Free Meals and Monster Eels!

Our Romantic Meal!

Had a really lovely few days here, me and Jens got our free meal from Eeyore and Monique, Taiwanese dumplings with a tasty salad on the side. My god was it good! And very sweetly they even prepared a separate room with candles and stuff for us all (me, Jens, Benjamin, Eeyore and Monique) to go and eat in, twas rather romantic. Was a fantastic meal, all due credit goes to the girls for their hard work! I do love the people you meet when travelling.

Our Eel Meal! (Small cooked eel)

As I mentioned we've been doing a spot of fishing in the river recently.. and the other day Jens and Benjamin brought back a WHOPPPER of an eel. Like an actual beast. 2ft long weighing about 3kg (which is apparently still small for an eel, but we didn't think so! It was still big enough to bite off fingers and that's quite big enough for me!) it will be cooked and eaten tonight. Eels are exceptionally hard to kill, after a frankly brutal demonstration from John, I took up an axe and tried my hand at beheading an eel. And succeeded! Although I got very muddy crawling under the decking of the outhouse to catch the eel that had escaped from Jenz's hands and shot like a snake into cover. It was dark, the eel can bite, and I was crawling in a small space. Recipe for disaster I know, but it worked so meh!

The Monster Eel

Partaaays Galore!

On returning from Queenstown mine and Moniques next social event began to be prepared. The idea, an International Party where everyone brought some kind of cooking that was typical of their culture. We all went down to the park, with lots of people from The Commercial and some from people's work places and enjoyed the public BBQ (which took an hour to cook some burgers ¬_¬) had a few drinks and generally had an awesome, awesome time!To name some of the dishes present: Scones (by yours truly, about as English as it gets..) Kiwi Salad, Apple Strudel (Germany), Crepes (France), Chinese Pancakes (Um... China..) Kiwi Sausages, Apple Pie (England), Mashed Potato (Canada??) and Dumplings (Taiwan).

Antoines Crepe's

Eeyore's Taiwanese Dumplings

Benjamin's Apple Strudel



Monique's Salad



A couple of days later we discovered it was Nikolai's 25th Birthday (he had kept it VERY quiet!) So we decided to throw him a suprise shindig in the kitchen which was lovely. Decorated the place with ballons etc etc Pat made a Lemon and Orange Spongecake before then insisting that we all play party games such as: Pass the balloon (and say something nice to whoever catches it) and tear the sweet wrapper to see who can make the longest thread. We had an absolute rave on our hands... it was wild.



Work is quietening down now, meaning my job is not EVEN more envied as I can spend much of the day reading out in the sunshine. Lovely jubbly. Although Monique and I continue to find ways of amusing ourselves, the extreme ice creams being one of our favourites! In the evenings we are beginning to go fishing down by the river, this evening a freshly caught eel is being cooked up.. gonna be interesting! I'm also playing a lot more Piano with Jens, after earning a free meal for our "The Entertainer" duet, we're now working on a Four-Handed piece dedicated to his friend Elisa who died of cancer aged 18. It's based around the chord sequence of the last song she heard. (Cue 'awwwwww's) It's going REALLY well, once it's complete we'll film it and put it on youtube or something.



International Party!



Queenstown: Take 3

After working all morning I hitched a lift with a physiotherapist into Alexandra where I met up with my Aunty Bronwen and Uncle Colin! After a bit of catching up we set off for Queenstown stopping at Clyde and Cromwell briefly along the way (on a wine/food hunt).

After the most comfortable sleep I've had in quite some time at Glenys and John's place we went into town, set me up an appointment at the Kiwi Bank and went for a nice stroll in the park etc.After a spot of lunch we drove up to the ski fields of The Remarkables (currently snow free obviously) and climbed to the face of the mountain looking out over Queenstown. Utterly magnificant. One of those jaw dropping sights you really never forget!

Amisfield Vineyard

My Aunt and Uncle are very keen on their wines so I've had a bit of an education in different varieties and flavours. Experienced my first official wine tasting at the Amisfield Vineyard, very nice and you feel ever so posh. They even have special 'spitting dishes' if you intend to do the tasting properly. I however had no intention of wasting good alcohol. After buying the evening's supply of wine we came back to Glenys's and I had a wonderful evening tipped off with talking to my dad on his birthday! Lovely. My well organised present that was stashed at home before I even left will be opened any time nowww....

