word up! wellington style

yes, dear friends we have finally made it to wellington! we got our visas on friday (the 10th), our plane tickets on sunday (the 12th), and left on wednesday (the 15th). phew! the three plans rides were actually really great. we both slept through them, and arrived in wellington on friday, september 13 at 9:30 am relatively well rested.

we have settled into our temporary accommodations quite nicely. a professor who is teaching in korea is subletting his house to us until we find a place to live. it is a nice house, but it feels a bit foreign. many of the houses are not heated. we have to portable heaters that we drag into the room we would like to heat. it was annoying at first, but now it is almost cozy.

the first week we spent a large portion of time walking and busing all over the city to view potential places to live. this place is WINDY and HILLY, to the extreme. it is almost comical. fortunately, we found a car on trademe and within a weeks' time we were the proud owners of a 1996 toyota rav4. the car is a godsend. it is so much easier to do everything now. a few odd notes about cars here:

• car insurance is not compulsory. however, it is cheap. for us to both be fully covered it is $400 (NZD) a year.
• the car itself was amazingly cheap as well. it was only about $2800 (US) dollars and it is in good shape
• it is so much easier to do things like buy a car here. we electronically placed the money in the sellers bank (they give you their bank numbers here!) and went to her house to pick up the car. from there we drop to the post office, where we paid them $9 and the car is now registered to us.

a few other odd notes in general:

• things here are either really cheap or really expensive. for instance the car was really cheap. the eyeshadow that i usually purchase in the US for $5 is now $25 here. (when aaron goes to agu this year, he will be coming back with a suitcase of cosmetics)
• the area we are staying at currently (karori) is making me feel a bit uncomfortable. there are children, babies, and pregnant women EVERYWHERE. it is crazy. at first it was cute, but the more and more of them you see it becomes kind of weird. (please note i have nothing against babies, children, or pregnant women. i just find it odd that they have all congregated here)

i have a bit more...but i'll save it for another time as this is getting long and i hope to get a few things done today. hearts!