It is just like Home

As we were cooking breakfast this morning in our little three bedroom rental cottage Mike looked over at me and said, "this is just like home", at which point I said, "who wants it to be just like home?". We have a little home to overselves, and it does feel just like home when you are doing the dishes and cleaning up after yourselves. What are the differences from home aside from the obvious things like no family around?

First of all, kiwis have on/off switches on all of their electric outlets and they use them religiously. So, when you want to turn on the kettle to boil water for your coffee you have to turn on the outlet and turn on the kettle. Same with the stove. You turn the switch on at the wall first. I am not sure why it exists this way, but even the hotels are like this. The only exception I have seen is for the televiaion, which in most places seems to be in the permanent on position.

Secondly, although rental houses and kiwis houses all seem to have washing machines virutally no one except hotels use clothes dryers. Given the fine economic shape the country is in I doubt it is because they cannot afford them. I think the prefer line dired clothes. So, yesterday when we arrived at our rental house I had to take our towels off the line, then later when our clothes came out of the machine I had to hang them on the line to dry. As a result our clothes are fresh, but a little wrinkly.

Third, all rentals everywhere include milk. Kiwis are huge milk drinkers. Apparently Heather Mills, Paul McCartney's soon to be ex-wife recently was in a set of ads talking about how cows are ruining the environment and we might as well be drinking rat milk, it was so preposterous to drink the milk of an animal. The newspapers here have roasted her, taken her comments out of context ("she proposes we all drink rat milk") and invited anyone to come see a beautiful dairy farm in New Zealand and see that they are clean and beautiful. When you check into a moetel, rental, hotel, whatever, you get a small refigerator with milk and a tea making set (kettle, teabags, sugar, etc) so that you can enjoy your daily cuppa. It is very nice.

Well, someone has come into the library in search of my machine so I have to log off. We are going to Wellington tomorrow in search of a hotel with 24 hour access to the internet so I can finish uploading my phots. Until then...
Deanne