Happy Thanksgiving!

I sure wish I got Thursday and Friday off this week like all you folks back home! We're thinking of you.
Andy and I have had a really exciting past few weeks. The Art Gallery had a Kimono demonstration one evening, and we learned about ancient royal kimono construction, a modern married woman's kimono, and saw a full bridal kimono. I can't even describe how much we both enjoyed the whole night. The first dressing involved 7 layers of inner robes, an outer robe, and a jacket. The inner layers were put on in an order so that the resulting colour combination represented one of many naturalistic concepts, ie "Cherry Blossom" (going from pink to red) or "Pine" (light and dark green with deep reds).
Another demonstration was an older woman who dressed herself, and her presentation was very methodical and technical. Her sash was 4.2 meters long and she wrapped it around her middle and tied an elaborate bow. Very impressive.
When the bride came out, we were both, unfortunately, a bit underwhelmed. They talked about the symbolism behind the all-white kimono, etc., but then they removed her headcover and her hair was all done up and elaborately twisted and propped on her head with different clips and pins and dangly bits! Wow! Then they removed her plain white robe to reveal the most brilliant blue and red silk robe beneath it. It was great, they were totally playing on my emotions.
Japanese wedding, anyone?

We will be celebrating Thanksgiving on Saturday (Friday for you) with some of our good friends and their families. All of the parents sent along fixin's for a traditional Thanksgiving dinner: Pepperidge Farm Stuffing, Crispy Onion Topper, real marshmallows, cranberry sauce etc. We're gonna show them how it's done!
Many of these Kiwis can't get past the red, white and blue of America, and that it doesn't go along with all American holidays. Oh well. We'll make Inidan vests out of paper bags and they'll start to understand. We're going to force the children to watch Pocahontas, too.
We'll be sure to share pictures.

On the professioanl front, Andy has submitted his research proposal and we await official permission for him to start his research, complete with funding and Skinner boxes. Good stuff.

Our regular activities have been getting more interesting now that the weather's warm and we've gotten to know the city. We've been trying to take advantage of all that NZ has to offer, so we went to the Botanical Gardens the other day and played Bocce Ball ("Petanque") in a shady spot and had a blast. We took some snacks and drinks and played in the garden all afternoon! Yay!
I'll see about uploading pictures from the garden soon.

We'll report more as events unfold!
Happy Thanksgiving!

Let us know what's going on
...in your neck of the woods.