Tonight, I packed my bags for another 2.5 days of fieldwork. The smell of old wet plastic, sweat, moist soil, rotting wood and mould made me slightly nauseous.
But. There are other things happening. A few hours before the earthquake, we had our new sofa delivered.
Before:
After:
We now have the guestroom in order, which is just in time for the first guests to arrive! My dear friends Sandra & Marlies are as we speak travelling the North Island and will be over here soon.
Some days after the earthquake (there you have it, the daily earthquake dealings. Who was I kidding when I claimed this post would be earthquake-free?!) Thomas started supporting local business owners by buying an “entertainment unit”. This, because in the meantime his container from Germany had arrived. As a matter of fact, during the earthquake, Thomas’ container was sitting ON the epicenter (or so we thought, later it turned out it was already some kilometers away from it at the container—centre), and his passport was in the epicenter of destruction: cathedral square (still not to be entered).
However, luckily the container wasn’t damaged, and in the meantime they have salvaged passports from Immigration NZ’s office in the city centre, sent the whole lot to Auckland, and Saturday morning his passport WITH PERMANENT RESIDENCE VISA arrived. I didn’t think an earthquake would get in the way of the visa when we were filling out form #56 version B back in August…
In the container were many important things such as Thomas’ entire collection of natural philosophy books (his family and friends probably think they have his entire collection of books too), more cutlery (until now we had to share spoons when more than 1 person came over for dinner), a decent stereo set (how could I do so long without one?!), and more. Although I was amazed at how he had packed everything away (I’d been scared the whole house would become a mess of books and spoons).
While I was on fieldwork, Thomas started working for the Emergency Operation Centre (EOC), first entering data from damage reports from throughout the city, now mapping landslides, faults, rockfall, with GIS. Which is slightly more in the wider area of his professional expertise, so that is good. I told my colleagues how I liked it we are now both working and I don’t feel guilty anymore when I come home and dinner is ready, everything is clean and tidy and the fridge is full. My colleagues didn’t really understand how I could NOT like NOT doing any household chores, but I feel life is much more balanced like this. We both work, both cook, both clean, and both do the shopping.
What else is new. It is my first autumn since 1.5 years, and I like it. We have more tomatoes than we can eat from the garden,
a cute pumpkin,
kale infested with white flies, 
wonderful sweet corn and a lemon bush, 
a variety of herbs and some more peas, salad, leek and peppers to come.I’ll be away until the end of the week again, but prepare yourselves for another (last?) grumpy fieldwork post.
