Update(it's been awhile)

Hi everyone...sorry it’s been so long since we’ve updated I know some have been asking for an update for awhile now. A lot’s been going on so here’s the summary.

Trip Home
Gay and I have been anxiously awaiting our trip back to the States and have been busy making the necessary preparations. It’s only about 2 weeks away and the way time has been flying lately, we’ll be taking off in a couple of minutes. For those of you who don’t know about our schedule, we both take off on June 18th and we both land in San Francisco. I then take a flight to Phoenix, AZ to hang out with my family (and Heather) for about a week while Gay stays in SF. On June 26th, I go to SF and hang out for awhile until we all head up to Napa for Gay’s sisters wedding. We then fly back on the 7th and I make it back to New Zealand in time to watch the World Cup finals on July 9th (I have money riding on the Hungarian team, they’re going to do it this year!). We’re both looking forward to seeing everyone and spending time with as many of our friends and family as is possible. Top on the agenda of things to do while home is EATING! The food here is less than exciting and we miss all the great styles you can get in the States. The first thing Gay is doing when she gets off the plane is going straight to Burma Superstar for some Samosa soup and Tea Leaf salad.

Work Visas
We got our Work Visas approved! After much stress, confusion and a bit of tears we finally got everything sorted with our visa situation. So we’re both good to stay here for another year provided we don’t change jobs. How long we’re actually going to stay here is still being discussed. To that extent, it’s funny how feelings and perceptions have switched between Gay and I. When we first started planning this whole adventure, I had in my mind that 2 years would be a good enough time to really get a feel and appreciation for where you are. While Gay was like “no way in hell am I staying there for 2 years.” So we settled on 1.5 years. Now as we’re approaching the 1 year mark I sometimes find myself feeling like “2 years? Why? Can we start planning our trip home?” While Gay is settling in and is comfortable staying for awhile longer. I haven’t really found the exact reason for my restlessness; I’m having a blast here with lots of stuff going on. I’m curious to see how I’m going to feel after this trip back, whether it’ll make me more homesick or kind of rejuvenate my interest in staying in NZ longer.

Misc…
We bought another car. Our current car sucks its 4 wheel drive and its way too expensive for Gay since she commutes everyday. So we got this little Honda Prelude which is kind of sporty and has a sun roof which is nice. I still commute by bike or at least I did. The bike I was using got stolen last week but it was my fault since I left it outside a pub on Friday and forgot about it all weekend. Needless to say it wasn’t where I left it by the time I looked on Monday morning. Oh well, it was falling apart and one of the brakes was shot so it wasn’t that safe to begin with.

It’s getting frigid here. Winter is settling in, and I’m looking forward to doing some snowboarding at some point. But other than that I’m realizing that when it comes to being in the cold all the time I’m a little bitch. I can’t stand it. I can’t get out of bed in the morning and when I do I put on as many as clothes as possible. Living in San Francisco I had to put up with the cold, but not the frigid.

The band is going well, we’ve been able to secure a spot at a pub in town playing every other weekend and opening for the house band. WE’ve been calling ourselves “The Immigrants” since 3/5ths of us are not Kiwi.
We’ve been having some on nights some off nights, but it’s always a lot of fun. This coming weekend we get to open for a National Act!! Yes, a band is coming all the way from Wellington and we get to open for them. Not only that, we get to play through this bands rig and they have fancy amps and monitors! So hopefully we’ll have one of our “on” nights. Last Satruday was a big night since about an hour before we played, one of the biggest rugby games all year was on and people were out watching and partying. So after the game a lot of people came into our gig and we actually had people up and dancing, it was pretty cool and nerve racking.


That’s all for now. We’ll put some pictures on soon…