The Famous NZ Glowworms

Day 3 started with a visit to the famous glowworm caves in Waitomo.  They're technically not glowworms, they're a fungus gnat, but glowworms is a much more marketable turn-of-phrase.   Similar to a spider, they create these little webs that act like fishing lines.  They wait until they feel them vibrating from a catch and then pull them up and eat what they caught.  Our guide Ruben smacked the water really loudly with his inner tube and it made all the little strings vibrate so the "glowworms" all lit up a bit brighter (it's an old tour guide trick he said). They are luminescent until they go into their cocoon (about 9 months I think), then once they come out as a fly/gnat they only live for 2 more days.

The glow worms are the blue dots and the blue 'lines' are their
fishing webs - the giant bug you see  is something they caught.  

We did our tour with Tube It, and although I really wasn't sure what to expect I had a great time.  Josh, Sally, Irwan, Mary-Kay, and myself were the only ones on the tour - everyone else chose to stay dry and just do a walking tour inside the cave.  We put on our wet suits, boots, and mining hats and hopped in the van.  I anticipated being driven to the entrance of a cave, but no.  We stopped in a field and our guide led us through a gate and into the pasture.  We're all traipsing through this cow pasture, walking up over a hill and heading towards a small wooded area - we certainly looked like we were inappropriately dressed considering our surroundings.

As we were walking we found out that we were actual on top of the cave system.   There are three caves in the area made accessible for the tourists, but even the parts we visit are only a small portion of the entire cave system.  I believe 85 km of caves and passages have been surveyed so far and we only went through a 1 km section.

We climbed down into the cave and all had a seat and the guide told us to turn the lights off on our helmets.  We sat there in the pitch black talking about the caves and the glowworms for a bit and then he told us to switch our lights back on and off we went.  He told us a bit later that they do that to figure out if anyone is going to freak out later on inside the cave.  He said kids especially turn their lights right back on because they're scared of the dark.  If you can't sit in the dark for 5 minutes you'll never make it through the cave.  We started out walking and eventually got to the point where we needed our small tubes.  At one point we had to climb up this ladder and then he had us turn around, holding our tubes to our behinds, and just sit back - dropping a few feet into the water below.  Not my cup of tea, but thankfully it wasn't a along drop.  Towards the end there was a water slide too so that was a nice end to the tour.  After being in the dark cave for so long the greenery outside the cave when we emerged was quite spectacular with the sun shining through.

On our way to Rotorua we stopped to so Josh, Shirley, and our guide Andy could do the Zorb.  Some of you may have heard of this odd Kiwi invention, it's the "recreation or sport of rolling downhill inside an orb, generally made of transparent plastic."  It was fun to watch, but not enticing enough for me to pay money to experience for myself.

Shortly after settling into our accommodation we headed to Mitai Maori Village for their dinner and cultural show.  We had a quick tour of the  traditional village they had built, showed us the food they'd prepared (an authentic hangi meal that is cooked in the earth oven known as ‘the hangi pit’), and then headed to the cultural show.  On our way there we stopped in the woods and saw the warriors, in traditional dress, traveling down the Wai-O-Whiro Stream as was done many years ago in a 'waka' (ancient war canoe) hand carved by the Mitai family.  In the "auditorium" the family took us back in time to see the ancient Maori customs and traditions that were part of their lives.  The presentation included the retelling of legends, a display of weaponry and combat, an explanation of 'ta moko' (their tattooing - it demonstrates heritage and social standing), and even a poi dance and haka.  It was a fascinating show, but left me wanting to know more.  Andy told me that if I visit the Te Papa museum in Wellington I can learn more about their culture.

Coromandel to Waitomo

From the tour pamphlet: "It's no secret that many blockbuster hits have been filmed in New Zealand due to its incredible landscapes."  From what I have seen so far in my trip it is indeed stunning.  Just the scenery along the drive yesterday was amazing.  Today we visited Cathedral Cove, which might be recognizable to some from "The Chronicles of Narnia" movie.  There's also a spot in this area where a music video was filmed, but I've never seen it either.

