I've got mail!

The agency I got my work permit through in Auckland provides mail forwarding, but since I didn't have a stable address (I knew I wasn't likely to stay in Hastings) until now, I hadn't received any mail since just before Christmas. I finally got around to giving them the address here in Kerikeri to have it forwarded. I was really excited to see anything from home, especially since I was waiting on photos from home of my dogs and niece and nephew etc.

But then, last weekend, someone ran over the mailboxes at the end of the driveway. Just mowed down all seven of them ( a couple have since been ressurected).



It was actually kind of funny when I went down a couple of days later, looking for the weekly, local paper, and found that an obviously determined paper carrier had put one newspaper in the mangled debris of each mail box. Sad really (even sadder is that a picture of the flattened mailboxes was included in said paper in an article on vandalism). But the postal service did not do the same - it wasn't until yesterday, a week after the initial flattening, that the new and improved letterbox got installed. And today we got mail! Yay! So, to anyone who sent me a Christmas card/present/etc that hasn't been acknowleged, it's because I didn't get it until today.



I painted the mailboxes, but, for the record, I didn't choose the colours - I would have picked blues and reds and yellows - it was just the extra paint that Richard had around after painting the lodge. We still have to put numbers on it, after we figure out what everyone's house number is. I did try picking through the rubble, but I only located five numbers and there's seven houses.