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a kiwi family with eight kids and a grandpa
chronicle their pilgrimage from Singapore to London and beyond.....overland all the way

that was in 2008/2009....

then they kept on pilgrim-ing....2012....

then the 1,000km walk-for-water in 2014...

at the edge of the world

in Him we live and move and have our being ~ Acts 17:28
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unpacking

December 30th, 2009

Auckland, New Zealand

and the new babysitters:

That about sums up the day – apart from people dropping in and us popping out to do a spot of unbudgetted shopping (things like mattress for the baby-girl, who is now a big girl, vacuum cleaner coz our old one blew up, crock pot for Grandpa coz one of our clan dropped his with a great shattering crash when doing the dishes last night, sheets, towels, journals, undies and Christmas mince pies coz we had only had one between us last year and none this year).

Posted in 2008/09, parenting, postcard: New Zealand | No Comments »

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it’s the little things

December 29th, 2009

Auckland, New Zealand

The distinctive NZ birdcalls wake us, loud and full and warbly.

The morning air is nippy, but it will be nice and warm by midday.

We turn on the tap and know that water is potable.

Driving to the supermarket Mboy7 notices, “New Zealand roads are designed for cars to park on the side.” He’s right, they *are* wide.

We drive through a part of town that could best be described as “entry level first-home dwellings”. Through our old eyes, the pokey sections had seemed a bit shabby. Now we see the grass surrounding the houses, the houses that are all painted, the trees, the upright fences made with fence palings, the space between buildings, the absence of apartments stacked side by side, the wide footpaths with grass verge. We notice that none of the buildings have tiles missing or bricks crumbling away. They are complete. That said, they are also flimsy – houses made in New Zealand are not going to be standing in a couple of hundred years.

We arrive at the supermarket after only quarter of an hour in the van and ERgirl3 states in surprise, “THAT was quick!” She’s become accustomed to hopping in a vehicle and not getting out for a few hours!

There are Polynesian faces around.

Over the PA system, that kiwi accent announces a special on vegetaboows. I spent my childhood being taught to pronounce the “l” in milk, to not say “moowk” like all my friends did….to say “children” and not “choowdren”….and quite frankly, old habits die hard. To this day, that particular kiwi-ism grates!

Money comes from the bank through a plastic card – no paper notes exchange hands, no coins rattle, we don’t have to work out if we were given the correct change.

Going home again someone remarks how green everything is. So green.

We receive mail – a card from this couple in France – we might be home, but we still have the challenge of foreign language to contend with! Grandpa gets his postcard from Romania in the same mail; he’s got one more coming.

We unpack our backpacks, wipe them down, start washing all our clothes (fortunately there are not too many!), and simultaneously begin to move house. All our things were stored in the attic and at Grandpa’s…..we need to bring them out of hibernation. We had been ruthless when packing up, giving away boxloads of gear. But we find as we unpack that we still have too much *stuff* – we become even more ruthless.

We have neighbours to hug. How fortunate we are to have friends as neighbours.

We move boxes.

Four sets of bunks arrive. In the past our children have slept on bunks picked up off the side of the road from an inorganic collection or secondhand squeaky ones. We sold them all before going away and a month ago ordered some from a Kiwi bloke, who makes furniture for a living. Enjoying supporting local business, we were extra pleased when we saw how amazingly sturdy and well-made they turned out to be.

We line up our journals on a shelf – they take almost a complete shelf!

We are thankful for good health, remembering that a year ago Kgirl10 was collapsing in the market in Cambodia, unable to see anything, white as a proverbial sheet.

We move boxes.

We arrange the kitchen differently to how it always used to be.

Asthma starts again (sigh – what is it about Auckland?)

We move boxes.

Friends drop in, bearing homegrown silverbeet and radishes. YUMMO!

We move boxes.

Towards the end of dinnertime I am overcome with the inability to remain upright any longer. I lie down on the couch for a moment and sleep for much longer, missing a phone call from my out-of-town parents.

We tuck the kids up into their sleeping bag liners in their new beds (maybe we’ll find the linen box tomorrow).

