New Zealand Flag Design

So it has been suggested that New Zealand needs a new flag. The NZ government is currently taking submissions for flag designs, so if you'd like to make your mark in New Zealand history, now is your chance. Submit your designs! It's a bit of a debate and the topic of many jokes at the moment as to whether it's worth all the money being spent on this re-design. They've been holding meetings that aren't very well attended, but apparently all the engagement and support is coming in online. There are over 7,000 submissions for a new design so far. Many are variations on the silver fern, kiwi bird, and korus in red, white and blue. A few incorporate rugby, and then there are those that have a unique take on what it means to be a kiwi, for example displaying the kiwi fruit instead of the kiwi bird. Here are just a few that I found funny, unique, or interesting. Have a browse yourself and see if there's anything you like better than the current New Zealand flag design. If you click on the title of the design it should take you to the submissions website where you can read the reasoning behind the submission from the designer.

The Beach

How about a kiwifruit

The Winding Road

Crayfish Bonanza

Paherowa (Pavlova)

Integration

 

Chocolate Fish

Melting Pot

Koru Jack

Fighting Kiwi

Phar-lap

Mt Yasur - A volcanic expedition

It's not every day you have the opportunity to stand atop the crater of an active volcano and look down into a sea of spurting lava. I'm really glad we took advantage of this amazing (albeit expensive) opportunity - it was even better than I had imagined.

We were lucky enough to only have four in our tour group. From reading reviews, it seems like you normally caravan to the foot of the crater with lots of other groups, but we were lucky enough to only see one other small group (3 people only) when we arrived. Getting there though was an expedition indeed.

I've spent the past couple days compiling a video of photos and footage from the journey, so I won't say too much and will let the video speak for itself. I just want to point out a few things that are hard to capture in a five minute video:
* Our home for the week- we could see our place on Efate from the plane as we flew off to Tanna, see if you can figure out which one it is in the video!
* The cyclone's destruction- note the high number of trees that have fallen during Cyclone Pam. You can see this from the ground but I remember it being remarkably noticeable from the air, even more so on Tanna than Efate.
* It's bumpy- while making this video and when uploading it, I was asked multiple times if I wanted to stabilize the footage. I didn't think it was nearly as bad as I remember the journey itself being, so chose not to employ the stabilization. Hopefully it doesn't make you sick (I managed to avoid the car-sickness, only just).
* The smell- of course, being on top of an active volcano smells strongly of sulfur and whatever other mysterious things are erupting from the center of the earth.
* The heat- when I showed photos to my coworkers, they all asked if we could feel the heat. I must say, it wasn't noticeably hot whilst we were standing on the crater edge- in fact one of the guides was shivering. However, once we started climbing back down toward the car you could feel the air getting cooler and realized that you were just standing on top of a massive fire ball.
* The sound- the video captures some of it, but at times I thought the earth was going to open up to a big dinosaur and swallow us whole (lucky it didn't!).

Seapost at Hideaway Island

Diving was my main inspiration for visiting Vanuatu, but places with good diving often come with good snorkeling and Vanuatu was no exception. It even has this wonderful tourist gimmick of an underwater post office! Of course, being the fish that I am, we just had to check it out.

Unfortunately, the manned underwater post office had been swept away by the March 13, 2015 cyclone. Luckily, the actually post office box still remained and is supposedly checked daily. Mom, let me know if you ever get your postcard- I actually wrote it underwater! How cool is that?

Apparently the coral here was much better before the cyclone, but it was a pretty good start to our vacation if you ask me.

I'm only going to apologize once for the large number of underwater photos that are to follow on this blog (this post and those to follow)- I got a new GoPro toy and have lots of photos to show off. Here are a few from the first day: 

One of P's favorite fish

Tropical Fish

Finding Nemo

Blue Clam

The Happiest Place on Earth

Wow! I can't believe it's been so long since I've written a new post. I've been so busy doing things, I haven't even stopped to write about them. Quite frankly, I've been trying to spend my evenings NOT in front of a computer, which makes it difficult to blog. I'll try to slowly catch up on what's been going on these past few months, but will start with what's freshest in my memory; Vanuatu.

Even though it's still not yet my birthday, Vanuautu was a birthday present of sorts. We took advantage of the Queen's Birthday holiday to escape the cold New Zealand winter (yes, I've already acclimatised myself into feeling cold in these above freezing temps). I wanted to do some SCUBA diving in this part of the world, and thought of Australia's Great Barrier Reef and Vanuatu's natural reefs WWII wrecks. P was more intrigued by the WWII wrecks than reefs, so Vanuatu won. I'm so glad we went! Vanuatu has been voted the happiest place on Earth, and I can definitely say we were happy to be there and I didn't meet many people who didn't greet us with a big, genuine smile. Even their cell phone company service is called 'SMILE', so every time you turn on your phone it has the lovely message across the home screen reminding you to 'SMILE'.

