Melyssa-with-a-Y

After we recovered from our 3-week vacation in New Zealand, we came back to the craziness of OMG WE'RE MOVING TO BARCELONA!!        Yes, it's true. John officially retired from UT Austin on March 31 and already has a job contract from the Barcelona Supercomputing Center. I applied for a job at BSC, but haven't interviewed yet. I'm not too worried. There are SO many steps in this process. While our future employer helped with our visas (thank goodness), we had to go through every single piece of paper in our house and make sure anything identifiable gets shredded. We're not moving back to the US anytime soon, so we're selling our house and almost everything in it. That required us to sort through absolutely everything, so that the Estate Sale people could come in and set up the sale (10-11) -- and they came in 2 weeks before the date, so we had to be out by Friday 4/25! Fortunately, the sale seems to have gone well, and most of the "big stuff" is gone...

Monday 3/17 we were off on yet another train journey (after all, this is the *Rail* and Coach tour) . This time it was an out-and-back through the Taieri Gorge, going through historic tunnels and along steep mountain cliffs. The Dunedin Railway station itself was beautifully tiled and full of stained glass windows. The train ride was nice, we chatted with people and took photos, and even ventured to the outdoor observation area at the back of the train.  There were multiple excursions available that afternoon when we got back to Dunedin, but we really needed an afternoon off. As it turned out, I also needed to replace my heavily-used Hokas, so I found an athletic shoe store in town and wandered off to spend some money. I also made us a dinner reservation at an Italian restaurant in town that came highly recommended by Campbell. Dunedin really resembles its Scottish cousin Edinburgh, and has a few extra touches to make sure that you make the connection. The Cargill monument (see pho...

M onday morning, March 10 , we were off to the Auckland airport to head south to Christchurch for the start of the Sir Edmund Hillary Explorer Rail & Coach tour. The program was holding an orientation at a hotel by the airport, and after waiting and searching for a shuttle, it turned out that the hotel was only about a 5 minute walk from the airport! Of course it was too early to check into our room, so they held our bags and we wandered over to a nearby shopping center.  Eventually, we checked in, threw our stuff in our room, and found the Pounamu tours (the organizing company) desk. They gave us small travel mugs and a big packet of papers with colored ribbons attached. At orientation they explained that there were two buses, pink and green. We were on the pink team. There were extra colored ribbons to be added for later parts of the tour. Already impressed with their level of organization.  We were on our own for dinner, so we went back to the same shopping center and...

John and I have been talking about going to New Zealand since we met. For our 10th wedding anniversary, we decided to go BIG, and go there for three weeks - I mean, when you fly halfway around the world, you need enough time to adjust so you can enjoy the trip, right? We wanted a way to see lots of things in a short time (and not have to drive it all ourselves). John came across the Sir Edmund Hillary Explorer Rail & Coach tours. So that took care of the south island, but there's so much to see on the north island, including Hobbiton ! For a small country, NZ sure has a lot of "highlights."  There's a link to my google photos at the end of each day, starting with Friday. Week 1: North Island Adventure We left Austin on March 2, and because we crossed the international date line, we missed March 3 entirely and arrived on Tuesday, March 4 . :) I booked our Auckland hotel with points, thanks to a special deal from Chase in January that offered a 70% bonus when I tr...