Week 1

Volcano eruption and snow-capped peak just sth of Mexico City

Friday
We had Wendy and Shannon round to lunch to say goodbye, finish the last of the food (weird meal!) and find temporary homes for the guitar, microwave, tent and dehumidifier. Mel and Sarah dropped round to retrieve their luggage scales and new neighbour Renee and her two kids dropped in looking for the greenhouses. It was all a bit of a rush to leave in time for the 2:30 bus to San Jose, especially as I had to go via Patricia Jimenez place to pick up the money for the computer I'd sold her, but it really helped that Shannon gave us a lift. Melody came to say goodbye at the bus and Hugh was also there seeing off some friends. We got to Alajuela and went out for a fairly pricey Peruvian meal - last supper for Costa Rica.

Saturday
Our 4:20am wake-up call got us to the airport on time, and - nice surprise - Aero Mexico didn't charge us for our excess baggage, a saving of $50, but nicked my pocket knife. They also forgot to give us luggage claim tags which we didn't discover till Mexico City. The bags were checked straight through to LA but in these paranoid times everything has to re-go through security between planes. One of the bags was disintegrating and after we secured it with bungy straps the baggage handler threw it onto the conveyor before we could stop him and it took us 2 hours to get it back. It was searched twice, before they gave it back to us and before we took it to check it back in - they clearly don't trust their baggage handlers. We were 45mins late for check-in by the time they did all this. There was no sign that we were in Mexico and we had to get takeaway food from Starbucks.

In LA Air NZ did charge for the bag - $70. We checked in five hours before our flight and went to a terminal that did have some mexican food to wait for the flight. At checkin time we returned to our terminal to find a queue of people the whole length of the street waiting to get in. I went to the front of the line and told them that it was our checkin time but they said the airlines knew that people were backed up and would hold the flight and to go to the back of the queue. We did and when it was 15 mins before takeoff I went in and told them we were going to miss our flight. They said the airline had to take us through. So I ran to the Air NZ desk, and the guy who managed to get us as far as security, which was another lengthy process. All the time they were calling me for the flight. It was takeoff time by the time I got to the gate, and Willy going through security with his pacemaker was even further behind. Air NZ had no idea there was a problem, which was caused by security being unable to handle the number of people getting on flights. We took off at midnight.

Monday
That's right, we missed Saturday due to the international dateline. They gave us breakfast on the plane at about 4:30am. We landed 8am in Auckland, got bus into the city, train to Ranui and taxi to Earthsong. We found neighbours Daniel and Shingo with the key which was tricky to use. Deirdre had left us some of her homemade dried crackers, but that was the only food available and I was not in a state to go shopping. I ate some and crashed. Willy then found that the key was stuck in the lock so Daniel and Shingo took the lock off the door and went and bought a new one. By the time all this was done Willy needed something more to eat but fortunately he had brought oats and raisins. He crashed too and we waited till the next day to get up. It gets dark early and stays dark late. The little room was warm and sunny so I crashed in there. The other room was cold.

Tuesday
We needed food. I thought I'd go to the local veggie shop and find out what can be got locally and then venture further afield to a supermarket for the rest. As I was wondering around trying to figure out where to go I met several Earthsong residents. At one point there was about 6 women in their 60s standing around talking to me - the largest demographic, but especially mid-morning on a Tuesday. One, Glenys, next-door but one, offered to take me to a convenience shop slightly further away because it has organics. It was very kind of her and I went along with it but it really wasn't what I wanted to do. Things were very expensive there and I struggled to walk home with them. Car drivers don't realise that if you live without a car you need to do things much more locally and if they give you a lift it makes you struggle and dependent. So I paid $75 for 2 days worth of food and still didn't have any fruit or veggies! Another of the women told us about a Non-Violent Communication session she was running that night and invited me and Willy to take part. I had a doozy of a conflict to explore having come for my mum's husband's 80th birthday party only to find we weren't really invited by his family and they don't really want me to spend time with my mum either. I got to meet a couple of Earthsong people through this. It was quite helpful too.

Wednesday
Shingo was going to Henderson and offered to take us to we could do some shopping. I had been trying to find out how to get on the internet since we arrived and it's complicated. Earthsong has its own network wired into the houses and you can get an account for $10/month but you need a fixed IP address which has to be registered with the server against your unit number and hardware address of the machine. This took a few days to figure out and in the mean time Helen let us use her wifi. Deirdre didn't want us to have wifi in her house while she is away as she is worried it will do something to the brains of her neighbour's children even though you can't get the signal through the rammed earth walls and two other neighbours already have wifi. Willy lost his network adapter in a lightening strike and has only been able to use wifi since, so this was a bit of a blow. However, Daniel said we could get an ethernet to usb adapter. We asked at Dick Smith and another computer shop in Henderson to no avail. But we stocked up well on food and got the train home.

Thursday
Still recovering from the 28hr journey, we are still wanting naps in the afternoon. Willy tried to get the ethernet adapter online but the shops wouldn't take a non-NZ credit card. Common meals at Earthsong are on Thursdays and Saturdays so this was our first experience of it. A bell rang at 6pm, though we didn't hear it so Daniel came round for us. Everyone queued up for their meal and then went and sat at tables of 6-8 people. There was a space beside Joel, our 'buddy'. You get assigned a buddy to ease your introduction to the community and Joel and I have been emailing for a few months. He's a cohousing veteran and taught for a while at Berkeley High School where I was a student when I was 14. A couple of Maori kids were also our table. Joel introduced us to everyone as new arrivals, though they already knew we were coming from the email list. After that we had a series of visitors including Denise, the only other Aussie and Robyn, founder of the community who apologised for not liking the way I joined, which I didn't know about. People are meant to attend 2 meetings before they join, which is kind of hard if you don't live in Auckland and apparently we're the 3rd lot of people they've waived it for. I found out not to put your hat on the table, it's taboo to Maori.