The Difference Between Me And Kiwis. No, not the birds. Or the fruit.

I came to realise today one of the big differences between me and your average Kiwi.
Mostly, in what I'm going to describe I'd rather be like them than me but I accept (to a large extent) that I am a product of my country and my upbringing and although, with awareness I may change a little, I do not think I will change drastically in this area. Of course, what follows is also gross generalisation.
Kiwis are blunt. They may appear rude in various circumstances. They do not wave to say thank you when you let them pass you on the road. They do not make many attempts at "the customer is always right" if they believe you to be entirely wrong.
Kiwis are also exceedingly friendly. They will not gush at you or bounce at you or bubble at you. But they will invite you into their home and expect you to understand that that invitation really is an open one. You will, if you wish it, find yourself with several surrogate families. And not just one layer of those families. We have two surrogate families here. Both are wonderful and we will miss both very much. Even outside our surrogate families, we have good, good friends who will help us out at a moments notice, even if they are lost in the midst of Christmas shopping with three small, not wonderfully happy children. Even if they are people that perhaps we would say we didn't know so well, we know they will help, always.
And I am the opposite of this. I will be very excited to meet you. I will bounce. I will chatter. I will want you to feel at home. But my home will not, much as I might wish otherwise, be one that you feel you can just drop in on. I hope when you do come round that you will feel very welcome but I know that you will have waited for an invitation rather than just appearing on the doorstep. When you ask me for help, I will have to swallow all the thoughts that bubble up first (what about this plan or that plan, I'm not sure I have time, I need to do this, I can't do that, urgh) before I can help you. I will still help you most of the time but I don't think I'll be as helpful as I would if I didn't have to push aside those thoughts first. The flip side is that most of the time, I won't ask you for help because I won't want to put you out either.
I've had to learn this over the past year and a half. First, that Kiwis aren't rude or even abrupt, they just aren't spending their energy where I do. Second, that actually, I should ask for help, it is always there and keen to be given. If I ask for more help then perhaps I will learn to give more help too. Third, being polite and friendly at first meeting is ok too. :)

It was the best of weekends...it was the worst of weekends...

(Actually, that isn't fair. But it was a very contrasting weekend.)

Laaaaaaate on Thursday night (so much so that it was already an hour plus into Friday) my brother arrived from Sydney. Husbink was working nights at the time and so Friday morning was taken up with much needed sleep (and much creeping about on behalf while the men slept on...we really don't have enough rooms for guests!).

Anyhoo, after the brother woke up, we left Husbink sleeping a little longer while we went out in search of a marvellous kiwi brunch. We found it, we were happy. :)

Finally, Husbink was up-and-at-'em (actually I must say, Husbink managed to get up without all the prodding/shouting/bacon wafting that it usually takes to get him out of bed when he's just finished nights. I was extremely grateful and it was one of the things that really helped my weekend get off to a good start) and we could head away to Martinborough for three nights of relaxation, wine tasting, good meals at restaurants, wineries and the place we were staying (courtesy of us - my bro's bbq skills, my salad skills and Husbink's holding-it-all-together skills all came to the fore).

We cycled hither and thither - Saturday afternoon from winery to winery (we fitted in six); Sunday we cycled out of town and along a gravel road called "River End"...we thought we'd try to find the end of the river...it turned out to be a stagnant pool...rather disappointing but the cycle was still fun! Of course, the ride ended at a couple more wineries... This exercise *almost* justified a third of what we consumed over the weekend!

We found some spectacular wines and wineries - for anyone interested in experimenting with new wines, I'd advise some of the following (possible to track down in places in Australia, limited availability in the UK...so really, you should just come here and see for yourself...)

Alana Estate - has to be one of my favourite places in the world. Staff are welcoming, friendly, knowledgable (in a want to share their enthusiasm with you way rather than a hoity toity snooty way). Restaurant is also fantastic and the food and wine matches are done superbly. We are more than a little gutted to have left NZ before their summer concert series really kicks off.

Stonecutter - a new experience from this weekend, Stonecutter give the impression of making wine by accident, but it turns out rather superbly, especially their Syren Pinot Gris and regular Pinot Gris. I suspect rather more thought goes into it than they let on!

Tirohana - all round good stuff. Again, another winery that we had failed to visit on our previous excursions. Friendly staff, good wine and of course, with an ice wine on the books, I'm never going to be sad.