We move a few more boxes, and call it a day ourselves.

Posted in 2008/09, postcard: New Zealand | 1 Comment »

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surreal arrival

December 28th, 2009

Auckland New Zealand

Friends are at the airport to meet us. Little people have grown big. Babies have turned into toddlers. Apart from that, it seems we haven‘t even been away. This feeling of *did it really happen?* will surface frequently over the next few days. Everything seems so normal, and apart from a bit of vegetation growth in our newish subdivision (and significant weed growth in our garden!), everything seems unchanged. As we drive home we notice houses still sport for sale signs, traffic lights change predictably, there are corner dairies and advertising signs we can understand, it is humid, sticky humid. We are in a van with seat belts and carseats, we have muffins from a friend for afternoon tea (thanks Heather), and our first BBQ for dinner (thanks Grandpa). The pohutukawa are in flower, as are the agapanthus plants. We find a handful of strawberries in the overgrown vege patch (ERgirl3 doesn’t know the dangerlessness of New Zealand and warns concernedly, “Mama, be careful of snakes”) – no snakes here, but ah yes, it really is summer. It is still light at 9:30, and after enduring darkness by 4:30 for the past couple of months, we will find this little factor takes some adjusting to.

We walk through the house. Apart from a few random pieces of furniture, it is empty. There are no books on the usually-overflowing shelves, no pictures hang on the walls, there are no creations scattered around the floor, no smells wafting from the kitchen. It doesn’t feel like home. But then again it does. In fact, in some ways it feels like we just popped out for an hour or so. It’s another one of those surreal moments, and we thought we were finished with them!

 

Have we really been round the world? Did we really dine with family in Malaysia and set off lanterns into the dark night sky in Thailand and pick up the book we sponsored in Laos and visit an orphanage in Cambodia and sleep in four beds on a boat in Vietnam and climb the Great Wall and train across Russia and fight German bureaucracy in order to spend five months living in a motorhome and clamber over castle ruins and swim in the Mediterranean Sea and walk around the Coliseum on a stinking hot day and retrace twenty-year-old steps in Krakow and make friends in Romania and experience Istanbul??? Did we really? Standing here in our empty dining room, it already seems a distant memory, a dream.

We have been, we have returned, but we have not stopped. It is time to move on.


                                          a whole bed each!

Posted in 2008/09, children, postcard: New Zealand, quote | 2 Comments »

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lost in space

December 27th, 2009

sleeping at Dubai airport….onwards towards Auckland

We lose most of today somewhere.
We left Istanbul yesterday evening and took a four hour flight (just long enough to watch a movie and enjoy dinner) to Dubai, arriving when it was pitch black. Ribbons of orange lights stretched out beneath the plane as we landed. Having just spent a couple of weeks taking in mosque-ish architecture, the airport itself struck us as very mosque-like; big glass domes with star patterns. Men in turbans, leather sandals and flowing white robes set this place apart as different to anywhere else we’d been so far.  Security was very tight – shoes and belts had to be removed for x-raying in addition to the usual bag searches just to get into the transit area. Might be something to do with the plane that some dude tried to bomb the day before we flew!
We spent from 1am local time through to 10am perched on semi-reclining seats or spread out on uncomfortable seats or the floor and tried to sleep. The adults each managed an hour, the kids significantly more. 


                                                                                             4am 

Then taking off in daylight, our eyes flitted between the massive highrises of the main strip and the fenced mansion compounds creeping into the desert. Interesting to see roads getting covered with sand – do they plough them like the snow in colder climes? We flew over the manmade islands forming a map of the world – reactions of various family members ranged from *twee* to amazing, from creative to *won’t it all be wiped out in a tidal wave one day?*
A thirteen hour flight followed. Most of the children sat glued to their personal television screens for the duration, taking breaks only for meals. Adults enjoyed the babysitting service and took in a few movies ourselves! (Two recommendations: Julie and Julia, and Food, Inc.)
Meeting the sunrise somewhere over Australia, we marvelled at the hours and hours we spent winging our way across that massive continent of red dirt throwing up dark green trees. After another transit hour in early morning drizzly Melbourne, we were on the last leg.
The screens continued to perform their magic..
Forty four hours after waking in Istanbul, we flew over Lion Rock and our-favourite-beach-we-always-go-to, Karekare, and finally touched down in Auckland. It would be another five hours before we would let anyone go to bed!
But now we’re getting ahead of ourselves – that all happens on the 28th.
As I said, we lose the 27th.

