New year, new ideas...

We have nearly hit the halfway mark into March and the year just began the other day! Only 9 months until Christmas my kids tell me. Christmas! Are they kidding, but to tell the truth, it comes and goes in a flash of light and we are another year older and I wonder, “What have I done with my life?” Have I improved it, have I been kinder to people, have I spent more time with my family, have I lost the weight I was wanting to and started the exercise program I have been threatening to get into? Honestly I can answer yes and almost and a little to some of those and I think that is an improvement in 2012. I don’t know what lies ahead of us as we are in a new city, with a new home and many new challenges facing us.

When we started the process of settling into a new country with all its unknowns, people who have done it all before say that it would take at least two years to get into the swing of things and they were right. Only now do I feel relatively comfortable about where things are, how to find things and who to go to for help. We have made and lost friends along the way and we have found how to beat the homesick blues which comes in unwelcome waves every now and then. The frequency though, is lessening and that is a good thing. I still don’t call this home, but I no longer feel that South Africa is my home either. I seem to select bits and pieces of both worlds and shape my identity that way. So many of the people who have come from different parts of the world have said that they have created these bicultural identities and have continued in that way for many years without feeling disloyal to either culture. We have figured out how to make our own boerewors, cook it on a gas barbeque (we really miss the smell of an open fire) and eat it with mieliemeal (maize-meal) mixed with Polenta and it still tastes as good. Johan has his biltong drying cupboard and now that we have also figured out how to make good biltong, we can even enjoy that. This past weekend there has been a festival up in Auckland called Cape to Cairo and many South Africans and Africans from all over went to enjoy traditional food, music and products. We were due to go, but Johan and I had been really ill with flu and were pretty exhausted after a long week. So after dropping off my daughter Simone, at the airport in Auckland on Friday, we simply drove home.

Moving from Christchurch to Tauranga was a difficult decision in some ways and easy in others. Leaving the aftershocks from the earthquakes behind, a bleak future in the teaching profession (many teachers were let go as the student rolls dropped in schools) and the constant colder weather was not hard to do at all. Leaving friends and colleagues that taught us to become kiwis, a church that we really had a sense of belonging to and a life that we were familiar with eventually, when it had been unfamiliar for so long, was much harder than I had anticipated. However, the wonderful warm weather, living near the beach and being able to really enjoy the outdoors and a beautiful house is definitely starting to make for up for it. At times I still feel isolated, because I can’t just nip out to a friend, grab a cup of coffee and talk about everything. I have my best friend from Christchurch on speed dial and that will just have to do for now. I am slowly making new friends and meeting people all over the place but it takes a while to find those ones that you would like to make a permanent part of your life. Being a foreigner can be challenging and even though many New Zealand citizens were never born here, elitism amongst them that tends to exclude you, still exists. I guess I will just have to wow them with my sparkling personality! Just kidding.

I have been wracking my brain about starting a business of some sort and I am still thinking about what to do and how to do it. There are many things that light my fires and the science of turning them into a profitable enterprise will be the secret. I have been told that people, who do what they really love, don’t work a day in their lives. So I want to do things that I am good at and also really love – therein lies the mystery. Getting out of your comfort zone and being brave enough to wander into realms that you have never been (feeling a bit like Captain Kirk –going where no man has gone before) can be quite scary but then perhaps I would rather like to be scared and well off, than safe and poor. Brave words indeed but then perhaps these words will make me accountable to all of you who read this and then there will be no place to hide behind all my insecurities and reasons why I should not be doing this. So on with the research and I will keep you posted as to what I have discovered.

As for more fun things, I have been trying to cook and bake things a little out of my comfort zone in solidarity with my new found entrepreneurial self. My dear mum in law taught me to make koeksisters last time she was here in New Zealand and it is a challenging thing to bake. For my kiwi readers, these are about as South African a food as it comes! A koeksister is gooey, sweet, syrupy and very sticky - crisp on the outside and soft inside. Biting into one can only be described as a taste-explosion! Although sometimes misspelled as "koeksusters" (cake sisters), the name comes from the hissing sound it makes when the dough is dropped into boiling oil (rainbowcooking.co.nz). Mum made it look like a really easy albeit long process from dough to sticky syrupy koeksister, so I jumped into it on Saturday morning raring to go. I got it all done with new found respect for Mum, as I only made 6 dozen of them and she easily whips through 18 dozen without breaking a sweat! The family has devoured nearly 3 dozen of them already and its only Sunday! Round two methinks but there will definitely be some assistance for the Little Red Hen, as she knead the dough, made the syrup, plaited the koeksisters and baked them. So no eating without working! Grrrr, the Mum has spoken. The same goes for the toffee apples that Courtney wanted to take to a friend’s birthday party on Saturday. They turned out beautifully but by then I was fit to be tied! Note to self – don’t bake koeksisters and make toffee apples on the same day, it shortens your life!

Until next time, keep well everyone.

Kia ora!

(For my South African readers, a Maori phrase which means hello! cheers! good luck! best wishes!)