Perspectives

The Anglican church in Devonport,
from behind the lavender hedge.
Devonport, New Zealand,
August 27, 2009.


The underbelly of a private yacht
dry-docked in Devonport, New Zealand,
August 27, 2009.

The prow of an America's Cup racing
sailboat with city buildings in the distance.
Auckland, New Zealand, August 28, 2009.

Spotted Shags

Kaikoura, New Zealand, August 13, 2009.

I've Got Ewe Under My Skin!

Dunedin, New Zealand, August 23, 2009.

Bird of Paradise

Botanical Gardens, Dunedin, August 23, 2009.

Sandfly Bay

Otago Peninsula, New Zealand, August 22, 2009.

Montreal Reflections

Montreal Old Port, August 2007.

Cheese Making!

Since good cheese is awfully hard to come by in
Korea, I decided to take matters into my own
hands while I'm here in the land of dairy plenty.
I took a one-day home cheese-making class at
the Langdale Vineyard outside of Christchurch!
That's our teacher there on the right - Catherine
Mowbray. She was so much fun! In this picture
she's putting the screws to a new gouda. We also
learned to make camembert, liptour, and cottage
cheese (my farm grandma will either be delighted
or incredulous, since I believe she used to make
that all the time when my mom was a kid), and
to fry up a beautiful halloumi. Yum! With that
introduction and a very helpful book of recipes
that I took away (not to mention the necessary
cheese culture), I am all ready to start creating a
little milky comfort at home.
West Melton, New Zealand, August 14, 2009.


The display table, all set up for our variety of
cheeses. West Melton, New Zealand,
August 14, 2009.


Hungarian Liptour cheese - which seems to be
basically a cheese ball rolled into a log shape.
Delish! West Melton, New Zealand,
August 14, 2009.


Fresh butter (with a glass of the resulting
buttermilk just visible above). This is going to
sound silly, since obviously butter is just really
agitated cream, but it was a revelation to see how
incredibly easy it is to make butter (and, by extension,
buttermilk) and to taste how much better it is than
storebought. Definitely something I will be doing
for myself from now on.
West Melton, New Zealand, August 14, 2009.

Albatross!

Kaikoura, New Zealand, August 13, 2009.

Nose in the Air

Kaikoura, New Zealand, August 13, 2009.

Beach Flowers

Kaikoura, New Zealand, August 13, 2009.

Catch of the Day - Crayfish!

Kaikoura, New Zealand, August 13, 2009.

Moeraki Boulders

According to the Moeraki website:

'The Moeraki Boulders are a number of huge spherical
stones, found strewn along a stretch of Koekohe Beach
near Moeraki, a small settlement just south of Hampden
on New Zealand's Otago coast. These boulders are grey-
coloured septarian concretions which have been exposed
through shoreline erosion from black mudstone coastal cliffs
that back the beach. They originally formed in ancient sea
floor sediments during the early Paleocene some 60 million
years ago. The boulders weigh several tonnes and are up to
three metres in diametre. Maori legend tells that the boulders
are remains of calabashes, kumaras and eel baskets that washed
ashore after the legendary canoe, the Araiteuru was wrecked at
nearby Shag Point (Matakaea).'

What this extremely dry scientific explanation fails to capture
is that, for a bunch of rocks, these things are SERIOUSLY COOL!
Wandering around the beach, checking out the various globes,
stretching out on top of them, poking at the tiny muscles that cling
to their cracks, checking out the hollow interiors of the broken ones,
was one of the most entertaining things I've done so far in New Zealand.
Definitely something to check out if you are in this part of the world!
Moeraki, New Zealand, August 8, 2009.

Yellow-Eyed Penguins!

Of all the species of penguins in the world,
yellow-eyed are the most endangered. There
are only about 4000 of them left. New Zealand,
particularly the coast where I am living, is one of
their main habitats. I was very lucky to get up
close and personal with a few of them at an old
Maori 'Pa' yesterday...very close! This one waddled
up the hill right next to me! Katiki, New Zealand,
August 8, 2009.

Safe Distance

Less than 5 meters, but then, they were laying
on the path I was walking on which made it more
difficult to keep that far away! Katiki,
New Zealand, August 8, 2009.

