Happy GAMEDAY!

I hung out this afternoon with Genny, Beth, Amanda, Allison and Ryan for gameday. It's been raining all day! Soo heads up, tomorrow you will have rain :)

My new home: Arrowtown

Guess who's EMPLOYED?!?!

Yours truly!!!! It only took 3 days. Heck yes. I have a job. Unfortunately, it is not as the green cab driver or at the Save-A-Lot. I was just thinking about how I wanted to move to the Marlborough region and work on a vineyard. I emailed a lady about an aupair job and she didn't need someone till November, but after looking at my resume she told me I should contact the New Orleans Hotel (ironic eh?) because they were hiring and I had hospitality experience. So I went and talked to the guy today and he offered me a job. I will go in tomorrow to see what he wants and to make sure it's something I want to do. However, we didn't discuss money. Is that important? Here is a link: http://www.neworleanshotel.co.nz/ He is hiring me to be the manager! He needs someone that can run a bar, restaurant, run the hotel and manage the inventory. So it sounds like it will be a lot of work, but it sounds like it will be exciting. He told me he has never met an American that was a bad bartender so he had faith in me. I assured him he would not be disappointed :)

The New Orleans Hotel is in a little town 20 minutes outside of Queenstown in a place called Arrowtown. It's super small. 2000 people. It is beautiful though!! I walked around the little river today and I could see the blue sky and the mountains. It was so peaceful. He knows of a guy that needs a flat mate, so I will meet him tomorrow and hopefully be able to move in this weekend. I am looking forward to getting out of a hostel and having my own room!

I realized after my last post that I have mentioned very little about the scenery, where I was staying, etc. Just the food....imagine that! My first 2 nights I stayed in a hostel right in the middle of Queenstown. It was really really nice and clean. There were 9 red leather couches in the common area, with a pool table and a fire. I had a 6 bed dorm, which is 3 bunkbeds, and we had our own bathroom and shower instead of community, which was nice. Problem is, it was more for someone that wanted to go on a bar crawl every night. No thanks. So I moved a bit outside of the downtown area into a small hostel. It's not quite as nice because it's older, but it is much smaller and quieter. I will stay here until I find a place to live.

I have been borrowing Joe's car, Kermit. He is lime green. Kinda like the taxi I wanted to drive! Driving on the wrong side of the road is kind of fun. I feel like I just turned 16 again and am driving for the first time. However, I still don't really care for driving, so I will probably not get a car. It was really nice to drive back from Arrowtown though as the sun was setting over the mountains. I wanted to take a million pictures on the way home, but figured I would wreck trying to do that. I will eventually get some. The problem here is everything is picture worthy. Everything looks like a postcard. It's pretty unreal. I love the mountains this time of year.

I did make one friend, Mai Lee, she's from Arizona. She was only here for a couple days though so that is the downside of making friends in a hostel. It was very nice though to have someone that I could talk to and relate with, because she felt the same about the party hostel. We took a gondola ride to the top of the mountain and had a glass of wine. The views were incredible and we could see all of Queenstown and across the water and the mountains. It was a little cloudy, but I can only imagine how pretty it would be on a clear night. You can hike up to the top instead of taking the gondola, which I would like to do sometime soon.

I will get pictures up once I can get to wifi for my phone. Ever since I switched my iPhone over to a NZ carrier it freezes my computer when I try to upload the pictures, so I am not sure what that's about. Either way, pictures to come soon! After my first day of work I am sure I will have plenty to say!

Until then....ciao!

The last 7 days....

The last week has been a complete whirlwind of emotions. I am extremely lucky to have really awesome friends and parents that ate 100 meals out with me before leaving. Thank you to those of you who spent your life savings because I guilted you into non-stop bonding. There were lots of tears shed before leaving, as it is hard to say bye when you don't know when you will be returning. I am thankful that my friends Genny, John, Valerie, Hardin and my parents were all able to enjoy a big lunch in New Orleans before I left.

I flew from New Orleans to LA and had a 24 hour layover. It worked out perfect because my brother flew down from San Francisco and we were able to spend some time with our cousins, Chris and Julie. I also was able to meet up with a friend that I made 5 years ago in New Zealand. She is from Denmark and we met while here. Then when I was in Germany she came and spent a week with me. She was studying in San Diego this semester so I told her I would be in LA. The day before I got in she sent me a message saying she was there. It was a really unexpected surprise! We met for a drink and laughed about funny stories and the ridiculous things we did on our last trip. It got me so anxious to get back that I couldn't wait to get on the plane!

I arrived in NZ on Monday morning and my friend Joe picked me up at the airport. He works here in Queenstown at a hotel and had been working the night shift, so he went home to sleep and I wandered about the town. I had forgotten how touristy it is here. Even though I am a tourist, I am not really a fan of tourists. It's really irritating when people stand in the middle of the sidewalk to stare at their maps. I mean go somewhere that is not in the middle of everyone's way. People forget how to cross the street, they forget manners and basically get on my last nerve :)

Another thing about New Zealand is that it is really expensive. Everything. Last night I was at the supermarket and a 12 pack of Heinaken is NZ$36.50 and NZ$3.00 for a candy bar. Either I will get real skinny because I can't afford those things or I will get real skinny because I will make a candy bar a meal. In all honesty, I don't see getting skinny in the plans because I found an incredible burger place already. Joe told me it was the worlds best burger. I cannot bring myself to say that because nothing will top a big juicy Callaghan's burger. However, this burger was HUGE. The patty was thing, but it was large. The bread was amazing and it was covered in aioli. I added avocado! Aioli could have been what made it though. Aioli is the greatest thing in the world. I might even eat aioli and french fries for every meal. It's not like aioli you will find in the US because that is mayonnaise based. That place may be my downfall because the burger is NZ$12. Which isn't bad considering tax is included in everything already, you don't tip and the US dollar is worth a tad more than the NZ. So I find great value in that deal.

