Kings Court Motor Lodge Hamilton

Today we went out to the local restaurant with Dad's work mates.

Everyone was staring at us. The restaurant had very ineteresting ceiling and a lot of people were there. Dad's work mates took us to the beacah walk. It was dark but we felt ...

... will, habe ich diese nicht genutzt.Ausserdem wurde ich (aus Whirpool und Sauna) stets von einem merkwuerdigen Schweizer mit Hut angestarrt. Bin dann aus Langeweile Tomaten kaufen gegangen und habe Leute gefragt, was man denn in Raglan an einem Regentag machen kann. Die Antwort war> Nichts. Aha! Die restliche Zeit habe ich dann im Hostel gelesen und so Blickkontakt mit all den merkwuerdigen Gestalten um mich rum vermieden. Am naechsten Morgen hab ich ...

... gang in Australia (or you could make it any country you wanted) goes out, it takes an hour to get to the bit of road they're going to dig up, and oh dear (probably not the exact words they used), they'd forogtten the shovels. So they phoned back to their supervisor, who said he'd be out as soon as he could with shovels but it would take an hour. They asked what they should do in the meantime. And the response: lean on each other! xx

... so cute and my flowers are so pretty and I bruised my knee the other day and I saw the funniest thing crossing the street". No, it's not diving with sea turtles in Thailand or petting elephants but it makes me smile, laugh and keeps me in contact with people I love which is *interesting* and important. Especially when I'm somewhere foreign and unfamiliar, to get those little vignettes from home about regular stuff....helps on the bad days and adds to the good days ...

... The Zoo was a great somethin-to-do. We saw chimps, wild african dogs (which are orange, white, and brown...real cool), ducks (woot...not), frogs, tropical birds and such. The shopping in town was great, as well as the outlet mall on the outskirts of the city (called "the base"). If I ever chose to move to NZ, I believe Hamilton is in the lead so far. SO GREAT!

... This also meant I didn't notice that the NZ driving standard is a shade retarded, until I got to the North island where the human population density gets a bit closer to that of sheep. And another thing which I struggle to understand is why they build their houses out of effectively cardboard, which strangely doesn't quite cut the mustard in winter when southern softies such as myself come to stay. My theory is that they're all scottish ...

... was exhausting though. I worked less than five hours but all of them were spent running back and forth between customers, tables and standing outside trying to attract people (something they do here - like in S.E. Asia!). ~~~~ My day job is a little more my speed. After dressing up and driving myself to Te Awamutu for the interview, I was offered a job as Casual Support Worker at Aratika, a center for adults with mental disabilities. There's no autism here but ...

... the standard Stray Bus Discount. Coming from a bit of a surf town myself I managed to dodge this one and went body surfing in the world's most fabulous left break. Except the swells were only about two to three feet that day so it was just good, not out of this world. On the positive side I was able to pull out before the reef, which must be tricky on a big day. The other thing about stray is that they deliberately choose hostels a little out of the way ...

... photo taken in front of 'Welcome to Hobbition'. We move down and our guide takes us around Hobbition. It's a bit run down but you still feel like a school kid running around and i can visualise ho it looked in the film. We have far too many photos taken with us in various poses on the party field and next to the party tree. It's a shame that the actual houses apart from Bilbo's are wooden panels placed into the ...

... Holland) and Sandra (Germany). After a beautiful sunset, good conversation and the gentle background noise of one of the boys off the bus playing guitar, we all had had enough wine to decide to have a go on the flying fox - a zip wire within the lodge grounds!! With the adrenalin still pumping the sauna was calling to us.....yup this dream of a hostel has a free sauna!! However the mix of the heat of the sauna and the wine just caused us all to be ...