Making a life: food and friends

Kia Ora, friends.  A Maori greeting, in case you didn't guess.

It's been more a week about making a life here than one about being a tourist.  John continues to go out and about with staff from mental health, visiting patients in suburbs and outlying communities.  I began volunteering at the hospital, connecting ICU visitors with staff and ultimately with the loved ones they are coming to visit.  It was a little different kind of role than the one I am used to, but it was ok to be there and try to be of help.  I think I've only made one person mad so far, a nurse who came in and posted a "leave on 24/7" note on a light switch I had inadvertently turned off.

We have heat again, which is a significant improvement.   The weather has improved too.  Bright sun and cold wind are parts of every day.  At some point, it gets cloudy too.  Seems much like San Francisco. I remember a famous quotation about SF's weather, "The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco," and I wonder if it will ever be warm enough here to wear the three summer outfits I brought in addition to the three winter ones.

Those of you who know me well know that my social needs are high.  It's been very odd to know no one, and it's been nice to have a few social contacts this week.  Thursday night we had dinner at a restaurant called "The Hop Garden," to help say goodbye to one of the drs. who is leaving.  Friday night we ate Indian food on Cuba Street, a very happening place with shops and restaurants where the youth culture is strong and our more geriatric walking was skirted by skateboards and tattooed walkers in short skirts.

 Saturday we Skyped with the Walter-Fromsons, including Kathryn, and talked to Claire on the phone and did a little baking.  I made cookies with something called "Choc Bits."  After baking, we decided to walk up the very steep stairway down the street to take a walk on the southern walkway of the town belt.  The trail wound  about a mile and a half thru the woods with beautiful views of the harbor here and there, mostly UP to the Mt. Victoria lookout, where you could see the whole landscape--several bays and the city in the midst.  Lovely and worth it, I think.  After making our way up, we felt pretty good about ourselves, but pride goeth before a fall, and we lost the track somewhere on the way down and ended up winding around and meandering back the long way thru town.  No real harm done.  Just sore muscles in the aftermath.

 Saturday night we went to the meetinghouse for a soup supper and game night, hosted by the Australian family who are Resident Friends at the Friends Center here.  Apparently, Quakers everywhere have a similar low-key sense of what is fun.

Today we went back to meeting and to the market.  Then we spent some time at Te Papa, the national museum, looking at art.  Maori art is characterized by elaborate carving.  There are totem gateways for houses and meetinghouses and posts and prows for elaborately carved wakas (large canoes for many rowers).  Also beautiful ornaments carved from greenstone--looks like jade or malachite but is much harder and was even used to carve chisels.  Much black, white and red in the visual art, much like the first peoples used in the Pacific Northwest, which makes sense if you consider the link to Pacific Islander heritage.

 After worrying about  you and the earthquake and hurricane back home, we were homesick to hear someone "talk American," so we went to the lovely Embassy Theater to watch Don Cheadle in "The Guard."  Pretty fun.

Common phrases in NZ:  "mmm"--very expressive and can mean almost anything like "prego" in Italian,
"have a think".  Vowels very different--fish like terakihi ?, all "frish and noice"  (fresh and nice); someone who has died is "deed".  Food:  fabulous citrus (lemons with a slight tangerine note, the best oranges I've ever tasted),  purple sweet potatoes called kumara, weird little red yams, fruits we've never seen that are kind of tropical like feijoa and tamarillos, great fish and chips with garlic salt and lemon pepper, fascination with beetroot, lots of lamb, kind of weird desserts--Ex. the ice cream choices today at the theater were plum/creme fraiche, honey/fig, and hokey pokey (NZ toffee).  New Zealanders are very serious about coffee, with the regular choice being a "flat white" (latte, yum, often served with a silver fern--the nat'l symbol--imprinted in the foam).  No such thing as pickle relish.  No dryer sheets.  Not so many varieties of everything.  Many kinds of chutney.  The best butter.  Serious about jam.

Unfortunately, I left the camera at home when we were on our long trek, but here is a picture of the Quaker meetinghouse, with the Friends Center attached.  As I listen to Friends' concerns about making a place in their society that is fair to all and concerns about peace and social and economic justice,  I realize that these  concerns are a part of my home wherever I am in the world.