Free gift with the car!

So, once you buy a car here you then go and talk to the business man about a warranty for your car. He sold us a 3-year, full service warantee for $2,250, and gave us a gift to go with it if we bought it! The gift he offered us was a 30gig iPod video! and the bonus is that if you do not use the 3-year warranty at all, then they will refund the money to you in full at the end of the three years...and you get to keep the iPod!!!
Tell me who is the winner here!
So, this is the new iPod video, and you will see that it is playing KPE TV, the Video Podcast from Point England Primary. Episode one is fantastic!

The Car

After a whole lot of looking and searching and borrowing people's cars, we have made the choice! We bought ourselves a car on Thursday. There is a huge story to go with it, but that might be for another day as we are going out to dinner soon!
We bought ourselves a 2002 Mazda Protege ES GT, which is automatic (cos manual is kinda weird here), and it has done 74, 000 km. It is highly unusual to find anything older than 8-10 years in Canada as the snow, and the salt that they put on the roads, means that cars don't last as long.
We have decided that we are going to try and be the one car family for a while and have a go at this thing called team-work!

Tyndale College and Seminary

This is the place where I will be studying for the next few years. So far I have had two weeks of New Testament Greek, and it is hard work! We are learing nouns, and verbs comes later. It kinda makes me glad that I grew up with English, cos that would be a huge mission to have to learn!!! So, this is Tyndale, and in September I start here full time as a student (assuming my visa arrives by then). There is a guy named Bob in my course who is doing the summer school Greek as well as the next 3 years of study in the same programme as me and he works at the same church as I will be and he lives nearby, so we travel together. It is fantastic cos we study on the way there and share big ideas about church on the way back!
Oh...and the bad news is that I have class on a Monday and Thursday night, and we start every class with a test! That is bad news!

The New Church

Sunday morning we went to Chatwell Baptist, the Church we will be involved with over the next few years. ( www.chartwellchurch.org ) Chartwel Baptistl currently has 6 congregations, and the one we are at is called The Well ( www.thewellchurch.ca ). The people were friendly, the Pastor is great, and it was so good to see Scotty Dempster again! I am going in to see them this week sometime to organise what I am going to be doing there and how the next few years is going to look, so things should become a bit clearer over the next few weeks.

Flying to Canada

So Air New Zealand have upgraded their planes!!! We got the plane with little TV screens in the back of every seat. That meant that we could each choose from about 20 movies to watch, 15 different music channels, TV shows and all these little games to play. So, Ally watched two Jennifer Anniston Movies and slept for many hours, while Jamie watched half of The World's Fastest Indian, half of Syriana, slept for only a couple of hours, and played all 26 levels of a Caveman game and beat them all! 7 and a half hours in LA were crazy boring, then wwe got on the Air Canada and found out they don't serve food any more. Crazy! So, we managed to get into the country and the nice man at immigration gave Jamie a whole years visitors visa. Eventually we got through customs at 7:30am, 26 hours after leaving New Zealand!

The Final Week: The King Family

Nana and Grandy King

Ally and Deanna

Thursday night, dinner with Grandparents, Aunts, and Uncle and a couple of Cousins. We had a great dinner with the King side of the family. Even Josiah got out of his boarding school for the night to come and see us!

The Final Week: The Barrows

Jarrod Barrow

Mark and Jenny Barrow

Chris and Sue Barrow

Wednesday night dinner was with the Barrow Clan. We went to the dinkyest little Asian restraunt where we all ordered a plate of food, then they all went in the middle and we ate away. The highlight had to be the tea that just kept coming! After dinner we hung out at Mark and Jenny's house, learnt Sodoku, and read the trivia book.

The Final Week: Sky Tower

Marcus and Toni Driller

Marcus in his 27th floor office

Tuesday night was dinner up the Sky Tower with Marcus and Toni Driller. We had an incredible buffet, and even made it into the movie that was being filmed up there while we were eating! After dinner we wnt up the Vero tower to Marcus' office on the 27th floor, and then the lifts stopped wotking. so we sat, stranded on the 27th floor of the vero tower for about 20 minutes. When we were about ready to attack the stairs to get down, the lifts made a recovery.

The Final Week: Tie Sunday

Sunday Morning...Raliegh Street Christian Centre. This was our last Sunday at Church and we hung around forever afterwards saying goodbyes to some top notch people!

The Final Week: Dinner at the Burts

The world famous Steamboat
Max in his favourite top
Monday Night Geekfest

Monday night dinner with Jamies uncle, aunt and cousins. The steamboat was incredible, the dessert was even better, Max got his beating, and we talked rammage and giggage just for Max.

The Final Week: Mark & Zoe, Greg & Julie

Mark & Zoe Forrest


Greg & Julie Wallace

Saturday night: Movies, Dinner and Bowling. saturday night was our farewell night with Mark and Zoe Forrest and Greg and Julie Wallace. We saw Sione's Wedding, which was good if you live in South Auckland, except that it was for sale on DVD in South Auckland before it came out at the movies, so it kinda flopped! Then we went to Little India were the curry was good, and the antics were better. The night finished off with bowling at Sky City. Special mention to Zoe for coming second with 124, and to mark for breaking the 40km mark, and almost hitting the lady next to us when the ball came out the back of his hand. Man, this was a good night.

The Final Week: Grandpa Bay

So, this was a couple of weeks back, but it began the farewell tour. Lunch with Grandpa and Marion Bay the day before they left for the South Island and the Nelson Boys High School reunion.