Do we really speak the same language?
We arrived in New Zealand on Thursday morning and it didn’t take long for my ears/brain to cry out for help! I know New Zealanders speak English, but sometimes you really have to listen well to be certain of that. Then there are the names of cities, rivers, streets, and more that have more vowels than any one word should be allowed to have–If you were on Wheel of Fortune with New Zealand words, you could go broke buying vowels!
We went to the Visitor’s Center at the temple and in visiting with a Sister missionary there, I mentioned that our missionary son, Jacob, had put us in contact with a church member up in WHangarei. She smiled and said, “We pronounce ‘wh’ as ‘if’. I thought that a little odd and tried to figure out in my head how you would say the name of that name with an “if” at the beginning. Later I decided to give it a try outloud and said something to her about “Ifangarei.” She lookd at me very confused and said (again), “We pronounce ‘wh’ as ‘if’.'” I was getting ready to say that was exactly what I had done, when a light bulb came on in my head and I realized she wasn’t saying “if” but “F”! Fangarei! So lesson learned. The street here in Hamilton isn’t “Whata Whata”, but “Fata Fata”!
I have decided that NZers clip their vowels instead of drawing them out like we do. Not “hEllo” but “HeLLO”. Let’s hope I can get my ears/brain adjusted quickly so I can at least understand the names of cities, rivers, and streets. We rented a GPS for the car and I can’t even understand the GPS lady half the time! How sad is that…
But, regardless of the language, the people here are some of the friendliest and most helpful I have ever met. We were looking in the grocery store for a frying pan and not finding one so I asked a fellow shopper where I could go to get one and she gave me directions to get to The Warehouse. As I turned to go, she asked, “Now do you really understand how to get there?” I did and we got there easily. (The frying pans in the hostel left much to be desired and Sam’s pancakes got stuck, stuck, stuck regardless of how much oil we used in the bottom.)
On Saturday we went swimming at Water World–a place with 5 pools–4 inside and one (50 meter) pool outside. I swam my mile and loved being able to swim, swim, swim without having to do 60 laps! The pool was long, but shallow…only 3 feet deep.
We also went to the temple and fortunately there is a wonderful visitor’s center there so we could keep Sam happy and entertained as Al and I took turns attending a session. On Saturday we went back and Sam was able to join a youth group to do baptisms. It was very fun to see many of the men coming and going in their lava lavas, white shirts, ties and sandals. It reminded me of when Son #2 decided he wanted to wear a lava lava to the district DDF competition and being the ever-accomodating mother that I am, I got busy making him one. Seeing these men in theirs, I was pleased to see that I had done a darn good job given that I didn’t have a pattern to work from!
I know there was more I was going to say, but it’s time to recharge the battery before heading south to Rotoroa in the morning!
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Humor from “The Last Continent”
So, I’m now almost 1/2 through the book and am enjoying it more and more…though there are still many things I can’t wrap my mind around.
So, here are my 2 favorite lines from the book…the 2nd one made me laugh outloud and I hope it does the same for you:
“Last one into the water’s a man standing all by himself on the beach!”
[Mrs. Whitlow has just emerged from her hut and had done something to her dress.] “There was, for a start, less of it. Since the word is derived from an island that did not exist on Discworld, the wizards had never heard of a bikini. In any case, what Mrs. Whitlow had sewn together out of her dress was a lot more substantial than a bikini. It was more a newzealander–two quite large respectable halves separated by a narrow channel.”
Now you know the things that make me laugh 
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Current Reads
I have forgotten how to update my current reads on in the sidebar so let me tell you what I have been reading.
For Christmas I got the edited version of “In a Sunburned Country” by Bill Bryson. (He’s the same guy who wrote “A Walk in the Woods” that had come highly recommended by son #2. I read it and did a lot of head scratching trying to figure out why son #2 loved it so much. It turns out he had never read it himself…only heard others speak highly of it. So a word to the wise, if son #2 recommends a book for you to read, ask him if he has read it himself!) Bryson’s language can get a little rough so my edited version has all questionable words covered by black ink. It makes for a much more enjoyable read. As most of you know, I am headed to New Zealand in March (with Al and Sam) and I guess Son #2 figured Australia–New Zealand, close enough. After reading this book, I wish I was going to Australia! What an amazing country. I especially enjoyed Bryson’s description of the game of cricket. Don’t know how many of you have ever watched a cricket game, I have seen just enough to get a huge laugh out what Bryson wrote. Maybe later I’ll write a post about the fascinating sport of cricket.
