Maori Cloaks

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The pake is a cloak of Maori people and this is the original of something I’m going to talk about later in this blog post. The raincloak is thought to protect you from weather. The name of the thing I’m going to talk about later is the evening cloak. The rain cloak was made in winter and could be used as a skirt or shawl. The Maori made these out of twisted cords. 
The evening cloak is a decorative cloak that doesn’t protect you. This is something an artist made in a museum so it’s nothing I should criticize about but I really like it I have to say. I chose the evening cloak because it was not just the coolest looking it looked like that most people would wear it in a parade or something or a party or festivals and festivals are usually night when they light fires. The evening cloak is all black and it looks like there are spikes on it. I think the Maori people would have worn this as decoration but not out in the rain. 


-lb2

New Zealand so far

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So, on the first day we sort of spent our time walking around and going to this breakfast place called the scarecrow. I got some fruit salad! Yum yum! And then we sort of went round the sky tower and then we took a long tine to get to our hotel and I was sort of complaining since I just wanted to relax. Once we got to our hotel we had to wait a little while until the he person came down for us.Then we stayed there for a night. When we woke up we packed a little and then we started going again. We went around the city, we walked to the car rental place which seemed like 100 miles. And then we started driving back to our hotel and to get all our stuff. Then here’s the funny part,when mom and I were in the car when dad and brother were getting our stuff, dad had been in Starbucks before writing his blog post and had texted mom and we just got the text then! And then we started to go to Coromandel but along the way we stopped at Thames and we tried to eat there but somebody told us to go over there.Well,we sort of ate there but in the car.We went to another place and played there a little. Then we had a hike too. Then we went to Coromandel and we decided to go to the hot beach area instead. And I’ll do a little blog post on the museum we went to in Auckland also. 

-lb

On the road! DEN–AKL

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Our last day in Denver was getting a few last minute things together, throwing in an extra set of warm hats and mismatched gloves into our bags and getting to the airport. Our initial flight was delayed but I’d given us a big layover at LAX so that wasn’t a problem. Surprisingly, security through LAX was a breeze and we had a lot of extra time. (Side note: no security cares about those liquids anymore as long as they’re 100 ml or less)

The 12 hours to Auckland was nice! One trick I learned from traveling with my parents at a young age is to always order the special “Asian vegetarian” meal. You get served before everyone else and the dish is always tasty. The girl was in heaven in a little cocoon made up of blankets and pillows and quilts and couldn’t believe she got a whole tv all to herself that came with a anything she wanted to watch and even games. Long haul air travel has come a long way since my last flight!

Customs checkout line was looking, so the boy used it as an opportunity to play some tunes while waiting.


Once we got in and through the airport, we had a few hours before we could check in at our Air BnB. Man, these were rough hours. We were tired and gross and just wanted to get to a bed. We found a little breakfast place called Scarecrow, an organic farm-to-table place and had a very tasty breakfast. 

At this point, the kids were being absolute angels, peacefully chatting with each other about the beauty of Auckland. Or maybe they began needling each other.


After we got into our apartment, we enjoyed the view for about 10 seconds before promptly going to sleep. 


When we woke up it was time to explore Auckland a bit!

Auckland has a population of 1.4 million people which is about a third of the island’s entire population. That’s incredible! The rest of the island must be very sparsely populated other than the other smaller cities in the island. There is a lot of Asian influence here, which you see in the people walking about and in the food available. Given the chilly drizzle, nothing seemed quite as tasty as a bowl of hot ramen! We found a hold in the wall and popped on in. 


After this we took a bus to the Auckland Museum. The bus drivers make change for you, which was a pleasant surprise! 

The Auckland Mseum was fantastic. After we exited the bus and looked like lost tourists, a very kind lady asked if we were heading to the museum as she was going that way and she would walk us there. She turned out to be one of the head volunteer guides and gave us fantastic mini tour of the collections when we got there! The Auckland museum has the largest collection of Maorio art and artifacts in the world!  I found it fascinating that before the Maori, the island was entirely unpopulated by people and also by any mammals other than bats. There were plenty of large birds which had descended from the dinosaurs, which were largely defenseless and promptly killed by Europeans with guns when they arrived on the island. Way to go.

