Mini Egg Showdown!

Helen, an ex-pat from the UK, and I shared some local mini eggs at work and were astounded and horrified to find that Cadbury's Kiwi mini eggs (properly pronounced "eeegs" here) are not the same as the mini eggs we got back home. They were inferior! How can this be? Cadbury is the chocolate of choice for most New Zealanders. How could they change the recipe on us?! Is nothing sacred?

Fortunately, we were saved by our loved ones who sent mini eggs from home in care packages! Hooray for care packages! This meant we were able to have a mini egg showdown with eggs (and eeegs) from the US, the UK and NZ!



You'll have no trouble identifying the US package, no doubt, as it is appropriately sized. Both the UK and Kiwi bags leave you wanting more (and yet cost the same as the US bag!) The UK bag is on the upper right, and the Kiwi is upper left. I must admit I like the yellow of the UK version - I find it pleasingly Eastery. Also, I like the see through window of the Kiwi package.

Since P doesn't like chocolate (sad, but true), she was designated "the blinder" for our showdown. Each country was assigned (randomly by the blinder) a colorful bowl (red, purple, or green). A handful of eggs were placed in each of the bowls by P. We, "the tasters," then had to use all of our senses to determine 1- which egg was the superior egg overall. 2- which country was assigned to which bowl.

Before I share the results of the showdown I must tell you that it's very hard to truly blind a mini egg showdown and still keep it fun. Next time I think we will go for blindfolds as the eggs from different countries do look different. The UK eggs have heaps of speckles. The US eggs have the least speckles. This was a dead give away to the regular consumers of mini eggs. I can spot a US mini egg from 30 meters. Helen can spot a UK mini egg from 68 meters.

Turns out only 2 people (out of 6) were able to correctly tell where all three eggs were from. Congratulations Harold and Helen (or was it Andrew?). Most of us got our "home" eggs without much fuss, but couldn't properly tell the others apart. We all preferred eggs from home (be that US or UK), with the exception of B who preferred the Kiwi eggs. I thought the Kiwi eggs had a spice in them - a touch of cinnamon. That should have clued me into it being the Kiwi eggs since Kiwis put funny spices in everything (like cloves in the ketchup), but I panicked and assigned it to the UK.

Can't wait for next Easter! Do you know of any other countries that do their own Cadbury mini eggs? If so I want some for next years showdown! Can't wait to taste Ozzie eggs!

Adventures at Trolley Bay and Trundler Park

Among other adventures, P and I have spent some time at Trolley Bay this week on Holiday (aka school vacation):

We've also been to Trundler Park:

It's been a shopping kind of week as P has outgrown all of her clothes, and summer is on its way!

P caught doing meths at school!!!

Today is the last day of term three for P, so we are off to the beach to eat fish and chips (pronounced: fush and chups) and celebrate! She gets 2 weeks off for school holidays (as vacation is known here), then heads back for the final term of year 6.

Whew! Every kid feels like summer will never come and school will never end but for P this year it really is true! She hasn't noticed yet that this has been the longest school year ever, and that by the end she will have spent sixteen straight months in school!

The grand finale for term 3 was a musical production by the year 6,7,& 8 students called A Knight's Tale. I saw it twice, and I must say: I laughed, I cried, and it was better than Cats. Actually, it was better than most of musicals I have seen (though I really did like South Pacific).

The Production, as it was called during production, was set in medieval times at her school, and was a fun mix of Monty Python's Holy Grail and any number of Disney princess movies (witches, curses, weddings, ladies in waiting, knights, wizards, trolls, happy endings...) with a soundtrack by Elvis, Madonna, Abba, and whoever sings that I Will Survive song. Try-outs for the lead roles happened before P started at this school so she got to be in the singing and dancing chorus. She did a great job!

I remember being in the school play when I was P's age. I was a pilgrim. It was not a very high quality production and was only entertaining to the people who loved us. P's school production was fantastic, lasted 2 hours, charged for admission ($5 for adults, $3 kids), and drew quite large crowds!

This was no watered-down, just-for-kids musical, and is not something I would expect to see back home. One song was set in a tavern while drinking beer, another song made a reference to having a sex change operation, and two of the knights did a striptease in the forest (they only removed their socks, all in all a very tasteful striptease). This was a fine example of what it is like to live outside of the Zion curtain! (Another example: the University of Auckland's student newspaper just released its annual pornography issue. You can read it while sipping a beer at the bar on campus.)

On a somber note, P was caught doing meths at school. Turns out all the kids do meths here. I kept incorrectly calling it math, which I thought was merely spelled maths here and pronounced math, just like it ought to be, but no, it is correctly pronounced meths as P points out every time I mispronounce it as if I were still living in the old country. And in a funny twist, methamphetamine is called P here. I don't know why. So I won't worry about P doing meths so long as she isn't doing P.

We're off to read books, play outside, sleep in, and goof off on our holidays!

Learning the Lingo

I think the Kiwi accent is darling. It is also very hard to mimic. In addition to a cute accent, the Kiwis have some interesting phrases that have taken some getting used to.

Yissss and Nawoough.
Yes and no are spelled and used the same way here, but they are said very differently. Yes is yis, just like the onomatopoeia yip, but with an s on the end that is lisped out for a good long ways. Yissss. At least four S's worth.
No is also a long drawn out affair with many hidden vowels. In the US when No is drawn out it generally keeps it's No sound, but here it gets all the vowels. Nawoough. This is the hardest one for me to mimic.

BYEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
When talking on the phone here in NZ, it is common for the closing statement to be said loudly, and at least one octave higher than the rest of the conversation. The word bye is also drawn out a few seconds longer than what I am used to. It ends up sounding as if the person saying bye cannot wait to get you off the phone. This may be the case as cell phone calls are very expensive here, but as it is used on landlines as well, I think it is just the normal way of signing off. I try not to take it personally.

Sweet as...
This is perplexing phrase. When pronounced with a Kiwi accent it sounds like "Sweet ass," and it reminds me of something my Brother-in-law, JW, would say, but is used as "awesome!" or "cool." I find this phrase perplexing as it is an incomplete simile. Whatever it is that is cool or awesome is as cool or awesome AS... we don't know what. This is one of those phrases that makes me feel old.

Heaps
This is my most favorite Kiwi expression. Heaps means a lot or very. What I love about heaps is that it is frequently applied to liquids. You can have heaps of rain and eat heaps of soup. When your water breaks you can have heaps of that too. If you are this whale, you can be heaps beached. Heaps is sweet as...