16th May, 2011

Dave and I had a great weekend! The past few weeks have been so busy working on building our little house, and on the weekends,we’ve been working harder than during the week trying to get everything finished. So this weekend, the house was built and we could work a little easier on doing what we wanted to accomplish on those days.

Friday night, we celebrated a bit and cooked up a nice meal of Monkfish tacos with homemade tortillas, salsa, guacamole and pico de gallo. Divine!

Saturday, I went for a jog on the beach while Dave stayed home and played guitar. When I came back, we made a delicious meal in celebration of finishing our space. I cooked up some chorizo, onions and eggs and we ate that with some leftover guacamole, cottage cheese and salsa. Yum! Oh, and MIMOSAS!!! What a treat! I
After breakfast, we sipped on our drinks and finished our bottle of sparkling wine while Dave worked on priming the house and I worked on a new painting. Great day. In the afternoon, I called my bro and then called my house and caught up with my Dad and Uncle Pat for a bit. It was nice, they were funny and waiting for their 2nd dinner of Quonset pizza to arrive. Ha! I would do the same, I’m sure. Pizza is so yum! (As they say out here, instead of yummy).

Dave and I both showered up at the house and walked back down to start cooking up some dinner. We usually have to start cooking around 5pm cause it gets dark by 6 o’clock and cooking outside in the dark is not super fun. We had so much food leftover from the night before, we had fish tacos again. ☺ All we had to do was roll out tortillas, flour the fish and cook both of those up. Sweet as. (Another expression, instead of sweet).

After dinner, we made a fire in the grass by one of the dead tree stumps in an attempt to burn it down. The fire was nice and Dave introduced me to the phrase, ‘Hippie television’. Hilarious. That night we stayed up pretty late and I’m not sure what time we went to bed, but we had fun watching the fire, petting cats and sipping our homebrews.

Sunday morning, I went down to the beach to get a walk/ jog in before it rained. Much of the day it was cloudy off and on, which always makes it difficult to get motivated. Anywho, I found the cord for my camera and uploaded pics to my computer finally. I made a folder for Dave to send to his Dad and one for me to upload to Facebook, then headed up to the house to skype with my fam. I got to talk with my Dad, Mom, Pat and Lupe. It was nice. Lupe has a new puppy which is super cute! She is a little white fluff ball with a dress on. Hilarious!

While I was skyping with my fam, I also was trying to upload pics to Facebook… because it takes forever to upload anything here cause the internet is so slow. So, ½ way through the download they stopped working and I had to start over. It took about 2 hours for me to get all the photos uploaded, then deleted the duplicates, putting them in order and giving small captions. Needless to say that by the end of the computer process, I was ready to do something. Dave and I decided to head down to the beach in a little bit to catch the sunset and drink a couple beers. Perfect! Before we headed out, I made a fococccia bread dough to use for making pizza for dinner. Mmmmmmmm. Just before we headed out, it started raining. Buggar! Oh well, we decided to go anyway and by the time we got out of the orchard, we could see that it would blow over.

The beach was glorious. We put our beers and cups in my purse and stared walking down to some lava rocks we could sit on. As we were walking, we saw a truck on the beach with a rope tied to a tire it was dragging. One of the people in the truck hopped on the tire and they had a good time driving and pulling each other around. Hilarious cheap fun!

Dave and I found a nice spot to sit and sipped our delicious dark ales as we watched the sun setting in the little patch of clouds. The sun put out these beautiful golden rays, peaking out of the clouds and making them glow. It was spectacular and I forgot my camera. Arrrrgh!


Here's a view of the backside our finished house and the caravan!!! :)

Our celebratory breakfast: eggs, chorizo, guac, cottage cheese, pico de gallo and salsa. Oh, AND mimosas!!! Yum!!!

12th May, 2011

I woke up in the middle of the night while sleeping in the house around midnight and was so frightened. The wind was blowing and it sounded like a door was slamming under and around the house. At one point I woke up and turned on some lights and then the noise seemed to stop. Weird. I laid back in bed and then the noise started up again. I started thinking crazy thoughts about how there was a Maori ghost that wasn’t happy I was a Pakeha, (white woman) inside the school house. I laid in bed and prayed that the ghost would go away, which didn’t happen. Eventually, I got up and walked into the other room to see if the noise was coming from in there, which it was. The window wouldn’t close all the way, and the wind was pushing it around, so I put a small book in the space to close the gap and keep the wind from slamming the window. It was pretty hilarious though, to think that I was so terrified and thinking there was a Maori ghost that was fucking with me. Ha!

