March 11, 2021

Where has the week gone? We are on Thursday already and we’ve been slacking a bit on the blog. 

On Tuesday we drove down to Wellington to lend some extra hands to our niece, Lizzy, who was expecting her movers the following day.  We loved being able help, usually we are AWOL for these activities. We had lunch on her balcony with a nice view of Wellington Harbor.

Yesterday, our long-time friends, George and Hilary, came up from Wellington to spend time with us.  You’ll hear more about them in the coming days as they have put together our next adventure to the South Island.  Our friendship with these dear ones just picks up where it left off, always moving forward.  We spent our time together in long walks on the beach and up the river and lengthy conversational meals.  Forgive us if we never got around to taking photos.  It was all good and we managed to dodge the plentiful rain.

One additional excitement yesterday was watching the first two races in the America’s Cup.  Team NZ won the first race.  Luna Rossa (Italy) won the second race by 7 seconds in what was a really exciting finish.  Those boats seem to walk on water! One of the critical elements is “winning the start”. The boats want to be moving as fast as they can when crossing the start line – and cross as soon as allowed. Before the start, they are sailing around jockeying for position and timing their approach. Crossing the starting line a few seconds ahead of the other boat and/or at a higher speed can make a huge difference in a race that takes less than 25 minutes.

Today, after a good morning beach walk, we headed to Paraparaumu for a meeting and then afterward to Warehouse Stationery, which we’ve told you before that we’ve been using as our copy centre.  One of the documents that we wanted to print was a pdf with directions for weaving flowers out of flax.  Frances is keen to practice this craft.  The team member who was printing our documents noticed the thumbnail and commented that she was also learning how to do this from another Warehouse team member.  She called over her fellow team member who provided some tips on where and how to cut flax – even drawing us a diagram – it’s important to cut the leaves from the inside out. We learned that the Maori word for flax is Harakeke.  A flax flower is a putiputi.  The expert found some examples of her finished work to show us in a display in the store.  Amazing how some of these administrative chores can turn out to be such charming interactions with people.

Total non sequitur, but we did want to share the cute little post car that we saw delivering mail in our neighborhood.  Almost like a Little Tykes car!