Here comes the snow...

The time has come for both Erin and I to grace the US with our presence. For Erin it will be 8 and 1/2 months since she's been home and for myself it'll be 4 and 1/2. We are both very excited for our trip and to see friends and family.

Although it will be very difficult to leave our nice summer weather down here for the snow and ice of Boston, we are packing for the conditions.

My US cell phone number will still work, so feel free to give me a shout. In addition we will be going out in the city this Friday night and all are welcome. We will be starting in Kenmore Sq at 7pm (if interested in starting that early get in touch with me and we'll give you the details). Around 9:30 we will be heading to Foundation Lounge in Kenmore Square. Hope to see you all in Boston.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS TO EVERYONE!

Happy Early Birthday

Tonight we celebrated my birthday early with friends. It was a very fun night where we were also able to celebrate many other things including:

• Anna's sister and brother- in- law (Emma and Jens) visiting NZ on their six week honeymooon from Sweden
• Jochen's girlfriend Susanne visiting from Germany
• Jeroen and Jeremy's promotions
• And the year 2007 - which included a wedding and baby on the way for Mascha and Jeroen!

We had dinner at Hammerheads, a wonderful seafood restaurant which has fabulous views of the city and sunset. Sadly it was raining, so we didn't have a sunset, but the night was still lots of fun!

Christmas Is Everywhere!

This cloud was spotted over Wellington this weekend. Can you see the reindeer?

This weekend we were busy bees - finishing up our holiday shopping and starting to pack for our trip home. The city is very festive with carol singers and bell choirs all over the place. There are giant tree ornaments and people are starting to put lights up on their balconies. The Sky Tower is lit up green and red to celebrate. Here is a picture of the Tower at night:

Volleyball on the Pier?

We didn't have huge plans this weekend, but one of our most important items was to get some Christmas shopping completed as in less than 2 weeks we will be sporting our winter clothes in the cold Boston weather! Although Friday night was a long night out at the bars with people from Jeremy's work, he managed to get out of bed at a reasonable time so we could walk around the town and enjoy a very sunny day.
As we headed out, we heard quite a bit of noise down by the harbour and as we made our way closer, we saw bleachers and balls flying in the air. There was a volleyball tournament on the pier. It was pretty neat as they brought in a ton of sand so it was actually a sand volleyball tournament on the pier. If only we had known and entered a team. We also hoped to decorate our place a little for the holiday time, but unfortunately we only have a red candle and a kiwi with a Santa hat on. It's not great, but gives us some holiday spirit. (No tree for us this year.)

More US Visitors

This past weekend both Erin and I were graced with some more visitors from the US. Melanie and Alison came to visit us and although we have never met them before we picked them up in the airport and it felt like we had been friends with them for years. We took them to One Tree Hill, then to lunch down in Mission Bay. Unfortunatly the rain started in the afternoon for a bit, but we made the best of it by drinking wine and eating (our favorite things).

Erin and I had to work on Monday, but they were able to head to Waiheke and taste wine and relax in the sun. We met up for some yummy Italian food and more WINE at night. We capped both nights off at Danny Doolan's listening to some guys playing the Guitar. Melanie made a few requests and became known as Ms. America. They left this morning and headed to Sydney for another 2 weeks. They are keeping a blog of their trip which you can check out here: Melanie & Alison's Blog




The weather continues to get warm over here as summer continues to approach.

Busy Weekend

Following our yummy Thanksgiving Dinner, we had a busy weekend. We started with a trip to the gym and the Auckland Zoo. We saw a bunch of animals and it was a great time.


Then in the afternoon we watched the Celtics/Lakers game with Jochen at our place. After the game we headed to an Irish bar to grab some dinner and then headed over to a co-workers place for a house warming party.

We woke up early Sunday morning as the Ocean Swim was going on which is a event where 1200 swimmers swam from 1 side of the harbour to the other. It was pretty neat to watch all the swimmers in the space where we always see boats.
We then headed to Long Bay beach and went for a nice walk up and down the beach. When we got back to the city, we watched the Santa Parade which went through the city. It was a very long parade with various bands, floats, and of course Santa at the end.

It's less than 1 month until we head home for what will be a busy holiday week at home!

