Dawn-Monday May 12-Happy Mother's Day to all. We had a great weekend. We were invited on Saturday to have lunch with some of my co-workers at Dr.Wei's "lifestyle block" which is a 14 acre farm with fruit trees (limes, lemons,apples, pears,peach, etc), macedemia nut orchard, vegetable garden, olive grove etc. After having an authentic Asian lunch (he is from Hong Kong and his wife is from the Phillipines and they have 5 kids pictured with our children at the farm; other co-workers are from the UK and South Africa), We walked the property and ate fresh tangerines, passion fruit, freijoa, figs, nuts we picked from the trees. The weather is cool at night and in the morning but has glorious warming sunshine as the day goes on and occasional quick periodic misting rain then back to glorious sunshine. Sunday morning we dressed for church and went to view a rental house at 8:00 am. We think this is the one and need to contact the school today. We ended up spending the whole morning in this small beachside community. The mountains and beach pictures are there. The house is on the bay and within walking distance from a charming 100 person school with great ratings. The school sits at the base of the "heads" of rock pictured on top of the mountain. Many have asked for our address and we will post it as soon as we move in. Kiwis say "no worries" but what they mean is "no hurries".

Yesterday afternoon we were invited to a pastor named Miguel's house to have dinner with his beautiful wife and 6 kids. Miguel was Lynn's very first patient in the hospital. He has a lung problem and had been told it would take a year to see a pulmonologist. He had his church praying for us and stayed in the hospital extra days so he could see Lynn. His family is beautiful with his wife being from El Salvador and his Cuban background (parents are Cuban refugees with an incredible story). She also has an incredible life story which shows God's love, emotional healing, and restoration of broken families. The food was a wonderful mix of rice, meat, and black beans. They were both raised in California and are American missionary churchplanters who lived in Costa Rica and have been here 2 years. We had a wonderful time of fellowship just talking about how we became followers of Christ and where he has lead us and taught us through difficult circumstances. It was very encouraging to us. You can see our kids enjoying time with them too.

Whangarei Heads and the Beach

School and House Hunting

Many of you have asked for pics of the luggage so I included a photo of my dad's truck just before leaving for the airport. The kids are pictured around the temporary house here across from the hospital. Unfortunately the house is not zoned for the school we thought so we have spent the last few days looking about in the various suburbs. Yes Whangarei is a small city with a little downtown district next to the yacht basin with more residential areas surrounding. There are 3 grocery stores and one is like Kroger or Harris Teeter or Publix, etc. The downtown has a small mall with teenagers hanging out after school just like West Town. The 3 elementary schools and communities we have looked at are each about 15 minutes outside of town. We have had trouble finding adequate rental housing in 2 of the 3. The third called Onerahi however is on the way to the beach and has beautiful ocean and bay views and rolling mountain tops that are the prettiest we have seen. The school there has a wider range of socioeconomic backgrounds with 1/3 Maori. The facilities are great and the school houses around 400 kids 1-6th grade. The kids are excited about this area and there seems to be more to rent there. Lynn starts work today (Friday). They have residents and medical students at the hospital so he will be seeing inpatients has an attending/consultant within the team. He is eager to get going.

A Day in Auckland and our first evening in Whangarei

(Dawn-Whangarei) Sunday after we arrived in their early morning was a day of jet lag and lots of rainy weather. We forced ourselves to stay up all day passing the time in our 3 bedroom downtown hotel suite, swimming in the indoor pool, and venturing out in the rain to local shopping and a neat museum/aquarium with New Zealand and antarctic wildlife. We are pictured with the penguins there. We got back to the hotel around 6:30 at night and by the time Lynn returned with his Anthony Bourdain like authentic chinese takeout from around the corner, all the kids were alseep except...guess who?...Andrew. The 3 of us made it to 7:30 or so and crashed. Yesterday (Monday) was a great day in Auckland. Refreshed from a good nights sleep, we met with the medical council member in her Auckland suburbian home office for review of our credentials. She like everyone in New Zealand was very nice and we enjoyed seeing a bit of New Zealand suburban life. All seemed to go well as we poured over our various documents for approval. We hope to start work by the end of the week. We had a wonderful cab driver named Peter from Western Samoa. After the council meeting he took us to a fish market. The girls are pictured holding their noses there but we all got use to the smell. You can see Peter holding up a large octopus in the pictures. He tried to tell me how one goes about cooking Octopus with ink included! We grabbed some lunch at the market (fresh cheese, smoked fish, seafood chowder, and crackers) and then rode a free city bus back to the area of our hotel. We started to go up in the observatory (space needle building called Sky City seen in pictures) but ran out of time. We walked amid the busy shopping business district to meet our private chartered shuttle at the hotel. After packing all the luggage in a pull behind trailor we headed the 100 miles north through beautiful rural New Zealand to Whangarei. We went by the hospital to pick up the key and across the street we found our temporary house. The children were very excited to unpack their things and settle into "their own rooms". The girls used some cute sleeping bags Nana gave them to cover their twin beds in the room they share. Andrew surprisingly opted to have his own room which he displayed his neopets, cars, and jets sleeping bag. Phillip of course claimed the largest bedroom as the oldest kid. We are sharing a single bathroom which the kids hope means fewer baths! The best thing about the house is the yard which can be viewed from the many windows and contains a flat grassy area for play as well as beautiful plants such as a huge habiscus, lime trees, some other citrus tree, red gardenia, fall colored Maple tree, and a climbing rose bush. Today holds an exciting list of things to arrange so we better get at it.

Safe and sound in Auckland

(Lynn and Claire, Internet Cafe, Auckland, NZ)
After 26 hours of travel and about 7,ooo miles we arrived to a rainy Sunday morning in Auckland. We made the best of the day despite some pretty significant jet-lag. We visited "The Antarctic Experience", a really cool aquarium/penguin habitat with great examples of the different marine life we'll experience here. They had a giant squid on display about 10 feet long. There are killer asian restaurants from China, India, Malaysia and Thailand. Phillip will get his fill of sushi here! Phillip, Claire, and Anna couldn't fight it anymore and fell asleep around 6pm local time- while the rest of us could only make it until 8 before passing out. We all popped up around 5am feeling great and ready for an exciting day! The sun is out this morning, too.(Yeah!)

This morning we present our credentials to a medical council representative to get our work permits finalized, then we are taking a taxi-van the 100 miles to Whangarei (pronounced 'funguray') and our new house for the next 6 weeks.

For those of you planning to visit- Air New Zealand is great with video screens at every seat with hundreds of movies on demand, video games, music, etc.- comfortable seats, good food, and very nice flight attendants.

We'll add some Auckland pics once we get on our computer.
Cheers!