The Bestest Friends in the World!

Scott and I are lucky and blessed with the "bestest" friends in the world as evidenced by the following gifts that we have recently received.

Exhibit A:


This shirt was sent to us by Bill and Joey Emerson. It is possibly the saddest, most awesome shirt ever. The back has signatures and comments/well wishes from a number of friends and fencers. It also has the autograph of Jonathan Coulton (i.e the singer of Code Monkey) from his gig in Ann Arbor that Scott and I just missed seeing before we moved.

Exhibit B:



This is a "Chicken Chucker". It is a toy gun that catapults tiny rubber chickens. It is possibly the most hilarious, awesome toy I have ever gotten a chance to play with. It was given to us by Jennifer Ohea, a wonderful new friend from England, whom we met through the University of Auckland's International Student Organization.

Exhibit C:

This is the KFK with a napkin peacock tail being attacked by the tiny rubber chickens. In case you didn't know it, the KiwiFruitKiwi was given to us by our friends Gabe and Jess. It is possibly the cleverest, cutest fruit-inspired gift ever.

Who could ask for better friends?
Thank you all!

Love,
Jen (and Scott)

P.S. Here is the gift that I got for Scott (my best friend) for our second anniversary. The traditional gift in Cotton.

Small Update

We're still alive. And still in New Zealand.

Sorry we haven't been able to wow you all with awesome pictures of awesomeness from the other side of the world, but we've not had a chance to do any of the weekend trips we were planning on taking. Jen has been working pretty much non-stop since a week before Easter.

We are big fans of all of her professors right now, as I am sure you can imagine. However, it sounds like some of her professors like her: she got an A+ on her first paper, which was on determining the age of biological stains. She has not yet gotten any other grades back, but apparently she very much impressed her stats professor by doing a street survey of people and the hats they wore (the assignment dealt with eye-witness reports and statistical analysis). Her assignment got cited by several of her fellow students in their assignments.

This evening we spent playing Monopoly: New Zealand Edition and fought with the fire place trying to keep a fire going. Turns out it is too small to just pile a bunch of wood and let it burn, it needs futzing every 10 minutes or so.

Time for bed now, we are going to be getting up tomorrow morning and Skyping in to Becky's Kentucky Derby party. 10 a.m. Sunday here is 6 p.m. Saturday, so we can sleep in a bit and still make post time!

NZ ZooLife

OK, arguably I am just putting off starting my entomology paper by posting this entry, but Scott and I decided to go to the Auckland Zoo today which is actually right down the road from us.

Many of you may know that at the Detroit Zoo, they have peacocks running around, well, at the AZ it was chickens.

They had some Hippopotomi named Snorkel, Faith, and Fudge. Not sure who this is.

This is a snake-necked turtle.

This orangutan is trying to get a treat out of a Kong.

If this seems to be at eye level with the meerkat, it is because it was taken through a plastic bubble inside their enclosure which was gotten to be crawling through tunnels underneath their enclosure.

This we suspect is "Willy", a Galapagos Island tortoise who had an unfortunate accident and had to have his...well an amputation of sorts.
This, as the sign clearly states, is a Zebra Finch.

This is also not the rare NZ tiger, but a Sumatran Tiger.

Interesting factoid for you, a group of tigers is called a stripe or an ambush.

This is a Tuatara. It is an ancient lizard species found only in NZ. They can live to be around 100 years old! They carry their eggs 9 months before laying them and then it takes 11-16 months for the eggs to hatch. They don't reach maturity until they are 15-20 years old and only mate once every 2 to 5 years. Wow! They also have a third eye on the top of their heads!

Unfortunately we aren't sure who this guy is, but he was trapped in a pen with a huge flock of lovebirds.

Wallabies or kangaroos? Not sure, but we think wallabies.

We spotted these Asian otters snuggling under a bush.
We had a lot of fun, but was a long day, and we were all tuckered out by the end.