At the museum they had a Maori meeting house that they were refurbishing. Here are the kids making their best fierce Maori faces. 

After all that, we were beat. We dragged ourselves back to the apartment and ordered pizza – one of which was a butter paneer pizza! Tasty and so different. All we had the mental bandwidth for was to watch “America’s Funniest Home Videos” to which I have 2 comments – one, those were pretty funny and we laughed out loud,   and two – really Carleton? How the mighty have fallen. 

Today we are off to the coromandel peninsula, renting a car for our first left hand driving experience. Wish me luck.

Ps – I’m typing these up on my iPad and the connection lags a bit, so forgive any typos! 

Last night in Denver

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And so after many years of planning and saving, the day of leaving is here. Tomorrow we board a flight for LA and then New Zealand. We’ve got a place to stay that first night, and then after that I don’t actually know exactly where we’ll be. I think that for many, this would be a situation of unease and fear, but I love it. I love the idea that I don’t actually know what next week will hold for me. For quite some time, the overall cadence of days and weeks has been relatively predictable. I know that I’ll be going to work, I know that the kids are going to school, and while the details may vary, the essential framework remains unchanged.  I will miss people, of course. Over the last few weeks it has been a period of many goodbyes and realizing that the little times you spend with friends – working a shift together, going out for lunch, having dinner-  makes up the fabric of your friendship and these little times will not be happening for the near future.

To change the subject, though, let’s talk packing.

What do you take on a long trip like this? I don’t know what YOU take, but here’s what we’re doing:

That picture above is the sum total of our bags. After I took this picture I realized some things were missing which I list below.  But since all of that will fit into the bags above, you get the idea. We hope to do the trip with only carry on luggage as much as possible.

Here’s the girl with her stuff: 4 bottoms, 4 shirts, 3 pairs of socks, 5 pairs of underwear, long sleeved shirt, rain jacket, swimwear, pajamas and of course, a sloth mask, a kindle with a sloth sticker, and a stuffed sloth. 3 pairs of shoes – chuck Taylor’s, flip flops, and keens.

The boys pack is pretty much the same, minus the sloths and plus a backgammon set.


I decided to use the packing cube system given that we’re using backpacks – seems like it’ll be easier to manage  that way. Here’s the girls stuff all put into the cubes. I initially bought a cheap set off eBay, but the zippers were of poor quality and I could tell that I’d eventually find them annoying and will likely break soon. I splurged on slightly more expensive (yet still pretty cheap) sets off amazon for the other two. Each one comes with 4 cubes of varying sizes and 2 laundry pouches.


As for me, not really all that different than the kids except that things are bigger so do take up more room. Since I don’t really want to have my underwear on public display (even if it is all the really boring sort) I’ve left it in the cubes here and have laid out the toiletries instead. Packed my shampoo, conditioner, some makeup, and sunscreen for my face. I also have a small first aid kit with some band aids  and polysporin in it.


Things not pictured: travel guitar, camera, iPad, my knitting, kids coloring books and pencils, and 2 small backpacks for putting stuff in for shorter trips and to have on the plane. I did get a collapsible water bottle as well, let’s see if that’s any use. Eric packed the meds we’re taking : pepto, cipro, azithromycin, and flagyl.

Not bad, though I do feel like it’s still too much! As for when we hit winter in Romania, we are having a few things shipped though I think we’ll be shopping at Romanian secondhand stores for clothes we can wear and then discard, contributing to the great circle of thrift store life.  I’m really hoping I get some super stylish 80s Eastern-bloc era duds to wear.

And off we go – next time I post will hopefully be from NZ (unless the flight to LA is particularly bad then I’ll. post here to complain.

-s

How I feel about the trip

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I feel shifty, like I’m shifting feelings, but I am excited, not that excited because i am nervous. It feels like something might happen such as something might happen to our home or to the place we are going and we have to leave right away. I believe I sort of feel like the trip is a month away. Nothing seems real.                         but it is.

