A Life of Streiff

We went for a walk our first day here and discovered the great place.

This is our first day in New Zealand. After taking a much needed nap, we didn't sleep too well on the 13 hour flight here, we went for a walk to see what the neighborhood looked like. It is so beautiful. Lush green vegetation everywhere. The streets wind up and down with cute little houses, many in a jungle like setting. The beach is only a few blocks from our home and I suspect that we'll spend much of our weekends and evenings down there. Richard Hunter, the area public affairs director picked us up from the airport and took us to the area office to pick up our car. Just the thought of driving on the other side of the road about scared us to death and the actual experience was even worse. Every time I go to signal I turn the windshield wipers on instead. I hope the other drivers can tell by the wipers as to which way we plan to turn. There are lots of round abouts here and you have to be a bit aggressive to get in and out. That coupled with right seat driving has made our first two days here rather sporty. I have only had one incident of driving on the wrong side of the road. We were leaving a parking lot and I had to hurry to get out. My instincts took over and I took off on The wrong side of the road. both the other driver and myself had to swerve to avoid a collision. He didn't even honk at me or anything. they are much nicer here than in the states. We did however need to go back home so I could change my shorts. We have a Tom Tom GPS in our car and that little thing is wonderful. We have made shopping trips to the Mall and other grocery stores and it gets you right there. The sweet little voice is so kind and she doesn't even get made when I don't follow instructions just right. She just kindly tells me to take the next turn and gets me back on the right track. Kind of like the Holy Ghost. We love all the little shops and markets that they have here. We can walk to lots of them and others are just 10 or 20 minutes away. This is all quite different from Taiwan but the country side is beautiful from what we have seen and we already love it here.