The Middle

The trip back to England was always going to be a bit of a hurried affair, trying to cram in visits to as many people as possible, but when my tenants handed in their notice at the end of October, I knew it meant that my 3 ½ weeks in England would be filled with running around trying to get new tenants and making sure the flat was up to scratch, as well as getting all my paperwork in order so I could apply for Permanent Residency as soon as I arrived back in Canada.

Sure enough the time we spent in England felt like a whirlwind and for every friend I managed to catch up with, there was at least one I sadly didn't have time to see. We stayed in Surrey for the first week, picking up a rather lovely Peugeot 308 hire car (1.6 turbo diesel, very nippy, highly recommended) a few days in, and managed to: show my flat to a couple of different people; go through some of the stuff in my garage; show Isaac the Weybridge & Walton locale; spend 8 hours walking around London; go to not one but TWO fireworks displays; meet up with my dad & step-mother, Ellie, Sophie & Dan, Zoe & Phillip, Claire, Rosie, Guy, Chris, Debbie and Jonathan.

London, whilst the dream destination of many a discerning traveller, was not really Isaac's cup of tea. He's not really a city person at all – his mother told me that when he was younger he'd get a headache just driving in their car towards Toronto – but I though he ought to see it, so we took the train into the city. We started off at Borough Market where I bought him a lovely free-range homemade burger, then walked up to St Paul's Cathedral, where we climbed right to the top of the dome, via the amazing Whispering Gallery. Then off to Covent Garden where we saw a string quartet play and looked in one of my favourite T-shirt shops, David & Goliath. Up Neal Street to Shaftesbury Avenue, along to Leicester Square, down to Piccadilly Circus before heading up Regent's Street. Throughout this whole trek, Isaac had maintained a perfect air of complete indifference, seemingly fairly unimpressed by London's environs. However, five little words changed all that: “This is Hamley's Toy Store”. A look of wonderment came over him and he immediately asked where he'd find the Lego – a quick check of the map revealed it was one floor down in the basement. With a hop, skip and a jump he found the escalator and, on arriving at the requisite floor he proceeded to run around like a five year-old on Christmas morning – awww. He found a Lego kit he wanted, one featuring a snowcat, and picked out a remote control truck he'd like too. Only the lack of £450 stopped us sending that one home for him...

All too soon it was time to get on a red London double-decker bus (another must-do for any self-respecting tourist) and head back down to Ludgate Circus, where we were due to meet up with the lovely Guy, Chris, Debbie & Jonathan for dinner. On the way however, we took a slight detour to visit Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese pub, rebuilt in 1667 after the Great Fire of London and still looks pretty much as it did then – flagstone and sawdust on the floor an' all.

One other incident springs to mind from our time in Surrey. On the way back from picking up the hire care in Kingston, we stopped in at my friends' Zoe & Phillip's house, with their children Elliot (5) and Eva (2). Since Zoe, Phillip & I were nattering away nineteen to the dozen, when Elliot asked Isaac the magic words: “Would you like to come and have a look at my Lego?” he leapt at the chance. He took Elliot and Eva into the lounge to play and watch telly while I caught up on the latest gossip. A little later on, it was time for the kids to have their dinner, so when they came back into the kitchen to eat, Elliot brought some Lego with him. At one point he wanted to tell me something about his Lego but had no luck trying to get my attention, since I was still talking excitedly to Zoe, so he lent over to Isaac and asked “What's your mum's name again?” Isaac of course was laughing so hard he could hardly reply. I wasn't in the least bit offended however, since from Elliot's perspective, it was obvious that I was an adult who was chatting to his mum and dad in the kitchen, while my 'son' had come over for a play-date!

The trip up to Yorkshire involved a 3 day stop-over at Suzie's house – Isaac had of course already met Suze and her son Joey, over in New Zealand when they'd come over for Debbie's wedding, along with her ex-husband Simon who had been travelling with them (they're oh so terribly modern). Now however, Isaac also needed to meet Suzie's boyfriend, erm, Simon. We all got on well and it was great to hang out with Joey, who is hilarious.* He's very keen on cars and trucks – much to Isaac's delight – and can already at the age of three identify most of the cars on the road. In fact I was shocked when we stepped outside and he spotted our hire car he immediately said “Oh you have a Peugeot!” Isaac taught him that when you see a car riding on flashy rims, you have to say that it's 'balling on dubs', which he took to with great enthusiasm, though his dad had already taught him to say a car was 'pimping' so I didn't feel too bad. During our stay with Suzie in the Midlands, we visited Warwick Castle, in order to introduce Isaac to the ancient history England has to offer, and followed it by a hellish 2.5 hour journey home in hard rain and horrendous traffic, in order to introduce Isaac to what the Friday rush hour is like in England.

Finally we made it to Yorkshire just in time for a big family dinner for Toni's birthday. Jenny had done slow-roasted pork (Jamie Oliver's recipe) and all the trimmings, which was phenomenally good. Over the next few days we took Isaac into Beverley, over to York - where we totally failed to find a decent cream tea** to have and ended up buying our own in M&S and heading back to Benj's place to eat it - over to Leeds where we visited the German Christmas market and the museum and of course lovely lovely Hull. In between these trips I was frantically trying to find a new tenant for my flat, since my current tenants gave notice just before I returned home, as well as trying to get my paperwork for Permanent Residency (a.k.a. PR***) in Canada completed and organised, all at considerable and increasing stress-levels. We had Jenny's birthday to celebrate too, which involved an ice-skating trip, a visit to the cinema and a large amount of Chinese food,naturally.

Come the last couple of days at Jen's I was sat for 12 hours at a time in the same chair printing off and organising my PR application. It was horrible, but worth it as I was able to get it into good order ready to send as soon as we arrived back to Canada. Then we drove back down to Surrey in time to see my tenants out of the flat and spent the next couple of days living at the flat and getting a few things up to scratch - new vacuum, new ironing board, sealant around windows, fitting a new light and repairing an old one, new loo seat and a damn good clean all round - you know the kind of deal. I thought I'd found some new tenants who were keen but long story short a credit check and closer examination of circumstances revealed a very bad risk and we had to let them go, which meant I was heading back with no tenants lined up - very worrying. Thank God for my sister and my dad who were on hand to take over the search - I really can't say thank you enough guys! Quick final catch up with Sophie, Dan & Ellie, then come November 30th Dad drove us to the airport to catch our flight back to Canada. We were flying Air India, which fo some reason was the cheapest flight from London to Toronto - go figure - and had the best inflight food (though worst inflight entertainment) I've ever had on an aeroplane. But then you know how I feel about curry....


*Recently he'd turned to Suzie, apropos nothing, and said “Want respect? Use a condom!”
**and by decent, I mean clotted cream, not whipped, and plain scones, none of this horrible fruit rubbish.
***which is quite funny if you're a midwife, nurse or doctor, since this means 'per rectum'.

The End

I was reminded recently, by an avid reader of my blog (hello Oma!), that my New Zealand story lacked an ending – so here to correct that, before I go on to tell you all about England and Canada, is my round up of NZ:

I spent a year living like a hippy in a campervan with a gorgeous man; going where we pleased, settling down for a while when we liked a spot, moving on where we didn't. The van was cool as bro, and we worked nice casual jobs, none too taxing, taking advantage of everything New Zealand had to offer. We black water rafted, we Zorbed, we kayaked, we street luged, we tramped, we jet boated, we snowboarded indoors and out, we quad biked, we flying foxed, we hot pooled, we WWOOFed, we fished rivers and ocean and we sheared sheep. We saw hot boiling mud and sulphurous pools, we drove spectacular coastline, we saw beautiful mountains and amazing beaches. We saw old friends, and we met new ones. We had an incredibly hot summer when it should have been winter, and a fairly chilly winter when it should have been summer; we had a BBQ on Christmas Day and snowboarded on my birthday. We spent time lazing by rivers listening to Harry Potter audio books, watched power boat & off-roading competitions, tore down and cut up trees, blagged a whole campsite to ourselves and watched 4WD DVDs and movies a-plenty on my laptop. We saw kiwi birds, eels, wekas, wetas, penguins, albatross and glow-worms. We ate fish and chips on the beach. We were verbally abused by an old French man. We visited my first lap dancing club.

