For days I’ve been pronouncing the name of this town as “teh-now”, as in “up to now”. I have no idea why. I never heard anyone say it, it just felt right in my heart. Well, turns out I was way off. It’s “Tee Ah-new” as in Te Anau Reeves.

Anyway, our plan for the day was to visit the glow worm cave, which is exactly what it sounds like: a cave filled with worms that glow. There are boat tours that take off from the lake every hour or so, so we didn’t feel the need to rush off or pre-book. We had a slow morning.

This neighborhood has a gang of girls that Millie wistfully watched from the window yesterday while she was sick. She saw them outside on scooters this morning, and built up the courage to take this house’s scooter outside, hoping to play. As soon as we got outside they were on their way down the block, and she couldn’t catch up to them. It was so sad and made me feel guilty about pulling her away from her neighborhood friends. There’s nothing she loves more than going across the street at home to find someone to play with.

We decided to take her to the one playground in town. She immediately made some little friends and got adopted into a family. Sometimes I feel guilty when other adults do the work to entertain her. But not that guilty.

After they left, she found another family to join. She always chats up the moms and tells them our entire life story, then at the end the mom will say to us “bye Millie! Have fun on your adventures!”

At the playground Nick started to feel sick. He said it felt like a hangover, except we didn’t drink yesterday. Bad sign.

We remembered it was Friday and walked to an ice cream shop / Chinese takeout / fish n’ chip shop to get the goods. I joined Millie this week since they had this special NZ-style ice cream where they blend fresh fruit into a soft serve.

We went back to the playground to plan our next move. Nick was feeling pretty bad and we will have more opportunities for glow worm caves in the coming week, so we decided to just take it easy.

After Millie got all her playing energy out, we went to the grocery store to pick up some ingredients for dinner. We ran into both of the families Millie befriended at the park. It felt like real small town living.

At home, Nick lay down and Millie helped clean and set a very fancy table for our dinner. I whipped up a very good (if I do say so myself) Shepherd’s pie with local New Zealand lamb. Comfort food.

A boring day while we let this minor virus pass through the family.