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?

spending my time

I have been sadly lacking in my blog posts and for that I apologize. Let's be honest though- I manage to keep myself so busy that I barely have time to sit down and write a blog. It's crazy. So I've got only two days of teaching left. Two more days of math, algebra, junior high love, and obsession with Twilight. I kid you not, the junior high kids I teach are almost all obsessed with Twilight. Since the movie was released on DVD this weekend I am sure that I will be inundated with comments and conversations about the movie. UGH! I really have no desire to read those books and can't wait to be out of the situation where I have to hear about it daily. I have three books that are waiting for me to read and I can't even manage to finish a magazine, let alone get into a book! I want to be done with all the craziness of teaching and just focus on my moving problems. Problems I have with moving--

1. I have to ship things to NZ, no question about that...the lady at the post office tried to tell me there's no slow method of shipping and that I'll have to ship priority. Can you guess how much it'd cost me to ship two or three boxes of about 15-20 lbs each? Over 150 per box, if I'm to listen to the lady at the post office. So I had to search around for shipping options. Ugh. I'm still going to have to pay more than I'd like, but there's just no option about the shipping- I have to ship stuff to NZ.

2. Luggage- I have a large suitcase, but I still need to get another one. Do you know why I must get one? Because I have to bring my sewing machine to NZ and I won't ship it. So I'm getting a suitcase and packing it and then having to deal with one more piece of luggage I didn't really want to deal with. But again, it must be done.

3. I have to fly from Chicago to LA. Since I booked my flights separately I have to deal with the new domestic flight laws. So I don't get any free checked luggage on my flight from Chicago to LA...so I'm sure I'll get hassle from the airline and have to deal with them as well and part with some money to get my two checked pieces of luggage. Fun times.

I've only got 21 days left in the US and I can't believe how much I have to do. I better get busy! There's so much to finish. I'm also taking a short trip to Texas this week. I get to see Stephen, my brother, graduate from Basic Training and just enjoy a short vaca before I come back to IL and go crazy for about two weeks before heading out. So I'm going to head to bed now and try to sleep before starting my last two days of teaching.

blustery inside and out...

I feel blustery lately. So much is happening in such a short time that there are definitely times where I feel like a wild spring wind.

I have a list of things to do before I fly away from here. It's a typed list that is two pages long. Seriously, what have I been doing the last four months? Nothing apparently! That's not true though, I have been doing things, but now it's down to crunch time before I uproot again. It always happens this way. I save a whole bunch of things to do until the last month or so I'm in a place. So it's nothing new to me. The difference this time is I have absolutely no idea when I'll come back. I know my visa is for a year, but I'm packing up like I'm never coming back to Shelbyville, IL (which I really hope does not happen!) I've spent the last few days going through everything I left in storage before I moved to South Korea two and a half years ago. It's amazing how much crap I kept. No really...I kept every single decoration from my first year out of college, all my dishes, fabric that was given to me (glad I kept that though), books--I have a tote locker full of books to go through! Good grief. I know I'm a packrat, but this is bordering on insane. So I'm going through everything I felt was important two years ago and wondering now whether it really is important (most of it isn't). I suppose it's a good thing that I'm having a garage sale before I leave, because I just have so much stuff!

I've done this before, where I have so much and then go on an almighty purge to get rid of the STUFF in my life. I feel like that's what I'm doing now. I did decide to leave one box at home- of keepsakes from high school and college (I even have a book full of my report cards and awards from grade school ---my mom is also a packrat---). I told her that when I finally settle down I'll have her send me the last box of belongings. I'm only taking with me to NZ what I need or what's important to me. I can't use those memories in NZ for my work, so at my parent's house they'll stay.

Speaking of NZ- I'm leaving in 34 days! I will get to the South Island of NZ on April 16th and on the 17th of April I have work! Well, I'll have to adjust very quickly to life in NZ. I think I can handle that though. It's the last ten teaching days that I'm unsure of my sanity survival skills! Yes, I am almost finished teaching math to junior high students. Seriously, they may be funny, but they are dense. It's astounding really. Teaching them has been very different from teaching kindergarten though, and I know I'm really just not cut out for the junior high crowd. The last week and a half we've been working on our ISAT testing. Well, if ever I doubted their stupidity, this was the breaking point for me- I now know that they really are indescribably dense. Really they are. It's incredible. I've gone over some of their work to see if they learned anything and retained anything for any given amount of time. Not a thing.


Last week before we got started we had an assembly to recognize the students who had met or exceeded the goals for the previous years' testing. Well, after the kept announcing kids who are failing most of their classes, I leaned over to another teacher and asked, "Just how low are the goals?" He just started laughing. But it's true. How low are the goals set when kids who never complete an assignment and never pass a test manage to meet or exceed goals?