As you can tell from the photos, it was rainy and overcast, so I was thankful for my raincoat.  It was a lovely "hike" down to the cove, and I'm still always surprised by how many little islands are always out in the water.  I suppose for so much volcanic activity in this area I shouldn't be surprised.

Our next stop for the day was the town of Hamilton, where Andy, our tour guide, grew up.  His family all still lives here and he showed us where he went to high school and played rugby.  Then he took us to his favorite spot in town, Hamilton Gardens.  About 50 years ago the location of these gardens was actually the town garbage dump!  They have made quite an improvement since then.  I appreciated how the garden was subdivided into smaller, themed gardens; I thought it was a very good idea and they did an excellent job with each theme.  The rest of our afternoon was spent traveling to the town of Waitomo where we would spend the night.  The area is famous for its glowworm caves, but that's a story for tomorrow....

The Hamilton Gardens

Touring the North Island - Day 1

I slept marginally well, but was awake at 5am due to jet lag anyway.  It ended up being an extremely stressful morning here in Auckland.  It could have mostly been prevented I suppose, but "hindsight is 20-20", as they say.  I attempted to use the Uber app again in the morning (it wouldn't work the night before), but had no luck.  I called two taxi companies, but both said it would take half an hour before a car could get to me.  I called Haka Tours and warned them that I would probably be late since I was having trouble getting to the meet up location.  She told me which bus to catch, but of course that was not simple either (I waited at the wrong stop and attempted to wave down 2 of the buses but they waved me off - I finally got to the right stop to be picked up).  Once I finally got on the bus, and was almost to the stop I needed, I got an email from the tour company.  Apparently I was heading to the wrong meet up location!  They gave me the new location and the number for a taxi company.  I arrived 40 minutes late to the tour orientation, but they didn't have to wait for me and I still got some breakfast so I guess it ended well.

The group is a nice mix of ages, couples, and solo travelers.  We spent most of the day driving, but we did stop at Mount Eden on our way out of Auckland for some lovely views of the city.  From there we headed towards the Coromandel.  We stopped at Thames (they pronounce it Tims), the largest town in the Coromandel, for a lunch break.  I had a mince meat pie, how I've missed them!  From there we continued the drive, it's extremely winding, following the coast and going up over the mountains.

  The town where we're staying the evening is called Whitianga (but it seems a WH is pronounced as an 'f' so that was odd).  Here we got to "carve" our own tiki pendant from bone.  In reality we were mostly sanding, they had already cut the shapes out for us.  There were 3 choices and I chose the Koru for my pendant.  It was a very interesting task and the gentleman was incredibly talented; some of his pieces were amazing. 

Arturo is a master carver!  He explained the process and
would fix any mistakes we made.

Touchdown in New Zealand

I made it (as most of you are already aware).  Despite the length of time it takes to make such a trip, it was uneventful, thankfully!  It had once again slipped my mind to make sure I knew how to get to my hotel.  I booked a bus from the airport but didn't know if it would drop me at my hotel or if I needed to figure out the closest point and walk (every city is different and I probably should have researched these details beforehand so that my jet-lagged brain didn't have to work so hard).  As it happened, God sent me a nice young Chinese man on the bus to help me out.  He gave me his bus map and showed me where I needed to get off.  He was the same age and also doing the Working Holiday Visa.  A couple beside us over heard our conversation and told me of a possible job opportunity opening up in Christchurch in May.  I think sometimes we have our lives so planned out that we never give God a chance to show us how He's looking out for us.  Despite not knowing if this tip will pan out it was encouraging.

