General mooching, and job stuff

This week I have been:

• cleaning the house I moved into, and generally bringing it up to 'girl standards'. It's kinda old, but cool. It's pretty big, and like all the houses in Wellington, built on the side of a big hill so that half of it is supported underneath. Particularly I like seeing the garages that are built on platforms sticking out over the edge of hillsides. I'm sure they are safe and all, but they look odd.
• looking for jobs and sending my CV to agencies and calling them to hassle. I now have two meetings with agencies for Monday, so Smart Ruth will have to resurrected from the depths of the cupboard
• reading Harry Potter :) I know, not exactly a break from the norm, but I was very pleased to discover that Jamie has all seven volumes. I am r-reading no 7 at the moment as it's just SO good
• sorting out car-related things - you have to have the MOT equivalent done every six months here, and pleasingly it is called a WOF (Warrant of Fitness)
• enjoying pottering in my local 'hood called Northland. I poked my nose into the Church (open every day, how ashamed I was that even in this teeny tiny place they manage to keep it open all the time, whereas so many of our Churches are just shut and figuratively say 'go away'), noted that we have public toilets (no Councils making trouble for villages keeping facilities open here...), and bought a few items (yes, it included ice-cream!) from the rather well-stocked dairy
• looking forward to the world cinema festival happening starting in March - 'Tell no one' is a French film I've wanted to see for a bit, and it's on on my birthday (yay!).

Tonight I'm hanging out with my housemate (the only one until the other one moves in next week) as he's off to Oz (the emerald city) for a week from Sunday.

Thought it was high time

The longer it takes you to write your first blog, the more you want to put it off. That's how I feel anyway. I have no idea where to start or what to say.

I am curently in an internet cafe in Courtenay Place, Wellington. I am growing to like Wellington a lot, and to understand it's layout a little better. I still get supidly lost, though less lost in the car where I can go much further in a lost direction!

I am looking for a job and a flat/house share. Not in that order. I have seen a possibility today, which I really liked,m but I'm not sure it is in my best interests to take it. I'll say more if I end up taking it!

I've been doing a variety of pottering/getting to know the city, trips in my new Honda Accord (thanks Jen and Andy, it is doing really well), proactive searching for places to live/jobs, and random walks. The thing about Wellington is, apart from the very centre of town, it is basically a series of heart-attack inducing hills. I mean it. They are madly madly steep, and people just walk up them, even cycle up them. Ihave surprised myself already with how I've coped (dare I say even enjoyed?) a few of the hills and the views they afford.

I had a wonderful mini-break with Annabel over the weekend, in and around the Queen Charlotte Sound and Endeavor Inlet. Memorably, we stayed in a home-stay with a redoubtable old lady - to get to her house you left your car in a car park, walked down a road/hill, across a beach, through some bush and up the other side. The views were good by the time you made it though! We even walked a bit of the track one day...

hmm, ha, ha, um

This time tommorow I'll be, well, somewhere. Horribly confusing going back (or forwards? - feel free to think about this for hours too) in time and changing zones, and then missing an entire day, so forgive me if I just close my eyes and set my phone for the final destination time!

Air NZ have assured me that in the two hours of landing and processing in LA I will not have to pick up my bags or do much else than shuffle in a queue, try not to say the word 'bomb' or be sarcastic to immigration people, and sit in the transit lounge, so I'm hoping it will be much less stressful than last time :)

Most things are done. I seem to be taking hardly anything at all: one mostly full rucksack and some hand luggage. Karen is mildly disapproving at such a lack of stuff but can't seem to pinpoint exactly what I'm missing! I'll be buying a few things out there initially of course, and luckily it is summer so I didn't need loads of bulky jumpers.

I've applied for a job with Waitakere City Council (Auckland area) which sounds amazing. It is community development in a part of the city area and seems perfect for me. Fingers crossed for an interview please!

I feel I should be writing some sort of reflective peice about my ambitions and hopes for the year ahead, but I've never been great at that. I just want to have a good time, meet people, and be of use. I want to have a real life.

I'll miss everyone a lot, but we are very lucky to have so much communication available - please use it!

Much ado about one thing

That one thing being packing up my life and moving to NZ. Such a simple thing as I write it in a sentence. Not such a simple thing in real life.

A quick update:

• two more days of work
  
• then one week of packing
• then moving in for a yet unspecified number of days with the parents. Still flying 7th
• party this Saturday evening in local pub...photos will certainly be shared
• no idea about what work I will do 'out there'
• still having to sit on hands to stop myself battering people about the head who suggest I am going to meet, marry, and sprog up with a sheep farmer within 2 mins of arriving. Give me at least 5! (wah HA).
• no idea where I am going to live after initial week of being hosted by kind family friends
• yes, I am excited
• no I haven't got anyone for the flat yet...yes I am confident I will have
• yes, I vaguely know one or two people 'out there'
• I have reserved space in a storage facility about 10 mins drive from here for my stuff (thanks Karen!)

Having people round to see your flat with a view to renting it is quite a pain as I have to be ultra tidy all the time, especially at that inconvenient time of just before leaving for work. Whilst this is doable for me, it is not enjoyable. But never mind, I should get used to living in a bit of a mess.

I can't quite get on with the good stuff of actually getting all my clothes out and planning what to take, as this is something that needs to be done prior to then packing it all in loads of boxes and storing it.

I am very much looking forward to my party on Saturday as there should be quite a few people and a totally strange mix of al my friends, many of whom don't know each other. What did Bridget Jones teach me? Oh yes, 'Ieaun, meet Hannah. Hannah is into amateur dramatics and was last seen on stage sporting a ridiculous wig and bright pink period dress. Ieaun is Welsh and I used to beat him at spinning tops'. Should be a good night :)

'Would you like some ID?'

...I enquired upon approching the bouncers outside a pub in Brighton centre last night, and seeing they were already checking someone else's ID. One of them looked at me and said 'nah, that's fine'.

Ha ha haa! Since he could barely see my face, I can only imagine that he wisely thought that even on a very wet evening only someone past the age of caring about fashion (and therefore clearly legal) would encase themselves in a big white waterproof coat and pull the hood drawstrings so tightly around my face that I looked like the Ghost of Christmas Future. Probably a wise assumption.

Kinda sad

The trial was today of a boy from my District, who stabbed and killed one of his friends after a party in the summer. It's truly a horrible story and I'm not going into it, but his sentence was 12 years before it can be reviewed. Obviously everything about this is extremely sad, but what most shocked me were the comments on the online version of the local paper. I can't say more than that I was shocked, and whilst I understand the depth of emotion...well, anything I write doesn't explain what I want to say about such a complex situation. If you believe that prayer works, or even believe it might work, please pray for the family, friends and everyone involved with Michael (the boy who died), and Kieran (the boy who killed him). He showed 'no emotion' in court, and has never said what his motive was to kill one of his friends.

Cricketing and Thanksgiving

You know, I have had another weird day. Not unusually for me I suppose. Will blog more later or at the weekend when I've got everything done, but today I was at a conference at the Oval cricket ground near Vauxhall station in London. Interesting day and made me think about how much is achievable if I could just cut through a lot of the (necessary and probably rightly so) faff that goes along with my work. Quite inspiring in other words. Also used those voting pads like they have on Who Wants to be a Millionaire? That was fun. More in another blog. Then want to my second Thanksgiving held by Joel and Adriel. Amazing. 32 people and great food. Photos up later. Great to have a laugh, eat, and catch up with friends; and above all to be thankful for our lucky lucky selves.