Gillie is back from camp! We went to a local fair this past weekend, too. :o)

Hi again--it's Tracy.  Gillie was at camp since Monday Feb 7th, and came back on Friday, 12th Feb at 3pm.  It was so good to see her! I missed her a lot.

What had I done while she was gone?
A little bit of shopping for sleeveless shirts (It is warm here!  Sorry to all of you back in cold WI ;o)

Went to a local veterinary clinic on Tuesday 9th February, spent the day there and watched them do a stem cell transplant procedure on a dog, to help with its arthritis.  More to follow on this cool technology.
I will go back in 2 weeks and see this dog when she comes in for her follow up. 

Wednesday, 10th Feb, did some exploring of the Tauranga Harbor and found some cool places to run.

I spent Thursday 11th Feb, in a town about 1 1/2 hours away, Te Aroha.  This town has some of the coolest old Edwardian (Victorian) buildings, from the late 1800's.  Very pretty, and a lot of cool history there.

In between, did a bit of video editing...will post some videos here soon :o)

Here are some pics from this week....

View from island/waterfront of Tauranga, looking northwest to the Mount.

Taken Wed 9th February

This is a good reprensentation of the shopping areas in New Zealand.

This is downtown Tauranga.

Yes, they have malls, similar to ours, with different stores.

Can you believe Wal-Mart has not made it's way to NZ??  I can't!

(and I'm glad, or all these nice shopping/local stores would be gone!)

However, this type of shopping center is more common--many of the little towns outside of the bigger cities have stores like this along their 'main street'...the main road through town.

You have everything you'd need...banking, restaurants, take out places, video stores,

clothing stores, etc. 

And, they are very pretty!  Most every town has flowers and decorations to make it a pleasant place to walk. 

That is one nice thing here, they don't have huge parking lots with big box stores...even a big stand along store shares it parking with other stores. 

New Zealand also seems to keep their housing and cities much 'closer' together.

You don't have the subdivisions with 2 acres of land around each house.

Most houses have what we would consider to be a very small lot.

It just seems nice and cozy, though, and not really cramped at all.

Houses are designed to fit in with their lot, so you are not looking at your neighbor's windows!

Gillie back from camp...she is a tired girl!
Friday 11th Febuary 3:30pm at the school.
That is our '89 Nissan Sentra in the background!

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So what did we do after I picked Gillie up on Friday?

We hung out at home, watched a DVD, and had some Mc Donalds.

On Saturday, we went to a local "county fair"...but they call them an "A&P" show...

for Agriculture and Pastoral (plants and animals).

We picked up Gillie's classmate Abigail, and headed to Te Puke (that's pronounced

te pookie!), which is about 9 km (5miles) south of Papamoa.  Te Puke is a small town

that calls itself "the KiwiFruit Capital of the World!"

Saturday, 12th February at the Te Puke A&P Show.

Leave it to Gillie to find the litters of puppies that you could hold.

There were 4 Jack Russell pups, and Gillie and Abigail of course

fell in love.  NO, we are NOT bringing one home!

More later, gotta go pick Gillie up from school now.

Will try to get some videos on YouTube,

things just take really long to upload here!

Miss you all!

Love, Tracy and Gillie