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Soon after we arrived in Dunedin, Dave began exploring venues to play tennis. He discovered that Dunedin has several tennis clubs, and he began visiting the clubs, and playing with them, to decide where to join. He settled on a club called Cosy Dell, a ten to fifteen minute bike ride from our house (about halfway between our rental house and the house we live in now). The club has four courts and a small clubhouse. Dave plays there in tournaments and informal games with other members. Almost all play is doubles, both mixed doubles and men's or women's doubles. After the games, people gather in the clubhouse for tea or beer and talk for a while. The first photo shows the clubhouse a couple weeks ago.
The next three photos were taken only about two weeks earlier than the one above, but the courts were greener because they had just been refurbished. They are made of sand covered by a kind of astroturf that dries very quickly. So when it rains, people just go in the clubhouse and wait for the rain to stop. They play on the courts right after the rain stops, using special balls that can survive being wet.
The man on the right in the photo below is Dave's closest friend at the club. He's a couple years older than Dave, incredibly fit, and a vicious competitor and excellent tennis player. Many of the people in the club are in their seventies or eighties and are very fit.
The finances of the club are very interesting to me, a sort of public-private blend that I've never seen before. The Dunedin City Council owns the land. Major expenses are handled through grants, which don't seem to be that hard to come by. Members pay $100 per year (US$80), which I would guess only covers only basic maintenance. The recent refurbishing of three of the courts, and the building of the fourth, was all paid for by grants. It appears that commitment to sports and support of sports is a significant New Zealand value. In our neighborhood there are similar clubs for lawn bowling, archery, and rugby. I talked with someone who is in a lawn bowling club, and he said his club words the same way, in his case with a membership fee of $125, small fees for tournaments, and a lot of support coming from elsewhere.
About a month ago, right after we returned from the trip to Queenstown to see the fall colors, we took some photos of Dunedin to show the more muted fall colors here. I'm just now getting around to posting a few of them. The first photo shows the view from our back deck of what I call the wall of trees on the opposite side of our valley from our house. I look at the wall of trees from my office window as well. Now, a month later, all those gold leaves have fallen off. But there are lots of green trees remaining, and they are not conifers. I recently learned that only two or three of the species of trees native to New Zealand are deciduous. The town belt, a belt of forest around Dunedin, mostly stays green all winter, and the wall of trees outside my office window is mostly green as well. There are few bare trees, but lots of trees with dark green leaves.
I've said before that we live in a valley that goes north and a little east out of town. There's another valley that goes northwest out of town and follows the course of the Leith River (commony called the Waters of Leith, a Scottish way of speaking that comes down from the Scottish founders of Dunedin). Our church is a couple miles up Leith Valley, so one Sunday in April I rode my bike to church and took some photos on the way. Here's a picture of the Waters of Leith with a few fall colors and a few trees that aren't deciduous. The trees up on the hills are conifers, but the green trees in the foreground are leafy trees that don't lose their leaves in the fall.
Below is another nice autumn photo taken on the way to church. Again you can see all the non-deciduous leafy trees on the hillside.
Dave took the next one on a sunny Saturday in April. That's the iconic clock tower building on the campus of the University of Otago, where I teach.
I forgot one paragraph I intended to put in the last blog post about banking, so I'll put it here. Another money difference is that the government of New Zealand actually balances its books. When there are surpluses, then there are tax cuts. When there is a shortfall, taxes are raised or expenses are cut. Not long ago I was talking to someone who was expressing a desire that the government would expand some program and offer greater benefits, and he said, "But if there's no money to pay for it, it just can't be done." I wish someone would tell the U.S. government that.
I also wanted to follow up on my April post about Chinese miners in Queenstown who mined gold there in the 1800s. I said that I wondered what happened to them. I've been asking around and found out that the Chinese stuck with mining much longer than the Europeans, who wanted quick results and big fortunes. The Chinese were mining gold in numerous locations around Otago until only a few decades ago, and there are a number of people of Chinese descent around this part of New Zealand. It evidently took a very long time for them to be integrated into New Zealand society, but I'm told that now there is no discrimination and there's plenty of intermarriage. The mayor of Dunedin, Peter Chin, is of Chinese descent, and he has been working for at least a decade to get a Chinese garden built in Dunedin. It will open very soon, and Chinese designers were brought in to work on it. The Chinese garden is viewed as a way to recognize that the Chinese have played a significant role here for generations. I haven't met any New Zealanders of Chinese descent, but hopefully I will and then I can ask more questions.