Now I am reading my first…hmmm, I don’t know if it would be considered fantasy or science fiction…book about wizards and bizarre worlds. It is “The Last Continent” by Terry Pratchett. I am up to page 56 and still not sure what I think of it. But this much I do know…there are no chapters in it! It’s just one long book–390 pages! Do you know how frustrating it is to read a book without chapters?! You could wind up reading far into the night because you’d never get to a new chapter which is a “natural” stopping point. Fortunately, I can only handle small bites of this book and so I will never be tempted to read far into the night… It’s not that it’s not a good book…it’s just the ideas are so weird that my mind can’t begin to imagine what is being described. They say that it’s usually the brightest minds that enjoy science fiction and I’m believing that more and more. I never have been particularly bright and reading this book only confirms that!
My neighbor Lynn
This year at the RV park we didn’t get our usual sunny spot of E3…instead we are in E9 and we have a big rig to the left of us that blocks our sunshine! But that’s ok because it gets us out of the RV every day so we can enjoy the sun (except today–it’s RAINING!). It turns out our swimming pool friend from last year lives in that big rig. When she first came by to say hi, we didn’t recognize her because she wasn’t wearing her swim suit and big floppy hat that she was always wearing when we saw her last year. Last year she shared a lot of books with me that were truly “light” reading, but fun just the same. It’s been fun to visit with her again.
We still love to swim and usually have the pool all to ourselves because everyone else, including neighbor Lynn, thinks it’s still too cold. We can’t have clotheslines in the RV park so we hang our swim suits on the outside of the rear view mirrors of the RV. (I’m sure some residents would prefer we had a clothesline for our suits…) One day when we got home after a long explore, Lynn told me it had been very windy around the park and she had found my swim trunks in the street. I thanked her for looking out for me.
So the other day she came over with a big box of books for me and to say she was having to fly to PA to care for her aging mother. Before she left, she reached behind her back and pulled out a hanger with built in clothespins and said, “This is for your swim suit…I know how much you love to swim and I’d hate for you to lose your swim trunks while I’m not here to keep an eye on them for you.”
Thanks, Lynn! And so much for that stereotype called “trailer trash”! We have met some great people here in the RV park.
Things that made me laugh today…
They say that laughter is the best medicine and so I’m feeling pretty healthy right now. Here’s why:
First, it was Stake Conference today and we had the video conference from Salt Lake City. Elder Uchtdorf was one of the speakers. He said that when he shared the news with his wife of his speaking at this conference for 88 stakes in Southern California she said, “Well, at least you don’t have to worry about your accent when you speak to them…they’re used to your kind of talking thanks to their governor.”
And then this afternoon Sam wanted to watch one of his church DVDs so he got out our portable DVD player and got things set up…only it didn’t work. I tried plugging it into another outlet, but still no luck. I asked Al what he thought we should do and his response was, “Well, we’ve got some good use out of it.” To which Sam replied, “Why don’t we call Ben. He can fix it.” So now you know what is said around our house when we need help with the computer, the camera, or any other electronics…”Call Ben–he’ll know what to do!”
Hope you’re all smiling!
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Electrifying!
This morning I swam a mile! Can I make it 2 before we leave the RV park in mid-February??
But that’s not what the title is all about.
Today we went to the San Diego Civic Theater and saw “Riverdance”–the Irish dance troope, Irish singers, an Irish band and their good friends Miss Flamingo Dancer (I want her dress!) and a Russian dance troope. They started out on Broadway in the 1990s and then took their show on the road. The man who began “Riverdance” later had a falling out with the producers and went on to start a rival group–”Lord of the Dance.” The advertising for “Riverdance” said it was electrifying and it really is! We were up in the nosebleed seats, but we could see their magical feet and hear the music just fine. It was a wonderful experience for me (being Irish you know…and remember I’m always “Wright”)…though I’m wondering if I need to make another trip to Ireland and look a little harder for a leprechaun so I can make a wish for magical, Irish dancing feet! And if I danced like that every day, I’d wind “Biggest Loser-Team Ewing edition” hands down…
3/4 mile
First a little history…
I took swimming lessons as a kid and the crawl never worked for me. I could so the side stroke, the breast stroke…I could on my back and on my stomach, I could swim underwater, I could do a couple different strokes on my back, but I could never get the breathing down for the crawl. Like with piano lessons, my parents finally decided that their money could be better spent and I was released from my misery.
