...that's about the sum of my week- white alfajor here, passionfruit truffle there, a chocolate crepe or two with ganash and banana's for good keeping! I'm actually thanking the mighty walk to and from work in order to burn off the calories! Really enjoying the job so far... friendly team, customers are all pretty lovely, atmosphere nice and relaxed plus we're allowed to play whatever music we desire... generally the managers choose, so reggae and funk is normally on the menu! (Dad you should check out the new Fat Freddy's Drop album, tis pretty good) So yes I have worked every day bar Saturday at Patagonia - I'm pretty good with my 58% and 71% cocoa choc's, my cream based ice creams to my egg based and sorbets! I did a long long long shift yesterday ... read more

One week down in Queenstown... i've come to the conclusion that it's called 'QUEENStown' as you have to have the wealth of royalty to live here comfortably. Everywhere you look there's fun-filled activities enticing you in, fun-filled bars luring you in to drink and dance away your evening, cafes selling fun-filled yummy goodness tempting your tummy.... it's a funstop town but fun comes at high prices!!! Money and I seem to of fallen out recently, apparently I spent it too quickly in the first few weeks and didn't budget (Whoops) and so now money is teaching me a lesson by not being in my account when I want it. So the week has been spent NOT spending money but instead going in to every cafe, bar, shop handing out CV's and smiling nicely to try and ... read more

So here we are on the South Island! Had a incredibly rough ferry journey over - 3 hours of a slow roller coaster ride, stomach leaving me at every wave... hearing and witnessing the woman opposite be sick the entire journey didn't help either! The waves were so big they came over the front of the ferry... which by my standards are pretty big waves! I'd like to add it was the only ferry running that day due to the winds, our ferry had infact been cancelled Saturday night, but reacheduled early sunday morning (when we were asleep). So we had to manically drive to the port to be lucky enough to be the last car on! Literally! We arrived in Picton Sunday afternoon and checked into 'The Villa' hostel, purely because they offered free apple ... read more

Apologies if this entry is rushed... at a wonderful hostel where my computer crashed towards the end and deleted the entire thing after I tried to save it! Joy! So I shall attempt this again, on a different, yet equally crummy computer! Mary was once again on the road and the three of left the warm and comfort of the Benson Base to begin the long adventure down south! We travelled down through Hamilton and onto Waitomo, rain in tow until we arrived at the destination. We checked into the Juno backpackers and ventured off to look at the Marokopa falls, on our way back to the car a local gave us some 'insider information' that we should go to the Mangapohie natural bridge at night time to see an impressive glow-worm show FOR FREE- two ... read more

A week in already and so many little tales to tell... I'll start from the beginning, i'll skim over the flight as flights are flights- right?! 23 hours in the air, an hour at LA airport where they cloned my fingerprints and iris... experimental cloning is on it's way! We arrived at our destination Sunday April 26th 5am. The Benson's greeted us with warm smiles and hugs and took us back to our NZ base in Manurewa, just south of main town Auckland. We were here. The sun was struggling to get it's position in the sky and come late morning the rain had won and decided to greet us as we walked around the Botanical gardens. Not a long walk, due to the ongoing fight Josh and I had with our eyelids and sanity as ... read more