Feb 2008

As it turns out, we aren't going to be working in Queenstown after all. We headed about 90 minutes up the road to Wanaka - a little town situated right on Lake Wanaka. It’s still insanely pretty, but it is smaller and more quaint. Brody wasn’t digging Queenstown too much, and refused to stop referring to it as Vail. If you've ever been to Vail, you'll attest to the fact that its a gorgeous place, and a fantastic get away, but not the kind of town in which a couple of minimum wage earning travelers, living out of their van would want to settle. Within the first few days, we both found jobs. Brody is working at a nice restaurant washing dishes. The restaurant is called Finchy's. What are the odds? He's also working at a place called DiVinci's Pizzeria. I'm hoping we can get some good leftovers. I have a job at a cafe/ice creamery. It’s a really cute little place, and I'm excited about all the goodies I'll get to try. I already have my eye on the white-chocolate raspberry ice cream. We are committed until the last week of March (most places around here were very against hiring anyone short-term, which confuses us, since we cant figure out how much training it takes to get someone up to speed on washing dishes or scooping ice cream). But, we're pretty centrally located to the remaining activities on our list, so we will be able to get out for some weekend trips.

I also took my first dip in a Kiwi swimming pool. As some (maybe most) of you know, I hurt my back around Thanksgiving, so its been a while since I've done any swimming. It is a great pool, 5 minutes from where we're staying (aka, parking our van) so hopefully I'll get back into shape. The Tim-Tams have not been so nice to me. There is an open water swim here in a couple weeks, and hopefully, I'll be up for it by then. The first couple thousand meters were painful.

I'll be back with some more posts about our new home in a few days.