Saturday, July 22, 2006

Moving in and setting up


Here is the outside of our house and you get to see me scrubbing the kitchen. We live in a neighborhood of Nelson called The Wood. The term neighborhood must be used loosely as it is really a collection of about 3 square blocks or something. Nelson is quite small. But you could be thinking that The Wood sounds like a crazy, hip place on many levels just by that cool name. Think again—The Wood is a retirement home in the area and our little place is considered a townhome even though it is detached but there is a teeny yard and we are surrounded on all sides by very old people. We hear they party very hard.

And this is our new house, more like an apartment-sized house, but it’s ours for 12 mos and we figure all our stuff will fit in here until we (hopefully) buy something a tad more spacious. We’ll post pics of the inside once we’ve cleaned it and dispersed the clutter from our luggage and all the new crap we’ve bought. It was so nice to get rid of all that stuff at our house and just leave with a few bags, very freeing. But what do we do once we land in our new town, buy a bunch of new crap. Ah well, I guess we need a mop to clean floors and some rugs for the bathroom and hangers for our clothes. So we’ve been accumulating things over the past week since we arrived in Nelson. What and from where you ask?

Well, at The Warehouse of course. They have everything one would need at a place called The Warehouse. I like to speak of it more affectionately, however, as The China Warehouse. To back up a bit, perhaps the most bothersome thing I found about New Zealand when we vacationed here (the radio was totally stupid and irritating, but this is a more significant thought on bothersome-ness) was the fact that so much of . . . well, pretty much everything you find in stores throughout New Zealand comes from China. It is manufactured so cheaply and you can just tell how crappy everything is. Imagine Walmart but everywhere in every store. Blech. Not every single store, to be fair. But most of the stores most of the Kiwis go to to buy most everything they'd need.

My beloved store The Warehouse is like a cross between Sam’s Club and Walmart—it’s got all the cheap shit you could ever want with the same switch-and-bait advertising you’ve come to love in Walmart but in a warehouse-type setting like Sam’s Club. Of course, then, we had to go here to stock up on some housewares to get us through the next 6 weeks or so until our own housewares arrive. We made out like bandits: 4 dinner plates at $1 each, 4 small plates for 50c each, 4 glasses for $1 each, 4 of each silverware for $4 total, 2 small cups for $1 each, 2 wine glasses ( of course!) 1 mug for Don’s coffee in the morning for something like $1.17. Long story short (when would I do that?), we spent like $100 and got all our necessary plates, cookware, larger bowls, utensils, etc. thanks to China and The China Warehouse.

What about furniture you ask? Where are we sleeping? Well, again, we are so smart in doing this adventure that we planned waaayyyyy ahead on that one. Back in May we prepared two huge boxes containing a good air mattress, one sleeping bag to go on top of the air mattress, (then put on top electric blankets bought here just in case) a set of sheets and pillowcases, a duvet and down comforter, two wool blankets, sweaters, and a handknit shawl just for extra added warmth. We mailed them 6 weeks ahead of us so they would be in Nelson when we arrived--and they were! When we landed in Auckland, we threw in a new Bose clock radio system (much more expensive here but you can’t buy the US kind and bring it over, we did our research on that one!) and we’ve got ourselves a mighty fine setup here until our container arrives with our real bed.

More pics later we promise! Of Nelson too, we’ve just been totally swamped this week finding a place and getting set up and all.

One redeeming quality about radio: they let the songs play as they are, curse words and all! We heard Blink and Green Day and The Offspring in all their swear-word glory tonight.

3 Comments:

At Sun Jul 23, 04:54:00 am NZST, Anonymous Anonymous said...

The house looks cute!!!

 
At Sun Jul 23, 05:50:00 am NZST, Anonymous Anonymous said...

How about a picture of Don in his knit shawl.

 
At Sun Jul 23, 01:20:00 pm NZST, Blogger Don Bartkowiak said...

You got it Frey, I'll snap a photo of him in it while he's sleeping, he'll never know! a

 

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