Totally Awesome Adventures

Long time no posts, I apologize for that. this blog has turned into a big guilt trip for us because we neglect it so much, better stop apologizing about it and get to it!

We had heaps of fun when our parents visited, going on a 6 day backpacking trip (Heaphy track) and then having JUST enough time to recover and go on another, more difficult backpacking trip (Kepler track). Both amazingly beautiful and unique. One of our highlights during those three weeks had to be seeing the Yellow-eyed penguins up close. There are only 4,000 of them existing in the world! Surprisingly tame, they would just waddle right by us.. my dad put together a cute video of them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tx-sPeLETSM

After we parted ways with the folks, Tess and I headed to Mt. Cook National Park for some tramping. One day we decided to scope out the hitchhiking spot for the next morning, and came across a HUGE thicket of blackberries. We had way too many, so we offered some to a couple American guys & chatted with their parents for a bit. Next morning after waiting 40 min for a ride..guess who picks us up? We ended up going for a hike with the American guys, Jordan & Casey, and now we're planning on backpacking together in the Abel Tasman! Funny how a little thing like offering some guys blackberries leads to such a crazy string of events.

At the moment, Tess and I are recovering mentally & physically from the Wild Foods Fest. List of things consumed: Live huhu grubs straight out of the wood, huhu beetle (tess only), chocolate covered pepper, seagull egg, sea cucumber, worms on toast, worm truffle, raw tuna, whitebait patties, moonshine injection, beer, and some yummy berry wines. Things we opted NOT to consume: sheep testicles, scorpions, and horse semen shots.

Murchison, our home!

Murchison is one of those places you want to get out of because its so small with not much to do, but then it just grows on you. When we leave here I get the feeling we'll miss it a bit; enough to want to come back. Our home away from home! Along those lines... I've been missing home a bit lately. I'm having heaps of fun here but at work when it gets slow I think about going out with friends to my favorite restaurants back home again: Evergreen, Hard Times, or ANY Indian Restaurant. Missin movie nights and midnight retros... and excited to join in on the Wed. bowling nights. It will be really nice when our parents visit us in 2 weeks, but maybe that will make me miss home more!!

Tonight we're having a bit of a going-away party for our friend Michelle. A lot of people are slowly leaving Murchison.. either to continue traveling or going back to a university. We're going to miss Michelle!! Luckily we're going on a camping trip with her and some other Murch girls for a couple nights, so that will be a good time!!

Sorry Tess and I haven't been updating so much. We're actually keeping really busy in Murchison! Also... internet is hard to come by, especially for me. The Library has free internet from 9-4 and I work from 10-4 everyday. The blog is the one getting rejected here if you haven't noticed, haha!

We both like our jobs, but I have not worked so hard in my life... Cafe/restaurant employees work their butts off and we're under-staffed, but I love all the kiwis I work with!!

On our days off we've been watching movies (Totally Awesome), laying on the beach with a beer, swimming in the river, playing pool at the bar, and recently went on a night hike up a hill & stargazed. We can see the milky way here pretty easily every night as there isn't too much light pollution.

Oh, and I finally got a chance to get out of Murchison to Nelson for a day and bought myself a shiny new toy... a 1 Terabyte external hard drive. I filled it with over 20,000 songs last night.

Happy Holidays/New Years!!