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Published: December 7th 2008
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Front corner view of our house At Home in Timaru
Yesterday we attended Timaru Hospital’s Staff Christmas BBQ. As we sat soaking up the warm sunshine under brilliantly blue skies enjoying a barbeque with Christmas music playing in the background, Randy looked at me and said, “Isn’t this strange? Christmas music in the summertime in December?!”
We have now been living in Timaru since August; just over 4 months, and we are feeling quite at home here. I never wrote in the blog much about our house, so let me tell you a little bit about it. We are living in a very old house that has been renovated several times by various owners. I believe it dates back to the late 1800’s; it may have been one of the first houses built in Timaru. We see a lot of this type of model home in the area (the basic shape of it). It’s kind of an ugly green color on the exterior, with a nice wood porch. Inside is a long hallway with rooms off the side; 3 bedrooms on one side and a bath, and an open arrangement between the living room and nice sized kitchen on the other side of
49 James Street
side view of house the hall, as well as the “water closet” (yup, just a toilet, that’s it!). There is also a laundry room with washer/dryer, a large garage, and a breezeway for Randy’s prized (garage sale) barbeque!! The house sits very close to the street with a privacy hedge in front, and our driveway leads back to 2 additional, newer properties owned by the same landlord. All 3 properties are generally leased by the hospital for locums personnel.
Typical of most older New Zealand properties, the insulation is almost non-existent, and we have a “heat pump” (electric heater) in the kitchen as the sole source of heat for the house, and we rely on space heaters as needed in addition to the beloved electric blanket!! When the wind blows, it whistles right through the cracks in the door and window frames. The windows are single paned, and also do not have screens, much to the delight of the flies!
However, the house does have some character and I like it more now that we have fixed it up. Our decorating style would be best described as “Dorm style” as we filled in the minimal furnishings with things found at
garage sales and secondhand stores. We couldn’t find any posters that were anything near as nice as the photos Randy has been taking, so he had some of his own photographs enlarged, and they adorn our walls much to the enjoyment of our visitors.
The color scheme is rather unique. Our hallway is pink (think Pepto Bismol) but I rather like the purple and forest green counters in the kitchen. We have plenty of hot water but one has a choice between frigid or scalding, and it is difficult to find a happy medium, so showers are always exciting. We are lucky to have a washer/dryer; many people hang their laundry out, and if I am feeling ecologically minded and it is not threatening rain or too windy, I sometimes do hang ours. For some reason I cannot fathom, our washer takes no less than 2 hours to do a load, and it sounds like a jet plane taking off as it finishes the load with a flourish!!
We live almost across the street from the Timaru Botanic Gardens, which are lovely anytime of the year, but especially now, and if you stand in the right
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Note the absence of the toilet!! place on the street in front of our home, you can see the Pacific Ocean facing one way, and the (often snow capped) mountains when you turn around. I am totally not over the thrill of seeing how the color of the ocean changes subtly every day through lovely shades of blue and green. There are lots of birds in New Zealand, and they are often singing outside our home, which also has a garden (and a gardener to care for it!!) full of roses and flowers. Did I mention there are NO SNAKES in N.Z.??
The town is really quite charming and very liveable. We have 4 grocery stores, a main street with all the shops and several open air cafes, and the “centerpiece” of town is Caroline Bay, which is a large beach with a park/playground area and an aviary. They are currently installing a boardwalk there, and last weekend Timaru hosted the “Festival of Roses” to showcase its lovely and large rose garden (it smells wonderful there!) To Randy’s delight, Timaru is a major fishing port, and you can buy fresh fish off the boats in some small retail shops on the dock for a
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Living Room very inexpensive price. He will often come home with several filets, some skewered shrimp, smoked mussels and smoked salmon for about $10 (U.S.) There are many walking paths near to our home, along the beach, along the river, through the park, etc. so we take a lot of walks. There are also 2 large community pools, one indoor and one outdoors.
We recently bought a car, since we wanted to have a second one (the hospital provides our housing and a car this year). Randy found a cute 1996 Nissan Pulsar( which is like a Sentra), in very good condition with 50,000 miles on it for about $2200 U.S. We were amazed that we could buy a year’s car insurance for $200 but we needed to get NZ driver’s licenses to lower our deductible. We got the driver’s code book and studied for 2 nights, quizzing each other on the rules (there are some goofy ones about roundabouts and right turns) and we showed up the next day at the motor vehicle office, well prepared to ace our tests. When we reached the counter, the clerk said, “Oh, they just changed the rules as of Sept 1. You
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Hanging up our Tahiti silkscreen and a new duvet cover was a big improvement!! don’t need to take the test, I can just issue you the licenses!!!” We felt so let down! Strangely, it almost beginning to feel “normal” to drive on the left side of the road, although I am always repeating the mantra to myself as I turn, “Stay left, stay left”. Parallel parking is no more of a challenge for me than it used to be; I can’t do it in either direction!!
For Thankgiving, we celebrated a traditional dinner with our American friends from the hospital, the Shivers family, Joe and Joan Harris, and Angie, who is Kiwi but lived in the U.S. for 15 years ("Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday!!" )and her boyfriend Neven, who is Kiwi, so this was his first Thanksgiving. Turkeys are not readily available here, but Joan found one, and it was delicious. Everyone brought dishes; Greg Shivers' daughter Sydney made about 5 desserts, and one of the highlights was Angie's sweet potato casserole with PINK marshmallows (couldn't find enough white ones!) Everyone had a great time, and somehow we fit all 12 people into our house with a table set up in the living room and also in the kitchen.
I
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The Long Hallway! have also included some pictures from a recent weekend that we had at Lake Tekapo, a beautiful sapphire blue lake up in the mountains about 90 minutes west of Timaru. All the lupines were in bloom, and we had a lakefront room at the hostel. Randy had a quick dip in the lake which was about 45 degrees Farenheit (rumored to have submerged ice in the bottom of the lake!) I opted instead for a soak in the hot pools overlooking the lake!!
Lastly, I have sent some pictures of the Emergency Department, where of course I spend a lot of my time. Randy happened to come by with his camera in a quiet moment, don't think it is usually this empty!!
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Hilary
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flowers
I marvel at the flowers, so lovely to see at this time of year - it's snowing right now! And the views are outstanding. Makes me wonder how did I wind up in N.J. ?? Keep enjoying yourselves, Happy Christmas, Hilary.