Much like the Hawaiian "Aloha", the words "Kia Oro" mean hello and goodbye in the Maori language. The cities and towns, rivers and beaches and mountains all have Maori names in New Zealand, and one of the things we have appreciated most about this country is the way that all Kiwi's honor their Maori heritage. Everywhere you go there are information plaques describing historical events and places, and Maori culture is an integral part of New Zealand's day to day life.

We are still struggling to enter pictures into our blog - never thought that would be our biggest frustration. The ipad and blogspot don't want to talk to each other. But if that is the biggest problem we encounter in six months, we'll be very happy!

As Pat wrote, we left Auckland for the Northland in our little Hyundai, seeing the area around the Waitangi Treaty House where the British and Maori achieved a peaceful settlement. The Maori warriors dance the Haka before battle - which you can still see when the New Zealand Rugby Team takes the field. We visited a Maori Village in Rotorua, where they still cook traditional "hangi" meals by steaming them in the earth which has geothermal geyser activity.

We made our way to the Wellington Ferry which takes you from the North to the South Island, a lovely trip through what is called New Zealand's norther fjord lands. We spent a few days in the Marlborough Wine Region, home to many wonderful Sauvignon Blancs. We sampled fresh New Zealand Havelock Mussels, wished our fine dining group was here! And we found a restaurant in Nelson with a name so unbelievable that we just had to dine there - "The Honest Lawyer", have you ever heard of anything so crazy? Sorry to Kim P, Rob L, Chris K, Jerry VK, and the rest of our attorney friends. We are attaching a picture .... they sold great T-shirts, but we couldn't afford them for you ...

That brings us to Christchurch, where we arrived at our hotel to find it is closed due to damage from the earthquake a few weeks ago, so we were scrambling for digs at 8 pm. We found a great place, got up early and caught the bus to Dunedin, formerly "New Edinburgh", a city of Scottish heritage in the buildings and people. My dad (a proud Sinclair) would have loved it here. Took a tour of the coastal peninsula to see nesting yellow eyed penguins, blue penguins, and Royal Albatross as well as furry seals and sea lions. A beautiful day!

We are off to Te Anau for our four day Milford Sound trek tomorrow ...

The Otanga Peninsula near Dunedin ...

A yellow-eyed penguin ...

Furry seal ...

Hello to all!

This is one of New Zealand's black sand beaches ...

I love New Zealand!

Our first day in Auckland ...

Leaving from MSP January 5th ...

Finding Middle Earth and Hobbitland,

Greetings to everyone from New Zeeland. Deb and I are off on the great adventure and having a wonderful time. It has been nothing less than brilliant so far. But first, a much appreciated thank you for your good wishes, prayers, and overall support. It was and will continue to be a highlight of our trip. We remain connected and think of you often on our daily travels.

We send along our prayers and support for my cousin Mary Anne whose daughter Livy died this week from complications of Neurofibromatosis. Mary Ann and family were remarkable, caring, and courageous in giving Livy a wonderful last year.

We arrived in New Zeeland only 5 days ago, but we have already traveled the North Island and crossed over Cook Strait by ferry today and are settling into the Marlborough region (wine country) for the next 2 days. We have been impressed with the ever present commitment, value and recogition of the Maori culture (original settlers to NZ in 800 AD) throughout all of NZ. Yes there are the towns of Wellington, Hamilton, Christ CHurch, but almost every other town, road, sign, and historical marker is Maorin. We visited the Waitangi Treaty House outside of Paihia where the Maori chiefs signed a treaty giving sovereignty to Queen Victoris in exchange for rights to lands, forests,and fisheries in 1840, as well as the only active, living Maori village outside the town of Rotorua. Enough of the history.

Some of my favorite things so far have been the highways - if you come to NZ you have to see part of it by car. Driving on the opposite side has been amusing for Deb and she silently counts how many times I end up in the wrong lane or turn on the windshield wipers instead of the blinker. IT's hard to fake the wipers when it is sunny and beautiful out. NO accidents yet though. They also have great signs along the roads - " You're on holiday, what's the hurry"," Slippery when frosty", and "protect our forests because they are saving the rest of the world". I particulary like the slow lanes every 10 km to let the native NZ pass me. I have to admit the Hyundai does not have much pick up going up the mountain passes - we have both tried to lean forward to see if we could get the car going faster. The most amazing thing though is that each day you don't imagine you will see as spectacular a scenery as the previous day, but you do. I The country is a combination of COlorado, Washington, Northern Calif, and Ireland without the rain.

SO we did go looking for HObbit land and did manage to see Mount Doom as well as many expansive,green carpeted mountain valleys, covered with sheep and no houses.....just like in the movie.

I promised Deb that I wouldn't tell the story of the shower at our last motel (more like a room in a house) except to say that her only comment was "This isn't right!!"

I did manage to visit a hospice agency in Rotorua. Had a nice chat with the head nurse. All of their patients are at home and they do not have a residential home. The government is strongly supportive and in many towns we saw the "hospice store" on the main street where items can be donated for those in need. For my friends in St. Cloud, their typical census is 70 patients and they primarily use SQ infusions instead of IV's for pain control.

We are impressed with the focus on organic foods, a limited number of fast food outlets ( but they are growing), a respect for the environment ( maori influence), and a genuinely friendly people who wish us safe travels.

Oh yeah, and remember the next time you go out for Chinese take-out in the US, they call it Chinese take-away here in New Zeeland.

New Zealand is beautiful!

We are in Kerikeri near the Bay of Plenty on the north island - everything is going great except our Internet connections! Can't seem to upload photos - we'll sign in again once we figure that out!