Thanksgiving Dinner - Downunder

We didn't want the fact that we were on the other side of the world stop us from having a wonderful Thanksgiving Dinner. The main problem is that turkey isn't too common down here. The supermarkets do sell frozen turkeys, but they are too big for us and pretty expensive. We were able to find a turkey-log that we could cook up. We had asparagus, mashed potatoes, turkey, bread, and of course some nice wine from Waiheke Island.

We had a great dinner and hope that all of you did as well!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving! We hope that everyone has a safe and happy holiday :o)

Love, Erin & Jeremy

Danger Zone

Early Sunday morning I was woken up by yelling and screaming in the streets. We live close to a bunch of bars, so this noise on the weekends isn't uncommon. This just sounded louder and worse than ever, so I jumped up to investigate. At the end of the road, in a dark parking lot I could see a large group of people. It looked to me like there was a fight. Suddenly everyone took off running and I could see what looked like a body on the ground. A cab pulled up next to the person and I, not thinking clearly, went back to bed.

A few hours later, when the sun was up, we could see that the police had taped off the area and were conducting an investigation. Jeremy and I hurried to get dressed and tell them what we knew (not much more than there was a fight), but hoping that we might help catch the "bad guy".

The policeman informed us that there was indeed a fight and the man I saw was now in a coma. The guy has been in our thoughts all week and we were happy to learn today that he's doing okay. He came out of the coma after 36 hours and has undergone some surgery. He was also able to be there today for the birth of his first son! While this guy had a bad Saturday night, God was watching out for him in the end.

Here is a link to the story that ran in the paper: Saturday night brawl

There is also a crappy quality, but still terrifying video of the whole ordeal. Don't worry, we do live in a safe neighborhood. It's just the crazies who are out all night at the bars causing trouble...oh Hi Jeremy!

This weekend we were blessed with amazing weather. We went to our friends Mascha and Jeroen's wedding on Waiheke Island. Waiheke is an island full of vineyards just a 30 minute ferry ride from Auckland. The weather is always a little bit better there that in Auckland, so we decided to head over early with some friends for a bit of afternoon wine and cheese at a vineyard next to where the wedding was held.
Our friend Anna volunteered to drop the cake at the wedding site, so we had to make sure that was in order too!

Here are the happy Bride and Groom during the ceremony. You can see Auckland waaaay off in the distance! They are from the Netherlands, so the wedding was in English and in Dutch. They followed Kiwi wedding traditions, so it was a learning experience for all.

Today we relaxed in the sun and went for a walk to a new Pier we discovered. It is back to work for us tomorrow, but that is easier to think about knowing that Summer is just around the corner!

Today we hosted our first visitors! Bill and Vail and their friend Margy are in New Zealand for a few weeks and are currently spending a few days in Auckland. We picked them up from the airport and squished ourselves and all of their luggage into our car for the trip into Auckland. We had dinner at Soul, which is a yummy restaurant in the Viaduct, near our apartment. Sadly it was raining, so we didn't get to enjoy the sunset. Here we are after our delicious meal.

You'll also notice that Jeremy and I both got our hair cut this past week :o)

Learning Rugby

I'm really getting into the culture down here. I've joined a touch rugby league. I'm on a co-ed PwC team and we play every Tuesday night. Tonight was our 2nd game and I scored my first try (or touchdown as it would be called in American Football). On a side note about American Football, many people down here call it Gridiron and wonder why I don't call it the same thing.

Our touch rugby team isn't great, but we are improving and it's a nice way to run around for a bit. One of the toughest parts is staying behind the ball and waiting for someone to pass it back to me.

Marathon Sunday and The Red Sox

Today was the Auckland City Marathon. We live right on the route for the marathon so we decided to have a small party to cheer on the runners. There were 7 of us who cheered the runners on for 3 hours in the morning. It was great to cheer for them on the balcony and have the runners wave to us and give us smiles.

After the marathon ended, we watched the Red Sox win Game 3 of the World Series. Although we were watching the Red Sox on MLB live, it was easier to watch the WS games on TV, so we purchased Sky Sports for the month. 1 more win and the World Series title is back in Boston again!

