minimal staff, and anyone living in the hill suburbs was advised not to drive.  People who tried to take their cars out this morning played bumper cars with other drivers or skittered down icy hills into poles or parked cars or banks.  A jack-knifed truck blocked the motorway, trapping many vehicles including the snow plow and grit truck (and there may only be one of each here - snow all over the city is not a frequent occurrence).

We stayed safely at home in front of the fire, watching the snow falling outside.

Our only outing was to take Petra out onto the street to give her her first snow experience.  She was intrigued, but didn't feel like getting down to play in it, preferring to look from Travis's arms.

I haven't seen snow for years so I enjoyed crunching around and scooping up snowballs.

Winter has arrived with a flourish, bringing snow and ice to the higher areas of the country.

We're too close to the sea for such dramatic weather, but we woke up on Wednesday to flurries of hail which settled briefly in our yard.

In the past week we've had birthdays and Mother's Day, immigration wrangling, and visits with friends and family.

In honour of Travis's birthday, Travis and I went out for lunch by ourselves and then spent a very pleasant hour or so wandering around the Dunedin Art Gallery (or Art Museum as they call themselves).  For a small city Dunedin is well-served for galleries and museums.  The Art Gallery is particularly good.  The exhibitions change regularly and are well-curated and very varied.  We looked at photo collages of gorgeous, in-your-face nudes by a contemporary Dunedin artist, a disturbing installation that evoked a hospital complete with waiting room, bed, and breast implants by a woman who had recently faced breast cancer, 19th century watercolours from Japan, and some of the highlights of the permanent collection.

A date without Petra is a wonderful and slightly disconcerting thing.  We got to relax and eat at our leisure, but we both missed Petra.

I got another change to break out of my Petra-centric world later in the week.  My friend Nicola and I went to see the new Star Trek movie.  I haven't been out at night alone since Petra was born and I was surprisingly tense about leaving, even though I was excited to go and Travis was home to take care of Petra.  Petra and Travis were, of course, fine.  I enjoyed the movie, although I felt that the plot was pretty flimsy and the relentless cockiness of the young Kirk got a bit wearing.  Simon Pegg and Karl Urban were great as Scotty and Bone respectively.  And J J Abrahms did a good job of capturing the excitement and hopefulness of the original series. 

We finally submitted Travis's immigration application at the end of last week.  Now we just wait for them to process it and return his passport with a shiny new stamp or two.  I'm still working on renewing Petra's Canadian passport but that only requires a letter and a copy of her birth certificate - much easier than the 20+ page form Travis had to fill in.

The sunsets here aren't as spectacular as the tropical sunsets of San Jose, but they're beautiful even so.  Here are a couple of photos from this evening.  We had a beautifully hot day, unexpectedly hot after the wind, chill, and rain of the past few days.  And it finished with some good clouds.

 

One of the pleasures of being back in Dunedin is getting to look at the beautiful architecture.  Dunedin is home to some wonderful neo-Gothic public buildings as well as huge ornate late 19th century villas.  We went driving around the town last weekend, to give Travis a break from the lounge.

First up was the main building of Otago Boy's High School.  It was apparently designed to cow and chasten its pupils and it's certainly imposing.

Here's the railway station which was recently restored to its original splendour and is now the most photographed tourist attraction in New Zealand. And some of the glamourous private homes in Dunedin.

I haven't yet figured out how to be a blogger now that I'm back in Dunedin.  Costa Rica was exotic for me; I was a stranger in a strange land and the most mundane of activities brought with it the possibility of adventure.  But now I'm home, and home is just home.  I arrived here, moved into my house, and sank into a kind of wordless contentment with no blogging, no journalling and not even much emailing. 

I love being here.  I have little spurts of happiness at odd moments - when I look at my freshly painted and varnished, newly flat-ceilinged, and spring-cleaned lounge, when I drive through the Dunedin streets looking at lovingly restored villas and at native trees and shrubs, when I visit the beach or the Otago Peninsula, when I hang out in the familiar cafes and shops, when I spend time with family.  But I don't know how to write about it.

Travis is back from South Africa, just in time to miss an armed robbery in the company's office in Pretoria.  Three men with guns entered the building after hours, tied up everyone who was still working, and stole laptops and monitors.  Fortunately, they didn't hurt anyone, but just took their loot and left.  The whole office is in shock.  As are we.  If Travis had been in Pretoria still, he'd have been there because he worked late most nights.

It makes me glad to be in Dunedin where it's okay for our neighbours, having met us once for about 20 minutes, to give me a key to their house for a weekend so that I can feed the cat and water the tomatoes.  And where the various firms Carla dealt with to get our Costa Rican container through customs waited patiently for me to wander in to their offices to pay them instead of worrying about invoicing or sending out bills or demanding money on the spot from Carla.  Everyone is very trusting, which seems a bit odd as well as very heartwarming after all my time away.