Thanksgiving

We had an early Thanksgiving at our house with some fellow ex-pats and our South African friends.  It was good fun hanging out and chatting.

Watching for guests

Gifts and food

What's in a Name

One of the burning questions we had after arriving was how to pronounce the name of the town where we live, Hawera.  As it turns out, it's complicated and it depends on who you ask.

If you ask a Maori person, the usual answer is ha-WED-ah.  A person from English descent will usually pronounce it HA-wer-ah, with the last two syllables run closely together.  I normally use the Maori version unless I get a confused look from the person I'm speaking to, at which point I switch to the other version.

Our running joke is that you can pronounce it pretty much any way you want and somebody nearby is bound to correct you.

Weekends at Home and Parks

The past two weekends, we've spent at home in Hawera.  It's been a welcome break in the travel action and we've had some low stress family fun as well.  On the 15th of November we took in our first movie at the local theater.  It's a small place with only two screens, but the theater seats were nice and comfortable and there was no crowd.  We watched Interstellar.  I liked it.  Laura and the kids, not so much.

Hawera has several nice city parks.  King Edward park is about five minutes away and it has plenty of stuff to keep the kids busy.  The park also has a lovely rose and several other flower gardens.  Steven and I kicked the rugby ball around and Jack amused himself with the ducks and the playground equipment.

Signal cannon in King Edward Park

Lots of flowers

Jack and the ducks

Last weekend, we visited Naumai park on the east side of town.  It has a duck pond and a few walking trails.  It's nice and sheltered, so the wind isn't much of an issue there.

Naumai is near the city cemetery, so we walked over and had a look.  Laura found a potential relative.

A Riley

A flying club pilot

I chased the kids out of the house to King Edward yesterday.  We fed the ducks and played hide and seek.

Left Side Driving

One of the initial challenges of living in New Zealand has been the
transition to driving on the left side of the road.  We toured around
Auckland on the city bus and didn't attempt driving in the big city,
so our first experience driving was in Hawera.

The first thing I noticed is what in aviation we call negative
transfer.  Negative transfer is when behaviors and habit patterns
learned on other aircraft either don't apply or are down right
dangerous when transitioning to a new airframe.  My first dose of
negative transfer happened before I even began driving as I tried to
climb into the driver's seat of the airport cab, thinking it was the
front passenger seat.

It never occurred to me how deeply ingrained control location was
embedded into my muscle memory.  Right drive cars are backwards in
every respect.  The blinker is on the right side of the steering
column, the gear shift is on the left side and you have to look up and
left to cross check the rear view mirror.  I turned the wipers on
fifteen times going for the blinker that first day and I kept reaching
into the door panel to find the shift lever.

The driving part isn't all that bad once your established in your
lane, but errors creep in insidiously.  I have to think very careful
pulling into or out of parking lots and I'm routinely on the wrong
side when driving between cars in a parking lot.  The times that I've
wound up on the wrong side of the road have been when I'm distracted
with the kids or some such or I've just pulled out of a car park (NZ
term for parking lot).

The creepiest manuever is making a right turn across traffic.  I know
in my head that the traffic I have to worry about is ahead and to my
right, but I have this nagging feeling that I'm going to get speared
from someone coming up from behind in the right lane.

Fortunately, most of the unease with left driving has subsided.  Some
intersections still give me pause, but driving around Hawera is
routine.  The next thing I worry about is flipping my head around when
we get back home.

Rugby

Steven is playing touch rugby with his school and is having fun with it.  Practice is on Tuesday and games are Thursday.  Games are played on a large open field near a school on the northern end of town.  It's a lot like little league sports at home, with heaps of kids, cars and parents.  There's no parking lot to speak of at the field, so everyone parks on the roads in the surrounding neighborhoods. 

Also, there are no bleachers so we all huddle on the sidelines.  I say huddle because it has been cool and really windy every game.  The wind has been our constant companion since we arrived and it hits hard on open ground.  Every game, we think it can't be that bad at the game.  Every game, we regret not dressing warmer.

Rainbow

We had a late afternoon shower about 10 days ago and I grabbed this panoramic shot.  I like the photo, but I think the rainbow looks a little flat on top, which is a distortion artifact from the panorama algorithm.  Still, pretty cool.  It reminds me of sunspots you see when flying above a cloud layer.

Pin-hole Camera

Our last morning in Wellington, I noticed a pattern in the sunlight streaming through a gap in the hotel curtains.  Realizing what was going on, I snapped a few photos of my impromptu camera obscura. 

Projected Image

View from the window