Natural Tunnel

The following day I sert up my bank account with Kiwi Bank before heading down the road towards Glenorchy and went for a hike near Lake Dispute. Beautiful scenery and an incredible walk that we thoroughly enjoyed. Bron and Col headed off to Wanaka at about 4pm after giving me some Kendal Mint Cake and Haribo from home (oh how I have missed these beautiful things!) Given that it was St Patrick's Day I wasn't going to sit indoors all evening so I walked into Queenstown to see what was going down. On the waterfront, (a beautiful sight at the best of times) there was a busker with a Piano on wheels, yes an acoustic piano. I couldn't believe my eyes, and then a friend from Roxburgh called Ayuko happened to be passing and before I knew it she had dragged me over and I was playing Hallelujah and How to Save a Life watching the sun sink behind the mountains across the lake. Beautiful. A juggler and a magician followed as the next buskers after which I hit the clubs. Alone... =(

Piano Busker (Photo taken on phone)

St Patrick's day in Queenstown is fantastic, the Irish crawl out of all the nooks and crannys and EVERYBODY is dressed up as leprechauns and covered in face paints etc. All great fun, I made friends here and there, (at one point ending up in a large group dancing topless on a bar, nice) but I didn't really have the courage to socialise as aggressively as would have been needed to find people to hang around with till the early hours. We'll work on that courage. Man up Andrew, geeze.

Murder and Broken Windows.

I had decided not to blog till after I'd met up with my Aunt and Uncle on Tuesday UNLESS something interesting happened. Well.. sods law, interesting stuff happened.

The Pig Bin. Luckiest pigs in the world!

Was a fairly ordinary week, messing around at work, succeeded at making meringue on my day off. Good tiiiiiiimes. Me and Monique's cooking exchange on our days off is going well. I made her stir fry followed by meringue, ice cream and melted chocolate and she made me this delicious french toast concoction involving lots of spices, chilli etc (she's a pro with the herbs and spices).

My Perfect Meringue =')

Impressive Pear Stacking Skills

Then on Friday at work we noticed lots of police cars flying past and a helicopter of armed police overhead moving in on Roxburgh. Basically (without too much detail, I don't want to gossip) a man separated from his wife two weeks ago and then was diagnosed with terminal cancer, he shot her and then turn the gun on himself. He is alive and in hospital, but it's uncertain if he'll make it or not. Being such a small town (population of 600 I hear... the hostel I'm in therefore making up one sixth of the population LOL) it's sent shockwaves all over, because everyone knew them. Just this evening one of the girls who works in Roxburger told us it's actually her aunt's parents. Horrific to be involved in I'm sure, but she's handling it very well, they all are.

Saturday night we had an impromptu party down at Pinders Pond, lit a fire.. Me, Monique and Antoine went for a late night swim, which was amazing. I maintain the water is warm... they disagree. Sat round the fire drying off and chatting till we eventually headed back to the commercial intending to go to the pub (both of which were closed by 11pm on a Saturday of course ¬_¬) so instead we were relaxing on our balcony, chatting and drinking when Jens and Nickoli, sitting on the window ledge, leaning on the window (single pane and OLD) smashed the window. To be honest it was lucky they didn't get hurt. Pat went MENTAL and confiscated all the alcohol, all the while there was some kind of drunken brawl going on further up the road. Strange night. So now our room is nice and chilled due to an entire window being missing. Result.

Party at Pinders!

New People + New Room = New Roxburgh!

Blog post number 30!!

I have now moved from my little outside hut into a far more social 5 bed room in the main building with 3 other guys: Benjamin, Jens and Antoine. (German, Belgian and French) Antoine is new and I haven't really spoken to him yet but the other two I get on really well with, Benjamin is experimenting with his cooking just as much as me, making bread and cinnamon ice cream so far (both very tasty!) and Jens is an awesome Piano player, so at some point we hope to work on a duet of some kind!

Rainbow over my (ex) hut

Lemon Sponge Cake WIN!!

I continue to visit the gym three or four times a week so I'm feeling damned healthy! Many of you may have seen the "Extreme Ice Creams" we've been making at the store (without the boss seeing) with such epic flavours as Avocado, Onion and Garlic. Good times! It's just me and Monique working there now and we get on like a particularly flamable house of fire so it's good fun and the days pass quickly! My days off tend to be spent chatting with people back in England which is something I always looks forward to every week, followed by some form of cookery in the afternoon, and of course catching up on lots of washing!

The Extreme Ice Cream List

One Room of the Fruit Store

My Aunt and Uncle Bronwen and Colin visit in a weeks time! Which I'm really looking forward to! Hoping to go and spend a couple of days in Queenstown with them but details are yet to be sorted for that one!

I hope you are all well and enjoying your lives wherever you may be (welcome to the countries viewing this Moldova!) I'll update this again next week when I have met up with my Aunt and Uncle.. unless anything particularly spectacular happens between now and then..