Moeraki

Gulls perched around Fleur's restaurant,
a Moeraki institution. New Zealand,
August 8, 2009.

Trivia

Dunedin often feels like a parallel universe to me, since it is simultaneously freakishly similar to Canada and freakishly different. This is the first time in my life, since moving away from home, that I've been routinely homesick, and I think that's why. Everything is so familiar, but also off.

I love how the waxed paper covers on the sticky bits of 'feminine hygeine' pads here have random trivia printed on them. Who knew that women's middle fingers are more sensitive when they're menstruating (how did they test that, and why???), or that rabbits and parrots are the only animals that can see behind their heads without actually turning their heads. Suddenly I have a whole new perspective on how my apartment must look to my beloved bunnies!

I love that you can get banana-flavoured chewy chocolate bars here (previously mentioned 'perky nanas') and that 'hokey pokey' is a flavour of ice-cream. 'Hokey Pokey,' incidentally, is that crunchy golden foam stuff that you get when you melt white sugar and add a little baking soda to it (for you Canadians in the crowd, what's in the middle of a 'Crunchie' bar, or, for people who've been to Korea, what the little old women on street corners make in thin discs with pictures pressed into them with wire). I also love that corner stores are ALL called dairies, and that they ALL still sell fresh ice-cream by the scoop.

I love that all the little birds I see day in and day out still astound me with their unexpected colours. Fat little chickadee-esque ones that turn their drab brown backs to reveal bright red bands above their beaks and fly away in flashes of brilliant yellow otherwise hidden beneath their wings. Black birds with bright red beaks that behave like robins, grubbing up worms in the dirt. Parrots like Christmas ornaments, half green and half red. Rainbow finches.

I love that people say things like 'chuffed' when they're pleased, and 'knackered' when they're tired. That 'trim' means low-fat milk in the context of coffee, where 'flat white' is a single shot with a lot of un-steamed milk, and 'long black' is a shot of espresso mixed with hot water (aka Americano). That french fries may be 'fatties' or 'skinnies' and are generally eaten with aoli instead of ketchup (which here is called 'tomato sauce'). That sweet potatoes are called 'kumara' because that was the local Maori variant of them. And that people think it's normal to eat peanut butter and honey together on toast but would never dream of eating peanut butter with jam.

I love that up the hill there's a French bakery that is only open on Fridays because the baker is solo and takes all week to stock-pile the quiches and meat pies and fruit tarts and chocolate croissants that will sell out so quickly that to arrive after 8:30am is pointless. We went this morning at 8, and the shop was already half empty. The pastry was surreal, so perfectly flakey and buttery and light.

I love that stores have real sales, BIG sales, seasonal sales, storewide sales. That clothes come in sizes that fit me. That size 10 women's feet are so common that I find footwear in second hand shops. That not only are there people skinnier than me, but fatter than me too. Lots skinnier. And lots fatter. That the 'Jenny Craig' is in a dilapidated old building with little traffic flanked by bustling coffee shops, around the corner from possibly the world's best hamburger joint and about 80% of all things edible in Dunedin.

I love that kleenex comes in either mint or eucalyptus. That sheep are practically a national obsession. That all of the professional sports teams have 'black' in their names (rugby: all blacks, basketball: tall blacks, hockey: black sticks...). That 'Emma' sounds like 'Ee-ma' and 'bra' 'bra-er.'

I don't love that dental floss comes pre-coated with toothpaste. That blister band-aids are $14 for 4 (more expensive than in Korea!!). That busses cost a fortune and may or may not ever arrive at their advertised stops. That broken alcohol bottles (and pools of vomit) are utterly ubiquitous around campus. And that there is so much sugar in everything that my teeth actually ache before I brush them. But these are small prices to pay.

Tomorrow I am going up the coast to a place where the defining feature of the geography is a collection of perfectly spherical boulders. And next week I am going sea kayaking (with seals, I hope, I hope!) and then to a cheese-making class. It will be my first trip REALLY away from town, 6 hours up the coast. Think of the new things to love (and not to love) will be discovered then!