We learnt how to pick different varieties of apple, and learnt that we never ever wanted to do that again. We learnt how grapes were harvested for wine and what happens to them next. We learnt how to run a ski resort without computers, and how to do the banking for the whole mountain. We learnt that I hate sea-bound boats. We learnt that Isaac can't drink with the big boys. We learnt what an earthquake feels like. We learnt that mince & cheese is a surprisingly good pie filling. We learnt that the Kiwis don't know how to insulate or heat their houses. We learnt how to turn a campervan into a mobile disco.

We learnt what camping long-term entails and exactly what you need to survive comfortably. We hope we made things easier for the people we sold the van to, and we hope they're enjoying her as much as we did. We discovered that we were well-suited to living in a confined space together, and realised that other people might not make such good living companions. We found out what we missed when we were away from home and we planned what we were going to do in the future.

So all in all, our time in New Zealand was exactly what we hoped it would be. The country is spectacularly beautiful, as we hoped it would be, and the people are lovely. It is laid-back and remote; fun and exciting; friendly and relaxing. But would I live there?

The short answer has to be no. There were a whole heap of little things, insignificant on their own, which combine to tell me that I would be frustrated if I lived in New Zealand. It's very very far away, for one. I mean, Australia is big and brash enough that it can cope with being so far from everything else, but gentle little New Zealand feels very isolated, like no one else knows you're there, and if they do, they don't care about what happens to you. This is the very thing that makes it an appealing destination for many, but I don't think it's for me. Everything, especially food and electronics, seems very expensive over there – strange considering its proximity to Asia – and it wasn't easy to live on minimum wage and still pay for rent and groceries every week, let alone the odd treat. Television was largely rubbish and the internet is, as previously discussed many times, very expensive and v-e-r-y s-l-o-w which makes keeping in contact with home a frustrating experience. The houses, on the whole, are poorly insulated and very few have central heating, relying instead on plug-in oil radiators and the like which aren't always terribly effective and can bump up the electric bills to ridiculous proportions – I worked with a girl whose previous job was for the electric company, calling customers when their bills reached $1000 for the month to warn them, not an uncommon occurrence. Anyway, enough of the negatives.

That said, I wouldn't change anything about the last year – it was truly awesome. I couldn't have wished for a better travelling companion than Isaac, a better van than Jaffa, and for more amazing friends to visit and stay with; a huge thank you to Jude & Glynn, Big John Redcorn, Ben & Colanne, Sally, Ian & Debbie, all the Heaphys, Josie & Becky, Boz & Wendy, Justine & Barry, Jemma & Ron.

Down to the wire...

We managed to pack everything up and say a very sad farewell to our lovely flat in Wanaka. We spent a couple of weeks travelling north towards Auckland. We stopped along the way at Christchurch - visiting my friend Boz who worked with me at Cardrona and his girlfriend Wendy - then up to Kaikoura, where we stayed once more with Justine & Barry on their sheep farm. It was lambing time recently and they had an unprecedented amount of triplets, so Justine had 11 lambs she was hand-rearing; they were adorable. They also had 3 calves, Trevor, Bolt, and BJ. BJ, incidentally, got her name because, as a premature calf, she had a habit of suckling on anything she could find - and the thing she could find most often was Trevor's...*ahem* appendage.

Then it was up to Picton to meet up with Josie once more, and we took the ferry over to Wellington. Campsites are few and far between in Wellington so we ended up staying in a cheap hostel which was a bit on the grotty side, and went out for a spectacular Thai meal in the evening. The following day, after a wander round Wellington and a visit to the Te Papa museum, we headed to Palmerston North, which was really just a convenient stopping point - there's nothing to speak of in Palmerston North, it's really just a student town and reminded me rather of Slough. The next day we arrived in Okahune and met up with our friend Andrew, who I lived with in Banff, who had been working at the local ski hill up there as a freestyle coach, and who'd had a chance to come and ride with us down at Cardrona on a couple of occasions and was now heading back to Banff again. From Okahune we drove to Rotarua - a.k.a. Rotavegas - to introduce Josie to street luge and Zorbing. Okay, just to do it again ourselves really, since it was such fun the first time, and that was AAAAGES ago. Everyso often I like to remind us that we're here to enjoy ourselves.

So now we're back here in Auckland. We've been staying here with the lovely Jude & Glynn, who are putting up with us littering their home with our belongings very well indeed I must say. We've had a couple of tasks to complete while we were here, the first and most important of which was selling Jaffa.

I've loved that van since the first moment I saw her. She's been our transport, our home and our most identifying feature for our whole trip and the thought of selling her was awful. Still, it had to be done (we'd considered shipping her back to Canada - but the cost was astronomical!) so we put the sales pitch in motion. We'd sent Jaffa 'for sale' promos ahead for Jude to put up in the hospital where she and Glynn work, and we'd had a few nibbles, even someone who came to see it when we first arrived in Auckland, though as an older couple I wasn't sure it was going to be their kinda thing. We decided to take it down to the Ellerslie Car Market on Sunday morning and in the meantime I put her details on every backpacker message boards I could think of. We got her stripped down and cleaned every little bit, inside and out. We washed the seats, brushed down the carpet and oiled her creaky joints. We reorganised the inside and made her look as lovely as possible. I got some new material and made two new curtains - front and back - since these were the only ones I hadn't replaced in when we were Nelson. She looked lovely. On Sunday morning we got up early, as entrance for sellers opened at 8am, and the market opened at 9am. We arrived around 8.25am and the very moment we parked up, before we'd had a chance to complete our seller's paperwork, we had a couple of people wander over. They were followed by 2 or 3 others, and an American couple who almost immediately asked if they could take it for a test drive. So, only minutes after we'd pulled in, we pulled out again while I took Charlie, a very excited guy from Oregon, through the finer points of the console gear shift. They clearly liked it enormously, and kept going on about how much nicer it was than the other van they'd looked at. We got back and they asked how much we'd take for it. We'd listed her at $4000 - we paid $3500 if you remember orginally - and the couple offered us $3500. I said we'd need to talk about it but yet another couple came up to look round. I gave them the spiele, but the American couple stood nearby looking nervous the whole time. Eventually Isaac took me aside to discuss their offer. Considering the amount of interest we were already generating - and a quick glance around at the competition seemed to explain why, since no one else had bothered to make their vans look nice and presentable so Jaffa stood out a shiny mile - we could have held out for $4000 for sure. However, I wanted to take a price that made us feel good, and also made the other couple as though they'd got a bargain. So I said if they'd give us $3750 now, we'd sell it to them, or they could wait until the end of the market and if it still wasn't sold, we'd sell it to them for $3500. Instantly they went for the $3750 - even foregoing having a mechanical check done because they trusted us! The fools...haha. SOLD...all by 8.45am, 15 mins before the market even opened! We took them into Auckland CBD to get the money out and ended up parking, quite by coincidence, outside the Base hostel where we'd been staying when we met Jaffa for the first time - in the exact same place. Weird. The money was handed over and we drove the couple to the posh suburb of Ponsonby in order to practice driving her. We took 'goodbye' pictures and walked away with tears in our eyes... End of an era.

We had a walk down to the Karangahape Road, whose name is so unpronounceable it's known colloquially as the K' Road, as I had a treat booked for the afternoon. For ages now I've wanted to do a photoshoot, something a little on the risque side, just so one day I can look back and say 'I had an alright body once!' I'd come across an advert for Miss T Pinups a while back and thought it looked just the ticket - particularly since they promise to photoshop you to buggery haha - so I'd booked it up. I arrived at the studio and had my hair and make up done. I won't say too much about it (just in case they're awful!), but I should get them in the next week or so, so I'll post them then for your perusal.

My final task in Auckland was to have a medical done. I need one for Canadian immigration, and it's much cheaper to do it here than to do it in the UK (around £110 over £350) and as long as it was with a Canadian Immigration Designated Medical Practitioner, it was all good. So I had that and it went very well indeed so that's another thing down towards my Permanent Residency application...phew.

So now we've packed out things, put together another box to send back to Canada and we're just knocking around with Jude & Glynn enjoying the start of summer, before we head back to 4 weeks of drizzle followed by several months of snow. Good news is, we've got season passes for our local ski hill, Mount St Louis Moonstone, so the plan for ski bumming is still going ahead!

They think it's all over...

...it is now.

