Please write my folks and throw away my keys

The past few weeks have been such a blur, time is going by so fast. Last week I had my one month anniversary of having a full time job! Very exciting. Joe left for Auckland so we had a morning tea party for him. Sad to see him go, why is it always the awesome people who leave and not the creepers!
I saw Blindside last Monday it was so so so good. it was a fundraiser for Kirsten's family friend so we met up to go after work. I accidentally bought a new dress form Glassons, just 15$! Love it.
This past weekend was so fun. Had a girly night in with Katie on Friday night, we just watched friends and ate tim tams! Saturday was busy I hiked up Cannon Point with Jess and Katie and skyped the whole world including, but not limited to, Mom, Dad, Becky, Daphne, Rob, Rosa and Katie. It was awesome. Saturday afternoon I took a nap and then that night I went to Jade's where she curled my hair with her GHD. It looked so cool and stayed in pretty well all night which is amazing since it was humid and raining! We went to Cherie's to finish getting ready and then Kirsten and Lauren took us into town. We had amazing desserts at Strawberry Fare. I had a traditional Kiwi Pavlova with cream and the others had Banoffi pie, its like dulce de leche with graham cracker crust and bananas on top. wicked presentation and tasted great! Soooo pricey though, about 15$/dessert. Worth it though!

After dessert we went towning aka clubbing at Boogie Wonderland. This club was hilarious, it played 70s music and the dance floor was just like dance dance revolution. Around 1am we headed to Shooters, a more modern club and danced until 230am. At which point i was starving to I left with Cherie and her friends to go to Burger Kind where I ate a divine Chicken Grabba meal. The others came in after Shooters closed at 3am. Its the earliest club to close, the latest one closes at 7am. Wild! makes Hull looks like childs play..which it kind of is seeing as only 16yr olds go out there.... but I digress. So I got home at 430 am. And proceeded to sleep in until 11am. New Personal best! I got up and had some brekky and watched friends. then went back to bed at 1 and rested until 4 when I got up to go to Josh's moms for tea. She made the most amazing roast chicken with kumara, potatoes, squash, carrots and broccoli. So yum. Josh made brownies but I was too full for dessert! So unlike me, eh? By the time I was ready for bed at 10pm, I wasn't tired anymore so i read until 2am and then woke up at 630am to go to the gym. Played soccer with Katie and Josh's team tonight. we lost 5-1. I blame myself. I really really suck. But I got a good sweat on and had lots of fun!

Our microwave broke and it seems that I only eat things you can cook in it...of course I only realized that after its broken. I am completely out of my element! haha get it...like a stove element... I watched Rhys Darby's stand up (also known as Murray from Flight of the Conchords) and he often explains his own jokes, its a crack up.

I'm reading a book called '100 things everyone should know how to do' and its pretty neat. So far I know how to make a bed, cook scrambled eggs, flirt, kiss, ask someone out on a date (which i will never, ever do), push ups, sit ups, sew a button, and some other tsuff but thats all i remember right now. each chapter is written by the person who is the master at whatever the thing is. Pretty sweet book actually. Next on my list is 'what colour is your parachute'.
The weekend is the queen's bday weekend. crack me up seeing as we celebrate it on the May 24 weekend, and its the same queen so theoretically it should be on the same day... Funny as. But I get a 3 day weekend and even though I'm a temp i still get paid because i worked the last 5 Mondays. yay!

I am having such an amazing time in NZ right now. I just feel so settled and completely at home. I was feeling a bit homesick a few weeks ago but now don't feel that way at all.
I have to get a warrant of fitness inspection done on my car Wednesday and I'm a bit nervous it wont pass, seeing as its older than some of my friends... So please pray!
Love!
PS very happy birthday to Rosa, we'll have to re-celebrate in November!

