The view from our bay window this morning.Well let me start this post with a couple of observations I have made about NZ thus far.
1. Their 2 litre bottles are shaped just like their 20oz bottles only larger (compared to our shapeless, and without contour 2 litre bottles)
2. Turkey does not exist as a meat, and is instead all forms of Kiwi Ham is used as a replacement. (It makes me wonder what they eat for Thanksgiving Day Dinner?)
3. The letter Z is pronounced zed, which is funny when you hear someone say everything from A to Zed.
Lastly, as far as my comments towards NZ are concerned, I should state that I am currently in a state of Terror. For no where in the grocery store as of yesterday have I been able to locate Mayo. This may result in me declaring a breach in contract and immediately catching a lift to the nearest country that is openingly mayonnaise friendly. Regardless of whether mayo is soon located or not also fails to solve the problem since it will ultimately not be Hellmann's, which where I'm from is the only kind of mayo there is. I mean how am I expected to make a BLT without mayo, or a turkey sandwich for that matter, or tartar sauce, or ... Oh My Gosh, I have to stop before my head explodes thinking of the lack of possibilities.
At any rate, I suppose I should catch you up on yesterday and today (however it will make a large group of you jealous). Yesterday I did what probably seems obvious, and went to the grocery store. This was an interesting experience. Oh also, instead of box wine, here they have cask wine (which is such a cooler name for bad, cheap wine). Also observations outside of turkey and 2 litres and mayo, NZ bread and cheese suck. Which is unfortunate. Atleast at the grocery store level. There are awesome bakery's all around, but at the store the bread and cheese suck. As a matter of fact the bread is bad enough that my family keeps their bread in the refrigerator or it goes bad too quickly.
After the grocery store, I went to the bank (which was done in the wrong order, because I was standing around the bank awkwardly with a bag of mustard powder and Kiwi Ham in my hand. I should have thought that one through a little more) However, I am now the proud owner of a NZ National Bank bank account. It has a balance of 10 dollars (the amount on me at the time). After the bank I returned home and Christoph Yannik and I rode our bikes to the fish market and picked out fresh smoked salmon which we then turned into Salmon Lasagna. (It wasn't as good as I was hoping. The smoked salmon by itself was exquisite though.)
The rest of the evening was quite and I went to bed at around 9:30 because I still get really tired really early. This morning though... I went...
...
SNOWBOARDING.... INSIDE!!!!!!
Ya, I know. It was pretty awesome for me too.
Christoph took Yannik and I to SnowPlanet. which is a dinky little indoor snow mountain. It was very tiny and took me about 20 seconds to go down, but still I was boarding. Also they had a nice selection of rails and jumps that wear small, but great to help me get back into the swing of things. They had a Palma lift that you used to pull you to the top. I was able to ride for free because on Saturday's they do a Special Olympics program there. That is why we of course took Yannik. But I was able to help out, so I free rode for about 45 minutes, and then helped by giving a private lesson to a kid that I am going to assume was Autistic due to some of the social interaction I had with him. However he was a great guy, and I was able to take him to the top of the Palma lift and help him ride all the way down. It was neat.
So I returned from skiing and had a lunch of a ham and cheese sandwich (The first meat I've eaten in day. It was so delicious I could almost envision the meat juices dripping from my mouth as I bit into the so delicious and long awaited Kiwi Ham.) However I digress. Those are my past two days. Till next time.
Addendum A: I would like to thank you all who looked at the blog, and I hope you enjoy it and keep reading.
Addendum B: After yesterday's post a bright young fella emailed me back and corrected me on an issue he thought as quite important clarification. I am not an Au Pair at the moment. I believe my formal title is that of a Manny.
Thus Manny Wes signing off.
1. Their 2 litre bottles are shaped just like their 20oz bottles only larger (compared to our shapeless, and without contour 2 litre bottles)
2. Turkey does not exist as a meat, and is instead all forms of Kiwi Ham is used as a replacement. (It makes me wonder what they eat for Thanksgiving Day Dinner?)