Both Cardrona and Treble Cone closed on Sunday. A few days prior to that we had our friend Josie, one of the Canadian girls we met grape picking, come to stay and we did an epic 3 resorts in 2 days stint - Cardi on Tuesday, Snowpark Tuesday night and Treble Cone on Wednesday - and, after literally lying down on the run at the end of the day at TC vowing I couldn't continue, I thought my season was over. I didn't even bother to bring my board back up to work on Thursday but then Saturday brought a big dump*, as is often the way just before close, and I had to get out on something and make the most of it, so I borrowed some skis and went out with Mark, Roland and Stacey for a ride break. We managed three runs and they were probably the best three runs of my season. The snow was amazing, which - no offence NZ - is pretty unusual out here and we found some great drop-ins which were untouched, so we touched them. Oh how we touched them. Naturally we all fell over left right and centre, but that's what a powder day is all about. At one point Roland fell over, and I was laughing so much at him I went over myself, only to find I was now laughing so hard I couldn't get up again. I looked up to see Mark and Stacey laughing at us, causing both of them to wipe out too. Full house! I went out on skis again on closing day, which was not quite as epic, but I did find one totally fresh slope above the halfpipe, so I stood at the top and yelled "I CLAIM THIS HILL AS MINE!" before dropping in. Lovely. It was great to be back on skis again by the way, thus proving to myself that I enjoy both skiing and snowboarding as much as each other in different ways.

On closing day we also decided to have breakfast at the Mezz Cafe, the 'posh' restaurant at Cardi, and just before heading over there I popped my camera in my pocket saying to Lisa 'Just in case Shaun White's in there - you never know!' On arrival at the Mezz, I spotted Shaun White sitting at the next table. Okay, okay, I did know he was up that day, so it wasn't totally random, but still. In case you're not aware, Shaun White is basically the coolest pro snowboarder in the world, and won the Burton Open this year with back-to-back double corked 10s, the first ever in competition, and is probably the only pro snowboarder I'd spot a mile off. The mane of bright red hair helps! But this guy was on the front cover of Rolling Stone magazine for goodness' sake - he's a bona fide cross-over star. Well, seeing him sat there with his coach at the table next to us I just had to say something, particularly with it being our last day an' all, so I went over and apologised for interrupting him, and for being totally lame, to which he immediately replied 'No, no, not at all! Did you want a picture? I don't mind at all, really!' He leapt up and put his arm around me while Stacey took my camera. Afterwards I sat with him and had a nice chat about me learning to snowboard, and about how seeing snowboarding tricks on the telly is a totally different experience to seeing it happen right there in front of you. Eventually I thanked him again and went back to my table to eat my pancakes while he laced up his boots ready to go out and hit the pipe. What a very lovely chap indeed.

Lie in Monday morning, of course, and then off to Ron & Jemma's in the afternoon for a BBQ and a spot of fishing. Ron has a rod, and property that extends down to the river, but has only fished once or twice before, never actually catching anything. Isaac knew there was fish to be had, and had not yet caught anything over here in NZ, so they went out just before dusk with Ron & Jem's son Andrew, to see what they could find. They came back with two trout of pretty damn good sizes! One brown trout, one rainbow. They were duly gutted and arrangements were made for us to come back the following evening to eat the one Isaac had caught - needless to say it was delicious!

So now it's all about packing. It's all pretty overwhelming I'll be honest, we seem to have accumulated so much stuff, as tends to be the way of these things, and we've already got one box to post home to Canada alongside our bags. Whilst we are quite looking forward to being back in Jaffa, and certainly looking forward to heading home after so long away, we're really really going to miss our lovely flat here in Wanaka, not to mention having our own loo and standing headroom. But we leave here tomorrow, amble our way back up to Auckland to stay with Jude & Glynn before flying to the UK on 2nd November. We want to be down in Surrey/London for a week or so to catch up with friends & family before hiring a car and heading up north - although so far we've not been able to find anywhere to stay down south, as everyone is full! So no idea where we'll be - email me with any offers?!

*of snow, of course




Latest pics here

My Life is Average

For those of you who are fans of FML, I bring you MLIA...

(thanks for this link Liddi, I love it)

More of the same

Yes yes, once again I have been slack in my blogging. My main excuse is that it's all been more of the same, we got to work, come home, watch a film/tv show and go to bed, and get up again the next morning to go to work...blah blah blah. I will, however, fill you in on the latest with my snowboarding, which is coming along very nicely.

I am in general a helluva lot more confident on my board and yes, I can finally say that I absolutely LOVE snowboarding. It's taken me a while to get to this stage - far longer than I was expecting - but somewhere around my last post it all just clicked and since then it's only got better. Before, I found everything hard work on a board, from cat tracks to chair lifts, and longed to be back on two planks. Well the mileage I've put in has paid off, and now I no longer look at skiers with envy at all. That's not to say I don't want to ski anymore - in fact I'm determined to have one more day skiing before we close - it's just that I feel like every time I go out on my board I improve a little bit more, feel that little bit more comfortable, can ride slightly harder terrain, and it's rather addictive.

After spotting a poster at work and signing up immediately, last Wednesday I had a freestyle lesson. Freestyle, for those of you who don't ski or ride, is all the tricksy things you do on skis or a board; jumping, spinning, riding rails and so on. I had already ridden a couple of boxes in our 'baby' park, and felt I needed a hand getting my confidence up to try something more, so this was just the ticket. It was only $25 (organised for staff) and given that only my friend Stacey & I were in the beginner's lesson it was basically a 3 hour private, which is worth $355 to a punter! We had Pierre, a Belgian instructor, teaching us and it was amazing. I'll be honest, I ended up chickening out of the boxes in the Big Boy's park (aarrggh the pressure!) but by the end of the three hours I had ridden the baby boxes several times, got some good air off a small jump (previously one of my biggest fears), learnt to ride switch (this means riding the opposite way round to the way you normally ride, so since I'm left-foot forward, known as 'regular' or 'natural', I was riding 'goofy', which is right foot forward. It feels very weird), perfected my spins (not spinning while jumping, just pirouetting on the snow) and learnt to do 180s (where you jump from facing one way, to facing the other, hence 180 degrees). All in all a very productive and enjoyable three hours. Whilst I don't think I'll ever be a park rat, with their oversized clothing and fearless tricks, it's nice to know you can do something a bit more interesting than just sliding downhill, you know?

Following on from that, the following day we had Interdepartmental Games at Cardrona, and I was 'persuaded' to take part in the relay race. It involved running on slush from the courtyard to the bottom of McDougalls chairlift, getting on and then coming down a steep and icy front onto a gentler slope, racing back to the archway to send your next team member off to do the same. Not too bad then, if you forget to factor in that there are 6 other teams competing and they were all very VERY fast skiers and snowboarders, who were taking it all very seriously. I was lucky, by the time I ambled down we were so behind I was pretty much alone but it was honestly one of the more terrifying experiences of my entire life. We lost, hopelessly, but since I managed not to vomit on the chairlift through sheer nerves coupled with physical exertion, I considered that a win. I have vowed that in future, skiing and snowboarding is for fun and my fun alone.

The only other thing that is occupying nearly all of my time at the moment is my Permanent Residency application for Canada. It's so much more than just a form, it's a huge document where we've had to basically lay our lives bare for the Immigration Officers to judge us. The fact that we ARE a genuine couple means that it should all be fairly easy, but sadly it doesn't seem to work that way. Our main problem is that we spent the first 6 months here living in a Toyota Hiace, and though you (and I) might argue that this is a far tougher test of a relationship that sharing a flat together, whether it counts towards my immigration application is a moot point. Still, I've determined to press on, putting together a bundle of emails between Isaac & I, birthday cards to each other, our tenancy agreement, joint van ownership/insurance docs, joint bank account statements, a ton of photos, statements from family and friends saying they know about, and are supportive of, our relationship and much much more, including a comprehensive list of EVERY campsite, hostel or house we stayed in during our first 6 months here. That took a while I can tell you. That, along with every address I've lived at and every job or period of unemployment I've had since the age of 18 - leaving NO GAPS whatsoever - has been a challenge. That's not to mention the application costs! But little by little I'm chipping away at the work load (and using work while I can for photocopying and printing, naturally) so the plan is by the time I arrive in Canada, I can literally send it all off the next day. I hope that it'll be so comprehensive that they'll have no choice but to say yes! The whole process of course will take around 6 months to complete (maybe less but very possibly more), during which time I can't work legally in Canada, unless of course I get a temporary work visa separately, which I plan to try to do. It's all a bit of a nightmare, but it will be worth it in the end...

