SKYDIVINNNNGGGGG!!

Red sky at night, shepherd's delight. The saying that finalised my decision to on the spur of the moment book my skydive in Wanaka. I had two days off work ahead of me and upon seeing the red sky knew it was going to be nice weather the next day (Screw you weather forecast, old sayings win!)So woke up in the morning, booked a room in the Purple Cow Hostel in Wanaka and set off hitch hiking. Turns out my lucky nature transfers to hitching as both there AND back I only need to thumb a lift once. Which is rare for 2 hour journeys!

Spent a bit of time in Wanaka beforehand, beautiful town with an incredible view across a lake onto the mountains. Very like Queenstown but less commercial! Then headed to the airport for the big event! You get kitted out in a red jumpsuit etc and meet your instructor. Mine was called Eric and my cameraman David (An absolute joker who pretended to be on the phone to me before introducing himself... HA... not.) You then hop into the plane, a very flimsy plastic shutter is closed and you take off.

Looking around about 5 minutes into the flight I was like, ah we must be nearly there! Look at that view! Upon which I was shown an altitude metre telling me no, we were at 4000 feet. Still another 11,000 to go. I began to question my decision to go for the highest option. I also made the schoolboy error of turning to my instructer and saying "You have such a beautiful country! It's amazing!" Which he read as me feeling 'an unnatural sense of well being'.. one of the many symptoms of hypoxia, otherwise known as the beginnings of brain death from lack of oxygen. I was quickly handed an oxygen mask and proceeded to become euphoric from the delights of pure oxygen. Fantastic.

Then you come to the moment you shuffle forwards and are hung out of the plane by your instructor. When you smile, this is the signal you are ready and he will push off. This is not really a fair signal considering your face is being blasted by 200mph winds. Your cheeks naturally form a whopping great grin. Strangely I wasn't that scared, even on the brink.. it was surreal really. The view was better than anything I have ever seen and the stomach drop lasted a fraction of a second before my body decided I was beyond saving and stopped warning me I was falling. The free fall seemed to go on forever! It was incredible, when the parachute eventually opened out (massively cutting into your groine -_-) you then gradually descend appreciating the view and chatting with the instructor doing a few twirls to pick up speed. Landing was a piece of cake, you just stood up!

It was an amazing experience I thoroughly reccommend to all! It's not as scary as it seems once you're up there and the rush is unbelievable! After chatting with Eric I found out that to be qualified to do this professionally you have to do 1000 jumps. You can get a commercial pilots licence for less money than that would cost!! Crazy.

Photo's will accompany this post shortly!

A Romantic Evening For Our Hosts!

Okay officially the longest I've gone without blogging.. So high time for an update I reckon!

Work is really quietening down now... like REALLY. But we have methods of entertaining ourselves including: Learning guitar, learning Spanish, reading, making unusual ice creams and just generally messing around. The days are becoming shorter and the trees are becoming red and golden, reach any viewpoint looking across the valley and the orchards look utterly incredible.

Us all with John and Patt =)

John, Jens and Me

Monique and I have been trying to organise some kind of social event every Saturday evening. The most recent one was a romantic meal prepared for our hosts (John and Patt). According to them it was the first time in 35 years they had actually sat down together for a 'date' of sorts. That's almost twice my age!! Insanity! So we pulled out all the stops. Candles, romantic music, snazzily dressed waiters, wine and of course made damn sure they dressed up too! The menu for the evening was: Stuffed Mushrooms followed by Stir Fry (their favourite) ending with Meringue, Macaroons and fruit salad for dessert. We did a good job if I do say so myself! ;) They were very touched and claimed to have an incredible evening despite being slightly awkwrd talking to eachother at first (John was caught texting mid-meal... tut tut!) It was a fantastic team effort with everyone doing their bit , different people taking in various courses, Django as our head waiter giving it that bit of French class. We were rewarded by Patt with flashing necklaces...Goodtimes.

The Team!

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..

21st Birthday Party and a Car Crash! Never a Dull Moment in Roxburgh!

Saturday night was SO random. Played some poker (with monopoly money) and other card games with some of the new guys here, great fun. Then at like 11pm went to bed and TRIED to sleep. The pub was playing music sooo loudly, so in the end I gave up... if you can't beat them, join them! So I did. Went round there, tried to get myself an orange juice (I did have work in the morning after all) only to have one of the locals insist on buying me a beer. Anyway I accepted and next thing I know a jug, yes a JUG of beer was placed infront of me. People don't seem to order pints here, they're far more hardcore drinkers than that apparently! There was a 21st birthday party going on in a sectioned off area, but within half an hour I was dragged in there by Sarah and Anna who knew the host.