3. The letter Z is pronounced zed, which is funny when you hear someone say everything from A to Zed.
Lastly, as far as my comments towards NZ are concerned, I should state that I am currently in a state of Terror. For no where in the grocery store as of yesterday have I been able to locate Mayo. This may result in me declaring a breach in contract and immediately catching a lift to the nearest country that is openingly mayonnaise friendly. Regardless of whether mayo is soon located or not also fails to solve the problem since it will ultimately not be Hellmann's, which where I'm from is the only kind of mayo there is. I mean how am I expected to make a BLT without mayo, or a turkey sandwich for that matter, or tartar sauce, or ... Oh My Gosh, I have to stop before my head explodes thinking of the lack of possibilities.
At any rate, I suppose I should catch you up on yesterday and today (however it will make a large group of you jealous). Yesterday I did what probably seems obvious, and went to the grocery store. This was an interesting experience. Oh also, instead of box wine, here they have cask wine (which is such a cooler name for bad, cheap wine). Also observations outside of turkey and 2 litres and mayo, NZ bread and cheese suck. Which is unfortunate. Atleast at the grocery store level. There are awesome bakery's all around, but at the store the bread and cheese suck. As a matter of fact the bread is bad enough that my family keeps their bread in the refrigerator or it goes bad too quickly.
After the grocery store, I went to the bank (which was done in the wrong order, because I was standing around the bank awkwardly with a bag of mustard powder and Kiwi Ham in my hand. I should have thought that one through a little more) However, I am now the proud owner of a NZ National Bank bank account. It has a balance of 10 dollars (the amount on me at the time). After the bank I returned home and Christoph Yannik and I rode our bikes to the fish market and picked out fresh smoked salmon which we then turned into Salmon Lasagna. (It wasn't as good as I was hoping. The smoked salmon by itself was exquisite though.)
The rest of the evening was quite and I went to bed at around 9:30 because I still get really tired really early. This morning though... I went...
...
SNOWBOARDING.... INSIDE!!!!!!
Ya, I know. It was pretty awesome for me too.
Christoph took Yannik and I to SnowPlanet. which is a dinky little indoor snow mountain. It was very tiny and took me about 20 seconds to go down, but still I was boarding. Also they had a nice selection of rails and jumps that wear small, but great to help me get back into the swing of things. They had a Palma lift that you used to pull you to the top. I was able to ride for free because on Saturday's they do a Special Olympics program there. That is why we of course took Yannik. But I was able to help out, so I free rode for about 45 minutes, and then helped by giving a private lesson to a kid that I am going to assume was Autistic due to some of the social interaction I had with him. However he was a great guy, and I was able to take him to the top of the Palma lift and help him ride all the way down. It was neat.
So I returned from skiing and had a lunch of a ham and cheese sandwich (The first meat I've eaten in day. It was so delicious I could almost envision the meat juices dripping from my mouth as I bit into the so delicious and long awaited Kiwi Ham.) However I digress. Those are my past two days. Till next time.
Addendum A: I would like to thank you all who looked at the blog, and I hope you enjoy it and keep reading.
Addendum B: After yesterday's post a bright young fella emailed me back and corrected me on an issue he thought as quite important clarification. I am not an Au Pair at the moment. I believe my formal title is that of a Manny.
Thus Manny Wes signing off.
I would say damn you to Foodtown as a result of the mayo deficiency, but (as you'll learn if you haven't already) it's not as if there are choices, so the faster you can learn to love it and embrace the wide variety of kept-at-room-temperature eggs, the better. Also, there is no place in the world like Snowplanet! It is a glorious, shining tribute to all those citizens of the world whose lives have been touched by oversized refrigerators.
ReplyDeleteDo they even have Thanksgiving in NZ? If so, they probably eat lamb, as that's the only thing I can think that pilgrims would have had to choose from seeing as sheep outnumber humans 8:1. Lamb>turkey anyway:) And considering I just packed all my ski equip away into boxes to put into storage for an undetermined amount of time, I hate you a little bit for boarding yesterday!
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