Aaron and Paul's big adventure in the South Island

First cricket...


Then a tramp (hiking for non-New Zealanders), followed by a jump!

A cloudy day at the beach...

is still a good day at the beach. With Paul's visiting family.

Trippin'

Wow, has it really been over a month since I last posted? Whew, well I'll try to bring everyone up to speed and then maybe you'll see why we haven't had much time to write. Here we go:

-Paul's in the US right now to attend a friend's wedding and I'll join him there shortly, but before he left he resigned from his job at the hospital and will start working in June at a great private physio clinic where he'll have slightly more motivated outpatients than the ones he treated at the hospital. The clinic itself is state of the art and he'll also be working with one of his golfing mates (hmm, I sense Paul might be a bit late getting home from work a bit more often).
-I'm taking on more responsibilities at the winery as we're about to launch our Prestige range of wines, which is like our reserves. Still working long hours and I've officially worked every NZ holiday since I've been here. Granted I don't know what one is supposed to do on some of these holidays (ANZAC Day, Queen's birthday, etc) but you get paid time and a half and get an alternate day off for working them so I'll be using those while in the US. It's also autumn here, which means it's vintage time and when I haven't been pouring wine in the Cellar Door, I've been volunteering on my days off at the winery where I've learned the art of batonage (stiring of the lees in barrel) and sorting grapes into the destemmer (who knew spiders liked pinot noir so much).

But the biggest news and biggest consumer of all our free time lately has been the fact that we've decided that we're not ready to leave NZ just yet. That leads us to a couple major items on our agenda. #1 We're applying for residency, which entails a lot of paperwork. To give you some idea, we had to fill out an "expression of interest" in applying for residency, then go into a pool and be invited to apply based on a point system (have a Master's degree? get 10 points. Speak English, get 5 points, you get the idea). Then once you're invited to apply you have to provide proof of what you told them in your EOI, as well as get FBI background checks and medical tests, including a physical exam, chest xray and blood work. Although we're free to spread contagious diseases like TB while we're here on 2-year work visa, apparently they don't want you here permanently with your germs.

The second part of that equation is that we're spending our weekends at open houses as we're hoping to buy a house here soon. We'd like to find something with an ocean view or perhaps even oceanfront, which is something we'd never be able to do in the states. Now forgive me while I go off to look at some houses. I'll leave you with some pics of our recent goings on.