That girl's a genius... I think she's serious

So this weekend was awesome! Started out by taking Friday off and driving up to Kuratay for a long weekend. Sure it was a bit cheeky of me to ask for a day off after working only a few weeks, but I am a traveller, so I think it was alright. The boss didnt seem to mind at all anyway. So we left around 530, 5 ppl crammed into a subaru legacy with heaps of stuff in the trunk. We brought all our tramping gear to do the tongariro crossing, but we knew the weather was going to be awful so we probably wouldnt be able to tramp at all so we had decent clothes to wear as well. We stopped at McD's for dinner and i got a hamburger happy meal... so good. We stopped again along the way for sundaes and then again at a little pub for beers and a quick game of pool for josh and katie. We arrived at the cottage (or bach as it is referred to here) quick late and pretty much went to bed straight away. I got my own room and it was glorious. I slept in until 10am! pretty much unheard of for me. Very exciting. We had some brekky and headed into town around 12 after doing 200 crunches with Katie and 2 minutes of wall sits. we are so hard core.
I decided that I wanted to do a skydive since the weather was too crap to do the crossing, we couldnt even see the mountains because of the fog. But it was still a pretty warm day, and the skydive place had an availability at 12:50, which was pretty much perfect. I jumped with 2 british guys and my instructor was Joel. He was nice but not too excited about the jump, he said he does it 15 times a day and had done it over 5000 times total so it wasn't very fun for him anymore. Little bit of a downer. I put on a red jumpsuit apparatus (haha) that smelled of nervous sweat (not mine... it already smelled before I put it on) and a little leather cap and some gloves. The plane was tiny and took off with us all sitting backwards, such a weird feeling. I had to sit on my instructors lap so he could strap me in properly which was a bit weird, and he also braided my hair so it wouldnt get in his face. also weird. but he made jokes so i wasn't nervous. Until they opened the plane door at 16000-ft and then i got scared. I was second. The first guy was out within a couple of seconds it felt like and all of a sudden we were shuffling to the open door. I leaned back for a photo and then I was falling, no warning at all from the instructor. It was freezing cold at first, I only had a teeshirt and lulus on under my suit. A camera man jumped with us to take photos and video. It was such a long freefall it was insane, just over 60 seconds of freefall until the shoot was pulled. We had a nice chat while he flew us down, it took ages and I started to feel a bit nauseous because the wind was so strong that we had to spin in circles to land in the right place. LOVED IT though. I would much prefer to do it solo next time but the sport course costs 4000$ and i dont have the kind of money right now... I bought the video and the photos of my skydive. Pricey but worth it i think!


The rest of the day we did some shopping and got groceries for dinner. We also stopped at Huka falls for photos, the NZ version of Niagara falls. A lot smaller but quite cool nonetheless.


Katie and I made a chicken and avocado salad with bruschetta. It was really good. Jess arrived that night and we watched some tv and hung out drinking beers until pretty late. The next morning I slept in until 830 but woke up with a massive headache and realized I had not drank any water the day before. I read my book until 1030 and then went out to the kitchen for breakfast. It was raining pretty hard but we went for a walk down to lake Taupo anyway. Its a gorgeous lake, the deepest and largest in New Zealand. apparently its great for deep scuba freshwater dives. All that info courtesy of Josh Chapman Derulo. For the rest of the day we hung out in Taupo, and went to the honey hive where they have a museum about honey and let you try local honey in crazy flavours like lavender, peanut butter and my personal fave ginger which i bought a jar of!


then we went for dinner at Burger Fuel. We did sit down in an Indian Restaurant but left because the prices were higher than listed. lame. i got a vego burger made of chickpeas, seeds and other stuff with avocado, tomato, lettuce and much more. it was a gigantic burger, imagine about 3 times the size of a regular burger. So big you need a cardboard contraption called a doofer (pronounced doofa) to eat it. So good. They had about 10-15 burger choices, 4 of which were vego. I was impressed. And the kumara (sweet potato) fries were outrageously good, as was the garlic aioli. The place reminded me of a fast food version of the works on a smaller scale. And all the burger buns were whole wheat with sesame seeds unless you asked specifically for different which i thought was awesome. That evening we watched The Longest Yard and ate heaps of candy which we purchased from pac n save (the cheap grocery store...like no frills).