Crappy taxidermy

In lieu of a proper post, I give you this. Aren't I nice?

All coming together

For the past week or so I've had the cough/cold from hell; I've been very worried that it was going to develop into bronchitis like in Banff but I think - hope? - that today I'm over the worst. However, I did have today off work due to 3 nights in a row with hardly any sleep due to constant hacking. I did actually get up this morning and put my uniform on, but when Isaac came into the bedroom to find me sat on the bed crying due to sheer exhaustion, he wisely advised me that I probably wasn't going to be much use at work. I called in sick, which I hate doing because I'm always paranoid that they'll think I'm lying, and then tried to go back to sleep for a bit, which I managed to do, albeit on and off, till nearly 1pm. A day sat on the sofa watching Amelie and playing on the internet ensued and I definitely noticed that my cough has decreased in its ferocity a little, so I'm hoping tonight won't be so bad.

Tuesday and Wednesday are our days off, and this Tuesday, as I was feeling very rough, we spent the day at home doing much needed things like washing and cleaning. Whoop de doo. Come Wednesday, one more sleepless night down, I really wanted to just take it easy again but it was a bluebird day, I hadn't been on my board for 2 weeks, the NZ Freeski competition was on at Cardrona AND I didn't want to cheat Isaac out of a day on the snow, so come late morning I dosed myself up, and sucked it up Buttercup.

I had been flicking through a book a couple of days before in the bookshop called "Great Outdoor Adventures: An Extreme Guide to the Best Outdoor Pursuits" by the fabulous Bear Grylls. In it, whilst talking about skiing, he advises against being over-cautious, since this tends to over-ride the natural instincts and abilities that confidence affords you. Certainly in both skiing and snowboarding I've found that whenever I think 'Uh-oh, I don't think I'm going to make this!', invariably I don't. So with this in mind, and boyed by a dream I'd had the night before in which I was a really good snowboarder, I decided that today, I could do this. Sure enough, I found myself following Isaac onto terrain that previously I'd have avoided - too steep, too bumpy - and killing it. I threw yet more caution to the wind and upped my speed and realised it had all clicked! In sheer joy I followed Isaac off a small jump and landed it!* By the end of the day I found myself on our mini-bordercross course** riding the rollers and banked corners with ease. Hurray! Now I can't wait to get on my board again. My pesky coffee hand still waves around like crazy without my knowledge or permission, but at least I feel like I can now get to work on such small things. I may only have achieved mediocrity, but I embrace it like an old friend.

*it was a very small jump. And I got a very small amount of air. But still.
**okay okay it's called the Family Fun Park or something and I know 10 year olds are probably therefore supposed to be able to do it but I would still have avoided it on a board in the past...

It's never too late to start...

...though you might not finish.

Two planks and Jaffa with no juice

Isaac didn't win anything at the party - our friend Pat won a go at parasailing and Naomi won a heli skiing trip, which would be absolutely super if Naomi could ski well enough (she's a newbie) - and he came home complaining that he didn't like alcohol after all, but I think he had a good enough time.

I went skiing today with Isaac and Pat! Well they were snowboarding, but the visibility was virtually nil and I didn't want to spend the day falling over so I hired some nice skis - K2 Silencers - from our rentals department and had a brilliant day. It felt so good to get some speed up without panicking, so nice to be able to absorb whatever came up underfoot, even if I couldn't see it, and amazing to be able to rip down the blacks. It reminded me just how much I loved being on the snow, and how much fun it can be. I will carry on with my snowboarding, and I know I'll get better the more miles I do, but it's nice to know I can take time out of being a rookie and feel confident again.

We've had a bit of a run of bad luck with Jaffa though - the other night we went to start her up and she was dead as a dodo. Fortunately our friend Mark was over so he gave us a jump start and we drove around for half an hour or so before returning to our flat, switched it off and went to start it again - dead again. So yesterday morning I called the AA* - this being a small town, it was the same (English) guy who 'jumped me' a few weeks ago, as it were, when I had to replace one of the battery terminals. We got her started and we drove around for half an hour or so before going down to the AA garage to have the battery tested. It hadn't been doing its homework. We paid for a new battery to be fitted and went off, broke but happy.

Today she started first time and Isaac, Pat & I drove up to Cardrona. We parked at the bottom of the access road and hitched up with a crazy British lady who drove like The Stig. We had our stella afternoon and hitched back down the hill. I got a ride first, with a father & daughter from Brisbane, leaving Isaac & Pat to find another ride, and when I reached the bottom I went to get into Jaffa - there was a funny buzzing noise coming from the dashboard. I turned the key and there was nothing. Not a sausage, though the buzzing noise stopped. I turned the key back, the buzzing noise came back. Damn! I thought I'd call the AA again quickly, because the sooner I called the sooner they'd be there. I made the call but as I was talking to the woman who answered, I saw that by some bizarre coincidence, the AA van, with the same guy driving, was coming down the hill - I literally ran out in front of his car to get him to stop, and told the woman that the AA man was already there! He gave us another jump (I'm exhausted) and told us that the buzzing noise was one of the relays, which might need some attention, and might be what was draining the battery. I called up to work and told them I wouldn't be in early because I had to take Jaffa to the doctor's and got back in to drive off. I looked down and realised that the lights were on....yes I'd left the bloody lights on. What an idiot. Thank goodness for the AA! So hopefully she'll behave from now on.

*the Automobile Association, a breakdown service. Not Alcoholics Anonymous, who wouldn't necessarily know to bring jump leads.

Visitors, good times & good food.

Well the evening is my own - Isaac has gone to the Treble Cone staff do and I feel rather at a loss to be honest, so I'm choosing to share it with you, gentle reader, in preference to the High School Musical 1 AND 2 extravaganza over on channel 2. I hope you appreciate it. It does feel very odd actually, since this is the first time one of us has gone out without the other in...well the whole time we've been in NZ in fact. To be fair, Isaac didn't actually want to go, but since he was awarded the 'Exceptional Employee of the Fortnight'* award at work recently, he has been entered in a draw to win some supposedly fabulous prizes (last year a brand new pair of skis and a heli-skiing trip were up for grabs) so he had to go along to be eligible. They had a Mexican theme, so Isaac, with a somewhat loose interpretation, went wearing a plaid shirt and a bandana tied at the front, but accidentally left his giant handmade cardboard moustache at home sadly. I'm wearing it as I type, just to add some rich imagery for you. I'm waiting for the call to say he's won something fantastic and can I come and pick him up please?

So the big news of course, is that Isaac's dad, Imo, and his brother Reilly came out to visit us. It's a long journey** for a short trip, but we managed to pack a lot in to the 9 days they were here and I think they were glad they came. We picked them up from the little-more-than-a-shed that is Wanaka airport (one small room, which rather amusingly has a tannoy system for flight announcements, even though the man who runs it could probably whisper and you'd still hear him), got their bags from baggage reclaim (a patch of dirt outside the shed which has a sign saying 'Baggage Claim Area' written importantly on it) and drove home in the Nissan Terrano we'd hired for the week to out tiny flat built for 2, which was somewhat overwhelmed with the amount of bags/snowboards/sour cherry blasters*** that it now contained. After torturing Imo & Reilly with a continued lack of sleep to get them to conquer the jetlag quickly, Isaac took them all up to Treble Cone the very next day to go snowboarding while I went to work (SOMEONE'S got to earn the rent goddamnit). Tired and sore, we went out for New Culinary Experience for the Weinerts #1 that evening: Thai. One red curry, one pad thai, one garlic chicken and one mixed noodle stirfry later, we were all full and happy.

