Livermore New Zealand: 14th January Bluff

January 14th 2012 Bluffs-Invercargill

For the most part this last week the kids and Dad have played at the school park and explored Winton while Mom has worked. We take her to work, pick her up for lunch, and bring her home for the most part. Ursula is doing great taking care of patients and learning how they do things differently down here. She is seeing more patients here than she did in the States, despite having one exam room and she has to room her own patients (do what nurses do in the US).

Today, Saturday, we drove down to the tip of the South Island, Bluff. It is a big shipping port next to a very small town. The town itself is a little bit shabby, but it has some great views. We visited Bluff Hill Lookout. It offers a neat view of the surrounding ocean and town. The wind was wicked and blew us around pretty fiercely. Almost everywhere I live I hear people say the weather changes quickly, but it is only here in NZ that I am finding it true. We would have half of an hour of sunny weather followed by the same duration in rain.

Next, we drove over to Stirling Point. It’s not technically the southern most part of NZ but it is very close. It has a sign post declaring distances to some major cities. We could clearly see Dog Island and a hint of Stewart Island (35 km away).

The rest of the day we hit the stores in Invercargill for school clothes for the kids. The boys will wear grey shorts and long socks (wool of course!) and navy blue shirts. They can wear navy blue fleece if they are cold. The girls wear plaid skirts and jumpers and white shirts and socks. All wear black shoes. We also picked up and outfit for mom since our package with clothes has not arrived.