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