The Catlins

Merry Christmas! We are in Queenstown right now, having a blast. We will update the blog with those pictures soon. Below, we have pictures of a 3 day trip we took to the Catlins. The Catlins are an area 2 hours south of Dunedin. No cell phone service, no internet, but beautiful views, penguins, dolphins, and waterfalls. We stayed with another family in a wonderful apartment on the ocean. We had a great view! We visited the Southern most point of New Zealand, (besides Stewart Island), saw a penguin, but our camera died right before then. Craig and Leslie took pictures for us and we will post them once we receive them. The pictures below are our adventures. Just click on the photo and it should take you to Picassa web album and you can view them there. You can then click on the pictures to make them bigger once in the album. Enjoy!!

New Zealand Catlins

Kits Office

As requested by my mom, here are pictures of Kits office and his building he works in.

Things are going good here. Our kitty friend, Lily has been visiting more lately. We still can't decide if she is a stray or someone else's cat. I am tempted to put a collar on her and see if someone takes it off, but I probably won't. She did sleep in our bed the other night until about 3am. Around that time Kit woke up and saw a black shape on the floor in our bedroom. He assumed it was Lily, but it was actually another cat that lives next door hanging out in our bedroom. This cat has bell on it and has never wanted anything to do with us at all. Kit shooed it outside and then Lily left to fend off her new property. Then last night around 5am I heard a bell in our room, black cat was back again walking around the bedroom. I am thinking we need to lock the cat door at night or we might have a bunch of cat vistors through out the night.

On to Kits office....

Owheo Building

Kits name is on the outside of his door. I told him he needs some funny jokes or something to hang above his name.

Kit hanging out, doing work

the other side of the office, with a map of New Zealand, so he doesn't get lost :)

The view from his window. The yellow building makes instant coffee and it smells like instant coffee all the time by Kits work. He does have some really cool art work done on the walls by the leath river below.

Thats my awesome husband showing off in his office!

Cheers!

Views

This blog is all about the views from our house and around town.

view from our front window

purple flowers are outside our washer/dryer window

Our patio furniture from our kitchen window

view from our bedroom window

This is on my walk down into the city. This is a park not too far from us with the peninsula and harbor in the back.

Kit and I often eat lunch outside in the octagon. Here is the view from the stairs where we eat lunch.

Kit in the phone booths around the octagon

The Christmas tree in the octagon.

Kit buying coffee

George Street, the main street in Dunedin

Police car

When you graduate from the university you parade from the university to the octagon with bagpipes leading the way. We happened to walk by one the other day.

Another view of the city.

In the next couple of weeks we are going to be doing some traveling around New Zealand. We are headed to the Catlins, in about a week to see penguins, seals, sea lions and hopefully whales. Then for Christmas we are going to Queenstown, which is adventure captial of the world, camping and to Wanaka. We hope to get some good pictures and have some good blogs to post from our trips.

Flowers

It is weird that there should be so many flowers blooming in December. Summer is almost upon us and we are enjoying the benefit of the flowers and the green. A couple of days ago Kit and I went to the Botanical Gardens again to walk through the rose garden. It was absolutely beautiful. We got some close ups of the roses and some of the other flowers that you don't normally see in Carbondale. Hope you enjoy.Entrance to the Rose Gardens

Kit's professor picture :)

Not sure what these are but they are all over Dunedin

Ross Creek Reservoir

About a week ago, Kit and I walked to Ross Creek Reservoir, where Dunedin Supplies it's water from. There are alot of trails around the reservoir and you will find a lot of walkers and runners that use these trails for exercise. We enjoyed the walk and exploring the trails. I'm pretty sure we didn't even get to 1/2 of the trails, but we walked a lot. Ross Creek also connects to other trails around Dunedin which we are excited to explore in the future.