So last Monday me and my brother Sam decided to take the kids from church to the St. Louis Zoo. Of course the few days before we went had been in the 60s and beautiful weather. Then the day we decide to go it's barely above freezing. So all bundled up we drive down to the zoo and walk around with 10 kids for a day. The kids LOVED it. Most of these kids haven't been to a big zoo before (some not even to a zoo) and this was quite the experience for them. Exhaustion is a mild understatement for how everyone felt when we packed up to go home. Hope you enjoy the pictures and I'll hopefully write something funny soon.

Stories to tell...

I realize, upon looking back on my posts, that I haven't been blogging very well. I haven't been sharing what's been going on in my daily life. I haven't taken the time to find the funny in my life. Believe me, it's there...I've just been ignoring it. With it being winter and still being in IL, it seems to be easier to find myself more depressed than happy. But a couple warm days and a forceful change of my outlook has brought me to this point. If I expect anyone to be reading my blogs, it really should be something worth reading. Take today.

So I'm a middle school math teacher for the time being. I've been doing this for six weeks now. Five more to go! Lately the eyes in the back of my head have started catching things that I'm sure I've just been missing for six weeks now. Like kids passing notes. Oh yes, I have become the teacher who manages to catch the notes that are DEFINITELY worth reading. Take last week. After I gave out the homework assignment for a class, I went back to my desk to start grading things while they worked. Well, somehow a boy in the class got a hold of a note between two of the girls in class. This guy is tall for an 8th grader, and one of the girls is the smallest in the school...shorter than him by a good 12 inches. She is bothering him to give her the note back and is most insistent. Disrupting the class is really not something I'm ok with, so I told this guy to give me the note and for the girl to sit down and do her work since she is failing my class. He dully gives me the note and I put it away for lunchtime reading. When I do read it later, it turns out the two girls were talking about sneaking out of their homes and then copying down math assignments from each other since one didn't have the work done (the one who, consequently, is five assignments behind and failing as well). Since it was a note, I couldn't do much. This week though, on Thursday, I was checking late assignments from some kids who happened to consist of two of the girls in the previous note. Well, it turns out they did the same assignment, on the same kind of paper, and happened to do the wrong assignment altogether. No kidding. So I got to pass out detentions for cheating yesterday. I stapled them to the assignment and then made an announcement to the entire class that cheating wasn't tolerated and that if you were going to cheat, it's just a shame it wasn't done well enough to fool me. I really enjoyed that whole episode.

One last note story...I also picked up two other notes yesterday (I told you I was getting good at this). I found out that there's a love triangle in m 7th grade class I have for both math and writing. I also found out that the sweet boy in the same class broke a girl's heart and likes someone else now. Oh the drama of junior high love. I remember those days. Haha.

I remember that I was the new kid in 7th grade and I had a crush on a boy in my class. I spent alot of that year sending him notes and trying to talk to him. It didn't work. Especially since my friends got together with him and sent me fake notes from him that he liked me too. It was pretty cruel. Then again, I wasn't so nice either. There was another guy in junior high who liked me, but I didn't like him at all. So every single day he would ask me out, and every single day I would turn him down. After months of this he finally stopped asking me and then we proceeded to go through four years of high school without saying a single word to each other (in a class of 28 that was a pretty impressive feat I would say). So I know junior high is a rough time, but they'll get past it and then life will move on. But for now, I'm torturing them the way I was tortured in school by my math teacher and just laugh to myself when I hear/read about the drama that is forefront to their lives. haha.

a good couple of days...

It's been over a week now since I decided to move to New Zealand and I am pleased to say that things are progressing awesomely for that move.

I applied for my working holiday visa, only one part left to finish up- getting the results of my chest x-ray sent in, and am glad that application is basically done. I also bought my plane ticket! I wasn't planning on it, but then I found one on sale for under 700 dollars and really couldn't pass that up. So I got the ticket and am leaving from LAX April 13th. Yeah, I know I'm in IL, I'll just book another flight from Chicago to catch my international flight that day. But it means I get to see one of my friends from college and see LA for a short while! I'm excited to see Adam again, it's been too long. Once I get to NZ, I've got a night to myself and a ferry ride down to the South Island to meet Laura the next day. I'm a little nervous about the ferry ride only because I'm not a fan of the ocean or boats. I will try to be ok with it though. Moving to New Zealand will be an adventure, that's for sure!

Once I'm there, I've got some work already lined up! It seems like things are lining up for me in NZ like I didn't think it would. Theatre work and sewing await me! YAH!

Last weekend I was out in the lovely weather and was able to take some pictures on a walk with my little brother. It was nice and I managed to get a few nice photos. Of course the warm weather didn't last and it's back to freezing temperatures and snow.

Today I was out of town with a friend. I spent my valentine's day with Vangie shopping and watching a movie. It was a very un-romantic day, but one of the better days I've had in awhile. I got some new clothes and they are really bright colors. I guess I can't really wait for it to get warm and wear spring clothes again. It'll be nice to get out more too and take pictures. The cold just isn't to my liking.

Enjoy these pictures and take a look at the rest of them at http://picasaweb.google.com/debinoxford