Cool Stuff That Makes New Zealand “Sweet As”

It’s the little things. It’s always the little things. The sweet touches that are the icing on the cake, the cherry on the sundae, the details that make an experience extra special. New Zealand is a beautiful place. And I can’t wait to share more of the natural “wow-y, wow, wow,” as my son would say, at every twist and turn in this country. But today, I’m going to share with you some of the other cool stuff that makes New Zealand “Sweet As.

Let’s get colloquial, or something like it

Turn of phrase. Manner of speaking. Commonplace vernacular. It’s just fun. And I hope we Yankees don’t sound ridiculous adopting some of the local turn-of-phrase, because there are some clever colloquialisms that are hard to pass up. Such as:

• well…”as” attached to an adjective. Sweet as is common. As makes a description superlative. So sweet as means super sweet or just suh-WEET! The first time I heard sweet as in a commercial I thought the announcer said Sweet A$$! and I was confused-as. But we are learning.
• The letter “Z” isn’t pronounced Zee. I got schooled about this one, ironically, at school. While writing down an email address which the receptionist said ended in “school-dot-n-zed,” I repeated back, “dot-en-zee-dee, got it.” “No,” she gently corrected, “just ‘zed…zee‘.” Ah. Got it. The letter “Z” is pronounced “Zed.”
• “Good on ‘ya!” instead of saying, “Good for you!”
• And, alas…I’ll let this sign posted in a shopfront introduce it:

Yup, F-bombs. While not as taboo in the U.S. as they once were, The mother of all cuss words is as common here as “gosh-darn-it-all-to-heck” is in Wisconsin. And I thought it would be easier to send my kids to the UK than threaten them with a swear jar when they dropped an F. I hadn’t considered New Zealand.

Oh, wait. That shopfront was actually a bank. I bet this eye-catching ad was referring to the other F-word, “finance,” but that’s boring-as. And the entire word “finance” is no where near as attention-getting as a big-old capital F. Doesn’t matter where in the world you are.

Not your Long John Silver’s, not by a long shot

Praise the Lord and don’t pass the malt vinegar. You could, but you don’t need it. “Chipperies” are in every town large and small in New Zealand. Plus, fish and chips is on the menu at the sit-down establishments, too. And it is the real deal. You’ll never eat the franchise version ever again after getting this quintessential takeaway in New Zealand. The whole white fish fillets are fresh, as big as your head, and lightly breaded. The chips are akin to steak fries, hot and fluffy. And yes, the whole works comes wrapped in yesterday’s news:

Laundry

Ok. Bear with me on this one. Because, really, doing laundry here in New Zealand is…refreshing. It’s simple. So simple, in fact, I was confused by the first (and the second) washing machine I used here.

Neither had endless permutations of wash cycles requiring a manual to decipher. All I’ve had to do is select

Cycle.

Water level.

Water temp.

And start.

Sure, there are more complicated models out there, but our clothes aren’t any cleaner because of it. Simple is good.

And so is the drying of clothes. Electricity is crazy-expensive here in New Zealand. So people rarely use a clothes dryer, opting for “clothes airers” (drying racks) or on bluebird days, the solar option:

I love hanging laundry out to dry (racing to bring it in when it starts monsooning, not so much…), it’s like an active meditation. And the laundry smells soooo good.

School Uniforms

A few years ago I wrote a post about the benefits and disadvantages of school uniforms. I wonder what I thought back then? I’ll have to go back and refresh my memory. At the time I never thought my kids would ever wear uniforms. But here we are. Each school in New Zealand, public and private, secular and parochial, has a prescribed school uniform. Here’s what the local public high school fashion looks like:

Now, having experienced a full school year, we can say we are pretty happy with school uniforms. No constant indecision on what to wear every day. Despite the sticker shock, the uniforms are well-worth it as they are durable and easy to care for. We’ve been able to get by with one set per kid (thankfully, they are done growing!). The fun part? Incognito accessorizing. My daughter likes to wear her Queen (rock band, not THE queen, may she RIP…) t-shirt under her uniform. A bit of rebellion that stays inbounds.

An endless display of humor and telling it like it is

Kiwis are straightforward and funny. Keeping our eyes peeled, we find both qualities make it to signage as well. The baffling_new_zealand account on Instagram provides a steady diet of the best from around the country:

And here’s one of our own, spotted along a hiking track:

Critter sighting

Oh, yes, and that little critter from my last post? Now he was a find. Since we’ve moved here, we’ve been hyper-alert to anything that moves, hoping to spot an elusive kiwi. To clarify, kiwi as in the flightless bird, not the fruit or how people who live here refer to themselves. Unfortunately, kiwi (birds) are nocturnal, and are challenging to find out in the wild. So imagine how excited we were to see this little guy hunched under the eaves of our house:

However, on closer inspection, he was a hedgehog, not a kiwi. Cute though, and we’ve never seen a wild hedgehog before.

So these are just some of the little, daily sweet spots in New Zealand living. For my next post on living down under, I’m going to share a mash-up on Kiwi humor and the weather, Here’s some of the weather-related awesomeness, found just outside our front door: