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For the past few months, I lived in a little suburb of Wellington called Karori. Karori is where the well-off families of Wellington settle down and mountain bike on the weekends. It's right near a park and a bike trail. It also happens to be a valley on a hill... if you can imagine something like that. While our views were of the distant hill completing the valley creating a very Italian looking landscape, the valley itself brought with it the worst of Wellington weather. If it was sunny in Wellington, it was most likely foggy and rainy on our hill in the valley. I can't tell you how many times we walked home in the windiest, rainy conditions. What I can tell you is that I didn't always carry a raincoat, and on one such occasion, as I was fighting the wind and rain was soaking through my three layers, I bawled my eyes out on the walk home. Was this New Zealand in the summer? The southerlies that pass through are frosty like the early days of winter and they come on so fast that you could very well be wearing shorts as they sneak through.
And then there was Blenheim. After a three hour ferry ride with minimal seating (many people were sleeping on the floor wherever there was room since it was 8AM when we boarded and many of us had to consider travel time when setting our alarms), we arrived to the South Island. Our first sight was of its rolling mountains, dry as they were, and palm trees lining the shore. We arrived in Picton, a small nothing sort-of-town, with lovely beaches and mini golf. From there, we took the Naked Bus to Blenheim. And then there was sun. Not a cloud in the sky and the warmest day we had experienced in months, Blenheim proved to be everything we dreamed. We had lunch at the local pub where burgers were a mere $8. If you've ever eaten in NZ, you would know that burgers and sandwiches with fries are generally $15-18. For gourmet foods, you would expect to spend up to about $35 per meal. Since these prices do not include the booze I would like to consume, I felt a great wave of excitement at the affordable burgers. After some exploring, Nigel (of Nigel and Helen who own the B&B where we stayed) picked us up from town and brought us to the most gorgeous B&B I've ever seen. Their driveway was loose rock and was lined with purple flowers. The "garden room" where we stayed opened to it's own porch with a small table and two chairs for late night wine toasts. Off of the porch was access to the guest lounge where breakfast would be served overlooking the vineyard and distant mountains, and Sky TV could be watched. A small refrigerator was provided for chilling wines. Above it were handpicked walnuts, wineglasses, and homemade muesli. If this isn't enough for you, the bathroom alone would be. Helen put out natural hand soap, bath gel, and shampoo along with sachets of make-up remover. A hair dryer was attached to the wall beside a heated towel rack. The towels were that thick, white bathrobe cloth and they were the size of blankets. I could live the rest of my days in only that towel.
Nigel was sweet enough to drive us back into town for dinner. We went to Chequers and shared a cheap pizza with buy-one-get-one house wine while we listened to a local artist play his guitar. After an hour or so of music and three glasses of wine each, we headed to Cobblestone, a slightly classier bar where we continued to drink wine on a black leather couch for two. We finished the night with a couple of expensive chocolate truffles, called a cab, and headed back to our dream room where we stripped down to our undies and put on our big white robes to watch some tv.
The next morning I slept in after two weeks of early mornings and arose to the sounds of breakfast being laid out. Helen set up honey dew and cantalope next to our choices of muesli and fresh organic yogurt. A kettle of coffee was in the middle of the table beside home-made biscuits with butter and jams. Carafs of freshly squeezed apple and orange juices were now on the fridge beside the walnuts. And again the sun was out and it was already warm enough to wear shorts and a t-shirt. We finished our breakfast of kings, and made our way out behind the house to collect the bicycles for our wine tour. Nigel gave us a map and some suggestions of where to stop on the route and we set off for an amazing day of wine tasting and riding. We probably biked about 11 miles throughout the day and saw about 12 vineyards. Our favorite was Te Whare Re, where we bought 4 bottles. Other highlights included the tower at Highfield which overlooked gorgeous far-stretching vineyards, and Isabel which looked like a building straight out of Arizona complete with a brick-oven. During our entire ride, there were vineyards as far as the eye could see, most of them lined with wild roses and enveloped by rolling hills.
Needless to say, the trip back to Wellington was a difficult one. I could ride a bike through vineyards everyday and not tire of it. Besides, the ferry ride home confirmed our love of the south island. Bad weather into Wellington caused enormously choppy seas through the Cook Strait. Two hours of our boat ride were spent with no access to the top deck and ocean spray rising up against the ship with every rolling wave. When we arrived back in Wellington it was, of course, raining and cold. I wanted to hop back on the earliest ferry and stay in the South Island for the next 5 months. Instead, we made the long, cold, rainy walk home to Karori for our last night there. We packed up our things, I did some quick laundry, and got some shut-eye so Peter could get to work in the morning while I finished packing us up.