I am happy that we can spend all that time together as a family. I’m looking most forward to Paris, France and maybe Venice if we can go there.

-lb

Going Away.

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As the upcoming trip is approaching (by saying “upcoming trip is approaching” I mean that it is on the 26!) and me and my family are getting more and more nervously excited for the trip. One of the reasons that I think that we are getting so nervous is that our best friends that happen to live (read “live” backwards)  down the street from us have left and we do so much with them that it is hard to do something that we usually do with them by ourselves. For example, (watching “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”). But to combat that we are looking forward to going to all of the places that we are going. I am going to make this a short post and end it here because, I wrote this very quickly a little bit  before the trip partly because my mom asked me to write this and because writing this down helps me process that we are leaving. So here I must conclude my post until new zealand! 🙂

 

-HF

FAQ

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We have just a little more time before we leave. I know I’m not supposed to say on the interwebs when we’re leaving for vacation, but given that we have people coming to stay here right away I feel okay about it.

Much like a wedding or pregnancy, when you have a major event upcoming in your life all conversations focus around that. I know that people are interested out of love and concern, but one does get a bit tired of answering the same questions repeatedly. Here, then, is a collection of the questions I seem to get asked most often in order of frequency, with answers.

  1. Are you excited? – Far and away the most common question I get asked. Perhaps it is meant to be rhetorical. I always answer “yes, super excited.” Though sometimes I want to add to that “and I also have some bone crushing nausea and anxiety if I try to think about it too much.” But YES I AM EXCITED!
  2. What are you bringing? – We are each bringing one hiking backpack on the trip. Yes, that is it. We bring about a week’s worth of clothing and plan on doing wash as we go. Given that the weather is mostly temperate or warm  (except for the first week in NZ) we should be fine. If not, we can buy stuff along the way! Except for Eric of course once we get to Southeast Asia, because even the largest size of pants there will probably come to his kneecaps. We are planning on mailing a small box of winter stuff to Romania. Partly for warmth and partly because we will all be tired of looking like characters in a play who wear the exact same outfit for days on end. Eric will have his laptop, we are bringing the Ipad and we each have our own kindles. We have bets on who will get their kindle stolen first (ha, who are we kidding, it’s going to be the little girl)
  3. What are you doing with your house? – We have it listed on VRBO and it has already been surprisingly successful! This leads me to think we have it priced too low. We’re nearly booked for all of August and September, and given that most people don’t book more than 1-2 months ahead of time, I think we’ll be fine.
  4. Are you home schooling the kids? – This is the one I answer least honestly. The answer I give (truth part) is that I intend for the blog to be the homeschool. It’s a way to look up and learn about places we go, write about it, correct their grammar and so on. The rest of the answer (lie) is that I plan on dealing with math when we get to Romania. I do not know if this will actually happen. I’m kind of relying on the Irish Catholic Nuns to whip them into mathly shape in Spring semester as the kids will be enrolled in same sex Catholic schools, uniforms and all. This is really to everyone’s benefit. Have you ever had me try to teach you anything? No? Consider yourself extraordinarily fortunate.
  5. Do you have enough money for the trip? – God I hope so. Otherwise I hope I can ply my skills as a burlesque dancer along the way to support the family.
  6. When are you coming back? – Not entirely sure. See Question 5 as that will decide a bit. Sometime next summer.
  7. Are you going to be working/doctoring abroad? – No.
  8. Where are you going? – asked and answered in prior post
  9. “I’m so jealous/I hate you” – well, you should. I’m pretty fabulous.

I really want a 10th thing because all good lists have 10 things but I just can’t think of one more.