Auckland, New Zealand

As I had imagined, Australia and New Zealand are similar in many ways.  A lot of the chains I knew in Australia are also here in NZ, such as Harvey Normans, Woolworths (although they call it Countdown), Jay Jays, Bunnings Warehouse, etc. so it makes it feel less foreign.  I've also come to realize that I can't tell the Aussie accent from the Kiwi one - at least not yet.  My first full day had me setting up my bank account and getting my debit card, purchasing a phone plan and getting a mobile number, applying for my IRD (tax number to be able to work), and the like.  Not much excitement, but I'll finish this out with some trivia for you --

1. What is New Zealand's highest mountain (either the Maori or English name is fine)?
2. Name the largest city in New Zealand.
3. What is the capital of New Zealand?
4. What sea lies between Australia and New Zealand (hint: it's a variation of the name of an Australian state)?
5. Name the country's international rugby team.
6. What does the Maori name of New Zealand - Aotearoa mean?
7. It is one of the three countries in the world that has two official national anthems of equal standing.  One is "God Defend New Zealand", what is the other?

1.  Mount Cook or Aoraki
2.  Auckland
3.  Wellington
4.  Tasman 
5.  All Blacks
6.  Long White Cloud
7.  "God Save the Queen"

Another Grand Adventure

It’s hard to know where one should start when writing a post about embarking on a new adventure in life.  For me, the process was painstakingly slow.  I can still be an extremely slow decision maker, despite my best efforts to become better at making decisions.  My return to Australia in March of 2017 was probably the beginning of my thoughts on New Zealand.  In my original, big-picture plans I would have returned to Australia for a visit and then headed straight to NZ for a year.  The opportunity for a promotion and a pay-raise at work changed that exact plan, leaving me to contemplate if I even wanted to move to NZ in 2018.  As I’m sure you’ve now surmised, I am moving to New Zealand, but it took me about 7 months to decide.  Turning 29 and realizing that if I did not go in 2018 that I would forever lose my chance at the Working Holiday Visa certainly played a factor in getting me motivated to bite the bullet and buy that one-way ticket (cue the LeAnn Rimes lyrics).  Unsurprisingly, a lot of turmoil at work in the weeks following my decision to leave did not help me feel as if I had made the right choice.  Lots of prayers from friends and family have helped with the anxiety of such a big move, but I still have my moments.

So what, you may be thinking, is my plan exactly?  Who buys a one-way ticket and heads into the unknown, just because they can?  In my head this all sounds so reasonable, but when I see the reactions on the faces of others as they hear me say it out loud I sometimes wonder…  New Zealand is made up of two main islands (the North Isalnd, Ika-a-Māui, and the South Island, Te Waka-a-Māui), so I’m flying into Auckland (the largest city in NZ) and then taking a 10 day tour of the North Island.  For the month of April I’ve taken a home and pet-sitting assignment in Christchurch, which is on the South Island.  The “plan” is to be able to find some sort of employment while I have a roof over my head.  If I can’t find a job, I’ll then need to decide if I stick around Christchurch and keep searching, or move on to another city and try again.  I've got 6 whole weeks planned out; not much when you think of an entire year, but it's more than I had when I moved to Australia.  I’ve applied with some temp agencies in Christchurch and I still receive notices of potential house sitting assignments, so I have some opportunities.  I ultimately have no idea how it all will pan out.  Trusting God to take care of me when I don’t have a plan is certainly not easy for a type-A personality like myself – I prefer to have everything planned out, my ducks in a row so to speak – but He showed me time, and time again, while in Australia, that He is far better at planning than I am.

♫♪ Trust and obey, for there's no other way to be happy in Jesus, than to trust and obey ♪♫

The Land of Fire & Ice

I read an article in Lonely Planet about Iceland about a year ago and decided I would add it to my list.  It sounded incredibly fascinating, and seemed like an easy enough trip.  When I found out in early May that I had to use some vacation time (a long story), I tried to convince my cousin that we should go to Iceland.  She was not easily convinced, but after several failed attempts to book trips elsewhere I finally won her over.  Well, to be fair, I think Pinterest pictures of the Blue Lagoon won her over, but regardless of where the credit lies, I found a good deal and she said "Yes!"