The following day we were both off work, but the weather wasn't great, so we gave Imo & Reilly's aching legs a break and drove off to Queenstown to show the the shops and grab ourselves a taste of the legend that is Fergburger. I also picked up a little something along the way - a brand new snowboard. Not just any snowboard - oh no. The Gnu B-Nice, the board I'd been swooning after ever since I first saw it. I'd made attempts to buy it at trade price through our rentals department but the board was sold out throughout NZ. In fact the one I'd seen in Queenstown was pretty much the last one left in the country...and I wanted it badly. Of COURSE I couldn't afford it and of COURSE I wasn't good enough yet to justify a new board really, but it has banana technology (it's a bit bent like a banana so you don't catch edges so much) and magnetraction (has wavy edges which help your edges grip in the snow better) and, far more importantly, it has graphics that looked it was designed by Habitat. I wanted it. I ummed. I ahhhed. I sodded it. I bought it. I love it. Now I just have to learn to ride it properly.

And on that note, the following day we all headed up to Cardrona where I took advantage of having a snowboard instructor (Imo) all to myself. He did his best to help me keep my back straight, my knees bent, my shoulders back, my head up, my confidence brimming and my right hand down at my side, rather than swung out in front of me like I'm carrying an imaginary cup of coffee, setting me off balance, as it invariably does if I don't concentrate on keeping it down. I never got all of these things right at the same time, sadly, but I definitely got better, so that's a step in the right direction. The new board made it easier for sure, and the fact that I was so proud to be riding it helped too, of that I have no doubt.

New Culinary Experience for the Weinerts #2 - Indian. Mmmmmmmm. "These are good - what are they?" "Onion bhajies". Bless.****

The Wanaka cinema was a must-do, naturally, so we booked tickets for Transformers 2, which Isaac had been looking forward to seeing. I'd fallen asleep during the first one so wasn't really that bothered about it, but I do like a comfy sofa and a delicious pizza so I was happy to go along. We got our pizza ordered for the interval, but as soon as I'd eaten it I thought it would be nice to have a bit of a lie down on the sofa - one of the benefits of the Wanaka cinema - and promptly fell asleep, despite the ridiculously loud explosions. Really says something about my less-than-enthusiastic response to the Transformers franchise I suppose.

Friday was the only day that both Isaac & I were due to work, so Imo & Reilly would have to entertain themselves. However, a stroke of good luck meant that the snow came in and the wind came up, closing both our resorts, so instead we had a lazy day of recovering our muscles, catching up on our facebook picture uploading, and watching my newly purchased Top Gear dvds; a new experience for the Weinerts and one I'm happy - and hardly surprised - to report has gone down exceedingly well. Jezza, the Hamster and Captain Slow are now firm favourites. More snowboarding did follow however, with Imo, Reilly & I on the Saturday while Isaac went to work and Isaac, Imo & Reilly on Sunday while I did the honours. I have no doubt with whom they had more fun, but hope that I didn't hold them up too much. Reilly cooked a fabulous stirfry for our last night together - I love having a chef in the house.

Monday came around too soon and we were back in the shed saying goodbye. Still at least it won't be too long till we see them again this time.

Imo's parting gift for us was to offer us one more day's rental on the Nissan, so we took off for Queentown to visit the Onsen Hot Pools, which has six private pools, the front of which opens up to reveal a spectacular view over the Shotover river and surrounding valley. 1 hour of absolute bliss.

Got the call to go and pick Isaac up, so let's go see if he won anything...

*for 'services to the manager in the form of copious amounts of photocopying', if Isaac is indeed to be believed...
**Toronto-Vancouver-Auckland-Christchurch-Wanaka
***Isaac's favourite sweets from back home
****For the Canadians amongst you: for us English, not knowing what an onion bhaji is, is like not knowing what poutine is for you - which most English people don't by the way.

The earth moved for us

Last night we were watching telly - nothing new there, we must be one of the most unsociable couples in Wanaka - and it suddenly occurred to me that everything was moving. It was subtle, but unmistakable. A strange thought began to occur to me...then it stepped up a notch - the curtains were swaying to and from the windows - and I realised it definitely was an earthquake. I've never experienced one before but remembered the advice we'd been given at our orientation here in NZ and grabbed Isaac - who was still oblivious - and dragged him to the doorway between our lounge and bedroom. We knelt down, giggling and in disbelief, and waited for the odd sensation to stop.

There are few reliable things in this world, but the solidity of the ground beneath our feet is - or rather should be - one of them. When the whole house and the earth beneath it begins to shake and sway, your brain finds it devilishly hard to register - I'd have wondered if I was drunk if I didn't know that I haven't had a drink since May 2008! As it turns out, this was a fairly big earthquake, measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale, and was the biggest one in NZ for 80 years. No one was hurt, thank goodness, and the resultant tsunami that hit the Haast coast was only a tiddler. Still, it was all very exciting, even if nothing even fell over in our house.

And in other news, the lovely Kat Von B: Queen of Beaver is in town. She's from Perth (Australia, not Scotland) and has flown over on holiday to see me and her friend Lucy, who lives not too far from us. Sadly her trip has coincided with me developing a rather nasty virus - no, not swine flu thank goodness - and I've had to bail out of our planned skiing trip today in favour of sitting on the sofa feeling sorry for myself and eating Tim Tams. We did however manage to get out snowboarding together on Monday before I fell ill, which was great, and I was terribly relieved that we seemed to be fairly well matched with our riding abilities, with Kate being rather rusty (not having been on snow since we left Sunshine last year) and with me still being fairly gimpy.

I must admit, I had hoped that I'd pick up this snowboarding business a bit quicker - I mean, how hard can it be? But as usual, my desire for perfection is found to be lacking in the riding department. I can now get down a run without falling over, pretty much, and I've even been on blue runs. In fact, I actually prefer blue runs because the steeper it is, the easier it is for me to turn. But it still all feels rather unnatural to me and I feel like everything is harder on a board than on skis. Cat tracks for example (relatively flat and narrow) are easy as pie on skis - point them in the right direction and pole it if you slow down - but a nightmare on a board because you have to be on one edge or the other all the time and I just can't get the bloody hang of it. Isaac, who has been riding for 12-odd years, just says 'oh you don't need to be fully on an edge, just put more pressure on one side or another, and you don't have to make turns, just go straight'. Well all that is fine if you are instinctive about it, but for me, having to think about everything I do because it's not muscle memory yet, this always ends up with me a) trying to put too much pressure on an edge, losing balance and falling over, b) ending up right at the side of the run, hitting something, like a wall of snow, and falling over, c) hitting someone who's trying to pass me because I'm so slow and falling over, d) getting some speed up, panicking, trying to slow down and falling over or e) getting just too tired holding my legs in that awkward position and falling over. So falling over is still a big thing for me. And most of all, the thing that has surprised and disappointed me in all of this is that I haven't fallen in love with it yet. Everyone I know who snowboards says that it just suddenly clicks and you just love it and to be honest, it hasn't happened with me yet. I still yearn for skis and how easy and familiar it all is. I know in my heart of hearts that I didn't always feel that way about skiing - it was hard to begin with and I fell over alot - but now I feel very comfortable on skis I just wish it wasn't all so much of an effort on a board.

That said, I'm determined to continue with it, because I hate giving up at things I've decided I'm going to do. To that end, I'm delighted that Isaac's brother Reilly and his dad Imo are coming out to visit us in a week and a half. Imo has been a ski and snowboard instructor for years and is apparently keen to help me get my riding up to scratch* so that would be fabulous. Watch this space - I'll be hucking and shredding that gnar before you know it.

*actually, I only have Mary Lynn's word on that, and he might actually be going around saying 'God I hope she doesn't expect me to teach her anything, what a busman's holiday THAT would be!'

Wanna bet?

Son cuts off father's penis as a dare.

Best quote:

According to local media father and son were drinking together and at some point started to argue whether the son would dare to cut off his father’s penis. The son won the bet while the father was rushed to the surgery department of a local hospital.

"The son won the bet". Jeez.

Birthday blues

You're quite right Jenny (see comment on previous post), I have no real excuse for not blogging now. I can't blame lack of internet anymore, certainly - I suppose I've just got out of the habit. It is true however, that the past few weeks have been a whirlwind of training, working and snowboarding, so even when I have had time I must admit that the most I can do in the evenings is sit and stare at the telly like a zombie before crashing. It's pathetic. You'd think I'd never worked before!