Great Barrier Island

What a weekend. We headed 100km from Auckland to an island called Great Barrier Island. The total population is around 700 which soars to around 10,000 during the summer time. We rented a "bach" (a kiwi word for a house) with 6 of our friends. We were with Phil and Anna (Sweden), Jeroen and Mascha (Netherlands), Jochen (Germany), and Jacco (Netherlands). Some of the highlights from the weekend are listed below.

-The weather was great. It was sunny all 3 days although pretty windy at times on Sunday and Monday
-Our place was a 2 minute walk to the beach which was awesome with fine white sand
-Saturday was filled with a hike (tramp as it's called over here) up to the top of Mt. Hobson. Our hike was supposed to be 3 and 1/2 hours, but we decided to take a different route back and it turned into a 7 hour grueling hike up and down very steep inclines which were very slippery. We crossed many rivers, and crawled up and down. We were all very satisfied when we finished and our muscles were very tired the next day. (Check out the pictures of our hike and some of the steep inclines and declines that we went on)

-We spent a lot of time drinking and eating (white wine, red wine, 42 below vodka, and lots of beer)
-Hung out at the beach and played some cricket
-Went swimming in the chilly water to cool off (only lasted a couple minutes as it was very cold)
-Drove a very old bus on the skinny 1 lane roads
-Hung out with some local fisherman who were all very well intoxicated, 1 was missing his arm and had a hook, and another was missing all his teeth and pinky finger
-Had a very rough 2 and 1/2 hour boat ride back to Auckland on Monday with big waves where Erin ended up getting sick and having a very unpleasant time

A worldly weekend

We have a long weekend down here as Monday is Labour Day. We are heading to Great Barrier Island which is an island about 100km by boat from Auckland. We have rented a place for us and 8 others and can't wait for a fun weekend. Although we are vacationing in New Zealand, we will be traveling with people from South Africa, Sweden, Germany, and the Netherlands. No Kiwi's this weekend.

Stay tuned for some pictures when we return.

Can you jump?

This weekend was a big weekend for Jeremy as he decided to leap from the highest building in the Southern Hemisphere. The Sky Tower in Auckland has the Sky Jump which is 192 meters (630 feet) off the ground. Thanks to PwC Boston I had a gift certificate to do this jump and I had my reservation on Saturday at 11am.

I wasn't too nervous through the whole morning, but when I walked out the door 630 feet in the air onto the platform, my legs and stomach decided that I was getting myself into an interesting situation. It was pretty scary, but I did it and it was a ton of fun. They gave me a free 2nd jump as well, so I've now done it 2 times. We've attached a couple videos that were taken by Erin at the landing zone with her sweaty palms.

All Blacks are All Done

It's been a tough beginning to the week over here in New Zealand as a result of last weekends Rugby World Cup matches. The All Blacks lost to the French team in the quarter finals. Although the All Blacks were ranked number 1 in the world, this loss was the earliest they have been knocked out of the Rugby World Cup.

It will be 4 years until they will be able to compete in the World Cup again and it will be here in AUCKLAND!!!

Pink Star Walk

Last night we participated in the Dove Pink Star Walk with some of our friends. The 5k walk was a fundraiser for Breast Cancer Research. It was held under the stars in the Auckland Domain (park) and was lots of fun.

Everyone was encouraged to wear pink and Angel wings. Sadly, our registration packs, including wing template never arrived, so we were wingless, but we were pink!

At the end of the walk there were fireworks and awards for the best dressed groups. We didn't win any prizes, but did get some exciting Dove goody bags for participating!

Seafood Festival

This weekend we went to the Auckland Seafood Festival. We started the morning off with Mimosas and then walked to the fish market where we enjoyed wine and different types of seafood from area restaurants. The weather was great, so we stayed at the festival all day long until we met up with some additional friends for dinner and a play in the evening.

This morning New Zealand "sprung forward" for daylight savings. Now we are one hour further ahead of everyone back home. Horray for Spring long sun-shining days!

Eruption

Big news down here in New Zealand. There was a volcano eruption last night.

Remember how Erin and I went skiing on Mt. Ruapehu a couple months ago which is an active volcano. WELL...last night it erupted, a pretty scary thought for sure. Thankfully only 1 person was injured, but some of the pictures are pretty cool. Please check out the following link.

