We have a car!

Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Yes, Jack and I are the proud owner of a car. We are now mobile. We went practice driving this evening. Jack is a bit more confident than I am but I think we will do better as we go on. We drove part way to Christchurch. Tomorrow we may try to drive to another grocery store. We are to feed the CSU students on Friday. It has been a bit challenging to figure out a meal to serve. I am working with a small refrigerator, a small stove and limited ingredients. I think I am going to try lasagna. I do have two pans that will fit enough lasagna and will fit in my small stove. If I go with green salad and garlic bread, I think I can work it. Saturday there is a garage sale in town and I hope to add a few pans to my collection.
We bought a car from a Maori graduate student. We found the advertisement on one of the For Sale boards on campus. It is a 2003 Mazda but has a lot of miles. We got it for about $900 so we think it will work for the next 4 months. It is a station wagon. There are a lot of used cars in New Zealand. Apparently in Japan, after a car is five years old the registration gets really expensive so they ship their used cars to New Zealand. When you buy a car you look for it to be registered and have a “warranty of fitness.” Every six months, you have to take your car in and have it inspected. Our car was just inspected and looks good. The woman who sold it to us is the president of the Maori students on campus. It was a beautiful sunny day so I snapped a few pictures on my way to pick up Jack for a walk to town to get him a haircut.