So basically Isaac & I have both started work at our respective resorts, me at Cardrona and him at Treble Cone. In many ways I think I've got the better end of the deal, because Cardi is very similar to Sunshine in many ways, so it was easier to pick up for me, whereas TC has some fairly archaic systems. The ticket windows don't have computers, they sell pre-printed tickets by hand, which turns cashing up into a nightmare. It can take up to 3 hours for them to balance! I, in related news, was promoted during my training, when myself and an Aussie girl called Lisa were asked if we could help handle the 'money room'. Basically we have a woman called Margaret - English*, ex-banker - who handles all the money coming in and out for the whole mountain 2 days a week. The other 5 is now covered by Lisa & myself. It's nice to be trusted, and it's a bit more money, but it's also longer hours and very like being in an all-day maths class, which is hardly my idea of a relaxing time. Anyway. Treble Cone has more extreme terrain, whereas Cardi is more beginner/intermediate, so we get the lion's share of the family market. Plus we're between Wanaka & Queenstown, so we get people from both towns, whereas TC is a bit of a hike if you're not in Wanaka. We both work with some great people who we've been out with a few times, so that's nice, and working at both resorts means we get to play on both mountains. It's a good thing that Isaac's at TC really, as I'm rubbish on a snowboard at the moment and probably wouldn't be able to handle its steeps! We both get the opportunity to go on ride breaks most days, though I've realised that going for an hour by myself when I'm this new at it can actually be counter-productive, because I lose my confidence very quickly, so I don't go very often.

It was my birthday last week and I was working. I only had one card to open (thanks Toni!) in the morning and I had told Isaac not to buy me anything, since we were totally broke. However, getting up at 6.15am to make porridge before work, I suddenly, and without warning, burst into tears. Isaac naturally asked me what was wrong and I genuinely had no idea, but managed to blurt out "I don't WANT to be 35!" This pretty much set the tone for the day. I cried walking to the bus. I cried on the bus. I went for a ride break - just to be able to say I'd snowboarded on my birthday - and cried at how awful I was and how terrified I was at turning ('I know I've got to turn, I've got to turn, I've GOT to turn.....NO!' Cue falling over) and when I was asked to stay late AGAIN when everyone else was going home I ran off and cried in the stationary cupboard. I got dropped off by a bus driver who was heading up near where I live but he set me down in a road I was unfamiliar with and I got lost walking home, crying the whole way. A dog I passed in a garden went completely mental when he saw this howling figure! I made it home ahead of Isaac (the one and only time I have) and turned on the computer, only to see a whole load of happy birthday messages on my facebook, which made me howl even harder. Poor Isaac came back to find me in a heap on the sofa, sobbing my heart out. He was brilliant (as ever) - he hugged me, made me tea, listened to me wail for an hour about how awful I was at snowboarding and how I couldn't turn without falling over, gave me a present of a new jar of marmite and both a bought AND a homemade card (showing stick figures of us snowboarding together) and then took me out for dinner. We went to Amigos, the local mexican restaurant, for which we had a birthday voucher for $30, and the food was nice (I had a very bloody steak) but the service was TERRIBLE. It's a family-run restaurant, and they're very friendly, but the waiter that night was the owner's 13 year-old son, who slouches up to you and says in a bored voice 'Is everything alright with your meal?', which of course means 'Mum told me to ask you if everything's alright with your meal'. It took an hour to get our food after ordering and then we sat with dirty plates for so long that I eventually had to go up to the desk and ask them to clear our table. By this time I was so tired I was looking at my coat next to me on the bench and genuinely debating putting my head down and falling asleep. We ordered churros for dessert and ate them at breakneck speed before heading home - I'd barely made it through the door before I was undressing and falling into bed. So not a good day all round, and many apologies go out to the ever-lovely Isaac who had to put up with me being such awful company. The next day I woke up feeling fine! Go figure, as the Americans would say.

The following Tuesday we both had the day off so we decided to have birthday #2. After a leisurely morning, we headed up to Cardi and spent the afternoon working on getting me over my turning phobia. I even took a demo board out, the Rossignol Diva, which has some fancy serrated edge they called Magnetraction, which I was assured was like 'cheating' at turning. Fine with me! I loved the board and want one badly. We had a very good afternoon and, though I'm still by no means elegant on a board, I finally got the hang of turning (most of the time) without being terrified. Hurray! We had a great day, with my favourite, corned beef hash, for dinner, so that is how I'll choose to remember my 35th birthday.

So all in all, work is going fine - if a bit frustrating/anti-social/exhausting for me - and we still love our little flat. We keep hearing awful stories from other people about how freezing cold their houses are, so we feel very lucky to be in one of the only warm places in Wanaka! Still, we haven't had a heating bill yet, so we might yet have a terrible shock awaiting us...

*as if I even have to say it. EVERYONE we meet is bloody English. Sometimes I feel like I'm in England, but an England where everything is a bit wrong and you can't get Pizza Express**
**my worst nightmare of an England then

The big catch up

Okay okay okay. Now we're officially installed into our lovely flat with free internet I have no excuse not to get this thing up to date and start blogging properly, by which I mean not having to cover a month's worth of stuff everytime I sit down to type. So, in order to play catch up I shall give you a run down of everything that's happened since I last blogged and start afresh. Is that okay with everyone?*

So we picked up Mary Lynn from Nelson airport and stayed in Nelson for a couple of days before heading down the west coast. Highlights (and lowlights) included:

• Getting pastries from the Swedish bakery and eating them as we walked around the block...and then returning to get a second round as soon as we'd finished them
• Going through our newly-brought-out snowboard bag and getting excited about getting back on snow
• Taking Mary Lynn on a mini-tour of the vineyards we'd picked at, campsites we'd stayed at regularly, our WWOOFing farm and, of course, eating fish & chips from the unsurpassed Smokehouse Cafe in Mapua
• Going to Kris Fisher's 21st birthday party and watching him drink a yard of ale, with only the gentlest of vomits. Ah to be young again...
  
• Doing the 'Supaman' over the Buller Gorge
  
• Spending ages playing with a very friendly weka at Cape Foulwind
• The Pancake Rocks at Punakaiki, which we saw in perfect, 'golden hour' sun
• Monteith's Brewery tour at Greymouth, where Isaac had to drink his own samples of beer along with mine and Mary Lynn's (once we'd had a small taste). All at 11.30am. With no breakfast.
• Seeing kiwis and giant eels at Hokatika Kiwi House, including the eel that was so old it was bent over like a crochet hook which freaked Isaac out
• Walking over the incredible Hokatika Gorge, with its ice blue glacial waters
• Doing somersaults on the bed at the highly recommended Franz Joseph Top 10 Motor Park - which was the nicest self-contained unit we stayed in. The beds were like clouds, everything was clean and well-equipped and, once we got all the heaters running, it was warm as bro.
• Blowing a major fuse while cooking dinner at the Franz Joseph Top 10 cabin by having every single appliance running at once. Haha.
• Having not one but FOUR attempts to fly to the glaciers by helicopter cancelled due to bad weather. At least we got to see the IMAX film...
• Having a decent curry in Franz Joseph. Can't beat a good saag chicken.
• Going to the Franz Joseph Glacier Hot Pools - for my money a hundred times better than the ones at Hanmer Springs - in the evening and in the pouring rain, lending it the air of a fabulous luxurious rainforest. And getting chatting to an English couple who happen to live in Weybridge, right opposite the Queens Head.
• Getting lost in the maze at Puzzling World in Wanaka and feeling funny for ages after coming out of the Illusion Rooms
• Discovering the wonderful Aspiring Campervan Park in Wanaka, which is the nicest, cleanest, friendliest campsite in the whole country
• Going for interviews for jobs at Treble Cone (Isaac) and Cardrona (both of us) which went well
  
• Seeing the monster trucks at the Cardrona Adventure Park (including the one that was used on the 'V' energy drink advert out here in NZ)
• Having a lovely lunch at the historic Cardrona Hotel, but having to turn back to Wanaka and take the other, longer, route to Queenstown, because it started snowing and the Crown Pass was, well, impassable. By Jaffa at least.
• Eating Fergburgers that were as big as our heads. Amazingly, both Isaac and Mary Lynn finished theirs!
  
