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Published: December 29th 2010
Unfortunately my weekly futsal session has finished until next Feb! Bit gutted about that as I had slowly been getting fitter over the past two months since I had been playing so it will be a shame to go back scratch when it restarts again next year.
Since October, the weather has been consistently good, with pretty much nil rain as it got warmer and warmer. Then about a week in December, it tipped in down one day and for the rest of the month it has been very random with only a few sunny days. Despite the rain, it has been incredibly warm still, especially at night (close to 20C, and 25C+ in the day), making it very humid.
Work has been quite busy as my we’re now putting a lot of time into our social media sites. But there have also been a few functions at work, entertaining our connections and vice versa. One of them was put on by Study Auckland at the Hilton Hotel which was really fancy! Expensive booze and waiters coming round with all this food which has obviously had way too much effort put into, making it look very pretentious, but it went down very nicely!
On the 17th we had our Head Office xmas at an upmarket Italian in the city. I had a lovely steak for mains and chocolate brownie for pudding, along with various other nibbles before the meal and plenty of wine! By the end, most people were getting the tequila shots in and after the head of finance took everyone out for a few more, so everyone was well on their way by the end of the night!
The last week of work ended up being quite quiet as Ting and Tarsha were on holiday, leaving just me and Kim. In the end I had the 23rd + 24th off, which was nice, especially because the 23rd was sunny beach weather. On my last day, Kim took me out for lunch in Ponsonby (upmarket inner city suburb) to Prego. She likes decent food and wine, and claimed the restaurant was the best in New Zealand over the past 15 years.
Auckland was getting pretty quiet as most of my friends were off travelling in the South Island (I’m planning to go in March, when it’s out of peak season), so that only left a few of us in Auckland over Christmas. On Christmas Day there were four of us (Sam and Sam from the UK and Niek from the Netherlands) and we went out for a Christmas buffet to one of the Sky City restaurants. The weather was a bit overcast so I can’t claim spending Christmas Day on the beach!
On Boxing Day, the four of us went to Rangitoto Island which is a volcanic island, 20 minutes from Auckland by ferry. There isn’t anything there (shops etc), as the island has been preserved so it’s a nice (and slightly challenging) walk to the summit over all of the volcanic rock. The morning was still quite overcast but by the time we reached the summit at lunch time, the sun came out for the rest of the day. By the time we got back to the bottom, a dip in the sea was particularly refreshing as we had ran out of water and the ferry wasn’t due for a couple of hours. So we were back in Auckland and went to the pub for a couple of refreshing pints whilst watching Australia’s batting crumble!
A lot of people were leaving Auckland for the South Island and it became quite slow and boring as I hadn’t been away much and my apartment isn’t the best of places to spend a lot of time in, so I was keen on getting away for the two weeks I had off over Christmas. However I didn’t want to hit the peak tourist season or spend too much and then a really good opportunity hit me – WWOOFing.
WWOOF sounds for World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms, where you stay with a family and spend about 5 hours a day helping out on their farm/land in exchange for accommodation and food. Tim’s mate from France had done this for 6 weeks when he first came to New Zealand and it sounded like a great experience which fitted in well with my aim of avoiding the peak tourist season and not spending much. So I applied for several places in the Northland, Coromandel and Bay of Plenty (all within 3 hour drive) and received a couple of offers. From the 28th December I’ll spending a week (maybe more) in Katikait (Bay of Plenty) with a family who own a big patch of land and rent out a lodge to guests. I’ll just be helping out in the gardens which should be an interesting and new experience!
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WWOOF WWOOF
Nice one dude!! Hope the WWOOF-ing goes well. You'll be qualified to help in the Maddox garden when we finally get one! x