Tea, Babaganousch and Chook Sammys

I have been fascinated by the angle of the railings on bridges since we arrived here - what mystifies me is not that the railings are angled, it's that some are, and some aint, and I can't figure out what determines which should be and which shouldn't.

We decided that although the weather remains decidedly wintery, cabin fever threatens so we thought we could do with a little sight seeing and headed out on Sunday afternoon for a wander. The world around us is definitely dealing with plenty of frost and wind, the leaves on the trees have long gone and everything is chilled and crisp.

The view from the 'lookout' beside the road. The railway line is a whole lot straighter than just about any road we have seen anywhere in New Zealand!

Late in the afternoon with the shadows lengthening, it was really cold up on the hill with the wind whipping around our legs, but the views were still quite spectacular.

We called in at a wonderful little roadside cafè for a hot 'tea' (being something substantial to eat and what we foreigners would actually call supper) and found 'chook sammys' on the menu. Just wondered if our dear blog followers would know that a chook sammy is a chicken sandwich. Just curious!

We had the best cheeseburgers and fresh hot chips - not the 'slap' variety - don't get none of thems here - and wondered if our blog followers knew that burgers in New Zealand have all sorts of things on them besides the cheese and mince patty - for example, most of them have loads of 'yukky green stuff' and most have beetroot slices on them as well. Some have grated carrot added and most have onion of some sort lurking as well. A complete meal - and generally very good value for money.

On the subject of 'wondered if you knew' - most of our dear blog followers in SA wouldn't know what size egg to buy - I mean, do you want eggs that are size 7? Or smaller? Or larger? How big is size 7 anyway?

And what's with the size of the dead chook - (the one you want to pop in the oven for Sunday dinner) - Size 18 chooks were on special the other day, but I've seen size 20's too.

Jo reckons that maybe eggs go up to whatever size and thereafter, meaning once the egg has hatched, we carry on with the numbers - a gigantic egg being say, size 10 and then size 11 being a fluffy little chick and size 15, say, a scrawny(for the Sunday lunch roast) fowl, but size 18 to say, size 20, a really yummy, plump, perfect for roasting chicken to be served with all the trimmings. Just wondering.

We've discovered 'babaganousch' hummus! Very yummy on crackers and less fattening than chips and dip!

The most common car in New Zealand is the Toyota Corolla (looks different here, same label) - and the most common colour for cars here is silver - I kid you not, they really do research about stuff like that and although we all know that manufacturers care about what colour of what people want and will buy - it's surprising that they tell us all on TV that there are presently 537,519 silver cars on the roads at the moment in NZ. (That's the number - not a thumb suck), but it was early this week so will no doubt have changed!

Good on ya Louis Oosthuizen on winning the Golf! Brilliant! The kiwi news readers can't say 'Oosthuizen' if their lives depended on it, but there you go. Only four South Africans have ever won the Open - Bobby Locke, Gary Player (of course ) and Ernie Els (just as of course).

Mr Tiger Woods failed to feature!

Fell about laughing the other day when someone here said " Tiger Woods het nou rêrig 'n groot gat in sy tjekboek gespyker" !!

Dis al!

Wanganui winter

We took these pictures during half time at the World Cup Soccer in South Africa - as you can see it was already Monday morning here and just about time for Jo to head off to work.
Winter is here in Wanganui - although this town claims to have the fifth most temperate climate in the world, it gets quite nippy on occasion in winter!
We've had quite a few mornings of frost like this one and although it's very cold outside and one needs to take care of the ice on the windshield of the ute, it's very pretty!

Randomness

There are 'landbou skou' type events here in New Zealand too - we spent an afternoon wandering around the 'field days' at Feilding and Marieta captured this moment - where all I could think about was how difficult it was painting the tractor wheels like those ones, when I made a couple of tractor clocks.














Julia has recently started guitar lessons - she's been in New Zealand since she was very little so we are spending some time learning some of the traditional Afrikaans folk songs like Suikerbossie.











The very best thing about electronic drums is that you can practise to your little heart's content without having the neighbours call noise control to complain - on the other hand, our neighbours are of the crumbly variety - either blue rinsed or bald so most of them are verging on the hard of hearing - so there you go it would not matter to them really. For my part, there is just so much one can handle of a 'mechanical drum kit' before threatening murder or suicide, whichever comes to mind first.


The drums belong to our friends Annelien and Carel Botha in Hamilton - (Annelien pictured below with Jo in the final stages of clearing out the booze cabinet back in May) and are on loan to us - thanks guys!

Mariaan decided that piano lessons where a little ho hum since she's about grade eight level so, in search of new challenges and things to keep her honest, she has taken up the viola (for those of you who don't know, a viola is fractionally bigger than a violin and consequently sounds less like a dying cat in the beginning stages).

This picture was taken a little while ago - just never got as far as the blog, but somehow it's a memory that I for one, would like to keep! Neither of these two are what one might classify as 'drinkers', but I'll have you know that we had a pretty marvellous weekend with the Bothas in Hamilton and all the bottles in the cupboards that had a few drams in them where finished and tossed out once and for all. Here's hoping that the cabinet will have been successfully restocked before we visit there again!

When we first arrived in New Zealand, Glenn and Tracey were pretty well the first 'real kiwis' that we got to meet and although Glenn and Jo worked together at MWH Hamilton (where Glenn still works) we became firm friends too. Tracey loaned me clothes to tide me over until our container arrived from South Africa and methinks that once clothing has been loaned and shared, friendship kind of becomes inevitable!

We had a lovely catch up visit and were thrilled to have our guest room used again! Little Dylan has to be the cutest, most well behaved two year old we have come across in a long while, maybe ever! Hopefully, we will get to see more of them since Glenn's brother lives in Wellington and if you drive from Hamilton to Wellies, taking a slight detour to the right off the state highway, you can't miss Wanganui! No excuses!

So I think I did mention that Richard and Pippa took a little flip over to Scotland and were around for the big sister graduation and celebrations! Here they are in the green hills of Scotland to prove it!

Naturally, we are hoping that the next time they are in the vicinity of green hills far away, those green hills are the ones found around our part of the world in the land of the long white cloud - now that we have a little experience, we can assure you that the scenery around here is as spectacular as any you can find anywhere and well worth it! We look forward to entertaining you here!

Dis al!