Greetings from Christchurch

I'm sitting in the parking lot of the airport, slamming my head into the steering wheel with frustration. It's cold — really cold — and while I'd been expecting that, there's no way to truly prepare yourself for fifty-degree, see-your-breath weather when you've spent the last day walking around the Hollywood hills. I've also prepared myself for having to drive on the left-hand side of the road and navigate my way around the streets of a new city and a new country, but what I hadn't expected was that the car I was driving would be a *@#^! Mitsubishi and I'd have no idea how to turn the thing on.

Turns out you have to turn the steering wheel to the side while starting the engine.

But you probably knew that.

I don't have time to savor the little country houses or the mountains dripping with fog in the background, because I'm trying to keep my mind on the road (I have a hard enough time with roundabouts in Massachusetts, where I don't have to think about going around them in the other direction). I manage to find the hotel (did I mention it's really cold outside? And raining?) and as I'm congratulating myself on this and hauling my backpack out of the car, a man on a balcony above me asks if I'd seen the rugby.

"No," I said, "but I'd like to."

"Well, you'd had to have seen it," he said, "as it was last night."

"How was it?" I asked.

"Well, good if you're for Canterbury," he said. "Not so much for the other team."

And that was my first conversation in New Zealand. The second, about three hours and an enormous pile of food later, at a pub devoted to the slavish admiration of the Canterbury rugby team, was similar: did I think I'd see a match while I'm here?

Christchurch reminds me of Aberdeen more than anything else: the same granite grandness of its churches, university buildings and former university buildings (the Arts Centre, one of the better collections of craft shops and restaurants I've seen), the same beautiful parks, the same cold, misty weather, but with a promise of something better to come. I'd love to be here in the spring. Even now, in this season of mud, the park grounds are green and immaculate. I can see why they call this the Garden City.

So I'm wandering around, feeling jet-lagged, trying to get my bearings and possibly something to eat for tomorrow's drive to Kaikoura, and I find this terrific convenience store. And I mean really terrific: there's all the wonderful British food I enjoyed in London, and that kind of iced jasmine tea I never thought I'd see again after Beijing, and there — sweet mother of mercy — is root beer, which I've never seen anywhere outside of the United States. And I'm filling up a shopping bag, and in trying to strike up a conversation with the store owner I ask who won this afternoon's match.

"Don't know," he said. "Who's playing?"

"Auckland, I think," I said.

"Oh, is that rugby?" he said. "I'm not really a fan."

And that was my third conversation in New Zealand.