PS When we checked in at Istanbul we were carrying 130kg – considerably more than we had been with our last days’ shopping, and that also included 20kg of pot and wok that we had been lugging round since the motorhomes. So if we took all that off, we’d estimate we clocked in at about 10kg per person, which doesn’t sound like a lot! But you know what? If we went again we’d take even less. We’ve discussed what we could leave behind, what extras we would take (only one thing, actually – a tripod)….and I really hope we have the opportunity to try out our theories sometime!

Posted in 2008/09, children, parenting, postcard: New Zealand, postcard: Turkey, postcard: UAE, recreation, transport | 3 Comments »

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to…..

December 26th, 2009

on the plane towards Dubai tonight….and onwards

It’s our last day before the homeward flight tonight.
Kboy12 talks incessantly – he does that when he’s excited.
The bags are packed and stacked in the storage room. We have to confess to taking home more than we brought away – the allure of Istanbul shopping and the knowledge that we would not have to put our packs on our backs again mean we have filled them up to capacity and then have two extra boxes as well! We’re bringing home ceramic tiles and Turkish towels, a sparkly lamp and hanging light, not to mention a pile of notebooks, bookmarks and the obligatory Turkish Delight!

In the practical sense we’re ready to go home.

But we have time to kill and take a final walk, go for last shish kebabs, continue to insist to every carpet-seller, who stops us that we are not buying any Turkish rugs no matter how much we’d like to.
For two weeks we’ve been in Turkey and for the first time today we discover a brilliant BLUE sky. A summery blue beckoning us homewards. 

These grey days….

….have turned into brilliant blue. We walk the same route already taken often – past the Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque, actually past lots of mosques…it all looks so different in bright light, and there’s always something different to see:

We return to the hostel, hoping to convince smallish children to nap. They do. 
Whenever someone stands up ERgirl3 asks if we’re going “to our home in Zealand now”.

We are.

Posted in 2008/09, children, food, postcard: Turkey, recreation, souvenir | 5 Comments »

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seeking Christmas

December 25th, 2009

Istanbul, Turkey

Turkey has had a reputation in recent times of being not particularly friendly to adherents of the Christian religion. We wondered what we’d find.

Christmas Day dawns – bright and early….well, early, but barely light. We are staying right next door to a mosque and the dawn prayer call rouses us from deep sleep.
Merry Christmas!

After checking out their “Christmas stockings”, filled with Turkish bookmark, chocolate bar and surprise toffee apple, we discover the children with noses in journals; this might be Christmas Day, but the strength of what-has-become-our-routine is powerful and they write and illustrate yesterday’s events as breakfast is prepared.
What could be better than thick creamy yoghurt to accompany pastries filled with apple and pistachios for a special breakfast? They are virtually Christmas mince pies!

 
The yoghurt comes in our-family-sized tubs for our-kind-of-price ~ 3kg for about NZ$5.

“I wonder what Christmas is like in Istanbul,” Rob murmurs as we step out from the hostel. We go out looking for signs of Christmas:

 
chestnuts roasting over an open fire
but they’re here because it’s winter, not because they’re a Christmas food


another Turkish-but-not-necessarilly-Christmassy food

 
that one’s not real Christmas either
that is to say, the turkey is real, but we saw it in Pergamum a couple of days ago, not in Istanbul today

 
Christmas Day is a Friday this year, and so Christmas in Istanbul means watching men streaming into the mosque for Friday prayers at midday, and then sitting in our hostel room listening to the same as they are loudly broadcast towards our window