Haythornthwaite Wines - Possibly the most fun of the weekend, run by Susan (who was busy wrapping up wine for Christmas presents) and Mark (who was a lot of fun and very informative), Haythornthwaites produces some fantastic wines with a lot less pretention than they could justify considering the quality of the wine. I had been sent there by Alana on our first visit to Martinborough as Haythornthwaites is one of the few Martinborough wineries to produce a gewurtztraminer however they had always been closed until this time... Sadly, they had no gewurtz left...until I mentioned it for the sixth time, at which point Mark admitted he had three bottles out the back and could we twist his arm a little more? I haven't tasted it yet but I was rather chuffed to have acquired it! The rest of their wines were very pleasant and Mark made us taste their two pinot noirs alongside each other (young vines in the left hand glass, old vines in the right hand glass) which was very interesting.

Vynfields - Their wines don't amaze me, all fine but nothing wow. However, should you ever be in the area, it is a wonderful place to lose an afternoon. And they make very tasty platters to soak up a little of the alcohol. (They also don't seem to have a website of their own.)

Benfield & Delamare - a bizarre little place. The wines were fine, the staff eccentric!

Margrain - you aren't going to go wrong with a Margrain wine. Sadly, it seems they know that and their cellar door staff were worse than lacklustre. While other staff would have persuaded us to part with a lot of cash and lose an afternoon there (beautiful setting, pretty good food), they effectively shooed us away. Buy the wines, don't bother with a visit.

Martinborough Vineyard - probably Husbink's favourite in terms of the wines. Certainly the Te Tera Pinot Noir is something very special. Staff took a bit of thawing but we were quite late by that stage and I think they were getting bored of the tipsy Sunday avo hoards. We even went back on Monday morning to buy more. Definitely a label to look out for.

And finally, Ata Rangi - we didn't visit these guys this time, but their superb value rose still hits all the right spots!

So what could possibly have been the downside of this weekend? Horrific (yes, I'm aware I'm over using this word at the moment!) hayfever. In some respects, not the worst hayfever I've ever had, its persistent, red-eyed (no, I promise it wasn't just from the wine), tight-chested, blocked-nose, itchy-mouthed present put a certain dampener on the weekend. Not least because by this morning I was feeling so sleep deprived and cranky (add the "monthlies" and a bit of a hangover into the mix too) that all I wanted to do was kick my brother onto that plane, Husbink out the door to work and get some sleep. ON. MY. OWN.

I knew I'd regret it if I didn't make the most of absolutely every minute with my brother so tried my hardest to push on through. An apologetic text is still called for though!

I am now home alone and within the next few hours I intend/hope/pray I'll be sleeping like a baby.

(Confession: The picture is actually from our first trip to Martinborough, last January. We took a weekend off taking snaps, my bro doing a good line in finding comedy places to put his tiny-weeny-smaller-than-a-phone camera to take pics of all three of us. Once he's sent them through, I will enlighten you further...perhaps! The reason I felt a need to confess was because the weather wasn't quite so picture-perfect this weekend, but that actually worked quite well for all the cycling and boozing, at least we didn't add heat stroke to the reasons for dehydration!)

World Famous in New Zealand Since Ages Ago

One of the things I'm finding most odd about preparing to go home is knowing that Husbink and I now have 18 months of shared culture that no one at home is going to understand or know about.
No one (or basically no one) will know who Dave Dobbyn or Supergroove are
No one will have seen the Trumpet togs/undies ad
No one will know all the words to Why Does Love Do This To Me by The Exponents (compulsory listening for granting of a visa into NZ...)
No one will call their flip-flops jandals or their swimming costumes togs...
And so on...

Of course the flip side to this is that people will understand when I mention Terry, Eurovision, Radio 2, Strictly Come Dancing... People will (hopefully...) understand when I start to sing the Challenge Anneka theme tune whenever required to do something in a limited time frame (though I suspect there might just be one or two people who understand that! And bizarrely it is the thing that comes up most often here that I want to make a reference to and know no one will understand).

Of course, there is also much shared culture. Most films, a lot of music, TV and so on is shared between New Zealand and England (and Australia and the US and...) but even then there is a different take on it all.

What is most strange about this is that it was also one of the hardest things about arriving here. Not knowing who any of the famous people were, not understanding in jokes and cultural comments and all that sort of thing. I'd say we still don't know all that much and there are plenty of times when we are left clueless. But there are times when we are not and it will be just the same when we get home. We've lost 18 months of British culture but we've gained 18 months of NZ culture - when we get confused, we'll just confuse everyone right back!

Camping

Husbink and I went camping for the first time together (not including our stay in the garden) this weekend. I was (and I think he was too) a little apprehensive as we have very different experiences of camping.