On arriving, we were pleasantly surprised to see our Couch Surfing friend from Santo meet us at the airport. He generously offered us a ride to our place, which was a relief as we didn't really know for certain how to explain the directions to a taxi driver, seeing as we'd never been there ourselves (we stayed at another friend's place out of town).

Once we settled into the house, we went for a walk down the road to a nearby resort for dinner (Ripples, quite tasty food) and enjoyed the beautiful water views from the backyard. Went early to bed with the early setting sun.

April Showers Bring May Flowers

After B's Colorado graduation, I flew straight to Chicago in order to get to grandma and grandpa's house. This was a whirlwind visit- 3 nights in 3 different cities and lots of driving (through 3 different states). There's never enough time to see everyone, but I got lots of hugs from family.

It started with breakfast in Chicago, then braving the city traffic (and driving on the right side of the road) to get to Iowa in time for lunch with grandma and grandpa.

We had a great afternoon in Iowa, with shopping and art and great food. It was really cool to see some of grandma's art displayed at the public library. I'm so proud to be the granddaughter of a famous artist- I had to grab a photo with her and one of her pieces.

The next day we drove into Wisconsin for the Amish Flower Auction. I didn't quite know what to expect, but knew it would be fun. We pulled into the parking lot next to a horse drawn carriage full of flowers. I clearly hadn't done enough thinking ahead, as I was very surprised to see the horse. We had arrived a bit early, so the men were still setting up- moving the flowers around the hall and taking them off the trailers pulled by the horses. There were a few kids running around in their traditional Amish dress. Unfortunately we weren't allowed to take any photos and I'm not great with words, so you'll have to use your imagination to get an idea of what it was like.

When grandpa first told me about this, I had imagined that we would be sitting in an auditorium and they would parade the flowers up on stage for us to bid on. What actually happened probably makes much more sense. The flowers filled the hall, and we went around looking at them before the auctions started in order to pick out our favorites. You have to choose carefully, as some come in groups of 12, but some are sold in groups of 48 or more! Grandma didn't want 48 pots of flowers, so we narrowed our choices down to groups of 24 or less (she actually just needed 12, but that seemed hard to find). The auctioneer started outside (there were so many flowers they overflowed the hall) and was true to auction style- fast and hard to understand. I struggled to keep up, especially with the maths. He gave prices per pot most times, so you had to figure out what you were willing to pay per pot/flower. Going up $0.50 a pot didn't seem like much, but when you're buying 48 of them it drastically increases your total cost.

We had picked out two sets of 24 hanging pots that all of us liked and were hoping we would win the auction on one of them. They auctioned off our least favorite of the two first, and when the price got too high grandpa stopped bidding, so we lost those. It didn't take long for them to get to the second set of hanging pots (and our favorite). Luckily, this lot went for less than the others and we won the auction! It was fun to watch grandpa bid and to just take in the atmosphere. I'm so glad we won the auction. The next challenge was finding space for all the flowers. We sent some home with grandma's friend, but managed to fit the rest in the car. Grandma and I had to carry some in our laps, but it was worth it!




That evening it was back to Chicago to say a quick hello to P's parents. I was really looking forward to seeing them and getting some hugs. I was only there for less than 24-hours, so not much time for any adventures, but we had a great time catching up and looking at photos, and of course K's delicious baking and cooking. Yum!

Thank you all for having me- in Iowa, Illinois, Colorado and California. I am blessed to have so many places to call home.

Congrats Grad

The reason I picked May to visit the US was for B's graduation- what a great reason to come home and celebrate with family. And what a celebration it was! So proud of you B!

We started the weekend with a family lunch at the local watering hole. I got some foods I'd been missing- onion rings and buffalo wings. A very well balanced meal. It was nice to be back in a college town, great laid back atmosphere and really cheap prices!

The ceremony was nice and not too long (and lucky it was indoors too as it was raining outside). Can you tell B was pretty psyched to be graduating?

The whole weekend was great- got to catch up with lots of family I haven't seen in way too long. And of course it wouldn't be a family gathering without some games of pepper.

