Million Dollar Cruise

Hey there again! Life here in Queenstown is settling in. Hannah and I have both been working a lot. Hannah still has her job as a housekeeper. The temp agency that I work for has been in desperate need for housekeepers, so I've been doing that this week! The hours are long, but the money is coming in, so I can't complain! I had a day off a few days ago, and I was kinda sick of sitting on the beach (that's the last time I complain about that, I promise), I wanted to do something different! I had seen signs all over Queenstown for the Million Dollar Cruise. I went on bookme.co and I found a ticket for $20, not a bad deal at all! It was just a day cruise, but the views were amazing! There were 33 people on board, and I lowered the mean age by about 30 years, the rest were elderly couple going on a nice adventure. The captain made fun of me and over the intercom said that if anyone goes over board, the young girl from Minnesota can save them without the risk of breaking a hip...

But anyway, back to the views:

The cruise was on Lake Wakatipu, the captain gave us all sorts of fun facts about the lake. For example: the lake is 99.99% pure. It's the same as distilled water, purer than any known bottled drinking water. It's the second purest lake in the world, next to some lake in Antarctica. 1,100 years ago a glacier came through and created the lake and took out all the top soil which is why there isn't a whole lot of vegetation around the lake.

These mountains in the background are called the Remarkables. They are one of the two mountain ranges that go north to south, the other one being the Grand Tetons in Wyoming. These mountains also show up in The Lord of the Ring, they are featured as the slopes of the Dimrill Dale, which Aragorn leads the fellowship to Lothlorien after the Mines of Moira (after Gandalf "dies")

So devastated...

I think the captain felt bad for me since I was alone (i had no problem with it at all). He let me sit in his chair and "drive the boat" for awhile. 

              I think the hat suites me :)

On the other side of this mountain there is a sheep farm that holds 25,000 sheep! 

It was definitely a fun and beautiful day! Lots of exciting things to do here! 

Queenstown Shenanigans

We've been here for almost three weeks now. Living in hostels it's really easy to make friends. Our favorite hang out spot is the beach by the lake. During the day we swim, read and enjoy the sun. At night, people grab a six pack, listen to music, and meet all sorts of new people. Hannah likes to play a lot of soccer while I usually chat with random people. One day while Hannah was playing soccer, I started talking to some Brazilians and we ended up playing some Samba music and dancing for awhile! it was so much fun!

Hannah playing some Soccer

A Brazilian showing us how it's done 

Night on the beach, people just chillin and drinking some beer 

Proof that we actually have friends! :)

We are here for another week and a half. My mom is coming here in just a few days! I'm excited to show her around and adventure out of Queenstown (shes renting a car) :). Until then, I'll continue working, I'm housekeeping the next few days and and doing some inventory work at a gift shop too!

Queenstown Preschool

Well after the terrible job of telemarketing, I have the extreme pleasure of now working at a preschool. It's just casual work, but that's what I want anyway, it's hard to be stuck inside on a beautiful day, so with casual work I can just not take a job for the day. On Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday I worked in the nursury part of the preschool, so I was feeding bottles to babies and catching little toddlers from falling on their faces. On Tuesday there were 7 babies for just two teachers... At one point in the day I was feeding two babies in my arms and rocking another on my lap, while singing to two other babies on the floor! Multi-tasking at its finest! It was so much fun and the days went by so fast!! 

Queenstown is pretty small, my job is on the other side of town from where I live and it only takes me about 20 minutes to walk to work. Here's the view from my walk home, I definitely can't complain! 

After work we lots of times would go to the beach or play soccer (well Hannah plays soccer, I cheer everyone on and talk to people when they get injured). We can sit out on the beach though until 9pm and still have sun, so it's fun to take advantage of the long days. 

I don't have scheduled work for the rest of the week, but lots of times I'll get a text about a job the same day, so hopefully something will show up! 

Minnesota Nice is a Bad Thing??

Well it happened... After 12 hours of working at the tele-torture, selling funeral insurance, we got fired...

Every 2.5 hours we got a break, at our 5:00 break, James (our boss) took us into our office. He told us that this job just wasn't for us. We weren't pushy enough and we let the uninterested costumers go too easily. To make us feel better he told us that people with American accents don't do very well with this company, whether that true or not, we simply were just too nice on the phone. Hannah and I couldn't decide whether that was a compliment or not, but we were just happy to get out of there. We were torn anyway about whether or not we wanted to stay, so this made the decision for us! 

Today we spent the day by the lake, giggling about all the poor souls who are stuck inside the calling center making calls. It ended up being for the better, I got a job at the preschool for next week and Hannah has a job in housekeeping. We will be much happier people! 

Our lovely view as we sat, enjoyed the sun and read our books instead of calling angry people. 

Just a picture to remember the great times in the calling center...

Tele-torture in Queenstown

It's been a week in Queenstown, I would have posted earlier, but not a lot has been happening. We spent a lot of time exploring the city and trying not to get lost. Queenstown is a very active city, lots of people from all over the world, of all different ages are here. There are a lot of tourist attraction, which are a little spendy, but there are still free things to enjoy...

