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Published: June 27th 2008
We are still having the time of our lives here, drinking as much coffee as we want and laughing our heads off with Christoffel and Alison.
Wednesday was our day off, so we went over to Christoffel and Alison's house out in Huntly again. We got to eat fresh mandarins, listen to British music, and watch their cows drink out of Christoffel's beer bottle. While they were at a midwife appointment, Jack and I walked along the bank of the Waikato River. We found a homeless man that had so many layers over him, we couldn't tell if he was breathing. We had lunch at a burger place called Hopin' Stopin' with a big frog dressed up as a waiter on the front. MASSIVE burgers. It was really good.
Jack and I are slowly moving the Badenhorst's stuff over from their house to the flat upstairs here in Waihi, but the weather has been so lousy that we haven't built the fence yet. They won't be able to move until they have a place for the dogs. The wind ripping through here is strong enough to throw you off balance, and the rain has been pounding for days. We
woke up to leaks, flooding, and various other insurance claims this morning.
Aside from the rennovations we are doing in the back, business has been alright up front. It gets better every week. With the rain and wind, people avoid being outside at all. Basically, we wake up, look out the window, and can immediately tell if it will be a slow day. The good news is that we still have backpackers coming through. The three guys from South America are still with us, we have had a family from Australia, and a few random backpackers traveling solo.
The best, though, is this kid named Jordan we got in asking if he could stay with a promise to pay the next day. Jack and I turned him away, so he came back the next day when he had the money. He paid for a week and made himself at home upstairs. He seemed awkward. The stench from whatever clothes or shoes he had in his room was so bad, the South Americans ate all their meals in their room to get away from the kitchen and started using the girls' bathroom on the other side of the building.
It reeked up there, but we snuck around to make sure he had a shower and washed his clothes. The smell got better, but then we would find unwashed dishes in the sink, food in the bathtub, and trash under his bed. We have reason to believe he was smoking in his room, not to mention his friends that came around. Random people would come pounding on the cafe door after hours saying they just wanted to "check in" on Jordan. They were mainly older men, one time it was his mom, and every now and then a kid or two. We found out that one man that had been asking for him was his mental health officer, and when she was cleaning his room yesterday, Alison discovered that he is out on parole. He had some offense having to do with assault on a woman. Today is his last day, we told him he will not be staying here anymore, and Christoffel and Jack just packed up his things into a trash bag and left it outside the door for him to pick up. Check out was at 10:00am anyway.
I wish we could stay in an igloo
at Mount Ruapehu, but we already booked a little room at a lodge. If we find a nice enough day, Jack and I are going to explore a little more around Waihi. We are just blocks from the mine and still haven't seen it!
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tiff
non-member comment
poor jordan
how akward! it is like having a troll just lurking by! new zealand better count their goats! yeah, linds stay away from that guy. i get a creepy feeling about his mental, emmotional, and spiritual health. (can't be to sure about trolls.) so.... is thw wind worse than argentina's wind tunnel?