Monday was full of ups and downs as the person who volunteered to help me move wouldn't answer her phone. During an excursion to place marketing boxes, Peter, his manager and her fiance moved us out. In my mad rush to grab everything and to get out of their car so they could return to work, I forgot some liquor, shoes, a towel, and worst of all, my cell phone in Karori. Did I mention that my first day of work at the gym started on Monday? After moving us, I hobbled (I also didn't mention that I hurt my foot about two weeks ago and it still hasn't healed) to work from 4pm-7:30pm. After work, I was too tired to unpack and too anxious about my first early morning shift the next day. So, it was my first night in a new bed, in a new room, and I had to be up at 4:45AM to walk to the gym by 5:15AM the next morning.
My first day went surprisingly well. There's luckily a checklist for me so that I have a reminder of my duties. There is a lot to do in the 15 minutes before our gym opens to the public, but I made a list in my head of all those things, so my second morning would go swimmingly. The only really hard part is trying to tell my body to get up that early and having my mid-day break at 9:30AM. It's really a breakfast break I guess, but I'm starving by about 7AM, and I'm not sure what to do about it yet. I got home after work and slight grocery shopping at the coolest local store, and slept for an hour. I probably thought about unpacking, but only managed to put away a few stray items that ended up in the way of my nap. That night, I couldn't sleep due to my mid-day snooze, so I stayed up until about 11:30PM only to be awoken at 2AM by the new flatmate moving in. He moved in at 2AM. Who does that? I fell back asleep and was tormented by anxious reception dreams.
Early morning #2 was not as calm as morning #1. A fitness instructor is assigned the morning shift and opens the doors in the morning. This particular morning, a new instructor swiped his card, entered the building with me and I went about my checklist. In the middle of turning on computers and trying to figure out what I was supposed to do next, Fitness Chris came over and said "A loud alarm is about to go off." Since he is responsible for turning off the alarm, I was pretty confused. He seemed overly irritated and tried to get out through the sliding doors. Unfortunately, when the alarm is activated, you are locked in the building. I found out later that Chris had typed his password into his cell phone and left his cell phone in his car. Luckily, as I was still a trainee, the reception manager would be in any minute to help me open, and she would be able to turn off the alarm. This is how an ear piercing alarm happened to go off at 5:15 in the morning at the gym. This is not the end of my story, however. Since it was my second day and I wanted to get my work done before people showed up to work out, I continued to turn on spas and saunas and do my work in the locker rooms. When I walked out of the men's locker room, a rubbish lid lay on the floor smashed to pieces. Ignoring this, I rushed into the ladies' locker room and continued my work. The alarm went off by some miracle, so I returned to the front desk and turned on the radio and set to wiping down tables. After a few minutes, my manager appeared. She said something about Chris flying off the handle and I asked what happened. Apparently, during the loud buzzing and due to his anxiety at having set off the alarm, he threw the rubbish lid at the wall, hitting a big flat screen tv instead and denting the screen. What?! I was then asked my side of the story so that it could be repeated to the gym manager who was awoken at 5:20 in the morning by a call to say that the alarm was set off. Ugh.
After an exhausting, dramatic early morning shift, I rushed in to see Gavin, the gym's physical therapist. He took a look at my foot, decided I had injured my tendon (of course) and performed an ultra-sound before taping up my stinky foot and giving me little exercises to do. He told me to leave the tape on through today. I set out of his office, grateful to have some answers. Instead of resting as he suggested, I walked my ass across town, picked up Fringe Theatre Festival posters and went store-to-store to ask if I could hang them up. After and hour of walking on my bandaged foot, I decided to sit and eat before returning with the posters and crashing for the day. I ate at the Sea Food Market which you would expect to taste fresh and healthy, but it was the greasiest fish I've ever had, so I didn't even eat the whole meal. I dropped off the posters and headed home on foot, holding in the biggest stomach ache of all time. I made it home, turned on some Jack Johnson, and slept for 3 hours straight. That pretty much brings us to today. I woke up this morning to the fresh smell of cigarette smoke. I blame the new flatty. Our room has smelled fine for the past couple days and then he moves his disrespectful self in at 2AM and apparently smokes in his room the next morning as the hallway smelled, too. I feel dirty and exhausted, and I need to get to the post office and Karori to pick up the rest of my things... but I'm afraid to wash the tape off of my foot, so I can't shower, and I'm not supposed to walk too much, so how will I collect my things? Instead of worrying about these things, I've lit a candle, cracked a window, and decided to begin the adventure known as the grad school entrance essay. I'll let you know how my first draft turns out.
