Napier, New Zealand

I would have posted this sooner, but I have been busy sunning on the Parliament grounds. The Prime Minister probably thinks I am stalking her, but it is my favorite place to read and listen to Christmas music. We are expecting rain tomorrow, so cramming in as much sun as possible was the wise choice for the day.

Last Friday we took a very small plane with propellers to Napier, which is on the east coast of the North Island. In 1931 the devastating earthquake took place (officially 7.8 on the Richter scale) and the city today is very much the art deco city that was rebuilt in 1932.

Mary Jane picked us up at the tiny Napier airport on Friday afternoon. MJ is a nurse practitioner in NZ, one of about 25...I had originally thought that there were a couple of pediatric NP's here, but it turns out I was mistaken. MJ had arranged for me to talk to a nice lady interested in becoming an NP here about how we practice in the US and how she could go about getting the experience she needs....the system here is so different from the US that finding a solution to her dilemmas was not easy! Becoming an NP here is very different than in the states and learning this process has been very interesting for me.

I first contacted MJ several months ago, as I found her name on the Vanderbilt School of Nursing alumni list while I was hunting for any nursing contacts in New Zealand. We emailed back and forth, and so by the time we arrived, I felt like I knew her. She graduated from VUSN a couple of years before I did, and then she and her husband moved back to California. A couple of years back they decided to have an adventure and move out here to NZ! We found this fascinating and very brave. She works a great deal with the Maori people and also teaches nursing. Her husband Don works for Johnson and Johnson selling hips and knees. He showed us his kit and I picked out my favorite one: ceramic on ceramic. It has great range of motion!

Their house in on Hospital Hill in Napier, and it is so beautiful! They have a lovely yard that is full of flowers and terraces. They even have a view of the water! Can't beat that. I really don't know how they garden on the hillside land of their home, but they do and it is absolutely gorgeous. Late Friday night we got in the hot tub and found the Southern Cross! The other constellations look upside down, and the seven sisters were also brightly visible that night.

Saturday was wonderful, as we took bikes around Napier to the port and then to a Bluff Lookout! Man, is it hilly! We heard how the land rose after the earthquake, lifting entire portions of the ocean to become dry land that is now city. The new land was handed over to the crown, and I wonder what lucky folks were given these new parcels! I only crashed the bike once, and it bruised my pride more than anything; I was on a boardwalk and looking up at the ocean instead of where I was going! Thankfully nothing was broken, even my record of always falling once every time I ride a bike!

There is a wonderful museum in Napier that has a movie of the accounts of several earthquake survivors. All of them were kids then and describe the chaos and sadness in very literal, child-like ways that make the movie very poignant. We spent a good deal of time in Napier wondering how they ever rebuilt the city and found the strength to move on....

Saturday night was our first NZ "barbie", or BBQ. We had chicken, sausages, veggies, mussels, salad, and fresh fruit and ice cream for dessert. Don turned on a gas heater outside as we all sat around the table, eating and drinking abundantly. Several very nice folks came over, making our total number eight....Don lit up the cool art deco fountain in their courtyard and music was wafting around with the great smells....Can you tell we had a good time? It was so much fun to get to know the New Zealanders, or the Kiwis, as they call themselves. They were so kind to us, and asked us a lot of questions about America, our families, what it was like growing up, etc... We just yapped and yapped.

Sunday we could hardly move, but amazingly we did. At least, long enough to get in the car and go to Te Mata Peak. I took a million photos of everything I could see from this venue, and it was raining pretty hard by the time we left. What really amazed me was the sheer height of the cliffs and the hang gliding platforms on the edges....From Te Mata we went to Island Beach, where the surf was too crazy for swimming. Still, folks were out and children were having a blast in the large shallow pools in front of the infamous "baches", which is short for "bachelor pads" and are summer homes used very much this time of year around Christmas break. A few crazies were in the water and making me very nervous....The rip tides are infamous here and the lifeguards posted no swimming signs....

We traveled on down the road to a honey farm, where we sampled NZ honey until we lost the ability to taste anything sweet. It was fun! Next we stopped at a trading post where the owners sold funiture and cowhides. We had a nice chat with the owner, who had extensively traveled North America. She had been to Nashville once and saw Def Leppard in concert! We laughed about this...

On to shopping for the next barbie! As it turns out, after we ate, we went to a Christmas caroling on a Lavender farm. They have it yearly and we were invited by the guests, which included a fellow nurse friend of MJ's named Ruth, her husband John, and their two boys, Alex and Sero. John has the biggest smile we've ever seen, Ruth is a really genuine person, and their sons adore them. They own a farm with a house that survived the earthquake. We went for dessert at their house after caroling.

Now... to the caroling incident. Well, it wasn't really an incident as much as a very unique event we will always remember. "Carols In the Lavender" is a yearly caroling at the lavender farm, as I said earlier. Well, it is officiated by a Reverend Deirdre, who is well known for her leading the songs with a very off-key rendition, which is sung loudly with the microphone hugged closely. We were warned, but we really weren't ready for the Reverend's keen ability to knock everyone off-tune. I was amazed to find myself at least a whole-step off-key, and this got me tickled, to put it mildly. To make matters worse, they had bussed in a bunch of elderly folks to sing, and in front of us there was a very hilarious and opinionated 90 year old. She put her fingers in her ears, her hands on her head, shook her head in wonder, and kept telling me to get up and grab the microphone. I was shaking so hard from laughter that candle wax was dripping on my pants. We had to give it to the Reverend though, because she showed enormous gumption. At the end the little old lady brought me a lolly (candy!) and teetered off. It was really precious, and the gold coins collected benefited The Christian World Service.

Monday we had to make our way back to Wellington, and it was honestly hard to say goodbye to MJ. We had had so much fun!