Hello Everyone,

I hope you are all doing well and that you are reaching for dreams of your own wherever you are right now!

On Wednesday in the morning after dropping the boys off to school I headed off to Mt. Eden Frasier’s, a coffee shop, to meet up with a girl named Elina from Sweden. She was super awesome and it was really great to get a perspective on the similarities and differences between Sweden and NZ. We were able to catch up for a bit then I headed off to walk and pick up Brooklyn on my way home. Brooklyn and I stopped off at the park and had a picnic lunch, played with a couple other children who had the same idea and then hurried home before the downpour of rain started! We made it home luckily before the rain and Brooklyn will tell you it is because “the clouds were being so nice and holding in all their water to wait for us to get inside so we need to thank them, Kelcee!” Little kids are so adorable sometimes. Seriously it is so interesting so see how they think about things or how they process information when you explain things to them.  After work I rushed out and caught a bus to Britomart (major transport centre/shopping mall) here in Auckland so that I could catch a ferry across the Warf to Devonport beach to meet a group of Au pairs for fish and chips. I was a little late and the weather was a bit overcast but luckily the girls were still there when I arrived. We had a group of about 8 of us there and were able to enjoy each other company and a beautiful sunset and take a little break during the week. After the sunset Anna one of the awesome Au Pair Link Coordinators was nice enough to give me and another girl a ride home and we drove past the “Block NZ” houses which are real houses from a reality TV show here in New Zealand. On the show they have 4 groups, mostly couples or siblings in sets of 2, who have to follow certain rules during challenges and redecorate, renovate, and landscape these houses for auction. At the end the houses are auctioned off and whatever they make over the value of the home the couple gets to keep. I think the winning couple made almost 2.4 million dollars or something outrageous like that! It was dusk so a bit hard to see the houses but it was still really cool to see something that people here in NZ are crazed about! The show was actually really cool and I was totally into it!

 On Thursday I was able to meet up with Hetal and Sandra, two German girls, at the Auckland War Memorial Museum and the Winter Gardens. I was able to explore it in more depth since I didn’t have a 2 year old boy with me and it still is absolutely amazing. I had no idea that New Zealand was so involved in WWII but they were an integral part of the war just like everywhere else. The Winter Botanical gardens were amazing. They had three main sections: the flower dome, the exotic dome, and the fern forest. In each of the sections I was amazed to see the size and diversity of all the plants. I know it may seem like I am going a little koo-koo over all the plants here but they really are magnificent. In the flower greenhouse it was teeming with colorful flowers of all shapes and sizes and of course it smelled lovely in there. The exotic dome had an internal heater so it was very warm for the plants to prosper. Inside this one we found these sweet red flowers that looked as if they were growing out of each other, an enormous tree with leaves literally the size of my entire body, and tons of plants that looked like they came out of Willy Wonka’s garden (except of course they were not food)! Hetal and I decided to eat some lunch there in the park so I shared my sandwich with here and she in turn shared with the birds. Within minutes the ground around our bench was swarming with birds and they were not scared of us at all. Literally they hopped on my shoulder and my knee and feet. I didn’t really know what to do but I definitely wanted them off of me! Pigeons are not my friend and I was not about to let them poop on me!!! Gross! So I hurried gathered our stuff and we made our way away from that area up to the museum to meet up with Sandra. The moral of this story is, don’t let your friends feed the birds unless you want to share your lunch with the whole flock! I looked like one of those crazy bird ladies off Mary Poppins! The museum was really cool again this time and we were able to see the entire thing and get our free museum member cardsJ