Yesterday Joe and I went walking along a trail on the Shotover River and bowling! If the weather holds out today we will go on a trail that is on the other side of the river. I have been job searching, but I am thinking I want to make my way up north a bit and work on a vineyard. Most of those jobs don't start for a couple months though so I need to find something temporary in the meantime. I saw a job posting to drive for Green Cabs. I am DYING to do that!!! Can't you see me sporting people around town in a lime green Prius? It would be so fun! However, you have to have a P certification and I am sure that is costly and timely. I do plan to check into it though. I guess that way if all else fails when I move home I could drive for Yellow Cab. Coffee is a big thing here as well and they like their fancy drinks, so I would like to work in a coffee shop. Ok so that's all for now....I of course have more to say, but am trying to learn to keep my conversations to a minimum!

Miss Johnson's Classroom

Genny Johnson is my dear friend/ roommate (even when I'm gone...at heart)! She teaches the 4th grade at Newton Elementary in Fairhope. She told her principal about what I am doing and she was all for me coming to brief Genny's class on my adventures, show pictures, answer questions and teach them about a new place! Genny's initial reasoning was so she could teach them to write a proper letter and to teach them about email. Her principle told her she could incorporate my trip into so many different aspects of her curriculum, which is really fun! They had some really good questions and some really funny ones. My favorite being: "what do they write with there? Do they use a feather and ink?". They were amazed to know they use pens, no. 2 pencils and crayolas just like them! They all took guesses on how many miles NZ was from the US. Google told me it was 9000 miles! I would have thought further. I showed them my skydiving video from my last trip here and they got to hear a kiwi accent! Another country was extremely fascinating to them.

Anyways, I am really looking forward to them following me, reading letters from them and hopefully eventually being able to Skype with them!

LA TO QUEENSTOWN....

.....I'm here! Only have time for pictures now, but they speak for themselves. I was very thankful to spend time with my brother, my cousins and a friend I made on my last trip to NZ....all in LA!! Stories to follow...the sunset is LA, the plane pictures are flying from Auckland to Queenstown, which is where I will be until I decide on a more certain plan.

Loss of sleep starts now

Do you know how hard it is to sleep when you will be packing a backpack with a few possessions and leaving with a one way ticket in just 4 days? Let's just say it's not easy. I have been tossing and turning and adding to my mental to do list (meaning it won't happen since I remember nothing unless it's written down). I think about the errands I need to run, which I always seem to have triple any normal persons. I start thinking about what I may forget. Even though I'm a pretty light traveler there are necessities like my favorite fingernail polish, my hammock and deciding how much of everything is feasible. Right now the pickins are a little slim as you will notice by the picture below with the short stacks of clothes. Once I am packed up you will get to see what the final product looks like stuffed into my pack.

I am going to try to sleep now that i have put some of my thoughts on paper. I have an early morning with a haircut appointment. Clearly I have priorities, right?

As I scrolled through the photos on my phone tonight it made me thankful and appreciative for so many of the things I'll miss....

Art Walk with a munchkin

I will miss spending all of my free time with my friends and their kids. Hence part of my motivation for leaving. Dear friends, please slow down. No more weddings and no more kids. Come visit me first. K thanks!

I'M BLOGGING!

It's really happening....and by happening I mean I'm actually blogging and I am actually approaching my departure date. I have a one way ticket to Queenstown, New Zealand on September 21st. Most people have asked what I will do when I get there. My answer: I don't know. As you can imagine I have gotten some bewildered looks, but that's just it, I don't know. I will figure that out when I get there. I may be a nanny, I may work at a coffee shop, I may be a greeter at Walmart (sike- thankfully they don't have that scary place), I may work at McDonald's or I may just fulfill my childhood dream of wanting to work at grocery store just to scan the items at the register. I will keep you posted on that one. I plan to at least work through the summer (our winter) and see what happens. If I can brave the cold winter then I will stay, otherwise I will galavant on over to Australia to visit some friends I studied with. Next August I plan to be in Thailand to find a job teaching English for a year. So that is my "plan". I wanted to put it in writing so I can look back and see if I even vaguely came close to following it. You never know what will happen when you travel. What I do know is that travel teaches you a lot about yourself and every trip has made me a different person. I am thankful for that!

Anyways, now that I am in the final countdown with less than 2 weeks to go it is really starting to sink in. I feel like I have so much to do, so many fun people to hang out with and so many of my favorite restaurants to visit, all in so little time. I'm a real procrastinator, so I should have been doing these things over the last few months. Actually the only one I am slacking on is the "so much to do" aka get organized before I go. I have hung out with most of my friends and I have gone overkill on the eating out, but that's normal.

I have tried blogging every time I travel and I always give up. However, this go round I am hoping to post more consistently, so I don't get carried away and write lengthy posts and then burn out. Somewhere on this blog there should be a place for you to "subscribe", so that you will receive an email when I have written a post. I think it is at the very bottom. I am new to actually creating a blog, so bear with me in the process of figuring all of this cyber nonsense out. If you would like to volunteer to make it prettier than this ancient picture of a globe, please let me know. I spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to figure it out and got extremely frustrated.

I promised I would acknowledge whoever came up with the best blog title. My friends and family voted on this one. So a HUGE thank you to my comical friend Keith Domen! Good work on pegging the nail right on the head in terms of describing my life. Want to know what you win? A plane ticket to New Zealand. Oh wait, I'm definitely lying, but it sounded good right?

That's all for now....but don't worry, I always have plenty to say so stay tuned for my next post!