Epilouge

Several kind people have asked me why I stopped the blog and have asked me to continue.  Thanks to all that have read and kept up with the adventures.  I have created a new blog which will allow me to open up some other topics and go down paths that were not appropriate to the focus of the Hoosier Kiwi blog.  If you are interested, please proceed to . . .

B2N

... and Beginnings

Remember that trip to Nelson I was going to say more about?

I went to Nelson to meet with John Boyce, the principal of Garin College.  He was a colleague and good friend of Christina West.  She told him about me, my teaching, and how much I liked New Zealand.  He showed me around Garin, we talked about teaching, education philosophy, and a little bit of philosophy in general.  A couple of weeks later Garin College offered me a full-time, permanent position.

It didn't take much thinking from any of us.  In early December Claire, Molly, Oliver and I received our  passports with a New Zealand Permanent Residency Visa sticker.  We are moving permanently to New Zealand. It seems it was always inevitable.  Does that make me KiwiHoosier now?

Come on down!

Endings . . .

My last day with students at Columba was bittersweet, and the girls certainly did not make it easy.  I was sad to be leaving them, but very happy to be getting back to my family.  In my many years of teaching, I have never been shown such devotion and kindness.  I received so many generous and personal gifts, including a painting and framed and signed Columba basketball shirt (see photo below).  I will truly miss these students.  They have a very bright future ahead of them.

We must have taken a hundred photos but there were the only two that made it to this computer.  Hopefully I'll update this entry with more once I find them.

Mr. I, Jamie, Alice, Emma, and Cindy-Lou Who

 The Year 11 Physics class sends Mr. Inman off in style!

I will also miss seeing my colleagues at Columba.  Then again, they have moved up from Colleague status to Personal Friend status, so they are moving in the right direction.  They are the absolute best and I will be lucky to find a better group to work with.

Good-bye, Columba. As Clarence Oddbody wrote, "no man is a failure who has friends."

Near the End

As my time at Columba has comes to a close, I am very grateful for the friends that I have made and the places those friends have taken me.  Here is a few more pictures from my last days in Dunedin....

The Year 13 Physics/Calculus Bar-B-Q.....

 Serious discussion of grilling techniques with Holly Cadzow.

Pitch-In!

 Great friends....

Great Scott!  It's Kate Scott!  And Christina!

Alan and Kate are the bee's knees!

More geocaching with the Hairy Stones.....

 at Doctor's Point

A leopard seal basks in the sun.  Leopard seals are not very common.

Geocaching

or Sandfly Bay Revisited

One of the things I have managed to accomplish at Columba is establishing a geocaching club.  Wikipedia defines geocaching:

Geocaching is an outdoor recreational activity in which the participants use a Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) receiver or mobile device and other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers, called "geocaches" or "caches", anywhere in the world.
A typical cache is a small waterproof container containing a logbook where the geocacher enters the date they found it and signs it with their established code name. Larger containers such as plastic storage containers (Tupperware or similar) or ammunition boxes can also contain items for trading, usually toys or trinkets of little value. Geocaching shares many aspects with benchmarking, trigpointing, orienteering, treasure-hunting, letterboxing, and waymarking.

Over the last two months, geocaching has taken me places I probably would not have seen otherwise. Here are some photos from our Columba trip to teh Otago Peninsula.

The Columba Geocaching Crew

Back: Me, Caitlin, Kita, Angela, Alan

Front: Christina, Ryely, Ailsa, Gaby, Emma, Aicha, Crystal

One of the geocaches in Broad Bay is called Yellowhead. The land bridge to get out to the island is not for the timid.

The New Zealand Sea Lions and Fur Seals were out in force on this sunny day.

Crystal finds a seal.

Going to a beach and seeing seals and sea lions in the wild is really a cool experience.  The sea lions are absolutely massive and move much quicker than one might expect.  People are warned not to get within 20 m or to get between a sea lion and the water.  This chap was just coming out of the water and did not mind posing for some photos.  S/he then went up to the sea lion and kindly asked it to move along, taking its spot on the beach.

A blond, a redhead and a brunette walk on to a beach... 

Nikita, Caitlin and Angela have been great physics students, great geocachers, and great friends to talk to during lunch. They will go far.

Angela finds the last cache of the day.

Things are winding down here.  Not many blogs left...

South

View South from Nelson in a larger map

The drive south from Nelson just as stunning as the drive north.  I drove through the Nelson vineyard and hops country into the West Coast region.  It was my intent to see the Pancake Rocks, but I took a wrong turn and missed quite a bit of good sight seeing.  Another time...

Driving through Greymouth I turned east and headed toward Arthur's Pass along the Otira Gorge Road, also known as State Highway 73.  I stopped several times along the route, including a quick tramp along an abandoned railroad tunnel trail, several snowcapped mountain vistas, and the village of Arthur's Pass.

The Railroad Tunnel Track

Walking Bridge to the railroad tunnel

Magnificent scenery with power cables.

The two pictures above are taken in the Otira Gorge.  The tunnel-like structure protects the road from frequent rock slides in that area.  The chute-like structure diverts a waterfall over the highway.  The vehicle between the two structures in the picture directly above is a double-articulated tanker truck, so one can get a feel for the enormity of the structures.

The Wobbly Kea Cafe & Bar

The Wobbly Kea Cafe & Bar in Arthur's Pass is the former home of Oscar Coberger.  Coberger was a German ski and mountaineering instructor who built an alpine tourist business in Arthur's Pass to lure holiday makers from Christchurch.  He was also a pioneer in marketing mountaineering and ski gear, creating an early form of REI (US) or Kathmandu (NZ).  According to the brochure, he sold Sir Edmund Hilary his first ice-axe.

This leads me to the Kea.  

What is a Kea?  A kea is an alpine parrot (!) that is referred to as "mischievous and inquisitive." The Kea has an extremely sharp beak and talons. This means that Keas will rip into anything searching for food, including convertible roofs.  

I did not know about the kea when I booked a room in Arthur's Pass.  Fortunately, the attendant at the hotel was kind enough to let me know and brought me a load of towels to cover the roadster top.  I also added a few rocks on top, so Rosie became camouflaged as a mound of snow. 

Yummy treat or snow covered tussock?

Kea terror aside, I really enjoyed Arthur's Pass and would go back there again.  The next day I ticked on gently back to Dunedin taking in the scenery....

... and the occasional unscheduled road hazard. 

Nelson

View Larger Map
Nelson is located at the top of the South Island.  The city of Nelson is the cultural centre of the Nelson Tasman region and sits on Tasman Bay.  Its surrounded on the other three sides by the mountains and National Parks including Able Tasman, Kahurangi, and Nelson Lakes.  The leading economic drivers of Nelson are fishing/seafood (yum!), horticulture, forestry, and tourism.  Nelson arguably has the best climate in New Zealand.  It is the Rivera of New Zealand!

The Nelson Clock Tower stands out.

The Maitai River runs through the heart of Nelson.

There is a slight insect problem.

Christ Church Cathedral is another prominent landmark

Tasman Bay

The Boat Shed Cafe

The Nelson region has a lot of things going for it. The area is famous for its wineries, breweries, mountain biking, tramping, beaches, art festivals, music festivals, . . . the list goes on.  It is a very nice place.  I expect you'll be hearing more about Nelson in upcoming blogs.