My apologies for the lack of blog postings lately, I’ve been pretty busy sorting out life and travel plans and have also been a bit lazy. I have a few stories to tell but for now I figured I’d put up a quick update about where I’m at currently. I’m off work for about a month and have been traveling around a bit. The first week was spent on a road trip up to the North of the South Island to Golden Bay with a kiwi friend of mine who was going home for winter holidays. It was really nice to spend a week in a place that felt like a home again, if that makes sense. I hadn’t realized how much I missed sitting around a proper dinner table at night eating yummy meals with a family. Plus being shown around by a local was way more fun than just being a tourist. We spent a few days wandering the gorgeous beaches and even got taken out fishing one day and I caught a couple of blue cod we cooked up for dinner! One evening we went down to the local pub, The Mussel Inn, and had some fun at their pub quiz night. There was a special prize for the silliest answers, and since we didn’t know most of the real answers most of ours were pretty silly. In the end the following three answers won us some chocolate fish:
Q: Where are the Silly Isles? (It definitely wasn’t spelt “silly” but we didn’t know the proper spelling)
A: They could be f***ing anywhere, where sillyness occurs!
Q: What is a ostler?
A: An ostrich hustler.
Q: I can’t remember the question, something about the name of a french chicken.
A: The biggest cock in all of France.
Now I’m spending a week in Melbourne, Australia with some friends. Mostly I’m just taking it easy, and enjoying being in a big city again, I hadn’t realized how much I would miss “the big city” living in a much smaller one like Dunedin. Plus Melbourne is a lot like Vancouver, there’s a sushi restaurant on every corner, not to mention all the other yummy cuisines. There are heaps of asian stores, coffee shops and a nice waterfront. Wandering around the downtown core I feel like I could almost be home. I’m looking forward to the next week spent here before I fly back to New Zealand for the next few months. Then my plans are to head back to Dunedin where I’ll be working until the end of October at which point I’ll have to decide whether to stick around for a bit of NZ summer, or maybe head to SE Asia for some sun before coming home to my second winter this year.
