Brunnen-G wasn't the enthusiastic, friendly, and accommodating person she is in RinkChat. She was more so. There was no period of awkwardness where we had to get used to being around each other in person. The four of us instantly fell into an easy and excited camaraderie. We filed out of the airport, across the street to the parking lot, hopped in the car, and headed out. This particular chapter of the trip report will likely be the longest, because the first day we took note of so many different cultural and geographic differences between New England and New Zealand.

The New Zealand Accent

The New Zealand accent is beautiful to listen to. It is most similar to, but more gentle than, the Australian accent (one I find pleasant but not beautiful) blended with a tinge of proper British that mutes the Australianesque twang. Added to that is the typically Canadian penchant for adding "eh?" to the end of occasional sentences and the famous New England way of muting the r's in words like "car" and "shark." (Note: Darleen and I don't do that; the New Hampshire accent isn't very strong, like the Maine accent and Boston accent, and I didn't grow up here anyway.)

I enjoyed hearing the New Zealand accent throughout those two weeks. The only part that ever threw me was the way they say their short e's in words like "head" or "leg." The best I can do to describe it is that it's a cross between a short 'e' and a short 'i', but spoken from the back of the mouth rather than right up front.

Two nights later, over Chinese food, we talked about accents, and I mentioned how I couldn't imagine what the American accent must sound like to a New Zealander -- or anyone else, for that matter. Other people's accents are always defined relative to one's own accent, and one's own accent is always "normal." (The next day, the guide for our spelunking adventure said something about Brunnen-G not having the drawl in her voice that we did -- which threw me for a loop. *We* don't have any drawl in our voices!) Puck, Brunnen-G's significant and occasional visitor to this forum, said that, to them, Americans talk very slowly, putting more space between their words. That surprised me, although I saw his point. I talk pretty quickly compared to, say, Texans, and when I brought that up, Puck said how he can't hear a Texan talk without becoming anxious for him to pick it up a bit and finish speaking. But I hadn't and still don't think of New Zealanders as speaking particularly quickly, because it doesn't sound unnaturally rushed. Yet whenever I paid attention to the relative speeds of speech, I realized, yes, New Zealanders do speak more quickly.

Driving on the Wrong Side of the Road

Driving on the left side of the road was strange to me, but not greatly so for two reasons: one, I lived in England for two years (granted, a long time ago), and, two, because I was expecting it. Driving clockwise around roundabouts (aka rotaries or traffic circles) was even less strange, because that's the way you're *supposed* to drive around roundabouts. We don't have roundabouts in the U.S. like they do in England and New Zealand, where there are very few traffic lights (within a 50 mile radius of my house, there are about four roundabouts, whereas there are nine traffic lights in the one mile main road in our town), and so to this day I've been around FAR more roundabouts clockwise than counter-clockwise.

It was all the OTHER side-effects of driving on the left side of the road that messed me up. It's SO strange that the steering wheel is on the right side of the car. (Even in England, our car was still a left-hand drive.) "Weird!!" Darleen exclaimed when we piled into Brunnen-G's car, and Darleen was shown to the front passenger seat. Dave laughed and said he had had the same reaction the day before. Sitting in the front passenger seat, you feel like you should be driving, and it's nerve-wracking not to have any controls at your disposal, to swerve or brake to avoid road hazards. When I was in the front seat, I kept wanting to find SOMETHING to do to control the car, but all there was was the air vent. From the backseat, it's stranger still. From the backseat, I kept subconsciously assuming that, of the two people in the front, the left one was driving, and so, when the person in the front passenger seat turned around to say something, I was thinking, "Aahh! Keep your eyes on the road!" On the other hand, I had to stop myself from carelessly distracting the actual driver. I got more used to that as the two weeks progressed, but even at the end I lapsed into that mode of thought from time to time.

There were numerous other WEIRD side-effects to driving on the left hand side. Bus doors were on the left side of the vehicle. The big heavy sliding doors on vans were on the left side of the vehicle. When crossing the street, we looked left, then, halfway across the street, looked right. We nearly killed ourselves. Signs on multiple lane roads said, "Keep left except to pass." Windshield wipers (called "windscreen wipers" there) were hinged on the other side, making them wipe the WRONG WAY.

Although I never did get *completely* used to driving on the left, it did look wrong when, in an in-flight movie on our return trip, cars were seen driving on the right.