WOW Airlines now flies from Pittsburgh to Reykjavík non-stop, and at a very reasonable price, so it's actually very easy to go for a long weekend; which is basically what we did, just during the week.  We flew out Monday night (arrived early Tuesday morning) and left Friday afternoon.  If we were to do it over I might choose a different flight arrival time, or perhaps I'd book a hotel night for the night we left (meaning we could check into our room at 6am when we arrived).  Depending on the difference in cost between flight times, it might be cheaper to have the extra hotel night expense.  Anyway, Tuesday was a bit brutal since I don't function well without proper rest and I can never sleep well on planes.  We made the best use of our early morning by settling into some lounge chairs in the lobby and trying to sleep, then we decided to go find a bakery (this act unwittingly set the tone for our trip) before our tour began at 9:30am.

We did a tour of the city (obligatory photos below) and also visited the Northern Lights Center where we learned about the aurora, got our hopes up about seeing the aurora, and saw spectacular photographs of said phenomenon.

Reykjavík with Hallgrímskirkja Church in the background

HÖFÐI House - where Reagan and Gorbachev met in October 1986

Hallgrímskirkja - Lutheran (Church of Iceland) 

Viking statue outside the Saga Museum

We also had a quick tour of Perlan (The Pearl); four hot-water storage tanks, situated on a hill, on top of which they created a beautiful glass dome that houses a restaurant and gift shop.  Surrounding the dome is an observation deck with fantastic views of the city.  They just opened a man-made ice cave inside one of the old tanks, but we didn't have time to visit that. We returned to our hotel around 2pm, and were thankfully allowed to check into our rooms and get some proper rest.  We would be heading out to attempt to view the elusive Northern Lights at 9pm.

Significance

It has been a long week at work.  The new system has been giving us (mostly me) a lot of trouble this week.  We shipped over 1800 packages last Tuesday with no major issues.  Beginners luck.  With our official "go-live" date occurring this Monday (we went live early, and a bit unexpectedly, for one client last week), things have been a struggle since, to say the least.  I didn't get home until nearly 8pm on Wednesday night and the issues still were not resolved!  Then Thursday morning God brought me to Hebrews 10:26-39 in my devotions (or time of personal worship as my Pastor prefers to call it).  I just couldn't stop the tears.  How often do I count "the blood of the covenant by which he (I) was sanctified a common thing"?  Probably every day.  I rarely give it any thought.  Then verse 34 reminded me of the prayer request from Advancing Native Missions a couple weeks ago that our pastor brought to us.  There were Syrian refugees in Turkey who were going back into Syria to baptize some new believers.  They had asked for prayer that if they were captured that they would die quickly, and that if they were tortured that they wouldn't deny Christ.  I just didn't even know how I was to respond to it all.  The first notation from my sermon notes this past Sunday was "Lord, am I lethargic in my walk with you?"  The world is a mess and I lost sleep Wednesday night because our shipping system isn't operating properly!!  What am I doing!?  But, I had to remember the rest of the sermon; a sermon about a life of significance.  In doing my job well and working hard I am "being merciful to God's reputation"- my work does matter, it just may not look as grand as the tasks to which God has called others.

"Drudgery is one of the finest touchstones of character there is. Drudgery is work that is very far removed from anything to do with the ideal – the utterly mean,* grubby things; and when we come in contact with them we know instantly whether or not we are spiritually real. Read John 13; we see there the Incarnate God doing the most desperate piece of drudgery, washing fishermen’s feet, and He says – “If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, ye also ought to wash one another’s feet.” It requires the inspiration of God to go through drudgery with the light of God upon it. Some people do a certain thing and the way in which they do it hallows that thing for ever afterwards. It may be the most commonplace thing, but after we have seen them do it, it becomes different. When the Lord does a thing through us, He always transfigures it." -- Oswald Chambers

*mean: as used here, something or someone ordinary, common, low, or ignoble, rather than cruel or spiteful."

significance (noun)

1.  importance; consequence
2.  meaning; import

3.  the quality of being significant or having a meaning