Winter Is On The Way

Yesterday morning I woke up to the first day of frost for the year. It was about 5C overnight and there was a tiny bit of frost on the car. But then things warmed up and I had lunch outside in my t-shirt. This is winter in Auckland.
This morning I woke up again quite cold. My house is very poorly insulated. I have some heaters on timers that come on before I wake up but it was still freezing inside this morning. I bundled up and took the dogs down to the beach where the sun was shining and it was actually pretty warm. I'm sure it was much warmer outside than in - this is winter in my house.
I met a man on the beach who swims (without a wetsuit) year round in the sea. He said the beach I take my dogs to is one of the best swimming beaches and he swims there almost everyday. He also told me that the very decayed carcass that Howie found on the beach last week and ate about half of, was not a cat as I thought, but a possum. Apparently they live on top of the cliffs by the sea and this one must have fallen off the cliff onto the beach. Howie's first taste of possum - and he liked it.

NZ News Today

"Possum knocks out entire region's power" - NZ Herald

Possums are an unwanted pest in NZ. They found their way over to NZ from Aussie and have been destroying the NZ forests. Since the only native mammals in NZ are bats, they have no predators in NZ. The Department of Conservation has been trying to eradicate them and lay possum bait in the forests to try to kill them. This makes it difficult to take the dogs into some areas as the possum bait would kill the dogs. Oh and the endangered flightless birds also mean that there are a lot of areas that are strictly off limits to dogs.

With the lack of mammals in NZ, the only road kill you see are birds and of course, possums. In fact, the only possums I've seen in NZ have been dead on the side of the road.

Trip to the Dentist

Well I thought I put it off for long enough so I finally made a dentist appointment last week. My neighbour recommended a nearby dentist, so I called to make an appointment. After giving me very detailed directions, I asked what the address was, but the reply I got was "we don't actually have an address, but we're right in the village just after the roundabout. If you get lost, we're right beside the diary, and there's only one dairy". Oh, by the way, a dairy is basically a corner store.

My appointment was for a check up and a cleaning. I met with the dentist right away and he had a look and then took some X-rays. He asked if I was having any problems and I told him I was having trouble chewing on one side, but I didn't think it was a big deal. He determined that I had a loose filling and said he would replace it right away. I was just not mentally prepared for him to start drilling right away, so it was a bit traumatic, but I got through. He then asked me to make an appointment for the following week for the cleaning and to have another filling on the other side.

I had my second appointment today and the dentist greets me and starts prodding around. He said he wouldn't have to do much drilling and said I wouldn't need any anesthetic, at which point I almost choked on his instruments. Kids in NZ get free dental care in school and my co-worker told me that when she was a child (she's about my age) they got fillings with no anesthetic because "kiwi kids are tough". Well, I'm not nearly so tough so I was terrified at the thought of a filling with no freezing. Oh yes, apparently kiwis have no idea what you mean when you say "freezing" at a dentist. I think it's because they've never a snow ball thrown in their face so have no idea what an actual frozen face would feel like. The dentist proceeded with the cleaning (yes the dentist - not his assistant). He didn't use any of the awful tasting polish that dentists in Canada use. After the cleaning he asked me if it was OK for him to do the filling without the anesthetic, to which I agreed. And he was right - it was fine and I didn't have wait the rest of the day for the freezing to come out so I could eat properly.

I don't have any dental insurance as it's not very common here. I could purchase some through work, but it's quite expensive and doesn't cover very much. But even though the dentist did all of the work himself, my total cost for 2 visits including 2 fillings, checkup with x-rays and cleaning was $300NZ. I thought that wasn't too bad. Oh and the other nice thing is that they recommend a cleaning only once a year so I have a whole 12 months to forget about the whole ordeal.

Camping with the dogs in Tauranga

My friend Robyn and I went camping with our 5 dogs in Tauranga this weekend. It was Tui's first camping trip and she and Howie had a great time. This was also my first camping trip in NZ and it was nice to explore a new part of NZ. Tauranga is on the East cost of the North Island, about 2.5 hours from Auckland. It was nice to get out of the city and see lots and lots of sheep. The beaches in NZ are beautiful and I still can't get over how uncrowded they are.

Here's Howie and my new tent (yes we went CAR camping)


I still can't believe that it's warm enough to go camping in May. I was even wearing a t-shirt at one point.










There was plenty of swimming and romps on the beach.


























We had great weather until it was time to pack up and leave, which we did in the rain.


I'm going to try to link to the all of the pictures on Flickr. Please be patient as I try to figure Flickr out. In the future I'll try to keep most of the pictures on Flickr, which will leave more room for actualy writing on the blog.