My whole family loved to swim and over the course of the summer spent more hours at Ward Lake than any other family that I knew. In fact, my working mother would save up her 2 breaks and lunch time in order to come home and take my sisters and I swimming during the day. She would call us to say she was on her way and we would all quickly change into our swim suits. Mom would get home, throw on her suit and we’d be off to the lake. Mom would set the timer and remind us not to daddle about getting in and then she’d run into the lake and start swimming. Sometimes I was embarrassed by her enthusiastic run and jump into the lake because she made such a splash! Then we swim and play until the timer went off. We’d use our towels to cover the car seats because otherwise your legs would stick to the plastic and it hurt (literally) to get out of the car. My sisters and I would take our time about getting out of our suits–or somedays we’d keep them on knowing we’d be swimming again after dinner. But mom…well, mom had to take off her swim suit and get dressed for work again. Mom worked as a bookkeeper at the most exclusive women’s dress shop in town and in the 1960s that meant she had to dress the part–including nylons and a girdle! I can’t imagine struggling to get into a girdle once a day much less twice a day just so you could take your daughters swimming!
After my mission when a friend suggested doing a triathlon, I again tried to figure out how to breathe while doing the crawl, but it didn’t happen. I’d just get so out of breath that I’d have to revert to the side stroke. (So obviously I wasn’t one of the first ones out of the water in the triathlon!)
When Mary Ann and I decided to do the Pink Cheeks Triathlon in Seward (called “Pink Cheeks” because it was held in February and yes, your cheeks got pink!) she tried to help me learn how to breathe, but finally gave up on me and declared me a lost cause. In fact, when I invited her to come to Olympia last summer to participate in the Relief Society triathlon, the first question she asked me was, “Have you learned how to swim right yet?” I hadn’t and she didn’t come (though I’m not saying that’s the only reason she didn’t come, but it does make you wonder, doesn’t it?)
Well, I’m finally coming to the end of my story…Sam joined the Special Olympics swim club last fall. It’s held at a high school across the street from a mushroom farm. Have you ever spent much time near a mushroom farm? If not, let me tell you that they stink to high heaven! I mean they STINK! For many years Mary Jane and Ron lived out past the mushroom farm and while it didn’t stink at their house, it STUNK driving out to get to their house. Sometimes I was tempted to drive a much longer route just so I could avoid the mushroom farm. So, why in the world the school district decided to build a high school right next drive is beyond me…they must have gotten a great price on the land!
OK, back to Sam and Special O. I would go to his practices with him and it would get so hot and humid in there that I would be dying to leave, but one step outside and the mushroom smell would hit me and I’d decide the heat and humidity were better than the other option. So I would sit and sweat and count the minutes until practice ended. Then one day I started watching the other swimmers…particularly those in the first lane…the best of the best, sir!…and I noticed one young man with Down Syndrome who just glided through the water doing the crawl. It appeared he could swim like that for hours on end–it looked completely effortless for him. One of the coaches told me with swimming it’s 90% technique/10% effort OR 10% technique/90% effort. (I know–I wrote that same thing a few days ago.)
Fast forward to present day. I first day I got in the pool here in San Diego, I decided to give this guy’s technique a try for myself. It was left arm stroke, slight roll, right arm breathe/stroke. Al told me I was breathing too much, but I told him I was doing what I had seen this guy do and I was sticking to it. I swam 1/4 mile without having to stop and rest and knew I could have done more because I wasn’t exhausted like I’ve always been in the past. Well, on Thursday I swam 1/2 mile without stopping and when I stopped long enough to shout “horray for me!”, I saw that Al and Sam were in the hot tub so I started swimming again and did another 1/4 mile! I could have kept going, but they were ready to go biking so I stopped.
Now I’m not saying that I am a fast swimmer…my stroke might even look goofy…but for the first time in my life I can do the crawl! And to think, I learned my technique from watching a guy with Down Syndrome at Special Olympics…
Blessings of the new year
As a missionary in Italy, the work came to a near halt in July and August as the Italians escaped the heat and headed for either the mountains or the beaches. We could go for days knocking on doors and find no one at home. Oh, occasionally we might find a man at home in the evening, but his wife and children wouldn’t be home and so we couldn’t go in to do any teaching. My first summer in Italy was more than a little discouraging and so as my 2nd summer approached, I decided that I was going to keep a positive attitude by keeping a “blessings” journal. Every night when my companion and I came in from a long day of tracting, we would sit down (usually with gelato or biscotti and milk–fortunately with all the walking and stair climbing we could eat like that and not gain any weight) and write down 3 positive things that had happened to us during the days. Some days it was easy to come up with 3 things…other days we had to think long and hard. One day we wrote:
1. Escaped from a missionary eating dog that chased us down 5 flights of stairs and out of an apartment building
2. Didn’t run my nylons when I fell off the sidewalk escaping from above dog
3. Were able to laugh, really laugh, about what really was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day
As we focused on what was good every day, the Lord blessed us to stay happy and enjoy our work. He even led us to 2 wonderful women who each listened to the discussions and chose to be baptized. We met one at a bus stop–a Nigerian who was so ready to accept the gospel of Jesus Christ and when she prayed it was as if she was talking to God face to face. She left Italy shortly after her baptism and I have lost contact with her, but I look for her face whenever I see pictures of Nigerian Saints in church magazines. The other woman was the sister of a member from up north who came to Rome for her August vacation. We met the sister at church and she asked us to come visit her, but she didn’t have her sister’s address with her that day. That evening as we went to visit our Nigerian friend, who should come walking down the street but this young woman from church. It turned out her sister lived just one street over from our Nigerian! No, that was not a coincidence, but divine intervention because her sister was so ready to hear and accept the gospel. I got transferred and then went home the next month, but when Al and I returned to Italy for our honeymoon, there she was at church! It was such a joyful reunion for both of us. She even had a picture of my companion and I glued into her scriptures.
