Wander & Nest

Our year long adventure for Wylie’s Sabbatical has officially begun! We left our home in Fullerton, California on July 5th for our first stop in Christchurch, New Zealand.

Thankfully our travel to New Zealand was about 100 times easier than going to Thailand last winter. Mara was a champ and the airport, she made friends in security and loved running back and forth along the people movers in the international terminal.

She slept a for good chunk of the long haul 12 hour flight to Auckland, and slept for the entire 1.5 hour domestic flight to Christchurch! She also enjoyed some screen time watching baby shark and wheels on the bus on repeat with her adorable headphones.

One of the faculty in the department where Wylie will be teaching at University of Canterbury picked us up at the airport. We loaded our 12 bags (yes 12 bags, and at least 6 of them are for Mara – stroller, travel crib, car seat, and some bags were exclusively snacks for the plane!) into his car and came to our temporary lodging, a house literally right next door to the university. We can see the mechanical engineering building from the living room. We’re only here for a few days until we move to the house we’ll stay at for the duration of our 5 months here. That house is also close to the university, just not next door, and has better heating, which the Californians will appreciate!

We’ll spend our first weekend getting situated and adjusting to the time change and season. We’re 19 hours ahead of LA, so we’re effectively behind by 5 hours and ahead by 1 day. And it’s winter! Luckily it’s nothing like the Illinois winters we experienced in grad school but still quite a bit chillier than the summer we left in California. Mara’s going to look so cute in her winter gear as we start exploring today!