11th May, 2011

So, it seems that my evenings spent at Mitimiti will be my blogging time, since I do not seem to allow myself another time to do so. I’m sitting here eating orzo pasta with onion, tomato and cottage cheese. Ha! (I forgot the broccoli raab from the garden, oh well.) The weather is crazy right now!!! Wind and rain just started gusting up from the ocean onto the house. Crazy! Funny part is that I was going to call Dave to say hi for a minute…. But I have to walk outside to a pole that gets phone reception here…. Hmmmmm….

So anywho, things have been quite busy. Dave has been working on building us a ‘sleepout’, which really is a one-room house. It has ended up being 4.5 x 3 meters, with 4 reused windows, a pitched roof, which we will use to collect rainwater and a reused Remu door that is peeeeeerfect! We are hoping to be staying in it this weekend or when I get back from Mitimiti tomorrow. Wooo-hoooooo!!!!!

While he has been working on this for the past week and a half, I have been working on a painting, (sometimes) and making sure he and his brother are well fed. Bryan, Dave’s bro has been helping on weekends and after he gets out of work, which has been a huge help. Each day, I’ve been working in the garden, picking lettuce, making bread and doing other domestic things since I am not able to lift all the heavy boards and things they have been doing. We’ve been calling it our house for fun the past couple days, which is nice. We are excited to have a little space of our own. :)

I just got off the phone with him and he said he go all the windows in, cleaned out the inside and is going to start putting things inside so we can have a little celebration when I get back. Very exciting!!! Also, it wasn’t monsooning when I went out there, just very windy.

After work today, I drove about 17km to the nearest town called Panguru, which has a little shop and got some treats for the kids. Last week, I had told them that I didn’t want only punishment for bad behavior to happen, but also rewards for good behavior. I realized this morning that I hadn’t picked up any goodies for the kids…. I grabbed 2 boxes of these nut bars I had at home, but that only brought the total to 12 and there’s 19 kids. When I went into town, I was told that they had chocolate covered peanuts and those would be the cheapest route for getting the kids some treats…. For 8 small bags the total came to $12.50. At least the kids will get what they were told. I saw a couple of the year 5 students outside the shop, Nicola and Alicia and we talked for a bit. Nicola is a silly little spaz child, with a sad life and little attention span, she lives with her Grandmother who works at the shop and is not allowed to see her mother and sister who live 4 hours away in Auckland, (no idea why she can’t see them). Alicia is a nice, quiet girl. Both of them were so funny, sitting outside the shop. They were asking me if I was going to give out the chocolate covered peanuts one peanut at a time and I said, “No. You each get your own bag or chocolate covered granola bar.” Both of their eyes lit up and they were very excited about school tomorrow. This makes me feel good. Bribing is not so bad.

Sleepy monkey. Passed out while writing.....

4th May, 2011

Time really is flying. Today was my first day back at work in Mitimiti at Matihitihe school, (what a mouthful). I can hear the waves crashing on the beach, have a full belly of pasta and a little red wine and am happy. A lovely woman named Ira is sharing the house with me tonight. She is a great teacher and worked with 6 of my students today, teaching them video work and will do the same tomorrow. Nice. I stayed until 6pm at work tonight trying to sort out some maths, reading and writing for the kids tomorrow…. Still need to finish the reading in the morning and get an art lesson together.

Ira and Tash, the junior teacher were hanging out for a while tonight and it was nice to have a bit of company. We talked about how Ira went on a 10 day meditation journey, complete with no talking and little movement. What a trip! Crazy. Tash is cool too, very funny and enjoy her company.

I called Dave from underneath the clothes drying rack, (which is the only place I can get a signal), but only had 3 minutes left on my phone plan so we briefly caught up before my phone cut out. Sounded like he had a good day building and was about to sit down to eat with his familia.

(I passed out while writing here… did not finish my thought). :ha!!

2nd of May, 2011

Busy days! This morning we started early, making tea and planting some of the new seedlings. Loaded the car with some snacks and our free window for Dave to make a new frame for at the workshop.

