I Haven't Forgotten!

I know it has been ages since I posted anything. Partly this is due to a lack of motivation for making time. Partly it is due to busyness and indecisiveness in where to start with what to write!

Suffice it to say, a LOT has happened in the last few months. Some of what has transpired...

1. I survived a mind-numbingly heave course load of my first semester of tertiary education in New Zealand. Only 18 months to go on the Masters!

2. I met my beautiful new niece :)

3. Troway and I got engaged!

4. We also enjoy a lovely holiday for 2 weeks in June. 

5. We are planning our wedding for February in New Zealand. Roll on chaos as my family plans to descend on us in the summer!! 

6. I am juggling 2 research projects as phase 2 of the Master's degree study (one is a comparative study of New Zealand vs. US music education, the second is four-hand piano transcriptions of a Beethoven symphony in the early 1800s).

See below for highlights of the last few months, especially the visit home.

Pinnacle Mountain, where Troway proposed

Visit to the lake!

Little Rock distillery tour

Fun with the cousins :)

Old Mill in Little Rock

Go KC ROyals!

Liberty Memorial in KC

View of the city from the top

Our beautiful mountain with its winter hat on

Study Break at Eden Garden

When you decide to be an over achiever and work close to full-time while taking 5 classes in grad school at a university you are not familiar with, in  a foreign country (more on that later), well there just is nothing of this thing that people call spare time. "Denise is nuts" has probably crossed your mind a few times. But that is ok, because well I am making it work.

However, in the interest of maintaining some form of sanity, study breaks are a necessity. Public holidays are wonderful because there is no class, which for the graduate student translates to more study time! The most recent holiday we had was Anzac Day (a month ago, paper writing has taken priority over blog writing) which happened to fall on a Wednesday so it was a nice mid-week break to catch up on some things. But it was also a beautiful,warm and sunny day. So I got up early to be productive and decided my mental health break would be attending the mid-morning Anzac service that was only a few blocks from where I am living. It was a beautiful service, a lovely way to remember and be thankful for the sacrifice of those before us.

The only problem was that I realized when it was over that I was not yet ready to head back home and continue with academic productivity. So I went adventuring instead.
I stumbled on a lovely little place called Eden Garden, which is only a few minutes walk in the other direction from my temporary  home.

The garden was established in 1964, built at the site of an abandoned quarry. It is located on of the the city's forty volcanic cones and when operation as a quarry had provided stone for building the city. Also after it closed it became an overgrown mess and it was only when horticulturist Jack Clark was approached by the then owner that it had a chance of becoming something lovely.
It currently has a native New Zealand collection with bird life, waterfalls, views of the city from the high point, a Japanese and bromeliad collection, and a range of other annual flowerings. Of course like any good place to relax in New Zealand it also has a nice cafe :)

But I enjoyed an hour or so wandering the trails and enjoying a bit of recharging in nature.

Busy Days

Finding spare time when my brain is interested in yet another form of writing is not easy these days, with 5 classes that are all reading and writing intensive. This is my excuse for taking so long to post something else. I am sure you are all shaking your heads and thinking that yes I chose this, and I did and I am mostly enjoying the experience, but it quickly became apparent that leisure time for things like non-academic reading or blogging would become non-existent until 1 June. I am 16 days and 9 assignments away from the end of the term :)

But enough about that. A couple of weeks ago a friend was up in the city for the weekend so we enjoyed doing a bit of exploring. I did not get photos of everything, but we enjoyed a good early 20th century display at the Auckland art gallery and a WWII exhibit at the War Memorial Museum, both excellent places to visit if you are making a list. We also found a pretzel shop selling stuffed pretzels. After a low of indecisiveness we settled on a pretzel stuff with vanilla custard and mixed berries. It was as delicious as it sounds :)

Narrow city streets

I just liked the name of this place!

The Auckland Art Gallery

Hipster Hoot - one of many owls
painted by local arts to be auctioned off as
a fundraiser for the children's hospital

Street murals

Bit of city fashion

A lovely garden we stumbled on

Unsure who this guy is but he made me feel short!

Dunedin at Easter

I like Easter weekend in New Zealand because you get a four day weekend, since Good Friday and Easter Monday are public holidays. It’s a good opportunity for an adventure before winter sets in. We spent Easter weekend this year in Dunedin, one of the Southern-most cities in New Zealand. I had briefly visited there in 2014, but enjoyed a bit longer stay this time.

We started the weekend by attending one of Ed Sheeran’s concert, which was fabulous J We enjoyed kiwi-band Six60 who opened for him as much as we did Ed I believe, wonderful night of music.

The rest of the weekend was spent enjoying long coffee breaks, massive burgers from a Chinese takeaway place, and roaming the city. 

Highlights were seeing the old European style architecture, marvelling at how people get up and down the hills once snow and ice set in for the winter, and touring an underground fort built in the 1880s due to fears of a Russian invasion, Fort Taiaroa. The fort was built with a disappearing gun that could be fired and then put back underground. I found it quite interesting that the guide said it took 6 hours to pressurize the gun so that it could be used, which made me question its usefulness in the event of a surprise attack. The fort was compact with the disappearing gun clearly the focal point. The location was beautiful, but due to its location at the point of a peninsula would be terribly unpleasant during cold winter months with no barriers to break the wind.

For more information: https://www.newzealand.com/int/plan/business/historic-fort-taiaroa/

There is never enough time to see everything but we particularly enjoyed the movie theatre with murals on the walls, the ‘Hard to Find’ bookshop, and the albatrosses that live near the underground fort.

'True Love' statue in Ashburton

Haka at the beginning of the concert

City bus!

Movie theater murals

Street art

Lovely coastal drive to the fort

View from the fort

Lighthouse near the fort

Sound the alarm!

The jail is the only original part of the fort still standing

Speaking of the wind...