 
Santa Claus has made it to Turkey, but not Jesus Christ.
Yesterday as we drove for six hours we listened to a Turkish radio station that was sympathetic to western Christmas tradition…..by that we mean they were playing Christmas songs. Once we’d heard Frosty the Snowman, I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer in both English and Turkish, we wondered if there would be any carols. We were rewarded with five different versions of “Last Christmas I gave you my heart” – all in a row, one soppy wailing song after the other. The closest we got to a nativity song was “The Little Drummer Boy” (vague enough to be non-threatening, I guess) and a non-Christmas song that included the word *angel* and could, therefore, be classified as Christmassy. Perhaps the fact that the angel was positively mortal and not at all angelic made it safe enough!

Where was
* O little town of Bethlehem
* Joy to the world
* Hark, the herald angels sing
* We three kings (even if they weren’t kings, and possibly not three of them either!)
* Away in a manger
* Silent Night (even if it was more likely to have been a rowdy one)
* O holy night
* Once in royal David’s city

??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

We’d have thought you might hear *while shepherds watched* here…each day on our road trip we saw shepherds sitting or standing by their flocks, leading them along the roadside or across fields…shepherds have been a concrete reminder of the nativity story for us this year. As was a shepherd’s cloak we saw today in the Grand Bazaar….along with all the treasure we saw there….and our Christmas lunch was also a reminder of this eastern story:

And while Turkey appears reluctant to allow mention of the True Christmas Story, it is preparing to welcome in a new year, ironically, the date of which is intrinsically linked to the person, Whose miraculous birth seems to be ignored here.

Posted in 2008/09, food, God, history, postcard: Turkey, tradition | 3 Comments »

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Lest we forget

December 24th, 2009

Istanbul, Turkey via the Gallipoli Peninsula

 

Impressions from the peninsula:

* the sheer number of cemeteries sprinkled along the coast

* the rugged countryside

* the mud in the trenches (trying to clean shoes before getting back into the cars
   seared this fact into the kids’ minds more than any written description ever will)

* the grand monuments

* loneliness, honour, freedom, courage, sadness, loss

* that this is our history

And then we drive the 350km back to Istanbul around the peninsula. Long straight roads, distinctive housing different to the other three days of this mini road trip (colours very similar to Provence, but deeper – coral, burgundy, olive, salmon, teal, mustard; semi-detached houses with yards), army tanks, the sea, rolling hills, yet another beautiful sunset.
We drive into Istanbul at rush-hour, blatting along at 120km/hr trying not to lose each other in the impatient lane-changing traffic, and knowing that we are running half an hour late – I knew I wasn’t enjoying it, but upon our arrival even Rob exclaimed, “That was so stressful”!! Stressful, yes, but also a bit of an adventure adrenaline surge!

Please excuse the lack of information about Gallipoli….the author is still in recovery mode and it took every ounce of energy to not crawl into bed, but stay up and put together some collages instead – the text is bonus, considering the circumstances <wink>

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where are we?

December 23rd, 2009

Eceabat, Turkey (via Pergamum and Canakkale)

Immediately after breakfast severe cramps grip my stomach. Could it be the super-salty pickles we just ate with our eggs and tomatoes? Surely not that quickly! Is it perhaps the pide we ate for dinner last night? Quite possibly – we were charged 50% more than the verbally quoted price, and maybe it left more than just a stale taste in the mouth! There’s certainly no denying – as the day proceeds I look greener and greener and become decreasingly aware of my surroundings….where are we?

We start the day at Ancient Anywhere. Actually, it’s Pergamum, but when you don’t feel so crash hot, all crumbling stones look much the same.

then there really should be a picture of Rob, but he was behind the camera all day, so here’s one more cute girl he snapped….

We could be in Italy – the buildings sport Italian-looking stone work, outdoor ovens, and there’s an abundance of yellowish-green pine trees.

We could be in Greece – the countryside has that rocky (no, boulder-y) look.

I hallucinate back to yesterday (just kidding – I merely remember!) The countryside had taken on a kiwi flavour for a while – rolling scrub-covered hills, dark pines, sheep.