The Scottish Highland games were not as exciting as we expected them to be. We got there later in the day and most of the games were over with. But we were expecting booths and a lot of people, but it was more like a track and field event with people sitting in the stands. We did see some people in kilts, but only the bagpipers. It was a cold day, so no kilt for kit :)

We had a good Thanksgiving dinner with friends. It was more like a pot luck, but it was still nice to eat good food and visit with people. I know Kit and I really missed our families over thanksgiving and the food that we are use too, but overall it was a great weekend.

We are headed to the Botanical Gardens again this evening, the roses are in bloom and the other flowers are just beautiful. Hopefully we will get some good pictures. It is so strange for it to be almost summer this time of year. Everything is in bloom and beautiful. Kit and I are amazed on our walks of the different types of flowers and how many of them there are in the city.

Cheers

update on the visitor

So our friendly furry visitor keeps coming back. She uses the cat door at her pleasure and comes in and leaves when she feels like it. I am loving having a surprise visitor.

I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving tomorrow. We are going to see a play tomorrow night, The Christmas Carol. Then on Saturday here, we are going to have a Thanksgiving dinner with some friends and co-workers of Kits. It should be a lot of fun and hopefully as good of food as at home. Kit and I have noticed that the food here is just a little bit different. We bought taco seasoning the other day and it had cumin in it, so it tasted a bit like Indian/ Mexican fajitas. I'm sure Thanksgiving will be wonderful. On Sunday we are going to some Scottish Highland Games, and we are hoping almost everyone will be in kilts. I know if I asked Kit to wear a kilt, he probably would. I would love to see that!

until next time- Cheers!

A friendly Neighbor

We had the cutest vistor the other day. She has actually come by the house twice and loves pets. She is a very friendly cat and makes herself welcome in our house. On the first visit she stayed for about an hour, going in and out the cat door, roaming through the house and hanging outside. We thought she might become our cat, so Kit walked up to the store to ge some cat food and litter. By the time he came back, she decided to go home. We seem to have a few neighboorhood cats in our yard from time to time, but she has been the friendliest by far. Kit always has a name for each cat, and so he named her Lily. We have figured out why they love our yard so much, our garden seems to be a wonderful place for them to use the bathroom. The joy of neighboorhood cats! Well, we fell in love with her and hopefully she will come and visit soon. It fills that hole in my heart slightly, when she comes by and then makes me really miss my animals even more. I knew it would be hard to not have them, but sometimes when I wake up in the morning I forget they are not there. I know they are doing wonderful. Marcello and Tahini and settling in very well. Tahini has caught 7 moles in the Elams yard and is very proud of herself. Marcello is just hanging out and loving every minute of it.
Bosky is loving having another dog to play with at my parents house. He is getting spoiled and enjoying every minute of it. He goes on at least three walks a day and loves hanging outside. So its only us that is having a hard time with it. Oh well, at least we have friendly neighboors!

Taieri Gorge Railway

Last week Kit and I went took a train into the country. The train took us along the Taieri Gorge Railway. We saw beautiful views, a lot of farms with horses, sheep and cows. We were in this cute old fashioned train car and enjoyed the four hour ride. If you click on the picture below it will take you to the pictures we took on the train. Enjoy!

new zealand railway

The Beach and looking for Penquins!

Hi Everyone, Kit here-
Things have been good in kiwi-land. This past week has been fun and busy. Natalie and I have been getting the place all set up. We've been making trips up and down the hill to 'The Warehouse' to buy various accoutrement for the house. In addition to that Natalie and I have made a few trips exploring around Dunedin. On Thursday we made a trip out to Sandfly bay where the rare yellow-eyed penguin lives. It was beautiful with panoramic views of the ocean but with only 2 penguin sightings. We did see a few ornery sea lions. Before the beach pictures there are some from St. Clair where we stayed with some of my colleagues from Oregon.

Lots of surfers waiting in the cold cold water


Frolicking in the surf

000h, that cold!

Sandfly bay with the penguins and sea lions

Sea Lion!
Hiking out
Sandfly bay
The walk through the green rolling sheep filled pastures
The yellow stuff is gorse, the Scots brought it over because they missed it

Arooo!cheers!