-s

Ocean City, NJ

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It was four in the morning and my sister and I had just been roused from sleep to go on a plane by ourselves to Ocean City. After the three hour long plane flight, we landed and were received by our grandparents. They took us to the house that they had rented and we changed into our bathing suits and, while grandma cooked dinner, me, my sister, and grandpa went for a walk on the beach. The walk soon became a time to play at the beach and me and my sister had much fun. But soon we had to go back to the house and eat a dinner of mac & cheese and salad, then we had to go to bed. I woke up next morning in an unfamiliar bed and then I remembered! And at that thought I let out a sigh and thought of my dear mom and dad and how I wish I could see them again.

Soon we found ourselves walking around on the boardwalk, and then getting a surrey, a four person bike, and riding around the boardwalk.

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After the tiring morning we decided to go to the beach and have some fun! And…we did just that.

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Once we had our fill of the beach we went to bed…but not before doing some mini golf, and then fell asleep almost immediately. The next day, after some breakfast, me and my sister found out that we would be boarding a pirate ship and going for a ride. Soon after receiving a eye patch and boarding the ship we found out that we would be fighting pirate Pete so we got out the water guns and blasted him. Although that was not the end of our pirating adventures I must finish the trip now otherwise half of the post will be taken up by them! And (again) we went to the beach after that, and after that we went to bed. (also again) . This time I woke up I learned that we would be visiting Cape May Lighthouse and then go to see Lucy the elephant, both of which were fun.(to learn more about Cape May Lighthouse and Lucy the Elephant,look at my sister’s and my other posts)

Next morning I woke up to the rain and cold, and because of that we were not able to really go to the beach. But we still went on a walk on the boardwalk, and we also went to a bookstore and got five books. And lastly but not least we went to see Finding Dory. We spent the rest of the day (and night) resting. The final day we would be staying had just come around the corner and slammed right into me. Soon we were driving along to get mom at the Tropicana bus center, then we went back to the house. And soon again! I was slammed by realization that lu, my mom, and I had to go soon. And we did we went home at nine.

-HF

 

Cape May Lighthouse

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The first Cape May Lighthouse was built in 1823, but due to erosion the lighthouse was moved and again, soon the lighthouse was moved and rebuilt in 1847, yet thanks to erosion the lighthouse was moved again but rebuilt in 1859. The third Cape May Lighthouse is still standing and if you go to Cape May, this is the lighthouse that you will see. This third lighthouse was built under the supervision of U.S. Army engineer William F. Raynolds. The lighthouse was automated in 1948. So far the lighthouse has changed ownership twice, the first owner was the Coast Guard, but the ownership changed hands into the state of New Jersey, who then leases the lighthouse to MAC (Mid-Atlantic Center for Arts and Humanities). MAC is the one that cleaned up the lighthouse and made it into a still a functional lighthouse and a museum.

The houses on the sides of the lighthouse are the three keepers’ houses. The house on the left is for the main keeper, the house on the right is for the two assistant keepers. Before the picture was taken the houses were about the same size. But soon, due to the assistant keepers’ complaints the house was expanded in 1903. The second keeper’s house was burnt down in 1968.

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-HF   

beach!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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🙂 I can’t wait to tell you about the beach but also about Lucy who is a wooden elephant that is a home. Now  I really want to tell you about her BUT I want to tell you about how I know about Lucy. My brother and I were at my grandparent’s beach house which we where renting for  that week. If you want read Ocean City, New Jersey go to that page. Now back to how I know about Lucy.  My brother and I on the fifth day we went to a lighthouse then Lucy. We waited for 20-30 minutes while we waited I got a little  elephant to remind me of Lucy.

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First, Lucy is a 65 foot wood elephant. Lucy is made  out of one million pieces of wood.Lucy was built to attract people . She has entertained men and women for 128 years. She was built in 1881. People wanted to destroy Lucy and build a hotel but some people raised a thing named  “Save Lucy Committee”and they saved Lucy!!!!!!!!!  Lucy does have one secret – Lucy is not a girl! Lucy is an Asian elephant and  in the Asian species, only the males have tusks. So when we were inside Lucy we went up to the belly. Then we watched a video then went up to Lucy’s back thing  then we went down   to her belly and down. That is the end.

one announcement I will not be remaking how to make oatmeal.

lb,