While Dave was working on building a frame for the window, I worked on doing laundry and editing his website, which was good! Picked Dave up around 1pm after he finished making a frame for the window and we headed back to the orchard. Dave got working on building the sleep-out and I got back to doing my chores and tidying.

Dave worked hard all day on the sleep-out by himself, building the frame for the walls and when Bry got home they were able to finish putting up the 3 walls that were built. Yay!

1st May 2011

Tomorrow is the start of term 2 in schools out here. BUT, I don’t start work until Wednesday!!! And I couldn’t be happier about that. The past 2 weeks have flown by and I’ve kept quite busy. During three days over break, I drove over an hour each way to school, downloaded printer software onto my computer so I am able to print down there. Also, I hung the artwork that the students have worked on down there…. And those days I will be paid for, which is nice. :)

Last week on Friday, Dave and I had a lovely dinner out at a restaurant called Acorn Bar & Bistro. We heard from a friend that the food was delicious, so we wanted to see for ourselves what it was all about, (especially since it was the first time we had been out to eat for dinner since I’ve been out here.) We shared a beautiful mushroom soup, Dave had pork belly, I had beef bourginion and we each had a glass of lovely red wine. What a treat!!! The couple sitting next to us was very cool too; they were around our parents age, she was a school teacher, he a builder. Our tables were seated next to us so that it was hard to have your own conversation, so they started one with us by asking if I was Irish or Canadian. Ha! Funny. It went on from there and they learned that we were living in a caravan trying to live frugally, pay off my student loans and Dave was beginning his career as a luthier. Kevin told us that he wished his daughter would learn how to be penny-savers like us, and we all laughed and enjoyed our meals together. They finished their crème brulee before us and after they had left, the owner approached and said, “The couple sitting next to you enjoyed your company so much and thought that you were such a lovely couple, they just paid for your dinner.” Dave and my eyes lit up, eyebrows raised and in shock, asked her if she was serious. She assured us that she was and that this was the first time anyone had done that in her restaurant. Wow! We were so giddy! As Dave and I were leaving, we told her we felt like we should do dishes or something, she introduced us to the Chef and Sous chef and we made our exit. Our meal was over $100 easily and it was such a treat to have someone else pick up the tab. :)

Yesterday, (Saturday), Dave worked on the sleep-out all day while I skyped with my family, worked on a new painting and made dinner. Today, I tried to help by scraping the paint off a used window we got for free, but after a while I was tired. I worked on my painting again and took a long nap; woke up to eat some chocolate and work on this blog. Laaaaazzzzy daaaayyyy.

Now I am sitting in the caravan while Dave and his brother, Bry are working on building us a room outside the caravan. They’ve been going so hard all day, even when its been raining and the power has been out all day so they have had to saw all the wood by hand. Such sweet men!!!! It will be a nice size, 3 x 4 meters, so we can put our bed inside along with a small table and chairs to eat or work at. I am really quite excited. Dave is going to make some shelves for the inside so we can easily stow all our crap and try to keep things more orderly. It can be quite difficult living in a small space to keep all the things put away. Even though we don’t have much, when we don’t put things away it gets cluttered very quickly.
Over break, I’ve also been trying to gather resources for teaching reading to the kids, which could be a challenge. The classroom I will be teaching is year 5-8 students, (5th-8th grade), and some of the younger ones can’t read. I am hoping that I can work on getting some of that organized tomorrow.

I’m so sleepy. Naps make it worse if you sleep too long, and that is where I am at. Sleepy monkey. Its only 430pm. ZZZZzzzzzzz….

I ended up drinking a b-vitamin energy booster and made us a lovely dinner…. Garbanzos, lentils and onions on top of lettuce… with cheese, salsa and guacamole.
Dave and I were asleep by 830pm. :)

Dave and his bro Bryan building the floor for our new monkey house!!!

Celebratory foamy homebrew after a long day of hard work. Thank you!!!

22 April, 2011

I am loving the school schedule out here! 10 weeks on and 2 weeks off. It is Friday and I am coming to the end of my first week of holiday out here. OHHHH!!!! AND…. I got the job! 2 days next term I will be out in Mitimiti, (read previous post if you’re confused), spending one night a week in the house that overlooks the ocean. Lovely!!! And Yaaaaaaay!!!!