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)