• Mary Lynn having a full roast lamb dinner, complete with peas, carrots and roast potatoes, on a pizza
• Isaac buying himself a new Burton Love snowboard, after some gentle persuasion from his mum and I. He got the 155, 'Hammock Girl'
• Trying to take Mary Lynn to Guilty restaurant in Queenstown for her birthday, only to find it was closed. Apparently this is a common occurance when trying to take Mary Lynn out for a meal. As it happens we then found an amazing steak restaurant that did the most enormous ribs you ever did see so we were happy...
• Finding out that Isaac got the job at Treble Cone
  

Phew. Okay. So we dropped Mary Lynn off at Queenstown airport and spent another couple of days in Q'town, catching up with me ol' mucker Nate, who worked in the rental tech shop at Sunshine Village, whose birthday it was. We even played a drinking game with him and his flatmates**, which Isaac lost and had to drink a mug full of everyone else's slops. We headed back to Wanaka on Sunday afternoon, to catch up with Pat, one of our supervisors from Sunshine Guest Services, who will be working with Isaac at Treble Cone. On the Monday I popped into the Cardrona office to see if there was any news about a job and the woman who'd interviewed us was a bit worryingly vague about it all and I began to brick it. Jobs are not just hard to come by in Wanaka, they're impossible to come by. The local paper even had the front page headline: 'NO JOBS'. The woman told me she'd let me know by Wednesday, so I decided to try to be positive and on Tuesday we went to see a couple of flats, the second of which Mary Lynn had found out about while asking everyone she met whether they knew of anywhere nice to rent. The first flat was a small self-contained shed at the back of someone's house. It was cold, dirty, everything was dated and/or broken and I just knew I'd be depressed as hell if we had to live there for the season. An hour later we went to see the other flat and felt like we'd walked into heaven. It was warm, modern, well-equipped with a HUGE bed and a dishwasher (oh the luxury!) and we'd barely set foot in the door before we said we'd love to take it. It turns out the landlady, Helen, knows my friends Ron & Jemma who live nearby in Lake Hawea too, so all worked out perfectly. We arranged to move in at the end of the following week, since we'd planned to go to Dunedin for a few days to meet up with our friends Josie & Becky, the Canadian girls we were grape picking with. Wednesday I still hadn't heard from Cardrona, and by 4pm I was like a pea on a drum so decided to 'pop in' to the office again. However, just as we got into town I received an email offering me the job - huzzah! I burst into tears, I was so relieved. On Saturday we went to visit Ron & Jemma, with their boys Andrew & Jack***, and had a fabulous roast dinner. Being the terrible moochers that we are, when they offered for us to stay the night - complete with power from their garage into Jaffa - we agreed and had a great day the next day too, complete with Isaac teaching Ron how to fish in the river at the bottom of their property. We had another great meal - pasta this time - before heading off to meet up with Isaac's new work colleagues from Treble Cone at the rather nice Uno bar in town.

Monday brought us down to Dunedin to meet with Becky & Josie for a spectacular Thai meal, and Tuesday saw us going to the Cadbury Factory tour (mmmm free chocolate), lunch at Velvet Burger (delicious), over to the Speights Brewery tour (Isaac having to drink more beer, though at least it was with a full stomach this time), a quick trip up and down the world's steepest street (ouch my burning thighs), quick stop at McDonalds (bleugh. But quick) before heading over to see 'I Love You, Man' at the cinema (not a classic, but worth a viewing). Spent the next day shopping and yet trying not to spend money. Hmmm.

Thursday we headed back to Wanaka and stopped into to see Jemma & Ron again, where once again they offered to let us stay (thanks guys) and even fed us a gorgeous Thai green curry into the bargain, in return for Isaac helping the boys make a helicopter and cement truck out of lego.

Friday. The day we'd been waiting for. We moved into our flat.

Much as I don't have a bad word to say about Jaffa, having the room to get changed standing up, to put our clothes somewhere where we can see them all at once, not having to get the gas burners out to cook outside in the dark, having a bathroom that you don't have to get dressed and walk across a campsite to go to and most of all, being WARM, is incredible. It's amazing how a few months roughing it can make you appreciate the little things in life you took for granted before, like a freezer, or a washing machine. We spent a fortune on groceries and have now effectively holed ourselves up in the flat, for fear of going out and spending anymore money ahead of our starting work (17th June for Isaac, 21st for me).

Except...we had to remind ourselves why we're here. So when Coronet Peak, a ski resort near Queenstown, opened last Saturday, we gave it a few days to calm down and then arranged to meet Nate up there. I'm a skier, as you know, but this season I am determined to get this snowboarding thing cracked, so when Mary Lynn brought out our gear, I asked only for my snowboard, a Salomon Driver that I got from some friends in Banff at the end of the season for $40 (£20). It's a good beginner board and, despite the multiple temptations, there's no point in me getting anything decent until I can actually snowboard. I must admit, on my first run on the nursery slope, I thought I'd made a huge mistake. Although I've snowboaded a couple of times before, it was over 18 months ago and I could barely stand up on the thing for sliding around. A couple more runs in however, I was able to do 'falling leaf' (going side to side down the hill, just using one edge of the board) and pretty soon I felt up for going on a chair lift to a bigger slope.

I was amazed that I was enjoying it so much, given how much I hated it last time I'd been on a board, and I wasn't falling over nearly as much. It helped that I had Isaac there giving me lots of encouragement. Last time I'd pushed myself to start turning from heel to toe edge pretty quickly, but had no control and was just scaring myself, so this time I decided to try to master my edges using falling leaf first so I knew that at least I was able to stop when I wanted to! By the end of the day I was exhausted but had got a few good turns in and had really enjoyed myself, which is, after all, the whole point of the exercise. I'm now really really looking forward to our hills opening, so I can get more practice in and start getting good at it.

Okay, so now I'm up to date. No excuses now! Photos can be seen at the following places:
general travel, Mary Lynn's trip, Wanaka and our flat, and snowboarding.

*well obviously not with the anonymous person who commented on my last post, but to be honest I was merely relieved they didn't think it was the dullest thing they'd ever read
**though I always feel the amusement factor for this kind of shenanigan is diminished somewhat by the fact that I'm just drinking straight Coke
***with whom Isaac turned out to be a big hit, due to his ability to build train sets and play with lego almost ceaselessly

Penguins, jerseys and jail-time

Been a busy couple of weeks so apologies for what is basically just an overview of events.

Christchurch was okay, we had a couple of days decent shopping out of it and a trip to the multiplex to see Fast & Furious 4 (yawn), but I must admit I rather enjoyed the feeling of being back in a city. I do relish the endless possibilities...okay, not exactly endless in a city the size of Christchurch, but still wider than we've had in months, and Christchurch does have a very English feel - underlined by the large number of English place names they've adopted in their suburbs (St Albans, Scarborough, Richmond etc.) Indeed we found a great English import store, run by a rather eccentric old man, and managed to relieve my homesickness a little by picking up a couple of packets of Angel Delight and a can of Tizer.

On our third night in Christchurch, we ended up in jail. Always a sign of a good night, I'm sure you'll agree. This particular jail, however, was decommissioned in 1999 and is now Christchurch's coolest hostel and, though the rooms are a bit on the small side (well, it WAS a jail), it has a well-equipped kitchen, free pool table and a cinema-style DVD room. Highly recommended if you're passing through, if only for the photo op in the lobby, which Isaac made look frighteningly realistic... The following day we drove to Sumner beach where we partook of a cream tea (whipped, rather than clotted, cream of course but the scones were delicious) before going on one of the most beautiful drives we've done the whole trip, over to the Banks Peninsula. The whole thing is basically one massive - now thankfully dormant - volcano, and every turn on every corner (and there are a LOT of corners) has a stunning view. We decided to take Jude's advice and take the long drive out to the very remote and beautiful Le Bons Bay, hoping to have a lovely private spot, so imagine our surprise when not two minutes after our arrival a big motorhome pulled in behind us and decided to park right next to us. I mean, really?!

Next on the agenda was the small town of Geraldine - another tip from Jude - home of the world's most Giant Jersey and a half-scale reproduction of the Bayeaux Tapestry made out of knitting machine off-cuts. Yes, really. It took the man who made it 20 years to complete and boy, does he like to tell you about it! And show you the one and only paintbrush he used. And point out all the bits he had to invent because the orginal tapestry was incomplete. But no time to dawdle there, no matter how tempting it may have been, because we were off to Oamaru to see penguins goddamnit. The yellow-eyed penguins were free to see from a vantage point way above their nesting ground on the beach, so we perched ourselves up there around 4pm to watch a few waddle in before racing back to town to see the little blue penguins, who arrive a little later. This one we had to pay to see, but it was worth it to see a 'raft' of penguins swim in to shore right in front of us, run the gauntlet past a fur seal, and take up residence in a purpose built hobbit-style village. A highly amusing period where the penguins ran around making barking noises* ensued.