B's graduation party was beautiful- so many people came to congratulate him and it even snowed too. Not sure that the snow was loved by everyone, but Aunt K and I had a great time building little snowmen and playing briefly in the cold snow. It was fun to be back in the land of snow, even if it was May and supposed to be spring.

Mother's Day was a beautiful day as the snow melted and the mountains cleared in the distance. Farewell Colorado, Happy Mother's Day and Congrats B!!

Home is Where You Hang Your Swimming Suit

Or in Kiwi speak, 'Home is where you hang your togs'. I believe it was my youngest brother BK who coined that expression. We travelled a lot as kids- visits to Iowa to see grandma and grandpa and cousins and aunts and uncles, family vacations. Mom & Dad tried to book us in a hotel with a pool wherever possible (and reasonably priced). Whenever we were out and about for the day on one of these trips away from home, we'd often accidentally say 'let's go home, maybe just go for a dip in the pool' when mom asked us 'where to next'. In this expression, 'home' was referring to the hotel or place we were staying for the night- we didn't really want to go all the way back home. We were so good at adapting that we just made ourselves at home wherever we went, or as BK would say, wherever we hung our swimming suits.

That adaptability has stayed with me. I have called many places home, and feel like we've done a great job making a home for ourselves here in Auckland. However, leading up to my trip stateside, I kept talking about 'going home' and looking forward to 'my trip home'. It felt strange, as if by calling the states home I was somehow betraying the status of Auckland as my home. But then I remembered BK's expression 'home is where you hang your swimming suit' and realized that it's possible to have more than one home. That definitely rang true on this trip. I felt right at home in San Fran with mom, dad and J. We had a great time at the Giants game, I went to clay class with mom and made some adorable little New Zealand salt & pepper shakers, we played cards and caught up. And of course, I hung out my swimming suit after our dips in the hot tub. Most importantly, it just felt relaxed, and well, like home.

Australia v New Zealand: Cricket World Cup edition

So you may have figured it out by now, but in case you haven't I'll let you in on a little secret; Australia and New Zealand have a bit of a rivalry going across the Tasman Sea. Naturally, this extends into the sporting world. That's why we picked the Australia v New Zealand cricket match as our first live cricket match. With the ICC Cricket World Cup coming to New Zealand, we had to see a game, and we figured the atmosphere at the game of these rivals would be a good one.We picked a good game- it was a full house and not only was the atmosphere good, but so was the game itself. 

Wicket

Now, I know absolutely nothing about cricket, except that it's long. Some say it's even 'more boring than baseball'. That statement can be interpreted differently depending on your view of baseball. What I did know, was that the world cup matches are one-day matches, meaning shorter. At least I wouldn't have to sit through a whole week of a game I don't understand!

In preparation for match day, I did some Wikipedia research on cricket and tried to learn the basics so I'd know what was going on. I did pretty well, and was not only able to follow the match, but really thoroughly enjoyed it. The only rule I wished I'd learned about but didn't was the power play. Otherwise, it was great fun!

It probably helped that the match was 2 hours shorter than normal, and that it was a NZ home game with a lively crowd. The boy sitting next to us was so excited to be there and stayed engaged in the game the whole way through. It was nice to see kids getting into something other than their iPad (the kids behind us were on their iPads the whole game).

Brendon McCullum at bat for New Zealand

Australia was at bat first, and they got out (10 wickets) in less innings than anticipated. A great start for New Zealand! All we had to do, was score more runs than Australia, without getting out. 

The Black Caps captain and star player Brendon McCullum was at bat first. He was quickly hit by the pitcher with a stray ball. What an outrage! There wasn't even really a penalty for it. Brendon was a true champ and went on to play for 50 runs. Unfortunately he got out shortly after that, and New Zealand ended up needing 6 runs with only one wicket (out) left! Everyone in the stadium was on the edge of their seats, myself included.Williamson bats it out of bounds for 6 points to win the game for New Zealand.


What an exciting game! On a side note, I was glad we didn't bring an excess of fresh fruit into the match (we did pack a picnic dinner- well prepared for a lengthy cricket match). The fruit fly epidemic is still in high swing and no fruit is allowed to be taken out of 'the zone', in which the cricket stadium Eden Park is located. Hopefully they find all the fruit flies soon.

MR2 at last

It's official. We're now a three car family. P took his new toy out for a spin on the Hampton Downs race track this weekend. It was fun to watch him on the track, he even improved his lap times considerably throughout the day! Not that I stayed to see the end of the day- it was a long day so I just caught him go out for two 15-minute sessions in his car, and one as a passenger in another car to get some lessons.

The Kiwi Accent