Jen (and Scott)

New Zealand Wildlife Part 3

We got a rare treat today. We had the opportunity to see two specimens of the rare New Zealand Domestic Tiger:


OK, they aren't actually from New Zealand, which is why they have to spend 30 days in quarantine.

But they are tigers, at least that's what the big one said. Very fierce, with their purring and rubbing up against our legs. I was afraid for my life for most of the time we were in the enclosure with them.

OK, they aren't actually tigers either, but our very own orange tabbies, Crunch and Yeti, imported from the States.

Jen went and saw them right after they arrived from the airport and the kitties were, apparently, quite pleased to be in this fine country. And by "quite pleased", I of course mean really, really, unhappy.

They seemed in pretty good spirits today, though, and were very happy when we brought some cat toys to entertain them. They have a decent sized enclosure, approximately 10' x 20', but it is open to the elements (the top half of the walls are wire mesh), which we found very odd, and has a bare concrete floor. Apparently they don't have a lot of cats here that are indoor-only pets. Last night was very cold, it got down to about 40 degrees here, so we are concerned about the cats staying warm.

The plan was to purchase some cat bedding today and take it to them so that they would have some help in staying warm at night, but it is Good Friday, so nearly everything is closed. We managed to find a souvenir store that was open and bought a couple of sheep-skin rug type things for them.

We have approximately 28 days to get the house cat proofed, which is going to be interesting.

Wildlife Addendum

I was outside putting stuff into our shiny new shed so that it did not get more wet in the next batch of rain, when I found this on the wall of our house:


Kinda small as weta go: according to Wikipedia, the get up to 90 mm long (3.5 inches for you Yanks), but still pretty cool.

A bit of New Zealand Wildlife

Hey Everyone,

Sorry about the long pause in posts and the lack of cool pictures. Have been totally swamped by assignments and distracted by the awesome Spartan run in the NCAA Tournament! Go State!
Kiwi Fruit Kiwi also enjoyed watching the Spartans win against UConn.

I have finally seen my first real live weta in our yard, but did not get a chance to take any pictures due to the running and screaming. Here are some pictures of other NZ wildlife that has graced us with its presence around our house.
This is a Kotare or Kingfisher.These are Tiger Slugs.
And these are thousands of ants pouring out of our wall when the carpenter was replacing a window. Ick!!! One good thing did come out of this horrific event though. The carpenter, Ian, found a New Zealand penny stuck in the old window frame. They do not make pennies here anymore so it is cool and somewhat valuable.

The cats should be arriving into quarantine today, so we will soon be very busy cat-proofing the house. Especially since we now have a new set of french doors out onto our deck. Well technically the doors are used (purchased from a junk yard by our landlord actually), but they are new to this house anyway. You can also she our lovely new shed in this picture.
Well, just wanted to catch up a bit and fulfill a request to post more pictures of us. We miss you!!
Love,
Jen and Scott

Update...

We've been busy with not terribly interesting things around here, no great adventures to report. We had great plans to head up to Ninety Mile Beach over Easter weekend, but were foiled by trying to book things too late. No rental cars, and the cabins we were going to rent were already taken.

It turns out that was not so bad, as Jen is currently buried under about half a dozen assignments that are due shortly after her mid-semester "break", and so would have had to bring the laptop to work while on the trip.

We had a house-warming BBQ last weekend, which went quite well. There was a small amount of adventure in finding actual bratwurst to cook, but I managed to find some in a butcher shop down near a grocery store that we frequent. The BBQ chicken was the highlight of the menu, with the family BBQ sauce recipe now disseminated to both Germany and the UK.

Additionally, I accompanied the UA Fencing club to a tournament in Otahuhu. There was a good turnout: 25 foils, 19 epees, and about 6 sabres. I only fenced epee, but did well, placing 3rd.

We're having a couple of people over to watch a basketball game of some importance that is apparently going to occur tomorrow.

Go Green!