Belated Post re: Last Week

A lot has happened since we last blogged. First, and most importantly, The Cadbury chocolate company makes ice cream! I had the most delicious white chocolate-covered ice cream in the world (Erin, you’ll have to come and visit us now!).

Second, we have found our dream home [Editor’s Note: Mindy’s dream home], it happens to be owned by our landlord. We had to go to her house to sign papers for our little place and learned she owns all of the houses on our street. We live on a common drive with several other houses. However, the houses are far from the road with lots of space and bush in between so you have plenty of privacy. You go down a long gravel path to our landlord’s house. It is a monstrous, white house with Victorian-style gables (obviously Brandon told me this!) and galvanized tin roof. You step up to a wrap-around porch to enter into the front door. The entrance is a long hall with vaulted ceilings and off to the left was the kitchen and dining room, which was a large open area about the size of our entire house on Peach Street. The vast majority of the outside walls are floor to ceiling windows (with no screens) that can swing completely open (not too uncommon for this part of the world). Rough hewn wood floors and plastered walls juxtaposed against delicate touches (gables, spires, crown molding) gave the overall feeling of a Victorian-era farmhouse. One set of windows looked out into their pond-styled swimming pool and deck and another set stepped out onto yet another section of porch that had a hammock on it. Past that, out into the yard in a seating area enclosed by a gazebo of hedges was the most beautiful Relic’s type table and chairs painted a dark turquoise. We’re hoping she has a similar house on her “to let” list that we can move up into someday!

We must also tell about the “Greenbay Auction.” We had the most fabulous time! It was located in a large warehouse-type building. All the goods were in rows on each side of the building with rows of chairs in the middle. There was a little concession tucked in one corner that sold hamburgers, hot sandwiches, delicious pastries and tea and coffee. We of course went early to walk around and look over all of the items and mark the ones which we wanted to bid. We even thought we were being pretty smart by writing out beside each one the price we were willing to pay so we didn’t get caught up in the excitement and overbid. After signing in and getting our bidding number we picked out our seats. The first 200 hundred pieces were bric-a-brac and went fairly high. There was everything from Limoges jewelry boxes and beautiful butterfly brooches to Flintstone’s decorated plates, as well as, random fish poseys, troll dolls and beer steins. After this there was a pause while the auctioneer moved to the other side and we all turned our chairs to face him for the furniture edition. We were a little nervous at what people were willing to pay for these treasures [Editor’s Note: Especially after seeing what they would pay for little figurines and other pieces of utter shit] and were thinking that we would probably be out of luck on the furniture. We even considered leaving, but decided to stay and have some hot tea and a tasty date bun, and just “people watch” the evening away even if we walked out empty-handed. The first couple of items on our list did go out of our price range, but gave us great practice on raising our number. I realized I was raising it WAY to slow b/c I would raise when I heard the price we wanted. By the time I was spotted and had the auctioneer’s attention he was usually 3 or 4 bids past our “top” price, so then I would have to put my number down real fast and start shaking my head that I was out of it. Fortunately the first items were great practice b/c they weren’t as necessary or as good quality as the following items. Well, by the time the evening was over we had both gotten quite good and walked away with the most amazingly priced items! First, let me tell you what we missed out on—it would have never fit into our tiny little house but I would have bought it anyway had I realized soon enough the price for which it was to be sold. It was a large, peanut-colored wood wardrobe (circa 1910) with square, pounded copper reliefs in each top corner. It was the most magnificent piece I’ve ever seen. We didn’t even really look at it b/c a)it was too big for our house and b) we automatically assumed we couldn’t afford it b/c in the State’s it would have easily sold for $800-1000 USD. Well, folks, here in New Zealand it sold for $150 NZ!!!! [Editor’s Note: That’s about $93 USD]. By the time I realized that was the final bid and hit Brandon to make him bid the auctioneer had already closed the bids. We were both astounded and I can’t really tell you what the next several items were to be auctioned off b/c we just sat there looking at each other in disbelief. The good news is that we did walk away with some magnificent treasures: a square, French coffee table (white washed); a sofa table; a turquoise plant stand; a green “fire side” chair (looks like green moss is growing on it) [Editor’s Note: Reminds me of the pair of green chairs Nana has/had]; a yellow-toned Carver chair; a LARGE basket; an electric Kettle (for tea time); a toaster (an unfortunate “heat of the moment” purchase never to be spoken of); bamboo and canvas lamps. My favorite find was a green, artsy human torso ($10!!), and Brandon’s fave purchases were a tripod; a tre` cool leather back-pack; and box of national geographic magazines. All items purchased for less that $400 USD. Moses is going to deliver it all to our house Monday for $50.

Other than that we have spent the last couple of days completely lost. Actually, we arrived at the locations we aimed for, unfortunately due to language barriers they were the wrong locations. [Editor’s Note: In addition to the City (Auckland), areas are broken down into “suburbs” (i.e., Titirangi, New Lynn, etc) – all still within Auckland. The suburbs are apparently broken down further into neighborhoods. None of the neighborhood names and a dismally small number of suburb names appear on the maps I have seen. I do not think that a New Yorker would have a problem with this concept, but I am still at a loss]. Our first lesson was finding Clevedon instead of Clendon. When pronounced with a British accent these both sound the same. Another lesson was that everything has 9 different names and just because someone says Tamaki and a map clearly shows that there is a city with such name [Editor’s Note: The map said East Tamaki to be fair, which we thought would be close to just plain Tamaki], doesn’t actually mean they are referring to said city, but instead to a street in a completely different town. The amusing part is that EVERYONE seems to know these secrets but us. When we stopped in Tamaki (city) to figure out what street we needed the clerk was clearly surprised that we had come to the city instead of the street that was in a town “miles from here.” (We’ve also learned that when one is completely lost and VERY far from wanted destination the locals inform you that you are “miles away” despite the fact that they use the metric system and can’t really tell you how many miles). So with these frustrating “lost in translation” blunders we are glad we chose an English speaking country (as opposed to riding on a burro asking “?Que esta ________ -- una cuidad, un calle, un mercado – y donde es?”).