The next day we began our journey back up north - popping back in to Hanmer Springs to see Ben & Coleanne again - to Nelson, since Isaac's mum Mary Lynn was due to arrive in a couple of days time. We needed to get a WOF** done on Jaffa and decided to do it in Nelson in case we ended up off the road for a day or two. Sure enough the poor old girl failed her test, needing two new front tyres, an repair on our exhaust mounting, a handbrake adjustment, an a small rusted section cut out of the driver's floor and a new panel welded in. A mere $450*** and one day later she was fully legal, just in time to pick up Mary Lynn the following morning.

More on that later...
*Who knew?
**Like an MOT for the English among you, or a certification for all you Canadians
***This is sarcasm

Roadtrippin' again

A couple of weeks or so ago, we finished our grape harvest work and headed off around the South Island to do a bit more travelling. We hadn't saved up as much money as we'd hoped...actually that's an understatement, we hadn't saved up anything like as much money as we'd expected, but hey ho, we are not going to let it stop us. We left Nelson, with some trepidation; we felt like we'd become slightly institutionalised - Nelsonised if you like - by staying in one spot for so long. We headed east towards Blenheim and visited the excellent Aviation Heritage Centre, which has been revamped by the Weta Workshop, who did the special effects for Lord of the Rings. Basically it's just a bunch of old war planes which, in any other setting, I probably wouldn't find that interesting, however the Weta Workshop have put so much attention in the detail that they have really brought the planes to life. I found the stories of friends and family loved and lost very moving and particularly liked tableau, based on actual photos and film footage, of the Australian regiment's discovery of the legendary Red Baron's plane after he was finally shot down.

We spent one night in Blenheim and visted Montana's winery the next day for a tour. You'd think we might be a bit over the whole grape thing but in fact it was really interesting to see what happens when the grapes we pick leave the vineyard. We did some wine tasting - yes, even me. No, I didn't like it, still tastes like pretty horrible stuff to me, but I could smell the blackcurrant in the Pinot Noir and the peach in the Sauvignon Blanc so that's a start, eh? Isaac rather liked it and decided he should start drinking more wine but since we can't afford alcohol he'll have to wait until we get back to Canada.

Downwards to Kaikoura - stopping only to watch the seal pups playing on the rocks - and a visit to my friend Justine, who was my first mentor during my midwifery training. She moved to NZ in 2001 and got married in January to a sheep farmer called Barry. Barry's family has been sheep farming in Kaikoura since the 1850s, so he tells me he's almost a local now. They have 600+ acres at the foothills of Mount Fyffe, with some damn spectacular views down to the town and coastline; on a very clear day up at the top you can see the North Island apparently. Justine had clearly settled into sheep farmer's wife mode very comfortably indeed. She gets up ridiculously early (when I told her I normally woke around 8.30/9am, which I think is pretty good, she just laughed) and helps Barry with sheepy things until it's time for her to go to work, then when she's not working she bakes cakes and biscuits and produces perfect, stodgy, farm-type food. We got the chance to help (read: watch) Barry with the dagging, which is when you cut the wool off from around the sheep's bottoms to prevent it getting all clogged with poo - nice - and troughing, which is where you get them to walk through some stuff to remove infection from their feet. We also got to ride his quad bike up and over the hills, through the paddocks and fields, and check out those views.

The first night we were there, we went to reverse Jaffa back towards the garage so we could hook up to power. As I did so, there was a horrible, crunching, grinding noise - I kept checking the handbrake to see if I'd left it on but no. I pulled into place and turned her off, whereby Isaac & I looked at each other with concern. We decided that if we didn't talk about it too much then it probably didn't happen - a strategy that usually works for a bit at least - and then headed back inside. A couple of days later we decided to visit the town and got back into Jaffa for the journey. She started off just fine but as soon as we got down to the main road the grinding, crunching noise started again. I stopped immediately and we took a moment to consider our options.We lifted the front seats to look at the engine, which is located underneath and both stared at it. For quite some time. Suddenly, I spotted something! I reached down gingerly into the engine and pulled out...a travel adaptor. Wedged in amongst the abundance of pipes and metalwork. Not one we'd brought, I hasten to add, so presumably wedged there for some time. I reached in and pulled it out, but to be honest, even I didn't expect it to help. "So what do you think we should do?" I asked Isaac. "Well, if I was back home I'd call Hale* to come and see what was wrong" he replied, hopefully. "Ah, the thing is, Hale is in Canada, so we might have to try to deal with it ourselves" I reminded him. Thank goodness we had decided to take out an AA** policy way back at the beginning of our trip for just such an eventuality. I did hope that he might find our handbrake was sticking and he could fix it by the side of the road, but in my heart of hearts I knew that this was just a pipe dream. Sure enough, a tow truck came along and, after listening to our story, he said immediately "Yeah, your gearbox is buggered. I'll tow you into a garage to get a new one". Damn.

The garage we got towed too seemed nice. Murray the mechanic started draining the oil out of the sump and showed us that it had that tell-tale sheen caused by metal filiments from a disintegrating gearbox, along with some lumps of metal that - and remember here that I'm NOT a mechanic - didn't seem good news to me. He seemed eager to help us as quickly and inexpensively as possible but a new gearbox doesn't come cheap. He managed to source a second-hand one from Christchurch, which he had sent up immediately, and told us he could fit it first thing in the morning. Justine was kind enough to come and collect us later from town and took us back to stay at her house - thank goodness for friends! Next morning at around 11.30am I called Murray to see what the latest was and he told me it was all fixed and ready to be picked up. Not only had they put a new gearbox in, but they'd also replaced our sump plug, which was the cause of our (still slowly dripping) oil leak and he'd even repaired the heating for us, which in perfectly typical fashion had broken down just as the weather turned cool. All in it cost $750, which I guess wasn't bad, but when you're on as tight a budget as we are, it was one hell of a blow. Still, we are now warm, have a gearbox that works AND a new travel adaptor!

We felt we'd taken advantage of Justine and Barry's hospitality long enough so we said our goodbyes and drove down the coast towards Hanmer Springs, where our friends Ben & Coleanne are staying for the winter. We stopped one night in a town called Waiau (no idea how to pronounce that without sounding like an idiot) which had a very OVER enthusiastic campsite owner who insisted we call him 'Hutch'. I'm sure he felt it lent him kudos. The campsite was great though, with a well equipped kitchen and not one but TWO television rooms, neither of which we frequented of course, preferring to stay in the van and watch films on my laptop. We're SO anti-social. We didn't even use the kitchen because we walked down to the shop (one of two in town, but the only one open after 5pm) and got fish and chips. The following morning we headed off again towards Hanmer Springs and met up with Ben & Coleanne at the lovely house they're renting. Hanmer is a tiny town in the middle of some mountains, so we could see why these two Banff residents had stopped a-while there. It's famous for its hot springs and Coleanne, as a massage therapist, was working at the springs Spa, while Ben had a job in a local bar. This meant of course that they didn't see each other for most of the week, as Ben went to work before Coleanne came home, so I think they were happy to have some company for a few days!

We spent a very pleasant few days hanging out there, playing monopoly, visiting the hot springs (where we got ourselves a private thermal pool for half an hour), going through an Indiana Jones-inspired maze (which was very lame), playing mini-golf/crazy golf and cooking food that we never get to make in the van (because we don't have an oven!) like my famously good corned beef hash, which went down very well with Ben & Coleanne (Ben just before he went to work, Coleanne just after she came back).

Eventually, a couple of days ago, we moved on once again, driving down to Christchurch, which I've long been told is very like England. Well yesterday we spent most of the day walking around the town in the pouring rain, so I guess that reminded me somewhat of home, but I don't think we've quite 'got' Christchurch yet. We'll stay a few more days and see what we think.

*Matt Hale, Isaac's best friend, who is an apprentice mechanic
**Automobile Association, for the non-UK, non-Kiwis amongst you. It's a breakdown service.