Ocean Beach 31st Decemeber 2008

2008 is like so last year.

So, it's been 2009 here for nearly 19 hours and so far, so good. It was weird to be celebrating 2009 while for our friends and family in England it was still only 11am! Apologies to Alan and Laura for the drunken phonecall you received whilst you were probably having your brekkie. It was great to speak to you though.

The weather is hot hot hot, 32 degrees today (New years day) and pretty much the same yesterday so we spent new years eve day at Ocean Beach (about 25kms south). We took Rusty who thanked us by being sick in the car on the way; it is a very windy road. But then he redeemed himself by swimming for the first time in the estuary that you have to cross to get to the beach. Very cute. Then in the evening me and AJ walked in to Napier to see what was going on and had a guinness or two, followed by a beer or two- I got asked for I.D in the pub which just about made my year ( New zealand girls have all seen far to much sun and so apparently my comparitively wrinkle free complexion means I look about 17 over here). AJ started to get his ID out to show the bouncer as well, but was told - 'No, you're alright mate'. His ego was a bit bruised, until I remined him that as far as the rest of the pub knew he was going out with a seventeen year old and he cheered up.

Then at Midnight we walked round to the SoundShell; an original Art Decco band stand in the Marine Parade park; and watched the fireworks- they were pretty impressive and there was a good atmosphere amongst the crowd. Sorry no pictures of the evening due to technical problems (I remembered to charge the camera battery, I remebered to take the camera, but I forgot to put the battery back in the camera).

Happy new year to you all, I hope 2009 brings you all health, happiness and enough money to come visit us soon. xx

P.S

I didn't eat all of it. Honest.

Food Glorious Food

I popped in to Havelock North village today to drop off my contract to my new work place and next door to Advintage is a 'Gourmet Food Store'. Oh. My. God. It is the lushest deli/cafe I have ever seen full of locally made and European delights. So I bought a few things, brought them home and my lunch today looked so good I took a picture of it.

And here it is;

Pork and pistachio terrine, cherry toms and beetroot (from our garden), local blue cheese; quince jelly, fresh baked walnut bread and butter. Mmmmm.

Another day in paradise

Gorgeous hot weather today so after a late start (as ever) we headed off for a walk through the bush to Te Ana Waterfall. The trail starts about 30kms north of Napier and is about an hour round trip - with Te Ana Falls about half way along and then a steep and as it turned out, very muddy, climb up to an impressive lookout. Being the weekend after Christmas it was quite busy at the waterfall with kiwis and tourists alike taking a swim in the ice cold water. We were scared off by the quanity of small American children, but on a less busy day it would be a wicked place for cooling dip. The walk up to the lookout was pretty steep but the views at the top are worth it. Beautiful. There was a small incident with a big pool of mud and very slippy flip flops on the way back down, but luckily I was able to wash off in the stream at the bottom so AJ let me back in the car in the end.

Te Ana Falls

Christmas Kiwi Style

The great Gates Mini Golf comp, boxing day. Guinness clearly makes me good at mini golf and I came second! (AJ, of course, won)

Gilly tuning up the guitar I got for AJ, Christmas morning

A Boxing day Guinness in Napier with Lionel, Aunty Deb and AJ

Westshore beach, Napier on Christmas Morning. Grey skies, but warm water.

Rusty with his cracker. The squeaker may have to removed to preserve our sanity.

Kerem preparing the Vegan alternative for her first ever Christmas dinner(she's Jewish)

Rusty with his new friends; Mr Quackles the duck, Evil Monkey and squeaky cracker

Men make fire, (well, turn on gas)cook big chook.

AJ teaching Gilly to surf, Christmas morning.
Guess who had the biggest stocking?

Rusty Newsflash

Ok. So we took Rusty to the vets yesterday for his second jab and check up. He is very healthy, very well behaved (for the vet), but our suspicions have been confirmed; he is not going to be a small dog. We thought he was Jack Russell x West Highland Terrier; the vet says he thinks he is Jack Russell x Red Heeler (an Australian cattle dog about the size of a small Labrador). Oops. He is already 5.1kgs and bigger than a Jack Russell so we are probably looking at a dog the size of a Collie when he is fully grown. Red heelers are also apparently one of the most intelligent dog breeds - but since Rusty has just run in to the closed patio doors for the second time in as many days, we think he must take after the jack russell in that respect. It's a good job he's pretty.

We went for another lovely walk the other day around the Estuary. The whole area used to be under water as a huge lagoon, but when the earth quake happened in the 1930's it pushed the earth up and the land was reclaimed. Today it forms the area called Ahuriri and a large section of it is a marine nature reserve that you can walk around on boardwalks. There are tons of birds (herons, golden pluvers, gannets, pukekos), shellfish and it is a spawning ground for lots of fish.

Today we are off to the market in Hastings to do our christmas food shopping and tommorow me and AJ are going to watch the 4th day of the NZ v's West Indies Cricket test which is going on just down the road (literally 5 mins walk) at Mclean Park. Tickets are $15 on the gate!

The weather is grey today and has just started to rain - the forecast is not good for this week as a big storm is coming in from the west. So it lokks like rain for Christmas... just like home!

My new favourite show

This clip is from a hilarious show called Eating Media Lunch - it's a bit like Brass Eye (for those who remember that).
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=1cEYAm_vDRA

Headland walk Tangoroio to Waipataki

woo hoo - I gottta Job!