Like this lovely photo op

There is a large lake right on the outskirts of the city. The water is super cold since it comes down right from the mountains, but a lot of people spend time on their boats, or rent jetskies and kayaks. There are a limitless amount of things to do just on the lake! Hannah and I just enjoy walking around it or swimming at the little rocky beach. 

If you walk around the lake, it takes you to the Queesnstown Gardens where you can see lots of roses and see the city from a different point of view. 

Is...is that a mermaid?? 

There's a really cool website called bookme.co.nz it allows you to get deals on tickets at the last minute. Hannah and I decided to test out the website by buying tickets to the Ice Bar. Original tickets are $20, we got them for $7, so it worked out pretty nicely! 

The Ice Bar was -5c, which is nothing for us Minnesotans! Even our glasses were made out of ice and we got to smash them on the ground when we were done with them.

Friday (Feb. 8th) was a national Mouri holiday. There were lots of bands playing and little activities to do. The big event for us was the Running of the Wools. A herd of sheep fled trough the streets as they were being manacially chased by dogs and a Shepard boy wearing short shorts. 

It was one of the coolest, yet strangest things I've seen. But apparently for every one person in NZ, there are 20 sheep, so it's safe to say that the sheep is a staple of New Zealand. 

Just because...

By the end of the week, we had landed two jobs. The first one is catering on the weekends. 

After the first night, Hannah was promoted to waitressing, leaving me behind to clean dishes all night... To be fair to me, I don't have black pants and black shoes... But that's just what I tell myself to not feel bad... That or that I'm so good at dish washing, they don't me anywhere else...sweet... My fingers will be forever pruny. The first few hours is fine, but after bending over a sink that goes lower than my hips, the old back starts to hurt... And then I spend the next 7 hours in shear torture... This is the life... I'm telling you! 

If I thought catering was rough, I didn't know what was coming... Today was our first day telemarketing. But it's not just any telemarketing... It's selling funeral insurance... People don't want to listen to telemarketing, but people REALLY don't want to talk about how they will die someday and that their family will thank them for the money when they pass away...we are suppose to get one sale per hour... I made one sale my entire shift. My boss says I need to be more pushy and don't let them talk... That's just not my forte, we will see how long I'll last before they decide I'm not worth the money. 

Here's Hannah, just living the dream...

Until next time... As the kiwi's say: Sweet as! 

Wanaka and Queenstown Arrival

It's been a few days since I have posted, it's hard to keep up to date when we are in a different place everyday! On Saturday (jan.31st), we left our comfy little place in Franz Josef and hitch hiked to Wanaka . 

We had a late start to our day because of rain. so by the time we got to Wanaka it was 6:30 in the evening. It was a lovely drive though! We got picked up by a nice Canadian who was driving through NZ on his holiday. Since he too was a tourist, we had many stops along the way! 

We stopped at a beach for awhile to stretch our legs and smell the ocean air. The rocks were beautiful! All different colors and shapes. Many people troll these beaches looking for jade stones. 

There were all sorts of places to stop along the road. This one was full of information about tides and how ships use them to travel. 

One stop was at a White Bait shop. White bait are about the size of minnows. They have similar breeding habits as salmon. Salmon travel back to fresh water to spawn, where as white bait travel back to salt water to spawn. Fishermen catch White bait in the sea, right when they are born, before they swim to the fresh water. So these fish, that are a delicacy on the west coast, are simple baby fish. 

Here's a picture of what they look like before they are prepared to eat... 

... And with a little egg, slapped on a piece of bread, you have yourself a white bait pattie! These are known around the world and people come to the west coast just to try it. Now I was extremely car sick from the crazy roads, so I didn't think a whitebait pattie would sit well with me... But the Canadian said it was all he had ever hoped for! 

Another beautiful pit stop on the way to Wanaca. 

We made it Wanaka and has some delicious Hawaiian pizza, which happens to be the most popular pizza here. We had no hostel booked because every other town we have been to, we could just walk into any hostel and easily get a room. Little did we know that there was a huge music festival going on in the next town over. With our huge packs, we walked to two different hostels, both said they were booked and that we had little hope for any other hostel. So we sat down and just started calling hostels. By the 8th and final hostel calling, God had graced us with one room. It was a quaint little double bed room, with pictures glued to picture frames... But it was a bed, so we couldn't complain! 

The next day, with a hostel already book, we hitch hiked to Queenstown, just an hour drives away. This time, a young Irish man picked us up and gave us all sorts of advice about Queenstown. You can always count on the Irish! :) 

 This is the view going down into the valley where Queenstown resides.

Hannah and I have been here for 2 days now. It's an awesome city! There is soucb to do and everything is in walking distance! Today, we went on job hunts all day and started opening up bank accounts so that we can get paid. We have a few promising opportunities, hopefully something will come out of them!