And then there was Blenheim. After a three hour ferry ride with minimal seating (many people were sleeping on the floor wherever there was room since it was 8AM when we boarded and many of us had to consider travel time when setting our alarms), we arrived to the South Island. Our first sight was of its rolling mountains, dry as they were, and palm trees lining the shore. We arrived in Picton, a small nothing sort-of-town, with lovely beaches and mini golf. From there, we took the Naked Bus to Blenheim. And then there was sun. Not a cloud in the sky and the warmest day we had experienced in months, Blenheim proved to be everything we dreamed. We had lunch at the local pub where burgers were a mere $8. If you've ever eaten in NZ, you would know that burgers and sandwiches with fries are generally $15-18. For gourmet foods, you would expect to spend up to about $35 per meal. Since these prices do not include the booze I would like to consume, I felt a great wave of excitement at the affordable burgers. After some exploring, Nigel (of Nigel and Helen who own the B&B where we stayed) picked us up from town and brought us to the most gorgeous B&B I've ever seen. Their driveway was loose rock and was lined with purple flowers. The "garden room" where we stayed opened to it's own porch with a small table and two chairs for late night wine toasts. Off of the porch was access to the guest lounge where breakfast would be served overlooking the vineyard and distant mountains, and Sky TV could be watched. A small refrigerator was provided for chilling wines. Above it were handpicked walnuts, wineglasses, and homemade muesli. If this isn't enough for you, the bathroom alone would be. Helen put out natural hand soap, bath gel, and shampoo along with sachets of make-up remover. A hair dryer was attached to the wall beside a heated towel rack. The towels were that thick, white bathrobe cloth and they were the size of blankets. I could live the rest of my days in only that towel.
Nigel was sweet enough to drive us back into town for dinner. We went to Chequers and shared a cheap pizza with buy-one-get-one house wine while we listened to a local artist play his guitar. After an hour or so of music and three glasses of wine each, we headed to Cobblestone, a slightly classier bar where we continued to drink wine on a black leather couch for two. We finished the night with a couple of expensive chocolate truffles, called a cab, and headed back to our dream room where we stripped down to our undies and put on our big white robes to watch some tv.
The next morning I slept in after two weeks of early mornings and arose to the sounds of breakfast being laid out. Helen set up honey dew and cantalope next to our choices of muesli and fresh organic yogurt. A kettle of coffee was in the middle of the table beside home-made biscuits with butter and jams. Carafs of freshly squeezed apple and orange juices were now on the fridge beside the walnuts. And again the sun was out and it was already warm enough to wear shorts and a t-shirt. We finished our breakfast of kings, and made our way out behind the house to collect the bicycles for our wine tour. Nigel gave us a map and some suggestions of where to stop on the route and we set off for an amazing day of wine tasting and riding. We probably biked about 11 miles throughout the day and saw about 12 vineyards. Our favorite was Te Whare Re, where we bought 4 bottles. Other highlights included the tower at Highfield which overlooked gorgeous far-stretching vineyards, and Isabel which looked like a building straight out of Arizona complete with a brick-oven. During our entire ride, there were vineyards as far as the eye could see, most of them lined with wild roses and enveloped by rolling hills.
Needless to say, the trip back to Wellington was a difficult one. I could ride a bike through vineyards everyday and not tire of it. Besides, the ferry ride home confirmed our love of the south island. Bad weather into Wellington caused enormously choppy seas through the Cook Strait. Two hours of our boat ride were spent with no access to the top deck and ocean spray rising up against the ship with every rolling wave. When we arrived back in Wellington it was, of course, raining and cold. I wanted to hop back on the earliest ferry and stay in the South Island for the next 5 months. Instead, we made the long, cold, rainy walk home to Karori for our last night there. We packed up our things, I did some quick laundry, and got some shut-eye so Peter could get to work in the morning while I finished packing us up.