The big news this week for me is that I have landed myself a job. It is with a company called Advintage - who are a wine retail/online company operating out of Havelock North about 20km from Napier. I will be their Marketing Development Manager - they are a small company who started in 1999 and are now the number 2 home delivery wine company in NZ. They stock wine from all over- including Europe- but they focus on Hawkes Bay producers. It will be a mismash role of driving new sales through online and emarketing activity, developing corporate business/PR opportunities and helping out in all other aspects of the business, from helping to pack up the orders when they are busy to helping out at local tastings. It sounds just what I wanted and the company is really exciting - I will be their 8th employee ( 4 in the shop, 1 admin, 1 logistics, John the director and me) and I am looking forward to working in a small team and helping to grow the business. Check out their website at www.advintage.co.nz . My job will start on January 19th so still a good six weeks of holiday left (yey) and will be monday to friday 9 - 5.30. As well as my salary I also get a profit share bonus and, this is the best bit, $150 of free wine calculated at cost price a month! Score.

Other than that we have just been pottering about enjoying the sunshine. We went and 'hunted' down a Christmas tree yesterday - by that I mean we dug up a small one from the edge of a forest whilst no-one was looking. Did a gorgeous walk around the headland at Waipataki and once again failed to catch any fish on our third fishing trip. I'm not convinced their are any bloody fish in the sea. A.J says I'm cursed.

Our veggie garden is doing really well now - we are going to have tons of tomatos - the first of which are just turning orange and the aubergines, chillis, strawberries, spinach, and cucumbers are all well on their way.

Rusty is doing really well - he has put on 1kg in a week and is growing really fast. I'm a little concerned he might be Jack Russell cross Mastiff rather than Westie!

Hope you are all keeping warm in your cold weather- even though it's lovely here it doesn't feel very Christmassey in the sunshine. And all the christmas ads here show wintery scenes with snow and stuff even though it's 30 degrees outside! weird.

Camp Rusty

AJ built the house and run himself - I painted it.

Having breakfast on the veranda..

Rusty

Puppytastic!

We have got a lil pup! His name is Rusty and he is a jack russell x west highland terrier. He is unbelievably cute and already quite a character. We got him on Friday (it was my birthday on Sunday and he is the best present ever) from a scary backwater, mullet-infested cow town, called 'Bulls' (no joke) about 2 and a half hours south east of Napier. We had seen the ad for him on Trade Me and thought lets go for it. It's the perfect time at the moment as we are not working so have plenty of time to spend with him. He has his first vaccination and puppy check on saturday and the vet said he is a very healthy little chap. Lots of photos to come!

Another day, another beach..

Discovered an amazing beach today. About 30km north of Napier called Waipataki. The drive to it went really high up into the hills before dropping down to a perfect white sand cove. AJ had a good surf there too whilst I made friends with the locals - wild goats and wild turkeys (neither seemed pleased to see me.)

It's raining!

this wasn't in the brochure!

oh - forgot;

1. We have skype now- it's under Anna and AJ. So download it and give us a call sometime.
2. The new picture at the top of the blog is of the most beautiful place on earth - the Tuki Tuki valley. It's about a 15 minute drive from Napier and is also where all the best vineyards are.
3. Despite having been to all your houses, I don't know your addresses (post codes etc), so please email them to me at anna.astin@yahoo.co.uk.

We made it!

So, we made it. The flight was hell- just so long, especially the first leg - london to singapore 13 hours plus 45 sitting on the runway waiting to take off. The A380 plane is cool though- it's like a flying cruise ship with cheesy pictures on the walls and everything.

We got in to Auckland and AJ's dad picked us up and took us to his nans house about 20mins away. Lots of the Auckland relatives came over to see us - which was just about the last thing we felt like doing (i am not at my most sociable after a 26hr flight) so I'm sure I made a great impression. It was good to catch up with AJ's nan again though who is a super cool 84 year old originally from Manchester.

The next day we drove the 5 hours to Napier. It's a really scenic drive and we stopped for a bit in Lake Taupo to get a pie. Steak and cheese. It was fricking awesome.

Since getting to Napier we've done feck all really- got all our boring 'moving to another country papaerwork' done on the first day. It's weird here- you ring up the banks/tax department/licenseing office and a real person answers the phone and everything. People are very friendly- and trusting;
Here's how the conversation in the mobile phone shop went;

Are you employed? NO
Do you have proof of address? NO
How long have you been at that address? 1 day

..Sure you can have a mobile phone contract. Here's a phone, we'll send you the bill in a month.

Other than that we've been just chilling out on the beach, fishing, eating pies, AJ's been eating his body weight in Green shell mussels. That kinda stuff.

Also I have accessed the situation and you can get cheese here. I even found some proper french stuff in a deli - it was in a weird humidor, locked away like some dangerous contraband. Extreme fromage.

Anna x

here is a photo of the beach in napier. very niicceee!

it's a pa-hoot-a-ca-wa, the tree that is
aj.

Blogspot.Done.

Hi all ,

This is our blogspot. Visit it often for news and piccies on how we are getting on in NZ. And please keep in touch with all your news here as well. In all those bored moments at work (which is what I am now, in my 2nd last day at work) , just log on and drop us a line- we would love to hear from you all, no matter how trivial. Please. Don't leave me alone with the Kiwi's. Seriously.

See you on Thursday at The Pump House hopefully...


Anna