2004-07-22 - 9:55 p.m.
Entirely too long

This is an email I wrote for the benefit of my friends in England who I hadn't emailed for months as a result of shipping my computer and leaving their email addresses stuck inside.

I thought it was too long to just send it to them, so my *cough* avid readers also get a chance to marvel at my creation *coughcough*

And we begin, note that it has been slightly abridged.

[Hi etc etc] The boxes with my computer in arrived this week! So now I'm all set back up and can play games or email whenever I like instead of having to share a really crap computer with Mum.. It's so nice having my computer back!

I'm going to try and give you a run down of what's been going on since I left without making it too long but I'm not sure if it'll work or if I'll forget everything but here goes..

The weekend before we left was full of frantically sorting possessions, packing bags, repacking bags, trying to fit a bit more in and reluctantly parting with the stuff that just wouldn't fit.
On the morning of monday 22 March we left to go to Manchester Airport to catch our flight, everything went smoothly.

The flight to Singapore was good, got the window seat and the middle one, and a nice irish woman was in the aisle seat so I chatted to her for a bit.
The best thing about flying Singapore Airlines is that you have a little screen in the back of the seat in front of you so you can pick whichever of the movies showing you want rather than having to strain to see the big screen at the front of the section and if you need the toilet you don't miss any bits cos you can pause it.
I watched The Last Samurai and School of Rock and then some episodes of sitcoms - Friends, Will&Grace and That 70's Show. That flight took 9 hours.

When we were at Singapore Airport we went out on this bus tour of Singapore which was nice but we were So tired because we hadn't slept yet. Also we got paged over the PA system because the lady at the desk for the tour had taken our passports to take down details, then started talking to some other people and ignoring us. We didn't know what was going on so we just wandered off and she hadn't given us our passports back. Apparently she called out to us when she saw us walking off...

We were so tired we couldn't even be bothered to buy duty free which was a shame because you could get 1L bottles of Smirnoff for like $10 Singapore which is about £3 and 1L of Baileys for $20(£6). Our time waiting for the next flight (totally exhausted) in Singapore Airport (Chiangi Airport is it's proper name I think) was about 6 hours.

On the flight from Singapore to Auckland we finally managed to get some sleep which was good because that flight took 13 hours. The flight was really empty too so we could take up lots of room and no-one cared....
Apart from the stupid couple in front of us who were the only people in the entire Section who had their seats tilted back as we were flying over the top of the North Island (seeing the sun rise) so we had no room and couldn't see out the window properly.

Auckland Airport wasn't very exciting compared to Chiangi or Manchester, it was so weeny and the Domestic bit was even worse, we should have stayed in the International terminal for longer instead of having to sit in the uncomfortable seats for another 6 hours. We were in a small plane for the internal flight down to Palmerston North, about 30 people in it I think. Unfortunately it was quite cloudy so we could see the ground in some places but it was very hard for me to tell where we were so I couldn't point anything out.

Since we've been in NZ I've had my wisdom teeth out (there were 3), had about 4 fillings, made my brother's hair into dreadlocks, been to 3 birthday parties, 1 wedding anniversary, missed out on 2 weddings (one in England Just after we left :( and 1 in NZ that was too for away for us to afford to get to) and been on 2 small holidays.

The first one was in our Kombi VW van for the VW nationals which was near a place called Tauranga, but we stayed at Papamoa Beach. It takes a while to get to Tauranga from Palmerston North, about 8 hours in the van so we stayed overnight in a free camping ground on the way there and back. We got to put up our tent for the first time in the light of the vans headlamps because it'd got dark by the time we arrived, and it was also raining. And then my half of the airbed deflated during the night so I woke up lying on the cold ground *grumble*

While around Taupo we went a place called Craters of the Moon which is thermally active so there are these big holes in the ground with loads of steam and mud and smaller vents with steam hissing out. The whole place smells foul like sulphur but you get used to it quite quickly. We also had a look around the Trout Nursery where they breed the trout that they release into Lake Taupo and the rivers surrounding it.
And we saw the Huka Falls too which is quite good to see but it wasn't quite a full flow but still impressive.
The falls aren't very high, but it's the volume of water that comes pouring out, and the clearness of it is just amazing, with the air forced into the water as it goes over the falls it is a bright light blue colour, a bit darker than the sky. While we were looking at the falls there were a lot of native birds in the surrounding bush, tuis and fantails especially so it was nice for me to see and hear them again and for Chris to get to know what they look like too.