The currency in New Zealand is called dollars, and the ATM machines look similar (except I do like the curved shape of the ATMs at our bank). Sometimes I think those are the only two similarities in the area of banks and money between the US and New Zealand. 
We have three accounts at a bank called Westpac. Here's a photo of the small branch near our house. There are bigger branches downtown.
Here are the differences. New Zealand has the highest interest rates in the developed world, a strategy adopted by the central bank to slow inflation. One of our savings accounts pays 8.3% interest if you don't take any funds out during the month. The other account, which we take money in and out of, pays 7.4%. Our checking account pays 5% interest. But "checking" account is an inaccurate name, because we don't have checks (and I'm not saying that as a joke because they are cheques here.) There's no almost no identity theft in New Zealand, so people give out their bank account numbers easily. For example, we bought a quarter of a cow and the farmer gave me their bank account number, and I did a transfer online into their account to pay for the beef. (Our house came with a big freezer.) When we had a plumber fix something in our house, the invoice had their bank account number printed at the bottom, and I went online and did a transfer to pay them. The transfers are free, and you can set them up to be recurring, like for rent payments. Utility bills can be set up to pay by direct debit, so I guess that's another thing that's like the US.Mortgages are 9.5% interest and the longest period for which you can fix the interest is five years. After that, the interest rate floats. Scary.
More shops take debit cards than credit cards. No one pays with checks, in fact stores don't take them. One of the little craft shops where Dave buys art supplies takes only cash, but every other store here I've been in, big or small, takes debit cards. Only they're called EFTPOS cards here (electronic funds transfer at point of service). Checks are so rare that we get charged 35 cents to deposit a check in our bank account.
Then there's the way taxes work, almost unimaginable to Americans because of the simplicity. Every person pays 19.5% tax on every penny they earn up to NZ$38,000 (which is US$30,400), and 33% on every penny between $38,000 and $60,000, and 39% on every penny over $60,000. Every penny. No deductions, exemptions, or minimum amount at which taxes start. No different rate for married couples, or couples with children. So the vast majority of New Zealanders don't even fill out a tax return -- the tax is deducted at work and at the bank on interest. The tax year is April 1 to March 31, and I'll have to fill out a tax return by mid June because I got paid in cash a few times and will need to declare that income. Having just paid an accountant in the US to do our taxes there, and having read over all the pages and pages of forms, the system here seems almost miraculous in its simplicity.Charitable contributions are handled separately from taxes, as a rebate. I hear that sometime in August or September we will fill out a form and attach our charitable giving receipts and send them off, and we'll get back the taxes we paid on that amount. There is also a tax rebate for people who make less than $9,500 in a year. They get back about three quarters of the tax they paid.It's been interesting to go to a smaller country, with a significantly lower GDP per capita, and find that more money transactions are handled electronically than in the US. And it's amazing to live in a place with such an uncomplicated tax system.
The next three photos were taken only about two weeks earlier than the one above, but the courts were greener because they had just been refurbished. They are made of sand covered by a kind of astroturf that dries very quickly. So when it rains, people just go in the clubhouse and wait for the rain to stop. They play on the courts right after the rain stops, using special balls that can survive being wet. 
The man on the right in the photo below is Dave's closest friend at the club. He's a couple years older than Dave, incredibly fit, and a vicious competitor and excellent tennis player. Many of the people in the club are in their seventies or eighties and are very fit.
The finances of the club are very interesting to me, a sort of public-private blend that I've never seen before. The Dunedin City Council owns the land. Major expenses are handled through grants, which don't seem to be that hard to come by. Members pay $100 per year (US$80), which I would guess only covers only basic maintenance. The recent refurbishing of three of the courts, and the building of the fourth, was all paid for by grants. It appears that commitment to sports and support of sports is a significant New Zealand value. In our neighborhood there are similar clubs for lawn bowling, archery, and rugby. I talked with someone who is in a lawn bowling club, and he said his club words the same way, in his case with a membership fee of $125, small fees for tournaments, and a lot of support coming from elsewhere.