I’m brought back to the present as a dog runs out onto the road. This could be Cambodia.

After driving five hours over winding roads (on an empty stomach, which, in retrospect was a bad idea!), we reach the ferry terminal, and we could be anywhere in Asia. Extreme Asia. Here people don’t just stroke the children’s hair – they smother the little girls with kisses, taking the wee faces in their hands and plastering their shows of affection all over the slightly hesitant cherubs. Ah, that’s right – such intense displays have been reserved for Turkey – that’s where we must be.

As the boat docks, we see the lights from the hostel – thank goodness it’s easy to find! Without further ado, we all crawl into bed to face a bad night – it’s one of our squeeze-into-only-six-beds-due-to-cost-nights. To make matters worse, it’s one of our find-a-hostel-room-with-no-window nights too. This will not be a day to forget.

Posted in 2008/09, health, history, postcard: Turkey, recreation | 2 Comments »

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those twins again: the big one, Lboy8

December 12th, 2009

Brasov, Romania

“I liked Malaysia for the food and iced lemon tea. I liked Mongolia for the ranch, for riding horses and milking cows and herding goats. I liked England for the food like Cornish pasties and vinegar on chips. I liked Italy for the pizzas. And I loved the fresh crispy apples off the tree in Bulgaria.”

Here is a boy, who experiences life through his stomach!
To prevent his memories being solely related to food, we proposed another question: what have you learnt this last year or so? He almost got stuck on a foodie train of thought (“Other countries have open air markets”), but managed to digress…”At Angkor Wat when a new group of people took over the temples they would change the carvings to make them into their own gods, or sometimes they even just put a shawl around the statue’s shoulders and that made them new.”

“Before we went away I didn’t know a capital I meant an information centre.”

He was on a roll….
”When Chinese people take a photo they make their fingers into a V.”

“I’d like to go back to Poland in the snow, because it would be interesting to see the differences.”
Plus, we all know how much he loved the kremowka (special cream cake) and sernik (cheese cake) and paczki (doughnuts) and kielbasa (sausages) and pierogi (dumplings) and zapiekanki (pizza breads)….. 😉

 

 

Posted in 2008/09, children, food, learning, postcard: Romania | 3 Comments »

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those twins again: the little one, Mboy7

December 12th, 2009

Brasov, Romania

 

“Before we left I saw a movie about war in China and so I didn’t want to go to China. But when we got there I liked it.  I loved going for bike rides, especially the really long one on the tandem with Mama. I liked the food, especially spicy noodle soup. And the people were very friendly. But I didn’t like it that they wanted to take our picture all the time. Though it WAS funny. I also liked England for the English Heritage sites and Mongolia for the ranch.”

What parent would show their six-year-old child a movie about war in China? Not this one! Well, not the usual images associated with “war movie” anyway…what Mboy6 saw was an old black-n-white documentary about Gladys Aylward. Yes, it did end with her rescuing children, crossing the mountains on foot with them, because soldiers were coming, but the *war* aspect was largely missing from the screen. It was not, however, missing from our little imaginer’s mind. For the four months before we arrived in China, Mboy6’s conversations centred on “could world war three start today and where would we go and how would we get food and what if I get separated from you and will you know if there’s war and could there be war in Thailand and could there be war in Laos and could there be war in Cambodia and what about Viet Nam and is it still safe in China and and and????”
ERgirl2, on the other hand, had it in her head that when we got to China it was going to be cold and so the moment we crossed the border she asked, “Are we in China? Is it cold?” Less concerning than whether we were about to enter a war zone or not!!

Most probably visiting war sites in Cambodia, taking a hike through land not completely cleared of UXOs, requiring us to stay on a narrow specially marked track and seeing the effects of UXOs every day, did little to reduce his anxiety.

But after China, the war talk stopped. And Mboy6/7 got on with enjoying the trip.

 


every time Mboy opened his mouth, the fish did too!!!!
~for five full minutes~

Posted in 2008/09, children, postcard: China, postcard: Romania | No Comments »

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