and no, the toilets do not flush counter-clockwise...

So I made it in one piece, hale and whole. I've been in New Zealand four days now and I have to say everyday day I think to myself, and often out loud, "I live HERE? Wow..." Seriously. It is an amazing thought that goes through my mind when I see a beautiful vista here that says, "hey you, you live here now." I really like New Zealand alot. The people are so very friendly and laid-back. The taxi drivers are kind and extremely helpful. A cab driver in Wellington ran out of my cab to get a baggage cart for me and help me load it at the ferry station there...so very unlike the Chicago cabbie who dropped me and my luggage off in the street at Union Station. LOL. The weather is spectacular, rainy the first couple of days and dreary, but yesterday cleared up and I was able to see the amazing views of Nelson without the obstruction of low-lying clouds.

This is the view from the living room at Laura and Luke's house. yep.

I went to the theatre on Friday to help out with their children's holiday program (it's Easter hols here- two weeks off of school) and met people there who I'll be working with (in theory!) and I also decided I really like the small space the theatre has. It's a small black box theatre with about the smallest stage area I've ever seen...but it'll be a good challenge to be able to work in that space.

Change is good for me and I think this move to NZ was a good choice so far. I'm happy with it and look forward to the challenges life brings me. Yesterday we went to Cable Bay, which is only about 15 minutes away from town. It was lovely there and again, I can't believe I live here.

two days...

It's Monday evening now and I'm drawing closer to the time that I leave my parent's house. I've been through a few ups and downs over the last few months living here. More downs than I'd like to have had, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I'm excited to be departing central IL for what is hopefully the last time. I've been working towards this departure for what seems like ages and while the final destination may have changed, I'm not sad about it at all. Moving to New Zealand is going to be an awesome adventure. I've been caught up with all the little things that are involved with a move like this and have sort of lost sight of the fun part of moving-getting to a new place! But today I spent a good hour and a half contacting my credit card companies to let them know I was leaving the country and you know what? The people I talked to were really excited for me and my move abroad. I found it interesting since these are random people that I just happened to get when I got through to customer service. People I've never talked to before and probably never will again. It was nice.So, as I mentioned in a previous post, I took my brother's senior pictures last week and wanted to post a couple for your perusal. I'm still trying to get the plugin working for Picasa for Aperture so I don't have to do the slow method, so until then, it's going to be slow going on this. Here are a couple good ones I took.

The other pictures obviously aren't senior pictures...they're from my trip to San Antonio, TX last week to see my brother graduate from Basic Training.

11 Days...

It's all coming to a head now. I'm departing LAX in 11 days to move to NZ. Craziness! My room at my parent's house is a war zone. Really bad. I went through my belongings and did manage to get all my clothes into one suitcase (I have less clothing than I thought) and had three boxes of stuff packed to ship to NZ. Yeah, more on that. I thought I was doing well with the whole packing thing and so the last day and a half I've been doing menial tasks like my taxes, organizing pictures into photo albums, sewing nonsense projects and basically piddling around. Well, I should have been using that time better because today I went to check on shipping costs to send my boxes to NZ. HAHAHAHAHA. Unless I have about 500 dollars to blow on this, I would need to rework my stuff I'm shipping. I really don't have that kind of money to blow at the moment, so I spent time researching the best method for my buck. I got 3 quotes, one was for shipping 110 lbs. for 443 dollars. One was for 80 lbs for 345 dollars and then last (and best) was for 100 lbs. at 305. I have to sort through all my boxes again and then figure out how to get the most important stuff in. Ridiculous. Guess what I'm working on tonight while I watch LOST? Yep.

I went out today to take my brother Matt's senior pictures. I'm not a fan of portrait photography, but I thought it would be a nice challenge for myself as a photographer. It was interesting since the sun wasn't cooperating with us. It was too bright and I'm fairly certain most of my pictures have to be deleted because he was squinty or had his eyes closed. haha. I'm going to edit those and hopefully get some good ones out of it tomorrow.

Mina would be proud of me. I haven't had a proper haircut in six months. I really haven't. I got bangs cut around Christmas, but I'm letting those grow out again. You can see by this picture that, as annoying as it is, I am really growing out my hair. It is basically every single day that I consider chopping it all off. Instead, I colored it recently. When I dyed it, it was more of a purple color and was shocking but it has settled into a nice red color now.

So I've got a lot to get done, but I will get it done and I will be on my way to start travels in one week. I'll be in Chicago and then in LA and then finally I'll be in NZ! How freaking awesome is that?