The next day we drove back to Upper Hutt around 11am. We stopped in Foxton to try Foxton Fizz, a soft drink made in the town. I had my first Creaming Soda, tasted a lot like Inca cola! Not the nasty 10 yr old flat kind, the carbonated kind. We also stopped at the big gumboot for photos and then again at Wild Bean (an awesome cafe found in BP gas stations) where I had my first taste of Ginger Crunch. Its so good, I actually just made some tonight.

Ginger Crunch Recipe:
Base:
125g Butter
1/2 cup white sugar
1 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp ground ginger
Cream together butter and sugar then add other ingredients. Dough will be crumbly. Grease 9x9inch pan ad press dough into pan. Bake at 180 degress celsius for 20-25 minutes.

Icing:
75g butter
3/4 cup icing sugar
2 tsp ground ginger
2 tbsp golden syrup (or honey)

Combine ingredients and ice base once cooled.
Share with me.


After that we stopped on the kapiti coast for kapiti ice cream (used to be made there, but the factory had to be moved somewhere with more space) and a cheese tasting. I tried brie, blue and an old cheddar. All amazing. I got a scoop of delish passionfruit and lemon curd ice cream. So creamy. I bought some blue cheese too. I learned you do not shorten the word passionfruit by saying pash because that means to "make out" here in NZ. oops!
We made it home around 430 and did our grocery shopping before heading to Hannah and Jamie's for a pot luck supper with Katie's other sister Rebecca and her fiance Reg as well. We watched Sherlock Holmes (decent movie) and had roast chicken, beef stir fry, garlic bread, corn and roast potatoes, with cookies and cream ice cream and vanilla cake for dessert. Awesome.
Back to work this morning and back to the gym straight after since this weekend was all about food...
LOVE!

If love is really all that we need, than even all my singing is never going to save me

Flip its been ages since I last posted. I have been so busy its wild. I am still working at sektor payments and loving every second. well, maybe not every second, but i really enjoy it. Working 830-5 was hard at first, but I'm definitely getting used to it. One of my favorite coworkers is leaving to go to Auckland after a very messy breakup. I'm sad he's leaving, but the worst part is that because he;s leaving, a guy i work with in the dungeon is being promoted to work in maximum security (we call it that because the boss works in that room so you cant be silly). The dungeon is where I work, and we have no direct sunlight and are surrounded by boxes, BUT we laugh hysterically and listen to loud music, so I love it. There is also a room we call mexican security. it used to be medium security because the boss walks in there sometimes, but we have nicknamed the boys in that room poncho and alfredo so we changed the name to mexican security. We spend a lot of time in a cold, dark room so we go a little crazy sometimes...
I saw frank turner in concert last wednesday, unreal. He sang all my favorite songs and even a postal service song! The district sleeps alone tonight. and some bruce springstein and chuck regan. I was in heaven. I went with Michelle and Ash. I got to meet Frank after the show and he invited me to have a drink with him but it was a work night so i had to decline...oh well.
I saw an improv comedy show last weekend it was so funny, a guy from church was in it. I also finally got my bike looked at last weekend. The guys at the bike store went absolutely mad over it. Apparently its a handmade falcon londoner, worth a grand when fixed up! So he replaced the tubes and tyres for me, as well as the brake pads, and charged me only 10 minutes of labour even though he spent about an hour on it! Lovely guy. really passionate about my bike (and old biked in general i think). Now i just have to replace the bearings and give it a solid clean. I watched a video on how to replace the bearings online so hopefully i can do it alright.
I went to a 21st last weekend as well. It was sweet, lots of yummy food, and went for dinner at j& k's friends place, they had 3 reeeally adorable kids we played with.
tomorrow night we are heading up to do the tongariro crossing, a legendary 18.9km hike. I can't wait, hoping the weather is good for us.
I went to jade and tracey's for dinner after work on monday, we had baked bananas in caramel sauce with bacon. amazing! and then apple crisp and hokey pokey ice cream for dessert. I;m pretty much still full. I made cinnamon buns last night but they didnt rise properly so i was disappointed. But I made white chocolate and craisin cookies tonight and they turned out well.
Finally, I am disappointed to have missed Daph's dedication but I'm so happy I got to see some photos, thanks Dad!
LOVE