On Sunday, the weather was amazing! We were very excited that Spring had finally arrived that we decided to pack a picnic and go for a walk up One Tree Hill. One Tree Hill is a dormant volcanic cone and was the site of the largest prehistoric Maori settlement in the area. One Tree Hill was named after the solitary tree that was placed on its summit in 1640. Protestors have attacked the succession of single trees, so the last one was removed in 2000.

When we finally reached the top of One Tree Hill we were very sad because the weather "turned to custard" (that's a new saying I've learned here), it started to rain and our picnic quickly came to an end! I was lucky enough to snap a quick photo of Jeremy at the top and the view of the city.




After we reached the base of One Tree Hill, we decided to drive to the top of Mount Eden which is the highest volcanic cone in Auckland and is 643 feet tall. The views were great but the rain was coming down hard, so we'll have to go back to get some pictures soon!

Minus 5

Friday night was the last day for a co-worker who was here on secondment from Fiji. He had been here for 21 months and was heading back to the PwC Fiji office. We had a good night out, which took us to many different bars including our first experience at the bar Minus 5 Degrees.

It's an ice bar here in Auckland and there are a few more around New Zealand and Australia. Before you go in you have to bundle up in jackets, gloves, and ladies who have exposed toes (Erin) have to put on booties. We were allowed to stay in there for 30 mins and had 1 drink each. Except for Kaushick who was heading back to Fiji, as you can see from the pictures below, he did a shot of Jagermeister through an ice sculpture.

This weekend I went for a makeup class with my friend Mascha. The class focused on accentuating your eyes. Here is my finished product:

It's a bit much for the day time, but looked nice at night!

The rest of our weekend was spent relaxing and rooting for the All Blacks. They beat Portugal 108 - 13!

Sickness

It's been a tough past two days here for both Erin and myself. On Monday night we made some very nice salads for dinner with smoked Salmon and all sorts of goodies. It tasted wonderful going down, but about 5 hours later it came back up for me. I spent the night in and out of the bathroom and felt terrible. The next morning it hit Erin and she was in and out of the bathroom as well.

We both missed work yesterday and stayed home today as well. It was our first sick days in NZ and the first time we have both been sick at the same time (not fun). Needless to say, we are probably not going to be having Salmon anytime in the near future.

World Cup of Rugby

The World Cup has finally arrived and the NZ is very excited. I know that we have blogged about the All Blacks in the past, but I figured I would give you guys a little refresher.

The All Blacks are the New Zealand National Rugby team. The origin of the name is still up for debate as to whether it came from the color of their uniforms when they first toured the world in 1905 (black with a silver fern) or a spelling mistake in the paper which was writing about how the team was made up of "all backs" (A back is a position on the rugby team). Not only are they ranked number 1 in the world, they are also know for the Maori traditional war dance called the Haka which is performed prior to any match and is awesome to watch.

The Rugby World Cup is in France and I spent my Saturday parked in front of the TV watching various games. It started out at 7:30am watching France v Argentina (Argentina had a big upset). The All Blacks v. Italy started at 11:45pm (NZ crushed them). At 2am in the morning Australia v. Japan started and it wasn't even close, as Japan looked like a little children playing against full grown men. At 4am USA v. England started. I was unaware that the US had a team, but they played pretty well against England who won the World Cup back in 2003. Unfortunately they ended up losing.

So opening weekend for the NFL and the BFL were non-existent for me as I'm fully wrapped up in the opening of the Rugby World Cup. Stay tuned for regular updates.

Who's heard of Panraven?

As you know we just got back from our trip to Fiji which was our Summer Vacation as well as our 1 Year Wedding Anniversary celebration. We had an amazing time and have captured our pictures and experiences using a Panraven album. We have made our album available to the public so you don't have to become a member, but becoming a member has great benefits.

Please click on the link below and it will take you to Panraven where you can view our album. Just click on the page to make it bigger so you are able to read and see the pictures and use the scroll buttons at the bottom to change pages.

Erin and Jeremy's Fiji Trip

Back to the Grind

We are back from Fiji and back to work. We had a great "holiday" (vacation is only an American word so I was told the other day) in Fiji. We are working on the pictures from our trip and will be posting them very soon, so stay tuned for that.