Street Signs

"Yield" is "Give Way" there. It's "Give Way" in England, too, but I had forgotten that until I saw it in New Zealand. Instead of "Do Not Enter" signs, they have "No Entry" signs. Instead of "Hidden Drive" signs, they have "Concealed Exit" signs, which Dave once misread to be "Congealed Exit." Speed limit signs are as they are in many European countries -- rather than a white rectangle with the words "Speed Limit" and a number on it, they have white circles with red trim and just a number. Of course the numbers are in kilometers per hour, so they say things like "100" on them, which would be a speeder's dream in this country.

Their equivalent of "Slippery When Wet" sign is hilarious. There's this one sign with a picture of a car slipping on the road, similar to the one we have here: a black car on a yellow background, with wavy tracks underneath it. But in New Zealand, the tracks made by the left and right wheels CROSS each other. So instead of "Car May Slip," the sign conveys the notion, "Car May Invert," which is a truly frightening prospect. On the same signpost, but on a different actual sign, there would be the words "When Wet." Or, more commonly, "When Frosty," which inexplicably cracked us up.

They have temporarily speed limits, like we do here: signs that indicate that one particular corner has a lower speed limit associated with it, and after the corner the prior speed limit comes back into effect. In New Zealand, they also have "end temporary speed limit" signs that explicitly indicate when the permanent speed limit comes back into effect. The sign is a white circle with a thin black border and a thick black diagonal slash through it. The sign appears on both sides of the road, next to each other, which is odd, because it was the only road sign I could see that got dual placement like that.

From time to time, there were triangular signs that had just an exclamation mark on them. We didn't know what that meant, and Brunnen-G didn't really have any particular explanation either. So we decided the "!" signs meant, quote, "AAAHHHH!!" This was one of several running jokes throughout the trip.

Another great sign was a picture of two cars next to each other, one kicking up a rock from the road, which breaks a window in the other. There were no words. Dave and I wondered if this meant to be careful of people in other cars throwing rocks at you, or if it meant that it was ok to throw rocks at other cars.

Off the road, there were still interesting signs to be had. Near beaches, we found another humorous pictorial sign: it was of a guy fishing RIGHT NEXT to a wave, taller than he was, about to wipe him off the face of the earth. And there was a red slash through it. Interpretation: "Do Not Fish In Tidal Waves."

A sign outside farmland said like, "Dogs Worrying Sheep May Be Shot." I love the wording. The dog doesn't even have to be physically present. If the sheep are worried that a dog might show up and chase them, the farmer apparently has the right to drive over to where the dog lives and shoot it.

Residental Culture Shock

The residential areas of New Zealand, apart from the extraterrestrial vegetation in their lawns, look SO much like the residential areas of England. In America, we tend to have openly visible lawns. If we have fences around our property, they tend to be short white picket fences, wire fences, lattice, or those non-functional decorative fences. Most of the New Zealand homes had six foot wall fences, usually either wood or brick, that you can't see through. It's kind of nice: the neighborhood looks great from the street, and even if the houses are packed together, you feel like you've got all kinds of privacy when you're in the yard. Brunnen-G's house was no different. There was a locked gate for people to walk through, and an automatic garage door (one solid sheet, like the garage door we had in England, instead of the hinged things we have here) that permitted the car to enter into the property. It wasn't really a garage, though, but a carport, and there was no left wall or back wall: from inside the carport, you could go back to enter the house or left to come out from under the roof of the carport and be in the front yard.

Inside the house, the most unusual rooms were the bathrooms. Downstairs, there was a small room with a toilet and a sink, and that's it -- which wasn't so unusual. Upstairs, there was a room with just a toilet, and a second room next to it with a sink, tub, and shower. (The shower, by the way, was separate from the tub, not part of it.) The cold water faucet -- er, "tap" -- was on the left, and the hot water tap was on the right. (Brunnen-G was surprised to learn that this was not normal in America, but later I discovered that , in the restaurants and hotels we visited in New Zealand, hot was on the left and cold was on the right. So I don't know what the story is.)

The toilets were not American Standard brand. They were "Dux." They were plastic, not porcelain, and they flush with a button. Although Brunnen-G had the "one button" variation, hotels and other places had the "two button" variation. Which completely confused the three of us the first time we encountered it. I pushed a button at random, noted that it flushed the toilet, and then noted that it was taking a REALLY LONG TIME to flush, so then I wondered if I had to push the other button to stop it. No; it stopped on its own. Later I found out Dave had the exact same thought. Brunnen-G told us that the left button was for a half flush, and the right button was for a full flush. In America, of course, we have one-speed toilets, and they flush with a handle/lever thing instead of a button. As much as New Zealand reminded me of England, though, in their architecture and their terminology, the bathroom is not the "loo." The word "toilet" refers not just to the actual item of furniture but the room that contains it, while the word "bathroom" would tend to refer to that second room that has the sink, tub, and shower in it but NOT an actual toilet. Signs in public places that direct patrons to the bathrooms would say "toilets" on it, not "restrooms" or "loos."

