New Zealand

New Zealand is where I was born and raised. I adore this country's greenness, laid-back people and I especially adore my home city, Lower Hutt, which is by the nation's capital, Wellington.
Apart from the wind, what you really notice in Wellington is the fun atmosphere. It's a big city with tall buildings, large shopping malls, and lots of people. The theatre industry is great here. Every month or so different musicals and shows play at the Circa theatre, St James Theatre, The Opera House, Batts Theatre, Westpac Trust theatre and Downstage.

Lower Hutt is different from Wellington. It still has the occasional tall building, and it does get a lot of traffic but it's pretty safe, and pretty normal. Not much goes on in Lower Hutt and the main attraction is "Queensgate" which is the local shopping mall.

Fishing in the Coromandel.

Areas around Mt Cook.

Some myths about New Zealand

• We have lots of sheep.
  Truth: Ok ok! We do have lots of sheep.. but it's not like we all live on farms and have them as pets or anything.. the farms out in Moonshine and Paraparaumu have lots of sheep and any paddock you see in Silverstream has either horses or sheep... they also totally over-populate us. ;-) But where would we get our lamb or our warm wooly jumpers for winter from?
  

• Everything is in Maori.
  Truth: No! There is a maori name for everything here, and a lot of street and place names are in maori (and rather hard for you yankees to pronounce) but everything is not in maori. The language for NZ is english, but Maori is taught at almost every school in the country and Maoris are about a 1/4 of the population. I think. We have lots of samoans, asians and others here, too.
  

• We all wear gumboots, shorts, singlets and farming hats.
  Truth: I blame the author/artist of "Footrot Flats" for this. His delightful character Wal started off some strange rumours to any non-locals who saw the movie. We all actually wear normal clothing.. some farmers wear some crazy get-ups but us Kiwis in the cities are pretty sane. (Ok ok, i'm not but we're all insane, right?)
  

• We're a part of Australia and/or are Australia.
  Truth: No way! This is the most common one i've heard from the mouths of yanks, canucks or other citizens who live so far from NZ they have no idea what it's like. We're an independent country, with our own government, and are in no way associated with Aussie. Hmmph!