It's Been A Month!

So we've officially been in New Zealand for 4 weeks. In the meantime we are quite settled here. We have our steady jobs, our home, and our car. Wow. It's crazy how far you can come in 4 weeks.

Speaking of our car, We were out driving it the other day, and we took a look in the trunk. It is full of things that the previous owner just couldn't take back to germany. Man, it was like opening a treasure chest! We found some of his camping clothes (for some reason this guy liked wearing green things. Maybe he hunted animals while camping), a pillow, complete with pillowcase, a sleeping bag, a length of rope, a large towel, a tent, and all sort of other fun stuff! He also left us with stuff like windex, an alarm clock, and sandwich bags. Seriously, when you're living on a budget, these things get very exciting. We left most of the stuff in the trunk. I hope to get excited again the next time I open it! Our car is doing well. It seems to be a little unhappy that we keep starting and stalling it, though. It now needs to have the accelleration pumped before it will let us turn it on. Grumpy little bugger. In terms of gas money, it costs about $1 per km, so we pretty much pay 30 bucks just to get to the closest town. In other words, we should be saving up if we plan to travel with our car after the snow season ends.

Today, the owner of the Park is taking out all of his staff to dinner. I get to come along for the ride. (I love the perks of Jon's workplace!) I'm excited to finally meet the actual owner of the place. We've met everyone else so far. Plus, he must be pretty cool if he's taking his entire staff out to dinner with him. Oh, who am I kidding, he probably lives next door.

I have been laying in bed for way too many hours a day lately. Even when I have work, I tend to feel like just crawling into bed and sleeping after I get home. Today I did not have work. (Mondays and wednesdays are my off days... I think) Since the weather is pretty miserable right now, I had no desire to go anywhere, and I spent all day in bed. It was awesome. I can breathe through my nose, and that's all I ask. Swallowing still hurts though. Hopefully this will go away soon.

Speaking of work, it has come to my attention that my last few entries made it sound like Jon was being worked to the bone. I think I made that sound a little more extreme than it really is. He is working about 40 hours a week, just like me. It's just that his hours are a little more randomly scheduled. And he is getting paid for every hour that he works past 32. So there is definitely incentive for him to do the work.

Oooh. I also looked into the whole idea of working at a ski resort in Canada. It would work! They are looking for applicants right now. The cool thing in Canada would be that there are ski resorts as close as 30 minutes from Vancouver, BC. And several of them are hosting events for the Olympics. The process of applying for work is the exact same as what we went through for working in NZ. We would need to get a Visa, and a "social insurance number." We've done all those things before, so I can't imagine there being too many difficulties that we have not already hurdled. This time, though, I would look for a job on the mountain that is closer to what a mechanic does. Or, there is this one job where I would basically have to ski around carrying stuff and blocking off places that people can't ski in. I wouldn't be averse to that either. Jon could find some real work in the city, and that way we could both get what we want and still live in the same place. Plus, we could take a car with us across the border. Then we wouldn't have to buy one. Not that we would be far from the rest of the world if we lived in Vancouver. Not like National Park...

Ok, I'm getting ahead of myself. I am still at the beginning of my journeys in New Zealand.


....GAH, excited!

Jalissa

P.S. Shout out to Chelsea, who thinks that turkeys are far away. Whatever that means. Dude, there were turkeys just hanging out at Lake Natoma, remember? (just kidding Chelsea. You too get props for going to another country!)