There were no screens in the house. As in Europe, screens are not typical in New Zealand, and in general they are not needed. Brunnen-G said she needed them, though, and mosquitoes did find their way in. In most places in America, you MUST have screens, or you'll have all kinds of stuff flying or crawling in. Leave a light on after dark, and gnats and moths will start swarming. Which is odd, because, at least where I live, the bugs aren't very noticeable from outside.

Lazy Morning

We spent the morning in various stages of collapse at the house. Of note was the Exchange of Things, during which we gave Brunnen-G a touristy-souveniry-New-Englandy wooden box with sailboats painted on it and a jug of maple syrup. We also exchanged American and New Zealand candies, and we had some other things not found in New Zealand like grape koolaid. New Zealanders have neither grape-flavored things, nor the sustenance-free joy of the sugar drink known as Kool-Aid, so we just had to introduce her to it. We didn't drink any until a couple days later, but she kind of liked it and got more used to it over time. We brought her some candy corn, which she did try then and there, and she said it tasted just how she remembered it, years ago when she was vacationing in America. Chewy sustenance-free sugar that inexplicably tastes good.

We also got our first taste of the New Zealand soft drink "L & P," which stands for "Lemon & Paeroa" and used to be actually called that before a marketing genius shortened the name to something more catchy. Paeroa is the town where the drink originated. Later on in the trip we drove through Paeroa, and it was funny how many huge L&P signs there were everywhere, including building-signed L&P bottles, proudly proclaiming the town's greatest contribution to human society. My description of L&P: cream soda, Sprite, and ginger ale, mixed together. Leen's description of L&P: lemon-scented Pledge, which is what she figured the 'P' must actually stand for. Dave agreed with both assessments. All three of us liked it.

Brunnen-G played her harp for us, which was the first time she had ever played in front of anybody except Puck, and she sounded great, despite her claims to the contrary.

The Waitakere Mountain Ranges

That afternoon, the four of us piled in the car and drove around the Waitakere mountain ranges, which are just on the north side of Auckland. And so we got our first real glimpse of New Zealand countryside. (It apparently didn't count when, on our way back from the airport, I said, "Nice countryside," and Brunnen-G gently informed me that we were actually still in the city. Ok, so there were tons of houses around, but there was also actual vegetation, and lots of it, which is not usual in American cities.) The roads in rural New Zealand do not go straight. They go around things. When the roads were built, they apparently had a WHOLE lot of tar and no dynamite whatsoever. Granted, it's tricky terrain. Like Scotland, the hills are STEEP and crammed in against one another. At any rate, Brunnen-G was obviously well practiced at navigating the windy roads (it scared us when she said that we weren't even driving through the windiest roads New Zealand had to offer), because she was, to our mind, FLYING around those corners. Don't get me wrong. It felt perfectly safe. The car was gripping the road just fine, and she never wavered 2.54 centimeters from her place in the lane. Still, we Americans aren't quite so used to navigating roads as insanely twisty as those, so it took some getting used to. At one point I went to tell Darleen she should slow down on the corners a bit, and then I realized that even though she was sitting in the driver's seat, she was not actually driving.

So as we were driving around, we were noting all the extraterrestrial birdlife. And by and by we came to a spot in the road that crosses a stream. No, the road did not cross the stream; the stream crossed the road. No, the road was not washed out by the stream due to neglect. The road was actually designed and built so the stream, maybe six feet wide, would flow over the surface of the road. In America, I told Brunnen-G, we build our roads OVER our streams, with technical innovations such as bridges and drainage systems.

The day was drizzly, which made sense after I was told we were actually in a rainforest. The views from atop the mountains and amidst the extraterrestrial vegetation were GORGEOUS. By and by, we came to Whatipu, a west coast beach noted for its black sand. The sand was quite beautiful, really. It was black but felt like ordinary fine-grain beach sand. (It adhered to the skin and clothing a little more than usual.) In some spots, it had a bluish tint just underneath the surface, so if you walked over it, you left bluish footprints.

