Mount Maunganui

To all (2) of my faithful blog followers, I apologize for the long pause in posts, but here is a little update on the past few months:

After returning from Tonga, our first priority was to find work and replenish the funds a bit.  Ok our actual first priority was a hot shower, but our second priority was a job.  We retrieved our cars in Hawke’s Bay where our lovely hosts Matt and Regan let us stay for a couple nights so we could organize a bit, shower of course, and figure out where to head from there.  Also, much to my delight, their family had grown since we had been gone and we came home to 2 tiny black lambs that had been rejected by their mothers in the cold stormy weather they had had in our absence.  Matt and Regan had nursed them back to health in their home, set up a bed for them by the fireplace, and Matt had taken them to work with him all week for their afternoon feeding.  I got to feed one of them at night:

Regan’s sister had a crazy European friend Ned who had just opened an Italian restaurant in Mount Maunganui, on the north coast of the island, and who was looking for wait staff.  Both having experience in this area, we headed up north to meet Ned, confident we could secure positions here.  Unfortunately, Ned wanted a 6 month commitment to the job to last him through the NZ summer, and we just couldn’t do that, what with my plans to return to the states for Natalie’s wedding, and plans to be in Australia in January for harvest.  So we looked around town a bit but it didn’t look promising so we headed south to Rotorua, where we heard there were more jobs.  We did not find more jobs there and after a week of camping by a beautiful lake:

and job searching during the day, we went back to “the Mount.”  We eventually realized that in order to get any job we would have to let on that we would be there through summer, so we let a few places believe that and landed jobs in Tauranga, the neighboring town.  We lived in the Mount so as to be near the beach, and kept a car to get to work.  Tres worked in a sporting gear store not unlike REI, and I worked at a Mexican restaurant (Tres also worked there weekend nights).  Working at a Mexican restaurant in New Zealand is an interesting experience coming from California.  For one, I could never get a job at such a place in CA because, well, why would they hire an American?  But in NZ, there was only 1 Mexican, probably in the whole North Island, and he worked in the kitchen.  I was asked multiple times if I was Mexican, and had to admit that no, I wasn’t, but I was probably the closest they would get being from Ca.  I also got endless questions about the menu, eg what’s the difference between a burrito and a quesadilla, what is a burrito, can I have a quesadilla without cheese, etc. 

Working about 20 hours a week enabled me to live a pretty great life during the time until I returned home to the states in October.  I went to my college friend’s wedding in Virginia which was lovely, visited my new second cousin in Chicago, went to New York for Thanksgiving to see more family, had a white xmas in Mt. Shasta,

and hung out in California for a while catching up with friends, hanging out at home, applying for jobs in Australia, relaxing, etc.  But that isn’t what this blog is about so I will leave it at that.

I returned to Mount Maunganui in time for a New Year’s Eve barbeque (heart of summer in NZ), a journey into town which was crazy with partying kids, a short walk to the beach to see fire works, and a moonlit stroll home through the sand with friends.  Great way to start the new year.  I hung out there for the next couple weeks, enjoying the sunshine on the beach, catching up with friends from the restaurant and elsewhere, and camping up in the Coromandel, where supposedly the most beautiful beach in New Zealand sits just a short hike away from the campground:

We concluded our stay in NZ with an all day and night company party at lake Rotoiti involving wake boarding, hanging out on the wake boarding boat, tubing, BBQing, and socializing with coworkers, caught a ride up to Auckland to see the Red Hot Chili Peppers (why not, they were playing the night before we flew out?!!).  They were amazing, of course.  Then we flew across the ditch to Sydney…