The Kiwi Kronicles: June 2008

Ok, ok, so we’ve heard your complaints and after a lot of resistance, here it is…our first blog entry from home. Since we’ve been home for a while, here’s an ultra quick synopsis of what we’ve been up to for the past 3 weeks.

Week 1: Our trip home wasn’t without incident, of course. After a long flight from Auckland to Fiji, Fiji to Los Angeles, we were so happy to finally arrive at Chris’ friend’s place in LA. Bruno was nice enough to put us up for a couple of nights while we slept off the jet lag and got reintroduced to hot weather. We got to spend some quality time with his two dogs, Aspen and Brody, and get introduced to one of our new favorite tv shows, The Dog Whisperer. When we weren’t lounging around, we managed to connect with some more of Chris’ friends and go out for some drinks. It was pretty much a perfect stay until the final minutes when we were headed to the airport. We were in one of those typical airport shuttles, taking a tour of the LA area before being dropped off at the airport. We were right at the edge of the USC campus when our van got hit by a ridiculously stupid driver. Thankfully, everyone was ok with the exception of some residual pain for a few days, but the van didn’t make out so good. It was totaled and we had to get another one fast as we were cutting it close to get to the airport on time. Our driver managed to pull out of the intersection and onto a side street where we could safely get out of the van and wait on the sidewalk in 90 degree heat with all of our luggage. Luckily, we only waited for about 5 minutes watching the USC graduates and their families pass us by on the sidewalk. Our new van (and driver) got us to the airport in great time but we still had to push it to get onto the flight before it took off. In one of our closest calls yet, we walked right up to the gate and straight onto the plane only a couple minutes before the gate closed. Of course we then sat on the runway for about an hour waiting to take off, but it’s really what we’ve come to expect form the LA airport.

After finally making it back to New York, it took a while to adjust to yet another time change. We managed plenty of sleep and had a good visit with both sets of parents, which was really nice. It was good to see our families again after being gone for so long.

Week 2: After a week back home in NY, we were getting anxious to head up to Boston (our new home) to see our friends and play with our new ultimate team. We also started the job search which is our ongoing project. More on that later.

Our first weekend in Boston was Memorial Day weekend and we had a fun-filled schedule planned. On Saturday, we went to Earthfest, held in the city where we heard lots of live music (Cake was one of the big acts) and got lots of free food (some of our friends even scored free canned corn and beans). We got to see a man fall out of a kayak while fishing for a little football and enjoy a long, long walk to our friend’s housewarming party. On Sunday, we didn’t waste any time getting out to the disc golf course. Despite the warmer weather, we played a full 18 holes and had a great time. And, no discs were lost this time…that’s got to be an improvement.

Monday was the day of the big BBQ at Sue’s. We got to hang out with some of our new teammates and play some hard core backyard games. Ladder golf, sticks, and Frisbee joust were all big hits, but the dizzy bat relay was probably one of the crowd favorites (until it caused some injuries, that is). Instead of trying to describe it, it’s easier to just watch the video. Here’s the link to the race (race 2).

By the time the week started we got to play our first game with our summer league team and it was great (well, for our team at least). We crushed our opponents and the game ended so early that we scrimmaged ourselves afterwards. Really good time and great people to play with. We even hit the local bar/grill for some post-game team bonding over beer and food. Perfect way to start our first Boston summer league.

Week 3: For the weekend, we headed back down to NY for Chris’ Fordham reunion. It was a pretty quick trip, with the reunion taking up most of the time we were in NY, but it was a good time. It’s great that when you’re at a reunion, the first question people like to ask is “So, where are you living now?” After telling many old classmates about our current state of gypsy style living, we figured that at least we didn’t have a boring answer.

Not too much to say about the rest of this week…Job searching galore and continued frustration about how annoying it is that every state in the country seems to think that they each have the single most important series of teaching requirements, and therefore must test and retest teachers a ridiculous amount of times. Other than that, the typical emotions of looking for jobs is what pretty much sums up this week. Not too much more to say than that. Mainly we spent this week freezing in ridiculously cold weather for June and hearing crazy weather reports that told us the weekend would be super hot. Yeah right, we thought. No way that can happen so fast. Well, we were wrong.

The start of the weekend was Easterns. In the past, Easterns has always either been ridiculously hot, or completely soaking wet with rain. This year, it was HOT! After 3 days of really cold weather, the weekend started off by hitting 90 degrees before 9am! It was crazy! We started the day by playing a crazy good team followed by another good team, followed by a really long, nice bye in the shade, followed by another really good team, and finally ending with a team that we actually beat and had fun playing with. A late day thunder storm drove us off the field at the end of the final game and we were happy to be done.

The next day, we woke up to even more heat! We didn’t think it was possible to be hotter, but again, we were mistaken. Our first game on Sunday didn’t start until 10:30am which was great, except for the fact that it was already 95 degrees and crazy humid by then. We managed to win our first game despite our best efforts to sabotage ourselves during the time cap and we moved onto the second round barely mobile, and ready for some rest. The second game seemed to take forever and we ended up losing in the end which was fine by everyone because it meant that we could stop playing and hope to survive in the shade. Despite the crazy heat, we had a really great time and it felt good to play in a tournament again.

Week 4: More of the same job stuff this week. Lots of applications and hopes…we’ll see what pans out. The highlight of this week was clearly on Wednesday when we went to the Scooperbowl in the city. It’s an event with proceeds going to the Jimmy Fund and basically involves paying $8 for a spoon and getting all the ice cream you can eat! There were 10 vendors set up serving about 4 flavors each and the weather was perfect. We kept track of our ice cream consumption with our cups, knowing that Mark would easily eat the most. In the end, we did a good job with Sue finishing 10 cups, Jen 7, Chris and Mark, 22 each. While they both thought that they could continue, they decided to stop to honor Kevin McReynolds with the double deuce. Well done.

That about sums it up. It’s not quite as exciting to blog about normal, everyday stuff, but we know how much our readers have been going through withdrawal. We did this for you! Hopefully, this will hold you over for a little while!