So now back to the present. Over the years I have faithfully kept a gratitude journal for weeks at a time–but there have been too many long periods when that journal just gathers dust on my nightstand. So, I am recommiting to keeping that journal up to date. And here is my entry for January 1st:
Went for a family bike ride. About 5 miles into the trip, my front tire went flat. There are some nasty little thorns around here that are just long enough to make a hole in a bike tube. We stopped and Al found a hole which he patched, but we had no air pump. Since we were on a popular walking/biking trail, we kept our eyes open for a biker who looked prepared. I found a guy who read my hand signal for “do you have an air pump?” and he and his wife stopped to help. He had a CO2 can that he was willing to share and even had the right valve size, but in the end he didn’t have one piece that he needed for the CO2 to work and the think exploded. So, his wife and I started looking at the other bikes and bikers on the trail. She spotted a woman with an air pump and hopped on her bike to go ask the other woman to help. The 2nd woman came back and let us use her pump and I was back on my bike…for about 100 feet when it became obvious that my tube had more than one hole in it. Al and Sam rode on and I started pushing my bike home. Al and Sam didn’t have any troubles with their tires because one of our sons had told us to buy a thicker tube and some “green slime”. Well, we bought thicker tubes with green slime already inside for the 2 tandem tires and they have had some great, flat-free rides ever since. Unfortunately, we can’t find those thicker tubes for my bike so I think I am prone to more flats, but next time I’ll throw our big air pump into a back pack and be prepared. But, wasn’t it great that so many people were willing to stop to help us unprepared people out?!
January 1st also got: Found a great bathroom scale on sale! Now I can keep track of my success as a participate in “The Biggest Loser - Team Ewing edition.”
January 2nd: Got to walk 3 miles in the surf of the Pacific Ocean and it wasn’t cold…it was simply delightful!
I hope all of you will consider faithfully keeping a gratitude journal this year. With those of you who have babies coming, you will have much to be grateful for…hopefully even many mornings/days without naseau!
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Read the fine print
As any of you who have ever gone to an amusement park with me knows, I don’t buy the pictures they take and sell of you on the rides (Tower of Terror, California Screaming, etc.). No, I take a picture of the picture of me–soemetimes with my phone, sometimes with my camera. So, the pictures that I have aren’t good quality at all and you can hardly tell who is even in the picture, but they do remind me of the fun that I have had.
At Sea World Sam loves the “Journey to Atlantis” ride and they snap a picture of you going down the first big drop. You are getting splased at the same time so I always have my hood covering my face in an attempt not to get soaked right away…and it makes for a better picture in my opinion :) Sam loves looking at this picture on our way out of the ride so the other day I thought “I’ll just snap a shot of Sam pointing to his picture”…only as soon as I got my camera focused on Sam, the picture disappeared and the “Sea World” logo filled the screen. Sea World obviously has figured out how to deal with people like me. So no pictures of Sam.