The Damage Done..

Had great fun, danced a bit, ate some free food, drank some free beer (yes FREE.. they had kegs full.) They seem to love their country music here, which is... interesting. Especially when the dance floor is so wet it's like an ice rink and they're all off their faces! Especially Anna. Yes you Anna. Eventually ended up in bed by about 3:30am facing a 7am start for work... greeeeat!

Where the cars ended up..

Work was hectic. A very busy day having us constantly on the go, with Roweena cracking her whip listing out endless tasks that confused my poor tired mind. And then, as I was preparing to bag up some corn cobs suddenly there was a massive sound of grinding metal and smashing glass. Basically there was a pretty serious car collision where someone had tried to turn to visit our store and the car behind had tried to overtake at the same time. The overtaking car was sent spinning into our car park smashing into Sarah's car. (She was NOT happy) So then me and Monique found ourselves sweeping up glass from the middle of the road, and gave the little girl who had been in this car a free ice cream to cheer her up, because she really was shaking like a leaf!


So yeh... life's full of suprises!

"Have you kidnapped a chef?" - Pat Kerr

Possibly my favourite compliment about my new found culinary abilities. I'm trying to learn how to cook lots of different things to make my diet as interesting (and often unhealthy) as possible! From meals to baking brownies!

Lemon Curd =)

So far I've been pigging out on lots of sweet stuff, so I decided instead of spending all my money on them I'd have to earn them by making them myself. Starting with Brownies, then making my first lemon curd (kinda like lemon honey... a spread) and I'm pleased with my progress so far!

Brownieees!

Many of you will have heard the news about the earthquake in ChristChurch. Luckily I'm a fair distance away from there but the effect on people here is still quite shocking. I have several friends in ChCh, all of whom are fortunately accounted for but many of them know people who are still trapped/missing. The devestation is horrific, images of the collapsed cathedral have been utterly shocking to watch, many people are still missing so please think of all those involved. Any New Zealand readers.. GIVE BLOOD! They need it hugely, with 65 confirmed dead and hundreds injured last I heard, it's worse than the one last Septemeber! Look after yourselves people!

Ol' Farmer Andy!

Sunday morning, recovering from a night out in bed, John knocks on my door. "you're invited to tea at the Watt's farm in Gore, and you can stay there for a few days if you want. We leave in an hour."

View from the farmhouse

And so began my first farming experience, a random dash to have a shower and pack what I thought would be neccessary to work on a farm. Went there for tea, had a tour of the farm, got to know my host's James, Gill and Diana, was forced by Pat to provide entertainment when to her delight she discovered they had a Piano, I am now her dancing monkey... Good start. The following morning I had a nice lie in before wandering down to the yards to see if I could be of any help. My first job was to help with drafting, organising the lambs by weight to see which were ready for the works (slaughter) and which needed another few weeks fattening up (a smart sheep would have a hunger strike) I just drove them into a narrow passage and kept them moving. Over my two days on the farm we sorted around 2000 lambs. It's good fun and you have to stay on your toes, those lambs jump like nutters and get damn close to kicking you in the jaw.

The Yards

Bringing sheep in from the outer paddocks has to be my favourite part, at first I did it on foot with dogs and James in the jeep but on day two I was on a quad bike and James on a dirt bike... whizzing over hills mustering hundreds of sheep towards gates just doesn't seem to get boring! In the evenings I would head off on either the dirt bike or the quad to explore the farm.. of the two I preferred the quad... the bike had a tendency to batter my legs... Stupid kick start.. Getting used to changing gears with your foot and doing the clutch with your hand is a toughie... but I got the hang of it, after a few cuts and bruises (stalling at speed not reccommended!)

Wonderfully whenever we returned from working hard on the farm Jame's wife and/or daughter had always cooked up something unbelievably tasty, safe to say... I ate well, and slept better. Oh and I had my first bath in about 3 months, was a jacuzzi bath too! Tooooo nice! (Before anyone says "that's disgusting!"... I showered fools!) It was a great experience and I hope to try my hand at it again sometime, working outdoors really does have it's maaajor positives!

<3