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Published: March 16th 2007
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no butter required
This was a whole hours work and we won some olive oil! Okay...the last blog was me just rambling on about non-events - it's the heat! Summer has now finally arrived, and it's been hovering around 32 deg C for the past couple weeks on and off. On my way home from a work experience placement at a local secondary school it was so hot waiting for the bus I opted to buy an ice cream - turned out that was the last of my pennies and I had to walk for 2 hours across town to get home. Alteast I had the ice cream to keep me going for ...oooo...at least 5 minutes of that. The rest of the time I popped into libraries, police stations, gallaries, or whatever to cool down. In fact it's been so hot recently that a bit of the pavement I walk over on my way to work melted a few weeks back. The Canterbury Council have finally gotten round to filling this in and it's too hot to set again. Genius - pure genius. I was learning a wee while ago, (on a fudge making tour nonetheless), that when they brought fudge making techniques to this strange land that they had many an issue getting the
Sumner fair
Jen shows that the Sumner Fair is fun for all the family by looking super jolly in the middle of a kiwi crowd. Fun, fun, fun. I meanwhile had a mega hangover so was not looking jolly at all fudge to stay solid enough to remain, well, fudge like. They thought it was the heat but turned out to be the different milk the cows made from the different grass here. This got me thinking, Shrove Tuesday arrived. Would our pancakes suffer similar problems using a traditional recipe from home?
There was one way to find out... Pancakes are not really done here, but we found a pancake race to join in with. It was also fancy dress, so fancy dress we did. This however posed a problem - how could we run in our costumes? The answer was relatively easily. It was only if we dropped the pancake during the race that we couldn't bend to pick it up. This is why we came runner up instead of ultimate winner, but we did take home 1st place in the fancy dress part of the event. It was quite a competative affair thoughm and some locals did not respond to kindly to the strangers from afar who were awesome in every shape and form. In fact one mother was overheard stating that our costumes were all very well and good, but where was the butter for the pancake
mixture? Butter is only used in the pan to stop the pancake sticking to it - not in the mixture itself...How little these Kiwis know! Anyhow, news has recently reached us that we're going to be in the local Addington newletter, pictures and all, which gets put through everyones door. Goodness gracious - we'll never be forgotten.
We have also had some culture during the last few weeks - meals out on the town, my favourite comedian came to town (he's amazing!), we went to see Catch 22 (which doesn't stand up as a play in it's own right at all). A long lost friend from school, Jen, and her friend Jess came to play for a few days where most of our time was spent drinking tea and discovering which foods we still do and do not like. In the case of Jess this proved even more exciting because we'd never met so every food type was a new discovery. Jess likes really weak tea. Anyways, we did manage to squeeze in a walking tour of the city where we were informed by our guide that the Brits came to NZ and saved the Maori's from themselves because
rocks
and when the kids asked questions about them...I knew the answer!!!!! they were eating eachother and all sorts, along with many other classic, made-up facts like that. Before Jen and Jess left to go travelling (without me - sob, but apparently they haven't showered in a good week or so, so maybe I'm glad to have a few hundred kilometres between us) we went to the Waimakariri Gorge (spelling dubious to say the least) driving through the town of Oxford (Disclaimer: Was wonderful to see Jen again and meet Jess. I didn't even have to sleep on the floor once whilst they were here because people kept stealing my rollmat and giving me the bed (...nice!) and I'm sure they smell sweet even after a week...Please come back and see me again soon), stopping at apparently a celebrity chef's cafe. Word on the street has it that fame has gone to her head and she's a bit of a snob. Her staff are very pleasant and had lovely toilets. I'm still toying with the idea of writing a book on 'toilets around the globe'. These toilets would have definitely made it in, as would the toilets at Castle Rocks where I went on a school field trip yesterday. These toilets however
School trip
taking photos of kids is probably illegal back home. Here they just block the view! would have been for the view. In this isolated location (apart from the 47, 16 year olds buzzing around taking pictures for their projects) the ultimate experience would be using this smell-free long drop overlooking a landscape to die for.
The trip itself was amazing. Taking a bus (just like one of the First, green buses in Edinburgh) up into the mountains, I saw the next Chronicle of Narnia being filmed, did a little caving, saw the fault line on which New Zealands Southern Alps are formed and accounting for all the earthquakes we experience here, and a gazzilion geographical features that would bore the vast majority of you. T'was awesome. That's pretty much all I can think of now. Alison has just quit her high paid job in marketing for a life of luxury looking after me. This is awithout a doubt a good thing as she had recently taken to pitching her sales in her sleep. Hilarious as they were, they go on and on and on, so that eventually I fall asleep to them again! I have 2 shift left at work...ever. They're going to cry. bet you they will. Then it's off...off to the unknown,
Alison\
I haven\'t seen much of Alison in a while due to work commintments on her half. I felt she deserved a blog mention though sleeping in the car with 4 gears, or the tent that flaps. Exciting times!
P.S. Happy Mother's Day and Birthday to my mum for Sunday and...er...the 22nd whenever that is...Wednesday? No Thursday. Happy Birthday!!!
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