Last night we decided to go over to Sea World to see Clyde and Seamore’s “The Night Before Christmas” show and Shamu’s Holiday Show and because Al decided to go with us (!) I didn’t have to take my wallet. So, as I got out Sam’s and my passes, I came across a “2009 Sea World VIP” card that Sam got in the mail a couple of months ago (only Sam got one because he’s the only one that got a Silver Passport. Let me explain…when we arrived here in January, we went to Costco and found a great deal on the Silver Passports that includes free parking. Given that parking alone is $12/day we decided to buy one of the Silvers (because while it was a great deal, it was still more than the basic ticket that you can get) and we put it in Sam’s name that way either Al or I could take Sam and always get the free parking (not that Al has ever taken Sam to Sea World without me!)) So last night while we were waiting for Sam to get back from taking our recyclables to the bin, I turned the VIP card over and discovered that among other things, it is good for 3 free pictures–one with a plastic model of Shamu, one on the let’s-see-how-wet-we-can-get-you River Rapids ride, AND one free picture on “Journey to Atlantis”!! So guess where Sam and I are headed today as soon as he finishes his school work?? Heck, for a free picture, I’ll even be willing to go on that miserable River Rafting ride with him…
We did the Shamu picture last night (so that he won’t be wearing the same clothes in every picture) and just outside the booth there were a dozen computers set up with people being asked to take a survey and as a thank you gift, you got a Christmas ornament. Well, for those of you who know me even a little bit, you will know that I hate to pass up free gifts, so I took the survey. The man sitting next to me was so obnoxious…every time his mouse went even a little wacko, he’d YELL “Hey, excuse me, I have a problem over here!!!” and by the time a worker got over to help him, he’d say “Oh never mind, I fixed it.” I would have been fine if he’s only shouted it a few times, but he must have said it at least a dozen times. And sorry, Mickey and Minnie (or are you Dagwood and Blondie today?), but the guy was from New Jersey… They must have given me extra questions in my survey or maybe I just had a lot to say or maybe it just took me longer because I had a few things to say but those little laptop computers are hard to type on, but I was the last one of the night to finish my survey. They gave me my free gift–an Emperor Penguin Christmas ornament (they must not be big sellers in the gift shops and I can see why!) and then the guy saw Sam and gave me an ornament too. So maybe a couple of you will be the lucky winners of Sea World Christmas ornaments next year….
Will wonder never cease–dad liked both of the shows last night. He even laughed a few times during the Clyde and Seamore show! The Shamu show didn’t have much to do with killer whales, but did have a whole lot of real Christmas music being played and sung…I’m talking “Silent Night”, “Joy to the World”, “O Little Town of Bethlehem” and another song I wasn’t familiar with but which included lines like “our Savior was born” “he is our King” and more! There was a group of probably 24 carolers who not only sung, but signed all the songs as well. It was quite a beautiful sight to see.
So, the next time you get a VIP pass in the mail, take the time to see what perks it includes and then don’t wait until 2 nights before it expires to use it! I’m so glad I checked it out last night instead of on January 1st when I’d be getting ready to lighten the load in my wallet.
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Back in the RV
Winter arrived in Olympia with a week of freezing temperatures–record lows actaully–followed by weeks of rain so it was definitely time to pack up the RV and head south! Instead of hitting LA around noon as we have in the past and hitting all the lunch time traffic (though how anyone could possibly accomplish anything in a 1 hour lunch break with all that traffic to deal with is what I want to know), we decided not to spend a night in Coalinga and just drive on down to San Diego. We hit LA around 7:30 p.m. but the traffic was as bad as ever. At one point I thought that Pasadena might be a good place to spend the winter because the road leading there was empty! But we pressed on and finally arrived at the RV park around 10:30 and fell into bed.
The weather here has been a little cooler than I’d like…especially once the sun goes down, but it’s not raining and the skies are blue and the sun does come up and hang around every day so I am happy to be here.
Our Sea World tickets that we bought last January expire on December 31st so Sam and I have been there every day since we arrived. They have holiday shows for Shamu and friends as well as for Clyde and Seamore, the sea lions. Sam is not happy that “Risky Rescue” isn’t being performed and he doesn’t think much of the replacement show, “SLL–Sea Lions Live!” Although the evening show, “The Night Before Christmas” keeps him entertained. Tonight we will go over to see the holiday Shamu show–but we won’t be sitting in the splash zone because I forgot to pack our rain ponchos!
We’ve also been swimming every day. I have decided that getting into the hot tub BEFORE getting into the pool is a very bad idea…it makes the pool water feel 100x colder! As most of you know, Sam was on the Special Olympics swim team this past fall. When I watched the people in the fast line–many with Down Syndrome–I was amazed at how effortlessly they glide through the water as they did their laps. One of the coaches said, “If you know how to swim, it’s 10% effort…and if you don’t know how to swim, it’s 90% effort.” Well, for all these years, I’ve been putting out that 90% effort and exhausting myself. So, I watched those swimmers carefully and am now trying to emulate them. So far I’ve improved my breathing and can now do 20 laps (or 40 lengths) without having to stop and catch my breath! I’m hoping to get up to 100 laps (about a mile) without having to stop to rest before we leave here. I’m still not a fast swimmer, but I’d like to be able to glide through the water like those Special Olympians!
Well, Sam is being obstinate today about getting his school work done. So enough for now. Grant me patience…NOW!