Auckland missed us while we were gone and both Hudson and PwC almost stopped operating, so both company's were very happy to see us return.

Bubbles and Toast

This past weekend was a lazy one at home. Jeremy did manage to fit in a few games of Poker and a round of golf though! Fun traditions like "Poker with the Guys" and "golf on Sunday" make it easier to adjust to life so far from home. Speaking of traditions, this coming weekend we will celebrate our one year anniversary!



To celebrate, we'll be heading to Fiji for an extra long weekend! Sadly our guest book champagne bottles could not make the trip to New Zealand with us so they will have to be used to celebrate anniversaries 3 - 10, but we'll be sure to pick up another bottle for this year's celebration.

We'll post some Fiji pictures as soon as possible!!

VIP in Action

I headed back to Auckland from a week out of town down in Hamilton today. Unfortunately it was a very rainy day, which made for a difficult commute.

I got hungry so I stopped at my trusty McDonalds for a visit. I haven't used the VIP sticker since I got it a couple months ago, so I figured it was time to put it into action. Every time I go to McDonalds it's always some type of burger that I'm getting. Down here we have "The Boss", it's a tasty burger with 2 big patties and a bunch of other toppings.

Today I decided to branch out and got a Chicken Parm sandwich (it's on the speciality menu). The VIP deal was a Filet o' Fish for 2 dollars. (pronounced fill-it instead of fill-eh as we pronounce it in the US) I have never had the Filet o' Fish, but I recently heard from Andy that it was a "great" sandwich. So...I decided to give it a try. Let me tell you, I was very impressed with the sandwich. The bun was nice and smooshy, but not soggy, the tartar sauce had just enough flavor and the fish was pretty decent. I've never had any type of fish sandwich before so it's tough for me to rank this one, but I imagine it would be right up there.

After a weeked away, we had one at home. This weekend we had our first dinner guests over. Jacqui and Jerry came over for some yummy food. We had "Grandma's Spaghetti" (a recipe from home) , salad, garlic bread, and chocolate trifle!

Once we were completely stuffed, we taught them how to play ZONK!

The weekend was wrapped up with a Sunday afternoon movie. We saw Transformers, which was GREAT!

Whakapapa

A weekend out of the city is always a fun adventure down under. Erin, myself, and Jochen (German friend) headed south around 3pm on Friday. We had about a 4 hour drive ahead of us and we wanted to ensure we beat the traffic out of the city, so we got out of work a little early. We played the alphabet game as well as a few other car games to pass the time.

We arrived in National Park and headed to "hire" skis and then hit the bar for some food and drinks. There were about 10 others from my work that were coming down for the weekend as well and they trickled into the bar during the night.

Saturday we headed to ski on an active volcano called Mt. Ruapehu (Whakapapa). It was an amazing sight and not having any trees on the mountain was pretty amazing. The conditions were good in the morning, but after about an hour, the snow started and visibility on the mountain became very bad (about 2 meters if you were lucky). We skied for 1/2 day and then all 2-wheel vehicles had to leave the mountain so we headed back down to where we were staying and headed to the bar. We did get a percentage of our lift ticket costs back, which was pretty good.

Sunday morning was more of the same, and we didn't even attempt to ski. The upper mountain didn't even open until after 10am, and even then, visibility was still pretty poor. On the way home, we stopped for a "coffee break", hit the driving range, and then got some burgers at Burger Wisconsin. We also found out why they are called Hamburgers when there is no Ham in them. (Charlie Nagreen named his creation after the Hamburg ground beef favoured by German immigrants in his hometown of Hortonville.)

So we are back in Auckland now, and we had a great time away, although we were only able to do limited skiing. Check out the pictures from our weekend here.

Chef Geronimo

I had a dinner with one of my engagement teams down here. We went to this place called Ristorante Andrea. It was a neat place where you make your own food and then eat it. We all got Italian names and Jeremy closely translates to Geronimo, so that was me for the night.

We made pizza, Tortellini, Gnocchi, and Tiramisu. I was called upon to be a desert chef and work on a Tiramisu, it was a lot of fun, and tasty as well.


This weekend we are heading out of town for a ski trip, so stay tuned early next week for an update and some pictures.