Moving Week: Day 4 & 5

Sorry that I didn’t post anything yesterday! We checked out of the hotel, and therefore lost their Internet, and the Internet at our house is still not working. L I was quite disappointed to go my first full day without posting anything, as well as feeling isolated with no Internet. I am currently at the library using their free ½ hour of Internet (I biked through nasty rain and tornado-like winds to get to said library, so I hope you’re all appreciative). J J is going to work on our Internet when he gets off work today, so hopefully we will have it up and running this evening.

The last two days have been quite emotional for me. I was eager to check out of the hotel, but when the time came, I was also a bit sad. We have enjoyed being there, and Kirsten (who helps manage it and cleans the rooms) and I have become friends. I will miss seeing her around, although we do have plans to hang out soon.

After I left the hotel, I went to the car dealership to take our new car to the garage for a pre-purchase check. What this means is that my first experience driving on the left side of the road was by myself, in a car that we didn't even own yet! Yikes! Fortunately, it went very well. I think that I have learned how to be comfortable on the left side from riding around with J, and that made a big difference. I only turned on the wipers instead of the blinkers twice, which I think is pretty good. What I found funny, though, was that when I turned on the blinker with my right hand (which is correct here), I didn't feel like I was signalling, and my left hand was itching to flip on the blinkers! Habit is a pretty powerful thing. Anyway, my nervousness was unnecessary, and my first Kiwi drive was great. More importantly, the car is in fantastic condition, and I really like driving it.

While I waited for the car to be done at the garage, I felt a bit homeless, because the house was too far away to walk to, I’d left my bike at the car dealership, and I’d already checked out of the hotel. Fortunately, I knew just where to go. I walked to Jan’s café, and spent several wonderful hours there, hanging out in the kitchen with her, helping make muffins, looking at pictures, doing a Code Cracker from the paper together, and visiting with Karen when she stopped by. It made me so happy to have a haven to go to, and to be welcomed and appreciated by such nice people. What a homey feeling.

I returned the car to the dealership, I biked out to our house to meet Adele (the landlady). She was appreciative of the work we’d done so far, and decided that several windows in the house (including the one J had worked on), as well as both doors, were in bad enough condition that they should just be replaced. Which is wonderful news for us, because she is just going to take care of it, and then we’ll have new, functional windows and doors and not have to worry about it anymore.

After Adele left, I did some more cleaning and organizing, while listening to Great Big Sea. They are a talented, energetic group from Newfoundland, and you should look them up. Anyway, I was cleaning and dancing and having a good time, and then Dear Home Town came on. It is one of my favourite songs, and I love to sing along. But then it came to the lines, “Tell my mom I miss her loving smile, and tell my father I truly miss his laughter.” To my great surprise, I burst into tears in the middle of my enthusiastic singing and almost dropped the plate I was washing. I didn’t get an “I miss home/family” feeling, I just got terribly sad. It only lasted a couple more songs (specifically, until Mary Mack came on, because it’s impossible to be sad during that song), but it was quite upsetting, especially because I was totally unprepared for it, and still don’t fully understand why it happened like that. I think that (whether this is logical or not), moving to NZ feels like much more of a separation than moving to Canada or even France. It’s just so far away. I LOVE when people come to visit me, but I am realizing how infrequently that is going to happen, and that’s hard to accept. I haven’t been thinking about this sort of thing much, with how busy and excited I've been, and I think it just hit me all at once. But I feel much better now.

At 4:00, I met J at the bank and we signed the loan papers and got the money, which was a relief, because I did worry a bit that it wouldn't go through for some reason. But it did, and I headed home while J took the money over to the car dealership. I get to pick up the car tomorrow (Thursday) afternoon, and I’m very excited! I haven’t even owned a car in years, and I have never owned a car anywhere near this nice, so it is all very exhilarating.

Adele came back to measure all the windows and doors, and J fought with the Internet for a while, before having to give up. The problem is, the company says they set it up, but it doesn't work. We’re not sure if they set it up wrong, or if our router doesn't work. We need to find out which one ourselves, because if the company sends someone out and it turns out that it was our router, then we have to pay $300, which is no good. J is going to go over to a colleague’s house after work and try the router with his Internet, so we’ll know if it works. Cross your fingers!

J and I went out to a nice dinner at Spice Guru Indian restaurant, which has a butter chicken dish with rice that is maybe my favourite food in the whole world. Then we came back to the house and went to bed early. Unfortunately, yesterday marked the beginning of quite unseasonably cold weather, and we had kept the windows open to have continued ventilation for the paint, so our room was COLD! The last tenant left us a space heater, and we have a nice quilt, but I still woke up cold a few times. We will have to figure out appropriate heating choices sooner than we thought, as it is very cold today, and is supposed to be cold for several days before it remembers that it’s spring. 

On a related note, cold weather comes up from the south here, which will take some getting used to. I biked south from out house to the library, directly into a freezing cold south wind. Yuck. If the wind changes by the time I bike home and is blowing in my face again, I will be very disappointed.

Our second load of furniture was delivered this morning. That means that J has a desk, I have a dresser/vanity, and we have a fridge, table, chairs, bedside tables, and coffee table. The first thing I did was unpack my clothes, which felt so very good!

In sum, it’s been a very busy few days, I am overly dependent on the Internet, we have a great landlady, cold weather stinks, and we love our new house!

Speaking of our house, here is a picture of the outside. Cute, hey? (By the way, the Kiwi 'hey?' is like the Canadian 'eh?' which is like the American 'huh?') The side doors/windows open out, which is very pretty and will be so nice when it's warm. The porch needs a new coat of paint, but Adele is going to do that this summer, so that will be nice.

Most of the bushes in front of the house are white roses, and just a few of them have started blooming. It is going to be beautiful when they all bloom.