My first experiences of camping were in America at lovely campsites with great facilities. (The one I really remember also had a trout farm so you could go along, pay your few dollars, catch a trout, they did all the icky bits and then you could cook it on your bbq (that was part of your site) that night. That was the first time I actually like the taste of fish. Anyway, I digress.) I went camping with my family once in England but lots of our nice flash American stuff got nicked and we were rather put off. My only experience since then has been at festivals (or rather that should be "festival", being Greenbelt, a Christian festival and thus although still lacking in things like flushing toilets (even those it has now having moved site), it was still all rather nice.)

Husbink has done much more of the "proper" camping thing having grown up in the Lake District and done Duke of Edinburgh awards and that sort of thing. For him, campsites are fields that may have a tap if you are lucky. Husbink has also done the festival camping thing but his have been more of the sort where toilets get set on fire and so on...

We arrived at our site on Thursday evening and I got all confused because I'd just read too many almost-the-same descriptions of campsites during the previous few days and had forgotten what this one was actually supposed to be like. Once, I got over that though, all was well.

The weather was glorious all weekend (which didn't stop us getting ridiculously cold at night) and we chilled out very well. My only intention for the weekend was that we "went camping" and got everything in working order before our intended 2.5 week trip in January. Normally when we go away I have a stack of things I want to see or do and it was really nice to be able to chill a little more. We went to Taranaki again (we spent a weekend there back in June when it was cold and snowy) but instead of staying in a posh hotel halfway up the mountain, our campsite was right on the beach (protected by sand dunes, a hedge and the owners house). Not quite from our tent but within a minutes walk from it, we could watch the sunset over the beach and the mountain simultaneously.

We climbed a crazy rock/hill thing in New Plymouth on Friday. It started out as just a steep walk but became full on scrambling before the end - and going down was done pretty much on my bottom. As we were coming down, we met two people going up who do it every day as part of their training regime. One had a prosthetic leg. I was impressed. Near the bottom we also met some vaguely insane people on their way up...one with no shoes on, the others with sandals...I don't think they made it far.

The rest of the time involved lying in parks, reading books, strolling, eating cake, lots of fish and chips, games of cards, Surfer's Highway with the black sands of Taranaki, the adventures of camping cooking and a good time all round.

We've discovered we can camp together though I think Husbink is still not entirely convinced that I enjoyed myself. I'm all set for our big holiday now - just one or two tasks to achieve before then...(more on the rising panic of moving countries again soon)

Rugby

So, I know that many nations enjoy rugby and get passionate about it and all that. And when we arrived in New Zealand and were told that the national religion was rugby, we chortled gently at the wit.
However, we are now faced with being here for the rugby world cup. A world cup that by rights, the All Blacks really should win (no offence to England, Wales, Australia, other nations that at times may have been worthy...lots of offence to France...). New Zealand teams are not known for falling at the final hurdle but the All Blacks and the world cup seems to be a slight nod in that direction.
Everyday, the television tells us how many days to go to the start of the world cup (70 - it's been counting since 100). We have adverts that are just about how much we love the All Blacks (admittedly the tri-nations (with the Springboks and the Wallabies) are going at the moment too making it a little more justifiable) with a tiny weeny nod to their sponsors at the end.
Generally, sport is huge here but half the teams are still nods to the All Blacks (the Tall Blacks are the basketball team, the Black Sticks are the hockey team and the Black Caps are the cricket team. The Silver Ferns (netball) break out a bit but you know their logo has to be the same...)
We're in the midst of the America's Cup at the moment and already there are mutterings about the lower productivity of the country as people are staying up until the early hours to watch the races as they come live from Valencia. And sailing, while big, just doesn't touch rugby. I suspect we will need to plan in the same way for the world cup as we do for earthquakes - enough food and so on in the house that when everything shuts down (which is no bad thing - it happens in January anyway and is pretty cool), we won't be stranded!
(Oh, and for anyone who was feeling that we might be getting more attached to NZ than England, notice how I apologised to Australia and not to France... You can get t-shirts here that say "I support two teams, New Zealand and anyone playing Australia"...)

Whips

So the latest craze amongst the youf round here is to get a bed sheet, tie knots in it and whip it so that is makes a cracking noise like a gun. Round where we used to live there would be the constant sound of this all afternoon from about 3.30 until it got dark. Once you know what it is, it is ok but the first few days we thought our street had gone downhill a bit! Round here, it is a little more subdued but this afternoon we went for a stroll and ended up coming back through the park and saw two groups of kids practicing with their whips. One group were a little older and more practised and made some very impressive cracks, bouncing off the hills for an echo effect. The other group were quite young and still trying to work out how to make the noise.
So, yeah, I guess I can see why it has caught on and all that, but is it anywhere else in the world? Did it start here? Or elsewhere? Has it spread? Or do just have our own little bed of insanity?!