Here’s our house for the next 12 months. It’s a little yellow house that is clean and well lit inside, which is more than can be said for many of the rentals. Our address is 70 Checketts Ave, Halswell, Christchurch, 8025, New Zealand (southern hemisphere, planet earth, etc etc). I had to pick up the keys from the landlord’s house in a ritzy part of Fendalton (Christchurch), and I got a taste of what it’s like to be second class. Their house is VERY nice, made with good materials and bedecked with expensive furniture. We’ve gone backwards in the general societal ranking, paying expensive rent to those who own the house. The realization felt lousy. There’s a tint to the word “renter,” like if you’re a renter it’s because you’re too short-sighted to save up a down payment and own a house, or to incompetent to maintain a house of your own. Of course this isn’t always the case, especially in cities, but it still doesn’t feel good. I have to ask permission to paint the closet.

Milo likes the house. The yard is fenced and the kitchen cupboards are empty enough for him to fit into. I set up his room while he was sleeping in the car, and when we first walked in he gave a little “ah,” like “oh, this is my space.” I put the cheerful red blanket Emily made him on the floor like a rug and our colorful beach towels on other floor spaces, and he has the blanket Omi made him in the port-a-crib.

The shipment containing our stuff (dining table, dishes, couch, beds, etc) won’t be arriving for another 3 weeks, so the house is a bit bare at the moment. The landlords generously lent us a mattress, comforter, two living room chairs and a couple dishes, so here we are, eating dinner on the living room floor the first night. Try eating noodles with no fork sometime….but since that night we found a set of passable silverware at a flea market that includes both forks and spoons, a good thing.

I finally found one thing that’s cheaper here than in the US (or Owego, at least)–spices at the Indian food import store! I had seen the sign a while back so today, having nothing better to do, Milo and I stopped in. I’ve never seen spices in bulk like this before, the scents as you open each bin rise up and envelope you. Even Garam Masala had its own bin. I must have looked discombobulated, juggling my sharpie and several slippery plastic bags, because a thoughtful employee collected my spices off the floor and into a shopping basket. The store also has bulk flours (including ones I’ve never heard of) and more types of dried legumes than I thought existed. It was delightful. I plan to try every legume there, systematically, but I restrained myself this first time and only purchased two. Most don’t have English names.

Can you believe this color? I wonder if tumeric can be used as a dye. The spices are so powdery and soft that I’m glad Milo was safely strapped to my back–he would have loved dabbling in them, and the lower bins are at that perfect reachable height.

The labels and prices are probably too small to read in the photo, but ground cloves is $70/kg. That’s about $2.10/oz, NZ dollars, or $1.60/oz US dollars. Cloves were the priciest I saw, most were $15-20/kg. Mom, you want me to send you some?

I had a crappy crumby no good very bad day yesterday, culminating in having my wallet stolen from under my nose at the library. And it rained again to boot. But this morning we had a nice rainbow outside our window, which was cheerful, and must mean the sun still exists. Here’s hoping for a better day today. I’m going to take Milo to a play group to expend some energy, and luckily I had my license in my hand as my wallet was stolen, so I still have that (and my credit card!), and can legally drive and buy groceries.

Lots of ways to get money from the US to NZ, but everyone wants a cut, be it 3.9%, or 1%, or 5% hidden in the exchange rate. Jeremiah has seemingly infinite patience figuring out the fine print and finding the best deal (not via the banks, of course). Molly is agonizing over setting up her paypal account with a NZ address (we don’t have a permanent one), linking it to our bank account here (we didn’t reset our password, so we’re locked out until Monday). Ay-yay-yay…yay-yay, yay-yay. And it’s a cloudy day today, to boot.

It was the first genuinely sunny day we’ve had in Christchurch, which fortunately landed on a Saturday. We took a “tiki tour” to the Port Hills just south of Christchurch and after a bit of bumbling found ourselves some trails up in the grassy highlands where we could eat our lunch and gaze down at the bay by Lyttleton.

It’s a long way down a steep hillside to Lyttleton where the houses perch precariously on the side hill above the port. I think the residents feel particularly precarious after the earthquakes–all the trails that go down to Lyttleton are closed because of the danger of rock slides.

Yay, a familiar plant! Not that I know its name, but it looks just like the yellow blooming bushes in Bariloche (Patagonia, Argentina) that we saw almost 2 years ago. In the pea family I believe, and they have nasty thorns.

After a couple straight days of house hunting we needed a break, so Milo and Molly went to the playground. Milo thinks he can do anything the big kids can do. You can’t tell it by the photo, but we actually had a spot of sun yesterday too.

It’s another cold snivelling rainy day, and I’m mighty thankful for the Christchurch city libraries, they’re sprinkled around the city and suburbs, havens of warmth and wifi. There are often little kids for Milo to watch, there are toys and a colorful kids section. We’re picking up our car today, and going to see a few more rental apartments. Jeremiah starts work tomorrow, so Molly is going to practice driving on the left.

It’s still raining in this confounded city, a cold relentless rain. I feel a ton of sympathy for the refugee families my parents know that move from somewhere in hot Africa to Chicago in the bitter winter, into dreary subsidized housing without cozy furnishings and boiling kettles. Today we replaced all the 40 watt light bulbs (“globes” here) with 100 watt bulbs and bought a cheap lamp…which we need to return because one of its two lights doesn’t work. So at least my wall hangings on the drab brown walls show up better. And I made a really fabulous squash quiche in our camping dishes (no baking pans in this apartment).

The car chugged up narrow windy roads in Lyttelton, a little south of Christchurch. It’s charming. I love the idea of perching a house on a steep hillside, the view unimpeded by the roof of the house below. It wouldn’t matter how tiny the house or how hopelessly outdated the kitchen, when one could look out at that space. There’s still a lot of earthquake damage though, with closed walkways and broken retaining walls, and I imagine living on a steep hillside in an earthquake would be terrifying.

The winter farmers market has a good selection of vegetables, citrus, and prepared foods. I particularly liked the cheery veggie lady, who called me deary and urged me to pick the biggest “pumpkin” (squash pieces, all the same price).

“Protea,” that’s what the vendor called these crazy looking flowers that have a 4 week vase life (foreground). Sounds like a protozoa. When we’ve got a steady income and a permanent place to live, I’m going back to buy a bouquet. All frivolous purchases are curbed for the time being, and peanutbutter & jelly is the standard lunch.