A long weekend in Palmerston North
Trip Start
Aug 13, 2007
1
17
91
Trip End
Dec 31, 2008
Palmerston North,
New Zealand
Monday, September 10, 2007
In the evening, we went to a party at Jen's flat - one of the other flats in the same block as Jill & Paul. Each couple had cooked a course of food and brought wine to accompany the food. All the food was delicious, especially Amy's cob loaf. It's hard to explain what it is so here's an example - http://www.food.org.au/recipe-cob-loaf-dip/
Ewan and his meatballs!
. Apparently you can experiment with the ingredients but Amy's had onion, cheese and bacon I think! It tasted fab!There was wine to match every course as well, but I only had a couple of glasses as I'd picked up a sore throat on Thursday night so was mainly drinking orange juice! It was a very civilised and enjoyable party, and was nice to meet some of Jill & Paul's friends.
Saturday morning, we woke up at 7am to watch the opening game of the Rugby World Cup - France v Argentina. Then Jill took me to yoga, which I've never done before. It was supposed to be easy, but after the class, Jill said that it had been a bit hardcore. So I didn't feel so bad that my whole body was in pain! Paul had an U18s rugby game so he went off to work and we made our way slowly there via a few shops and lunch at Cafe Cuba.
After the game finished, we went back to Cafe Cuba for a hot drink and cake, and also to sit on the sofas with the tiger! Look at the photos and you'll understand! The rest of Saturday was a lazy affair. The lads had talked about playing golf, but Graham was too hungover to contemplate this!
Paul & Graham
We had an early night and then woke up at 4am to watch the England v USA rugby - It's going to kill us all these ridiculously early times! It wasn't a very exciting game, which was evidenced by both me and Jill dozing off throughout the game. Back to bed we went until a more reasonable time of 10am.
Sunday afternoon, we went to watch the local rugby team Manawatu Turbos play against Otago. This is the club that Paul works for - he coaches the Academy side. He was doing pitch security, and as they were one man short, Graham ended up doing it as well. You get paid $100 so worthwhile doing it. Me and Jill and a friend Johnny, sat in the stands watching the game, and it was very exciting as Turbos almost won, but disappointingly had to settle for a draw in the end. However, it was our first income in New Zealand!
After the game, we went to walk some dogs - through someone Paul knows. Three dogs, and we took them to the river and all was fine until we headed back, and one of the dogs ran off. So we spent a good half hour or so searching for this dog, and eventually Paul appeared saying he had found the dog at the duckpond and had taken it home whilst we were still looking. Unfortunately he hadn't got his phone with him, otherwise we would have known this a lot sooner! An eventful end to the day!
