Fush and Chups

Emilio picked Bryan and Jane up at the airport in his fiance's station wagon. "Plenty of room for your luggage," he told them. The weather was much different from that Bryan and Jane had left behind in Chicago: around 70 degrees and sunny. There was a little bit of rain, but Emilio explained to them that it rains often in Auckland but not for long, an observation that held true as the rain stopped just a second after you noticed it.

"You must be tired," Emilio said as they drove out of the car park, "but you may like a little tour of Auckland. I'll drive around a bit if you don't mind." Bryan and Jane assured him that they didn't. Emilio drove them down the windy roads of the suburbs of Auckland and pointed out the important parts of the landscape: the race tracks and the roads to the beaches. Horse racing is very popular in Auckland, Emilio explained, chalking this popularity up to New Zealand's not-so-distant agrarian past. Beaches, of course, are popular the world over, and Auckland is blessed with dozens of them within a very small radius around the city. Emilio himself lives in a suburb called Mission Bay, just blocks from one of the beaches closest to downtown Auckland.

Continuing on with their introduction to Kiwi life, Emilio took Bryan and Jane out for some fish and chips, or "fush and chups" as it's pronounced in New Zealand. Their tasty, fried bits of Commonwealth culture came wrapped in newspaper and extremely hot. Emilio suggested that they take their lunch to the beach, where there was a entle breeze coming off of the Waitemata Harbour, the harbor that connects Auckland to the Hauraki Gulf of the Pacific Ocean. Bryan, Jane, and Emilio were not the only ones to think that the beach was a good place to eat lunch. They were quickly joined by a large flock of white and brown seagulls as well as a small family of wren-like birds. Bryan made the mistake of dropping one of his chips in the sand, and ten seagulls quickly pounced and then kept a watchful eye on Bryan's slippery fingers. While they were protecting their lunches from the snapping beaks of the gulls, however, the wren-like birds moved in. One even got as far as jumping into Jane's newspaper wrapping and standing on her fish; it took a small scream and a flick of the hand to get it to go away - though it didn't go far. "The birds here are very cheeky," Emilio explained. "They're not afraid of people, and they love to eat." There are so many things for Bryan and Jane to learn about their new home.