So we walked along the surf and collected perfect seashell specimens, which, in the United States, would have been scavenged and sold in glass lamps and candles. There was not a SOUL on the beach. We had this vast expanse of coastal paradise all to ourselves, and yet we were only a half hour's drive from New Zealand's largest city. Around the beach were these abrupt, cliff-like protrusions and, not much further beyond, the mountains. Atop one thick, steep spire of rock was a surveying station of some sort (basically an outhouse-sized structure) and a pretty much vertical ladder to the top. Brunnen-G and I climbed to the top, but Dave and Leen, not enthusiastic about heights, stand on the ground.

From there we went to another western beach, the name of which I do not recall, and it had normally colored brown sand. We ate lunch at a little combination convenience store / grill, and that brings us to a whole new exciting topic.

Food

There is much to say about New Zealand food, so I'll spread it out over the next few posts. At any rate, the little Mom & Pop shop/grill, which had about two tables right in the store and a few more outside, was typical of a number of places in New Zealand where you can get some quick, cheap food. They had fish and chips, which are served in newspaper, as is traditional in England (although I don't remember ever ordering fish and chips and getting it in newspaper while I was there -- I might have, but I don't remember). And they had burgers and sausage and stuff like that. Among types of burgers was a "bacon and egg burger," and Dave and I thought that sounded pretty cool -- little did we know that was a standard offering in New Zealand -- and so we ordered that.

What we got was bizarre. Good, but bizarre. The hamburger part tasted all right but different from our hamburger. The egg was good. There was lettuce on it, which was not any kind of lettuce I could readily identify. There was a slice of ham on it, which I thought was neat, but I couldn't find the bacon. Then I realized that WAS the bacon. I removed the tomato slice, as I always do, and then I set about trying to identify the slab of dark red thing that was leaking dark red coloring all over the lettuce and egg.

"What is this thing?" I asked Brunnen-G. "Beetroot." "What's beetroot? Same as a beet?" "Yeah."

Maybe we call beets "beetroot" here; I don't know. I was too busy wondering what a slice of beet was doing on a burger. This, apparently, is also standard offering on a burger in New Zealand. I'm pretty neutral on beets -- I can take them or leave them. This time I left it and removed that from my burger also.

So I had a pretty decent if foreign tasting ham and egg cheeseburger with alien lettuce on it. And french fries wrapped in newspaper.

The drinks, which would become one of the best things about eating out in New Zealand, because except for Coca-Cola and one or two other sodas, none of the brands or drinks (sometimes even the flavors themselves) looked familiar. I had a can of "Creaming Soda," and Dave had a can of allegedly Raspberry Soda (the actual flavor was "chemical"), and Leen had a can of Pineapple Soda, which even Brunnen-G hadn't ever heard of. I also had a juice box of apple-orange Fresh-Up, a brand of 100% juice drinks, similar to our "Juicy Juice" but better. NZ had a competing brand, "Just Juice," which turned out to be even better. All the drinks of both brands had an apple juice base to them. The apple-orange-mango flavor of Just Juice is something Leen and I will both miss very much.

More Beach

We reached a third west coast beach, and Darleen was thoroughly zonked and jetlagged and so slept in the car, while Dave and BG and I hopped around mussel-ladden rocks to look for crabs and sea aneomeonnomeoenes. It was there we first observed the "Do Not Fish In Tidal Wave" sign. Dave and I argued over whether nuclear explosions or walri (plural of walrus, you known) were cooler, and it was then, I think, that it finally became clear to Brunnen-G that we are indeed absolutely the same people in person that we are online.

Thunderbirds

Thunderbirds is a British television show that Americans have never heard of but which pretty much any New Zealander in their late twenties or early thirties grew up on and loves still. It's all done with puppets (with visible strings) and models and explosions. Whenever there's a close-up of somebody doing something with his hands, there's a cut to real human hands, and the juxtaposition of human hands and puppets is bizarre indeed. It's a spy-adventure-disaster-rescue show, with a family of international suave heroes (yes, one international family -- there's this one guy that has like five sons of different nationalities, and no I do not understand how that works) that operate an organization called International Rescue. International Rescue is not governed by any particular nation, but it serves all of them. Whenever something happens (usually something involving a grand villainous scheme) and people need to be rescued, International Rescue and their futuristic rescue machines (the Thunderbirds) are called in. More on this show later, since this post is already quite long enough.

You Made It

Congratulations for finishing my account of Day 1. Excuse the typos. There's no way I'm proofreading all this.