A New Home

What a crazy few months it's been: saying loads of goodbyes, building gardens, playing good old kiwi cricket, lifting super heavy rocks, writing new tunes, seventies parties..............

Well, I've made it. Over 2000km travelling up to Auckland and back down - i've arrived in the completely beautiful Hawkes Bay. The sun sizzling down on my skin, the crickets in unison chirping their chorus, the warm wind ruffling around the tree tops. The dry and barren hills set against the deep blue ocean glittering eastward, and alongside sits a fertile basin of green, row after row of grapes and orchard trees bursting over with fruit. A mix of Asian vegetable growers, to very organic gardeners, gangs of African and Polynesian fruitpickers, Maori's and their culture scattered through every town and suburb (including a Marae just around the corner I encountered on my morning run today), not to mentions an interesting mix of Americans (I'm staying with one), Europeans. A multicultural bay. The Hawkes Bay. Home.

I arrived Saturday after a week in Auckland (which followed an awesome day at parachute on the Sunday) helping build a deck at my aunty's place in the humid heat. Went to my new church for the first time on Sunday and made to feel very welcome! Ian and Jacqui happened to be staying nearby so came along for the service too. Then we spend an afternoon taking in the smells of the Hastings farmer's market, out on the beach just over the hills with hundreds of other locals (must be the 'spot' to go), tracking a small river up to a waterfall with kids jumping off every place possible, and up Te Mata peak, the highest point of a majestic range of jagged, barren hills that sits obtrusively like a narrow block of cheese upon the valley floor, right alongside my town for the next few years - Havelock North. In fact the suburb I reside is nestled right up against the slope of the rising block of cheese.

Out job hunting this week. Prayer's would be appreciated. There's not a lot here because so many people are looking. I start my studies early March so have a bit of time to find some much-needed work to go alongside my year of theology at the college. Sat down with the dean today and sorted my papers and timetable for the year... all set to go with that! back to studies again will be strange. It's been four years since I last studied! Oh well, heads down

And i couldn't not put this sunset we had from the Crown Range this summer: