Well, it's only been five months since I promised I'd start a blog. We're off to Sierra Leone and by now life in New Zealand has become status quo - but let me give a brief catch-up.
Leaving San Francisco: The three days before we left were probably the most stressful in my life, with Ide having problem after problem with the health insurance companies and completely losing his temper. I don't know if any of you have ever seen Ide get angry. It doesn't happen very often, but when it does it's like being teleported into the heart of the ghetto. All of a sudden this weird boys-in-the-hood accent comes out which is barely comprehensible. I've asked him to get angry in a Scottish accent to take the sting out of it, but it hasn't worked so far. With the accent came super human strength and an immunity to pain, which meant he single handedly carried all our furniture - beds, couches, dressers, down to the basement. The benefit of this was that I didn't have to help. The downside was that he slipped a disk in his back and was incapacitated for over a month.
Every block: While Ide was battling the pharmaceutical companies I was on a quest of my own. Some of you know that I have been trying to walk every block in San Francisco. That day I raced all over town like a crazy person, but I am happy to say that after 4.5 years, on November 17th, 2010 - four hours before our plane left - I finished! See the previous post for the lowdown on my walks.
Arriving in New Zealand: Unfortunately Ide did not receive his residency in time for our flight out (and still hasn't). After (my) stressing that he wouldn't make it through Immigration without been held in a locked room and questioned at length, he breezed through (more quickly than me in fact). I then panicked that Customs would stop us and destroy all his hard-to-come by medicine - but that was just as smooth. They were more concerned about disinfecting people with hiking boots. Apparently there had been a massive kiwi-fruit blight which sent the country into a tail-spin. Our connecting flight to Kaitaia was delayed - so I need not have ran from International to Domestic airports yelling at Ide to move his lazy butt (okay, I didn't really say that, but I was thinking it). We did end up having to dump half our suitcases due to weight limitations on the smaller plane - but despite my protestations not to, my little sister Coralie had come to the airport and so we were able to give her a big plastic bag full of stuff that we really didn't need anyway. Our seats on the domestic plane were 6A and 6F, so I'd envisioned a tiny plane just six seats wide. To my surprise the plane was missing seats B through E - and it was only two seats wide. We promptly fell asleep after all the stress. We had to circle the Kaitaia airport three times because the cloud was too low to land, and the pilot said we would probably need to fly back to Auckland. However, a break in the clouds appeared, he swooped in, landed, and the only mishap was that some lady had accidentally driven right through the fence around the airport. Fortunately it wasn't my mother.
