Random Thoughts

Our first New Zealand road trip was a major success! To give credit where credit is due, the success is based entirely on the fact that Abigail was AMAZING in the car. She was perfectly content to sleep, eat and play in the car. What a difference from when she was an infant and would scream the second she looked at the car. Maybe all she needed was a distraction. On this particular trip the distraction was the sheep and cows. I’m not kidding when I say that we drove for four days and there was not a time when we were further than 2 minutes away from seeing the next sheep or cow. When Abby would get restless all I had to do was moo like a cow or ask her if she could find a sheep and BOOM, distraction! Believe it or not, it never got old.

Just some things that have been roaming around in my head lately:

When I was young and learning that in “1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue”, I thought that America was a really old country. That quickly changed as I became more aware of the world around me and traveled to Ireland and England. I soon realized that in comparison to Europe, America is actually a young country. Way to go America for doing what you’ve done in only 500 odd years; but still just a toddler compared to Europe. I held this belief all the way until we moved to Sydney and found that Australia was even younger being founded only in the 1700’s. Just a wee baby! How they missed this giant land mass in the ocean is beyond me. And now, come to find out that we visited the oldest building in Keri Keri, New Zealand this weekend and it was built around 1850! That’s only marginally older (when we are talking about the age of countries) than our house in Philly. What does this all mean, and why is it so important, I’m not sure. But maybe that is why Australia and New Zealand are still Commonwealth countries that pledge allegiance to the Queen…they just haven’t gone through their terrible two’s yet.

Philadelphians vs. Sydneysiders vs. Kiwis. They each have their good attributes and their bad (and I will have to get into specifics later) but I have to say that Kiwis win from my prospective as a stay at home mom of a two year old trying to get around an unfamiliar city with a stroller. First of all, the stroller is typically empty and Abby is walking alongside so it just becomes another thing to keep track of. We went to the Wintergardens in the Domain today which has two conservatories and a fernery (Kiwis love their ferns) as well as a fish pond and lily pond. Auckland is nowhere near as good as Sydney with making all things accessible so since Abby was walking anyway we headed up the stairs with me bumping the stroller up each step backwards. There was another couple there carrying their stroller up the steps as well. When they got to the top, they let their two year old out of the stroller and BOTH of them came down to help me; one to help carry the stroller and the other to hold Abby’s hand. Well, shit, I’ll just head home then, have a great day! Kiwis are nice people but they should watch out for their own…their two year old headed straight for the fish pond and almost fell in!

In the United States everything is done on the right (because right hand people rule the world). You drive on the right and so it makes sense that when walking you stay to the right. When we arrived in Sydney and the driving was on the left I assumed that you would then stay to the left on the sidewalk. That is only sometimes the case. With a city that is full of tourists, people just walk wherever they damn want, including right into you if they are busy texting and you are in their way. Now in Auckland, where they also drive on the left, it appears as though it is almost customary to stay to the right when walking. Now, this may seem like a trivial thing but Abby and I do A LOT of walking and I try to follow the law of the land if only to make my life easier. But what I’m finding is that I am constantly dancing with people on the street; and not attractive young men that might be fun to do a quick salsa with. I’m talking about teenagers on skateboards, moms with strollers four abreast and creepy old men that smell and have no teeth. Everyone needs to just choose a side, and the right is the correct side!