We're here!

After a VERY long day, we arrived safe and sound in Auckland today. The flights went great until LAX - where we already had an 8 hour layover until an 11:30 pm departure, but then the flight was delayed until 1:45 am. We had lost that "isn't this fun and exciting" look by then, so no more pictures until we have a chance to rest up! I'm posting one of us at the airport, where Erin and Dan dropped us off in the morning ... the check-in girls couldn't believe we were packed for six months!

auckland reminds me of flying into Ireland ... it is the most beautiful green island, with rolling hills and mountains and lakes and rivers - just really pretty. Can't wait to see more of it!

We'll write again when we've rested up for a few days - thank you all for your good wishes, they worked!

Last night at home ...

Our bags are packed and we are enjoying a last evening at home with James, Dan and Erin before departing for the airport at 6 am tomorrow morning. Pat and I are feeling very blessed tonight. We have had so many calls from friends and loved ones in the past few weeks wishing us well, and our patients and co-workers have been so supportive! Here are a few highlights:
- My friends at Clara's House Child Partial Hospitalization Program gave me a farewell party, complete with travel gifts and dinner and a beautiful engraved leather album for my pictures - only someone (ummm ... Rebecca?) forgot to invite me. I learned about it the week of the party, and found myself wondering how a person should handle this; do I go to the restaurant and just hang around? The day of the party someone said "Are you ready for your party tonight?" and voila, I had my invitation. So I showed up at the restaurant listed on the email invitation, told the wait staff "I'm here for my party" and they said "What party? We don't have any parties tonight". There was, it turns out, a later email changing venues, and (Rebecca?) someone forgot to send me that one. ANYWAYS, it was fun once I got there. Gotta love that Rebecca.
- Pat's friends at work had a great lunch for him, and they actually invited him to it.
- Many wonderful physicians in St. Cloud have been willing to help cover Quiet Oaks Hospice House, allowing Pat to leave without any worry at all that this special place will continue to thrive.
- Our coworkers have been so generous in being willing to care for our patients while we are gone. We leave knowing that they are in excellent hands!
- In church Sunday, our congregation gave us a wonderful blessing as we set out on this journey. We were so deeply touched by that, and will carry their good wishes and prayers in our hearts every day.

And tonight, as we struggle to say goodbye to our kids for six months, we are so grateful for their presence in our lives and for the care we know they will give to each other in our absence. Love is truly a wonderful thing.

Next stop, New Zealand!

Packing up ...

Less than a month to go, and we are close to filling up the one wheeled backpack each of us will be carrying! The clothes are all simple, packable and hopefully durable, and we'll be very sick of them six months from now if they actually last that long. We've found some interesting devices in the process:
- a Steripen, a UV light device that sterilizes drinking water by waving it in the water bottle for 48 seconds ... no need for purification tablets or filtering pumps! We'll let you know if it actually works. A long absence from entries in the blog could indicate less than stellar performance ...
- the IPad, with apps for anything you can imagine to find a map, hotel, restaurant or service just about anywhere. We'll be doing all of our communicating through it, so we are hoping for no glitches and no thefts ...
- as bathrooms will undoubtedly be subpar in some parts of the world, I found a device which allows girls to pee standing up ... enough said on that ...

We have obtained all of our Visas with exception of Russia, where we fall between the rule that you have to apply within three months of travel and the rule that you have to apply in your home country. So we are hoping the Russian Consulate in Sydney will help us out, or we'll have to reroute. Pat would very much like to visit his friends in Dmitrov, so we are really wanting to work something out; we had a very good organization in Washington DC help us with the Visas called Travel Document Systems . Bolivia was our other challenge, with the same rule about applying within three months of travel, but we can apply upon arrival there.

We are so lucky to have James house sitting for us, it makes a huge difference that our house will be lived in and cared for! Poor guy is already here and I'm sure counting the days to our departure ...

Lending a hand ...

We learned that volunteering isn't free! When you really think about it, this makes sense ... just because we might think we can lend a hand doesn't mean that a local community would have resources to house you and feed you and ensure that you are competent. We discovered that there is are broad differences among volunteer organizations as far as what kind of time commitment they require, services they try to provide, fees required, and whether or not they have specific religious sponsorship. Complicating our situation - we want to volunteer in at least three countries. Some of the organizations were really cost prohibitive, and we had the sense that we could not be sure those funds were being invested in the local community we would be serving. There are many wonderful smaller groups we would have enjoyed working with - but they tend to have specific times when they make volunteer trips, and we needed to fit it into our schedule.

We found a great website at the International Volunteer Headquarters which operates out of New Zealand, and which partners with volunteer organizations all over the world. They have a great website, answered our questions, provide opportunities to volunteer in medical clinics, orphanages and schools, and we could pick sites all over the world. Their fees are very reasonable, and we can choose a home stay, with our fees going to the family hosting us. We liked the design of the organization, and it really has helped us get organized about what we need to bring and they do the details. We are doing the India and Tanzania programs through them, and in India we will be in New Delhi for a week of orientation prior to heading north to Dharamsala for our volunteer experience. In Tanzania, we'll be in Arusha. We received an amazing file of information about the experiences right after we booked them, and are really looking forward to the experiences.

We are still trying to set up two other volunteer experiences - one in Peru, through Father Jack's mission in Chimbote, and in Bolivia we would like to connect with Mano a Mano. Our great friends Karen and Brooks have done volunteer work in Bolivia through Mano a Mano, and we have contributed to the building of a school there. Details we still need to work out.

We have learned that there are needs everywhere and wonderful organizations working to fulfill them ... making the world seem a lot smaller!