This weekend I met up with Ricarda (German) and another girl named Merce from Spain and we ate at “Circus Circus”, which is a circus themes coffee shop, for lunch then climbed up Mt. Eden. It was really good to meet up with her again and continue building our friendship. Merce does not speak English very well so it is sometimes difficult to communicate but I think it is important to always make anyone feel included in the conversation so I do my best to try and include everyone. Also since she is from Spain she obviously speaks Spanish so those 2 years of Spanish that I took are coming in handy sometimes!!! Thank you Senior Richards!! From my house it is like a 45 minute walk from me and then a 20 minute walk up the hill. So needless to say I am getting lots of exercise here in New Zealand! The view from the top of Mt. Eden was so cool. During orientation I went on a tour and this was one of the stops we made and took pictures at the summit. It’s great to climb to the top instead of driving like I did the first time because then you get a real sense of how high it is and the finish is so much sweeter since it is a reward for making it to the top. Looking out over the whole city and actually be able to say where things were and point out landmarks of places we had been was really satisfying. I guess it is making me feel like I am getting a sense of belonging here in New Zealand when I can revisit a place and recognize many other places from the top as well. 

Later that night Ashley came into town and we went to and Art in the Dark presentation at western park in Ponsonby, Auckland. On our way we caught a bus and then used our growing navigational skills (and our skills of asking for help from passersby) to walk the rest of the way to the park! The park is near what we in the states would call the red light district so we saw some very interesting stores and people on Karangashape otherwise known as “K” road. We had to walk up K road in order to find Ponsonby Rd where the park was located. On our walk we did pass this really creepy awesome looking grave yard so we walked among the dead for a little while and I have decided I definitely want to be buried in New Zealand when I die. When we finally made it to the park we were a tad bit early so while we waited for it to get dark we explored the streets around the area. Ponsonby was definitely a happening area last night with tons of restaurants, bars, clubs, and stores full of people and the streets buzzing with more and more people. We found an awesome little pizza bar called Freeman & Grey that was actually affordable unlike most places around here. So as more and more people were joining our group we met and communed in there. Although it was super loud it was a nice place and we had an overall good time. As we made our way over to the park to start the exhibit we noticed the coolest traffic sign I have ever seen. When people when the speed limit it said on the screen words of encouragement, and when people sped it displayed the words “Chill baby Chill”, all of us Au Pairs just thought that was the funniest thing ever! I was trying to video the sign and so I was saying to the cars, “speed people speed” so that the sign would say the funny words. There was a police officer near when I was saying this and Ashley said he just started laughing at me! We met up with 3 other groups of Au Pairs while we were there which made our group 10 girls! Four of us were from the US and then we had 1 girl from Spain, 2 from Germany, 1 from France, 1 from Sweden and 1 from Canada.  It was really cool to meet up with new girl and see how their stay has been and which things they like about New Zealand. Facebook is so amazing I mean honestly it has helped me to meet so many people that I would not have been able to meet otherwise. Some of them were girls that I had met before and others were all together new so it was a complete success. The Art in the dark display was really interesting because it is always intriguing to me to see what others imagine is art and trying to figure out what the artist was trying to portray or tell through their masterpiece. One of the reasons this event is so cool is because many of the exhibits use light, color, sound, or video to display the artist’s purpose so it can be very exhilarating. Throughout the park there are many tree roots and knots crawling over the ground and since there were supposedly over 10,000 people attending the event that night, we had to brave the mud and roots and forge a path across the park in the dark. Surprisingly we made it out of the night with only two casualties, Ashley cut her foot and got some blisters and I slipped in the mud and was a bit embarrassed but otherwise we were unharmed! Ashley and I left the group a tad bit early so that we could sort out a bus ride home and as we walked to the bus we saw our bus coming and literally were sprinting toward it but it left just as we were approaching so we had to wait 30 minutes for the next one. I was just happy that there were even buses running this late at night. After we finally arrived home we found that Ashley’s car battery was dead and do we spend the next 40 minutes searching the house at 1 in the morning super quietly for jumper cables or something to jump it. In the end we were not able to find it and she just had to stay over and we worked it out in the morning. Today I am just relaxing. I am trying not to spend a lot of money so that I can make the best of my south island tour and so I am choosing to do fewer activities or find free things to do even though I still have to pay for transport. I’m lucky enough to live close to the city so there are free things on all the time and I am able to still have some great experiences even though I do not have tons of money to spend at the moment! 

Thank you to all those who read!

Cheers

Kelcee