Monday was full of ups and downs as the person who volunteered to help me move wouldn't answer her phone. During an excursion to place marketing boxes, Peter, his manager and her fiance moved us out. In my mad rush to grab everything and to get out of their car so they could return to work, I forgot some liquor, shoes, a towel, and worst of all, my cell phone in Karori. Did I mention that my first day of work at the gym started on Monday? After moving us, I hobbled (I also didn't mention that I hurt my foot about two weeks ago and it still hasn't healed) to work from 4pm-7:30pm. After work, I was too tired to unpack and too anxious about my first early morning shift the next day. So, it was my first night in a new bed, in a new room, and I had to be up at 4:45AM to walk to the gym by 5:15AM the next morning.
My first day went surprisingly well. There's luckily a checklist for me so that I have a reminder of my duties. There is a lot to do in the 15 minutes before our gym opens to the public, but I made a list in my head of all those things, so my second morning would go swimmingly. The only really hard part is trying to tell my body to get up that early and having my mid-day break at 9:30AM. It's really a breakfast break I guess, but I'm starving by about 7AM, and I'm not sure what to do about it yet. I got home after work and slight grocery shopping at the coolest local store, and slept for an hour. I probably thought about unpacking, but only managed to put away a few stray items that ended up in the way of my nap. That night, I couldn't sleep due to my mid-day snooze, so I stayed up until about 11:30PM only to be awoken at 2AM by the new flatmate moving in. He moved in at 2AM. Who does that? I fell back asleep and was tormented by anxious reception dreams.
Early morning #2 was not as calm as morning #1. A fitness instructor is assigned the morning shift and opens the doors in the morning. This particular morning, a new instructor swiped his card, entered the building with me and I went about my checklist. In the middle of turning on computers and trying to figure out what I was supposed to do next, Fitness Chris came over and said "A loud alarm is about to go off." Since he is responsible for turning off the alarm, I was pretty confused. He seemed overly irritated and tried to get out through the sliding doors. Unfortunately, when the alarm is activated, you are locked in the building. I found out later that Chris had typed his password into his cell phone and left his cell phone in his car. Luckily, as I was still a trainee, the reception manager would be in any minute to help me open, and she would be able to turn off the alarm. This is how an ear piercing alarm happened to go off at 5:15 in the morning at the gym. This is not the end of my story, however. Since it was my second day and I wanted to get my work done before people showed up to work out, I continued to turn on spas and saunas and do my work in the locker rooms. When I walked out of the men's locker room, a rubbish lid lay on the floor smashed to pieces. Ignoring this, I rushed into the ladies' locker room and continued my work. The alarm went off by some miracle, so I returned to the front desk and turned on the radio and set to wiping down tables. After a few minutes, my manager appeared. She said something about Chris flying off the handle and I asked what happened. Apparently, during the loud buzzing and due to his anxiety at having set off the alarm, he threw the rubbish lid at the wall, hitting a big flat screen tv instead and denting the screen. What?! I was then asked my side of the story so that it could be repeated to the gym manager who was awoken at 5:20 in the morning by a call to say that the alarm was set off. Ugh.
After an exhausting, dramatic early morning shift, I rushed in to see Gavin, the gym's physical therapist. He took a look at my foot, decided I had injured my tendon (of course) and performed an ultra-sound before taping up my stinky foot and giving me little exercises to do. He told me to leave the tape on through today. I set out of his office, grateful to have some answers. Instead of resting as he suggested, I walked my ass across town, picked up Fringe Theatre Festival posters and went store-to-store to ask if I could hang them up. After and hour of walking on my bandaged foot, I decided to sit and eat before returning with the posters and crashing for the day. I ate at the Sea Food Market which you would expect to taste fresh and healthy, but it was the greasiest fish I've ever had, so I didn't even eat the whole meal. I dropped off the posters and headed home on foot, holding in the biggest stomach ache of all time. I made it home, turned on some Jack Johnson, and slept for 3 hours straight. That pretty much brings us to today. I woke up this morning to the fresh smell of cigarette smoke. I blame the new flatty. Our room has smelled fine for the past couple days and then he moves his disrespectful self in at 2AM and apparently smokes in his room the next morning as the hallway smelled, too. I feel dirty and exhausted, and I need to get to the post office and Karori to pick up the rest of my things... but I'm afraid to wash the tape off of my foot, so I can't shower, and I'm not supposed to walk too much, so how will I collect my things? Instead of worrying about these things, I've lit a candle, cracked a window, and decided to begin the adventure known as the grad school entrance essay. I'll let you know how my first draft turns out.