Relatively Good News and Bad News

The bad news is my job with John Austin Ltd. doesn't look like it's going to happen. I haven't heard from them for sure, which is most of the reason that it doesn't look good. The good news is that my job here is pretty secure for the next week, and I'm now the one riding behind the tractor, so my job is pretty good too. (we're netting now) I go back and forth on whether having a job here is really good news. Cromwell is not a very happening place, and I don't have any transportation so I'm kind of stuck here after work, not a ton of stuff to do. I don't mind experiencing this part of NZ, in fact I'm really glad I did. I'm just not sure I want to spend another week of my last month here.

Oh by the way IT'S MY LAST MONTH. WHAT? Time has gone really fast. "what's that you say Mom? It hasn't gone fast for you? Awww, thanks"

So anyway, I'll call John Austin tomorrow to be sure I can't work there and then I guess I'll spend the next week here, it might not be that bad. I am getting to meet all sorts of people. The crew right now is: 3 Belgians, 1 Czech, 1 Argentinian, 2 Chileans, 2 French, 1 Israeli, 1 Aussie, 3 Kiwis 1 German and myself. It's a really diverse group and it's really interesting getting to know everyone, and it makes for a fun workplace. At any time you can here conversations going on in English, French, Spanish and a mix of the three. We are never short of cross cultural humor, and interesting situations. For example, the vineyard has a air cannon to scare away birds, so every 15 minutes or so it sounds like someone is shooting a 12 guage, and for the first day or so we weren't sure what it was. Today I was was working with the Israeli girl named Nurit, we were talking about the air cannon, and she says, "It reminds me of home" and then laughed. So I laughed, and felt a little weird, so I asked "Should I be laughing?" She was saying it as a joke so it was ok, but she was kind of serious.

Speaking of OK, I heard today that OK originated in battle statistics. It's an abreviation for 0 Kills, so everything is OK.

Anyways, it was good thinking about you guys. (We'll have to save talking for later) I may sound a little depressed but I'm not so don't worry. I'm having a great time. I'll catch you on the flip side.

I was going to post earlier today, but I thankfully had to work. It started raining last Friday and it pretty much didn’t let up until about 11 this morning. Actually it didn’t last all day yesterday, but it was Sunday. So I’m hoping that I might be able to get close to a full week in, but it’s looking like it might rain the next couple of days too.

Mom sent me a book so on Friday I read pretty much the whole book. On Saturday I didn’t have a book so the day was a little more boring. I made a deal with Michi to trade cookies for some German cake, so I baked some chocolate chip cookies on Saturday afternoon and then we found a monopoly game to kill the rest of the evening.

On Sunday we decided that we really wanted a sub of the day at Subway for lunch, which is a problem since the closest Subway is in Queenstown (about 60 km away). So around noon we walked out to the 6 and hitch-hiked there. We ate a Subway, walked the waterfront, and Vladi bought some new sandals (or as the Kiwis call them, jandals). Hitching back didn’t go quite as smoothly as the way there, but we did make it. We split up the last 30 km and I actually rode with a South American couple that I work with.

It rained again this morning, but it cleared up around 11.00, so we went in around 12.30 and worked till about 4.30. I haven’t seen the weather for tomorrow yet, but we’re hoping to start at 7.00. We’ll see how that goes.

Let the Blood Letting Begin

I was introduced to the darker side of seasonal work in NZ. A half dozen people were given the ax today. Somehow I escaped the bloodbath, and I still have a job. Also the guy that I've been riding with to the vineyard is still with us so I have transportation. So I'll be working here in Cromwell for a couple more weeks. We're still fruit thinning, but later this week we are going to switch to putting on nets to keep the birds out.

Michi and Valdi are now in Cromwell doing netting for another vineyard, so we're staying together again. Last Sunday Jude (a kiwi that's staying at the chalets) took us on a loop up to Wanaka then down to Arrowtown and back to Cromwell. It was some pretty awesome scenery and we stopped in Arrowtown for ice cream. I had cherry made with locally grown cherries. It was amazing.

The weather has been really nice this week, sunny and warm. I'm hoping that we get a full week in. Last week it rained a couple of days so we didn't get as many hours as I would like. It's hard to make any money when you never work a full week.

I got my camera back, so there are a few new pics on the slide show. I promise I'll post more often now that I have my camera back.

Life at the Chalets

Time to check in. Hope everything's going well on the home front. I've been having a pretty good time. We've been fruit thinning at the vineyard. The wine that this vineyard makes is "boutique" which basically means everything is done by hand and then they charge three times as much. On each shoot there are between 1 and 3 bunches of grapes. For their highest quality wine we thinned them down to 1, and now we're thinning down to 2 bunches per shoot. It's been pretty warm, between 25 and 30 and sunny. We have been working from 7.30 to 4.00, but later this week we might start at 7.oo skip after noon smoker and quit at 3.15.

There's a Presbyterian church in Cromwell and their sign says they have an evening service at 6.30, so I decided to try and go to that. Well it turns out tha'ts not exactly true. They actually have a youth group meeting then. So they made me feel at home, and I spent the next hour playing the name game and doing a Bible study. It was actually pretty fun.

I called the camera place today and they have it all figured out and they'll be shipping it back tomorrow, so I should be able to post some pictures soon.

Oh, Hey Guys

Ok the suspense has gone on long enough. I can't find a job, I'm starving and I'm flying home tommorrow. Ok, not really. Actually thing have been going rather well.

(Mom maybe you shouldn't read this paragraph)
Last Saturday I packed up and left Ashburton. Valdi and Michi had hitchhiked from Auckland to Ashburton and said it'd had been really easy so I decided to give it a shot. At about 1pm I walked out to Highway 1 and sat down to wait. It took about a half hour but a guy in a pickup that was heading down to Timaru to visit family stopped and said he could take me down close to Geraldine. I said that'd be great and my hike was hitched. (or hitch was hiked, I'm not really sure how that goes) anyway after about ten minutes of waiting a couple of young guys stopped and took me into Geraldine. By this time I didn't think I was going to make it all the way to Queenstown so I stopped at the I-site and asked about accomodation further down the road. The lady there said that Lake Tekapo (tee-ka-poo, hehe) had some nice accomodation and even called ahead to see if they had vacancies, which they did. So I walked to the outskrits of Geraldine and sat down to wait again. In about fifteen minutes two girls from south Wales that happened to be heading to Lake Tekapo picked me up and took me the rest of the way.

So I spent the night at Lake Tekapo, which is beautiful, and the backpacker there is super nice. Unfortunately I still don't have my camera, so I wasn't able to take any pictures, but you should google it cause it's really nice.

The next morning it was raining and I really didn't feel like hitching so I bought a bus ticket for the rest of the way (I probably saved $15-20 hitching half way) I decided to just go straight to Cromwell since it was already Sunday and I wanted to start working as soon as I could. So I walked to the Chalets where I'm staying and met a guy who was doing some vineyard work. He gave me the number of his boss and I called him. To keep a short story short, I'm currently engaged in my first experience with viticulture. It's pretty cool. I work outside the pay is ok and I get some exercise, so I'm pretty happy.

I'll try and check in a little later on in the week.