Our first week in Hamilton

We enjoyed going to church with Geoff and Louise last week and left Pukekohe after lunch and a cuppa (we had lots of cups of tea with them!). We’re very thankful that our “new” car has much more boot space than our old 2001 CRV so we could easily fit all our luggage. Louise kindly gave us a box full of food to take with us to get us through our first few days. We got to Hamilton in the afternoon and Philip (the son of the couple who is letting us stay at their home) let us in. It was nice to be able to unpack after 4ish weeks of living out of a suitcase. The house is old but very nice and we’re very grateful to have it for the month (although we’re looking forward to moving into our new place on the 26^th or 27^th of August!).

Mon-Friday was pretty full on with Stephen starting work and really figuring life out in Hamilton for ourselves. It has been challenging to wake up early in the cold winter mornings after coming from summer in Oregon. This week was also the first time I, Tamara, looked after Ralph solo for so many days in a row. Stephen had been working from home for the past 1.5 years (thanks Covid!) and would often help with Ralph at lunch and when I needed him, so not having him around has been a new challenge, but we’ve enjoyed ourselves. I drove Stephen into work Monday and Thursday so I could use the car to do some grocery shopping, but the other three days Ralph and I were on our own. We took walks down beside the Waikato river (we’re very close to it) and down to the shops, and we even joined the library on Wednesday! Ralph was happy to get his own library card too J Hamilton has multiple small libraries rather than one large library, and the one near us is very cute. The library and “corner shops” are about a 20-25 minute walk. Like Australia, there are many corner shops. The ones near us has a green grocer, a hair dresser, a barber, a milk bar (with lots of food), a liquor store, pizza shop, fish & chips & Chinese shop, a café, and a fancy little women’s clothing shop, with the Library just at the end of all the little shops.

Stephen has found his work challenging with jumping right in on his projects and meeting so many people. He has come home pretty exhausted every night. The Thermophile Research Unit (TRU) where Stephen is working is a big lab group that has three professors, 4 post docs, 8 graduate student, 2 lab managers, and a few undergraduate students. It is housed in its own building that you have to have special clearance to get into and has two big laboratories (the biggest on campus). All work on samples from Antarctica has to be done in the lab that is PC2 (similar to BSL 2 in the US), with only certain people allowed in and no equipment allowed to be taken in or out without special cleaning procedures. The NZ government is pretty careful to not let things from Antarctica get released into NZ, thus the higher precautions.

We were invited over to three different people’s houses for tea (dinner) Tuesday - Thursday. We ended up just doing Tuesday and Wednesday because Ralph and I both got pretty bad colds. Tuesday Philip and Talia and their 4 girls had us over. It was especially fun because Talia is from Texas and Philip lived in Australia and Canada and travelled along the west coast of the US a few times. Ralph enjoyed their girls a lot and we enjoyed delicious Mexican food (most of it homemade because Mexican food is very expensive here! A small jar of salsa was $5)! They also had a 5 day old female lamb that we got to see Talia bottle feed, a female puppy, and a female kitten which were all very cute. So Philip is truly outnumbered! J Wednesday our new pastor Leo and his wife Carol had us over for a delicious pork roast dinner with all the fixings. It was a very enjoyable evening and great to see where we’ll be living too! Having Thursday and Friday with just our family was nice and Ralph especially enjoyed more focused time with his Daddy.

Saturday I went to the library during Ralph’s nap so I could use the WiFi as we don’t have any here; Stephen listened out for Ralph and read a book. After lunch, we drove down to Hamilton Lake and walked around it which was really beautiful. Sunday it was really nice to be at our new church; Leo had put it in the bulletin a few weeks ago that we were coming and then announced to everyone that we were there! So we felt a little overwhelmed but very welcomed J It was raining so hard all afternoon that we couldn't go for a walk, but after dinner we went to the evening service at 7pm.

-Tamara

With Geoff and Louise

Out for a walk by the Waikato River

At the library

Taking a "bath"

At Hamilton lake