The Old Man and the Sea

Well, the ocean has finally swallowed Brad, chewed him up and spit him back out. Last weekend while surfing, Brad got pummeled by a rogue wave that caused his board to attack him (and the board won), tangled him up in his leash and dragged him back to shore. This is the result:





Needless to say, he hasn't been back out on his board since. He just hobbles around the house, moaning and groaning in pain. (He thinks he's going to get out again this weekend...I don't think so).

Easter

Ahhh, the changing leaves, just screams "Easter" doesn't it!? I saw a carved pumpkin outside one of the classrooms last Thursday, and just had to shake my head...THIS DOES NOT FEEL LIKE EASTER! At least the weather last weekend was beautiful and we were able to spend a lot of time outside.



The Easter holiday here consists of Good Friday and Easter Monday. We realized what a serious holiday this is for the Kiwis... They're heading into winter which brings colder, rainier weather, and Easter is the LAST Holiday for them until October! That's FIVE months (winter months) without a day off...the inhumanity! So the Easter holiday is a big travel weekend for most Kiwi's. We chose to stick around Gisborne and just relax, instead.

We went out to a reef north of town one afternoon. Jonathan had a great time searching for little starfish, and crabs. Here's his collection...Three starfish, two tiny hermit crabs and one mudskipper (the fish). The boys carried them around in their bucket for a while and then let them all go before we went home.




Easter afternoon, we went out to Gray's Bush (a small forested area with walking trails) and hid Easter candy for the boys. They had a great time searching for it, and an even better time eating eat!



We hiked up to the top of Makarori Point on Saturday morning. It's not a long hike, but it's pretty steep. When you get to the top there's a wide open grassy area that the boys had fun running around in, plus the views from up there are amazing!





One evening we went out to the beach and right by the parking lot is a trampoline (once again, something you would NEVER see in the States). So we burned off some energy jumping around for a while.




We're kind of in wind down mode around here. The evenings are getting pretty short, it's dark by 6:00, so we've been trying to find indoor activities to amuse ourselves with. Since Brad can't surf in the evenings after work anymore, he's starting to look forward to fishing back in Kansas, and the rest of us are looking forward to our return, as well. Only 3 1/2 more weeks!

Weekend Trip to Hamilton & Raglan

The weekend before Easter we took off for an extended weekend trip to Hamilton and Raglan. Hamilton is about an hour-and-a-half south of Auckland. It's New Zealand's largest landlocked city. It has a population of around 135,000. Brad's main goal for this trip was to get some surfing in at Raglan (NZ's most famous surf break). Raglan is about 35 minutes west of Hamilton. Unfortunately the swell was minimal to non-existent, so we spent our time at the beach searching the tidepools.




We found a couple of starfish that the boys were quite impressed with.



A beautiful sunset over the Tasman Sea in Raglan.



On Saturday, we spent the morning at Hamilton's zoo. It was a small zoo, but the boys really enjoyed it, especially the elephants and zebras. We forgot the camera, so I don't have any documentation of this outing, but you know...a zoo's a zoo! We spent the afternoon relaxing and then headed back to Raglan to check out the surf again (none!) and eat supper. It was a pretty low-key trip, but it was nice to get out of Gisborne for a bit, and it will be the last trip we take before heading home in a few weeks.

"We're gonna need a bigger boat"

A few Saturday's back, Brad and some of his co-workers went out deep-sea fishing. Luckily the swell was minimal so A) Brad didn't miss a good day of surfing and B) it was calm out on the ocean, so Brad didn't get seasick. They left at 7:00 in the morning for a beautiful day of fishing. The first couple of stops resulted in only a few bites, so they kept moving to various locations, until they hit the jackpot! Once they were settled in their prime location, Brad would literally drop his line in, wait a couple of minutes for it to reach the bottom, hook the fish and haul them up. They spent most of the day out fishing and Brad was beat by the time they returned home...He was in bed by 8:30!

They had a really great time and we enjoyed a couple of great meals of fish!