It was really nice staying at Papamoa beach, the weather was nice and summery so Chris and I spent quite a lot of time down on the beach while Mum and Dad were doing the VW things that they'd paid for.
We made a 3d sand sculpture of a VW beetle which was really cool and we got some photos of it that haven't been developed yet. Fortunately we did because of the number of kids around it was ruined in about 3 hours. We also spent some time searching for pipis with a family who was looking for them for bait.
That was quite fun, I'd never seen it done before and it was nice being able to see how many you caught etc.
You dig down the them by twisting your foot in the sand until you feel the shell on your foot and then you quickly dig with your hands a bit more until you catch it. They're usually only down about 20cm so it's quite quick and easy, just sometimes you can't find where there are any and sometimes a wave comes and covers it in sand before you can dig down far enough to catch them.

The next day there was a convoy of all the cars and vans, at least 100 that went north through a few towns up to Mt Maunganui. Chris and I climbed up to the top of the mountain (not entirely sure how high it is) and Mum and Dad walked around the bottom.

As we were driving back to Taupo for our stop-over we went to Rotorua (the Stinky City - Very thermally active so the whole town smells like sulphur instead of just the tourist areas) and up a cable car to the top of a hill where you can do luging. Luging is where you sit in this little cart thing and steer it down a steep windy course. It's really fun and at the one in Rotorua there are 3 different tracks and you get taken back up to the top by a chairlift which is quite cool but not if it's raining. It's quite difficult to describe how cool luging is but if you ever get the chance to try it you should!!

It was a lot easier to put the tent back up in daylight the second time we were in Taupo and the bed behaved as well which made it much more pleasant.
On the way from Taupo back down to Palmerston North we stopped at Waiuru Army Museum which was good to look at too.

The second holiday we went on was for Mum and Dad's silver wedding anniversary(25th). They celebrated by inviting us and some of their other good friends that they don't get to see so often to Taupo for a weekend. We drove in the car this time because we rented a holiday house for the weekend so there was no tent to worry about.

I'd been a bit sick before we went away but it wasn't too bad and I didn't want to miss out so I went anyway.
Then when we got there I got quite a bit worse, having trouble breathing and stuff so the next day when I hadn't had hardly any sleep Mum took me to a doctor and I got put on a nebuliser to help me breathe because it was my asthma playing up along with some bronchitis and tonsilitis...or thats what the doctor said at least.
So I got to lie around being rather sick for most of the time, but I did go for a swim in one of the mineral hot pools in Taupo which was really nice and the warm steam helped too.

The last day we were there we went and saw the Aratiatia Rapids, which have a hydro dam at the top of them but people complained so they let the water out for 10 minutes twice a day or something as a tourist attraction. It is rather cool seeing all the rocks beforehand and the fish swimming in the shallow pool of water and then the gates open and the water all shoots out and fills up the pools and goes away down the rapids which are quite impressive.
We ran through the bush to get to another viewing platform to get some good pics on and on the way back there was a fantail flitting around catching bugs and stuff like they do, but this one was coming so close it was almost touching us! And it landed on the grass a couple of times and also landed on a tree branch at about eye level so Chris got some really great photos (also not developed but I think they'll be good ones).

I've had about 6 job interviews over the time I've been back, and 2 places said they wanted to keep my CV for if another job comes along, but I haven't actually got a job yet. This week I intend to phone up all the recruitment agencies I registered with and tell them again that I am interested in jobs and say that they can put me down for more sorts of work too.
I've applied for unemployment benefit so I can pay my parents rent and have a bit of money to actually do things but that means I have to accept any job that comes my way whether it's appealing or not. So I want to find my own job before WINZ (work and income NZ) decide to give me a cleaning job or something.

I've got so much other stuff I want to do as well, I've got these free computer courses with a local open university thing which you can just go in when you want and work through the booklets that I need to start going and doing before they unregister me. I got onto them because one recruitment lady said that I needed something that said I could officially use a computer. There are some evening courses at a local high school which are quite cheap and interesting sounding, including renewing my first aid certificate, learning NZ sign language, latin-american dancing and a writing course. The problem with those ones is how to get there in the evenings, but I guess I'd just have to actually get lights for my bike or see if there's someone going out that night that could get me. [Now I have actually enrolled for a First Aid course, but the sign language one had started already. Oh well.]

Last weekend we went to a model train exhibition which was cool seeing all the detail put into the scenery as well as keeping the trains running well.

I also really liked seeing the children with their gradnfathers looking at things, being held up to see better and told stories about how they used to go on a train like that when they were little.

I hope that fills in any gaps you wanted to know, or at least helped you procrastinate from doing an assignment or cleaning up or going to sleep.