Wanganui Road Trip

I don't think I have written anything about Wendy on here yet, which is strange considering that she's the first person that I met when I moved here excluding Nicole, Manuel and the taxi driver. Wendy and her fiance, Steven, are good buddies with Nicole and Manuel so we see them often...especially because she's an amazing cook. Wendy's birthday was this past week so we went on a little trip to Wanganui which is about 2 hours outside of Wellington to her family's place for some fun outside of the city. Steven picked up me and Nicole eeeearly Saturday morning from the house and we ran back to pick up Wendy and then we were off to the train station!!! It's not that big or extravagant at all but I thought it was cool. Plus in the left corner there is a dry cleaners called 'Platform 9 3/4', just like in Harry Potter!! I still need to go to the real one but that requires going to London.
Wendy and me with our coffee...seriously, these people can drink a lot of coffee...and all of our bags of party food. mmm.
Apparently this is me trying to look cool on the train with my coffee and shades. This is the very front of the train and if you were to open that little door with the window, you would fall out...so don't do it. There's a little room on the right side that looks like it could be a bathroom, it's not, that's where the driver sits. Also...I'm modeling my new waterproof jacket that I had to get because as soon as it starts raining, which it does every other day, my pea coat weighs 30lbs.
So since this was the first time on the train, of course Edward had to come. Nicole and I had forgotten that Wendy hadn't actually met him, when he came out of my bag she almost spat out her coffee.
This is Wendy's face as she learned all about Edward and his adventures so far. As if she didn't think I was a bit weird already...
Edward rides the train!! Sitting at the front window, watching the other train come into the station.
The conductor came on board and he was a great sport! Seriously, he didn't question this or give me strange looks at all. I just asked if my little man could take a picture with him and he was like 'sure.'
And we're off to Wanganui in the countryside of New Zealand! What's funny, is that Nicole thought that this was my first time on a train because I was so excited and had even emailed her Dad to tell him this. Lies...all lies. Sorry Daddy Day, I have ridden our Amtrak system several times but never a little commuter train like this. It was kinda like that time when Nicole told me and Van that she had never been to Disney World, yet when we got there, she kept remembering things. Come to find out, she had been there twice....
Scenery from out the windows. We passed a marina with lots of boats.
And rolling hills.
And since we're on an island, of course we passed some water. That is not the South Island in the background...it's something that I can't remember.
This is the train station where we got off to meet Wendy's mum. Not quite in Wanganui yet.
The restrooms at the train station were out of order and we all thought we were going to die so we went to the shopping center across the street to find a toilet. These people were outside playing the violins. They were really good!
Waiting on the corner for Mum and her big blue truck.
Yellow tomatoes! What do you do with those??
Hey Daddy! Look, Jack Links! They only have the little packets and just these two flavors.
After the Grocery store, we picked up Wendy's Nana (not pictured). We were all so hungry so we cute through a 'mall' to get to this little cafe that Wendy suggested. So in this shopping center, there was a store called Garage Sale where there was a lot of weird stuff. Nana got really distracted, while Nicole and I found this awesome sweater. If they hadn't wanted 35$ for it, we would have bought it. But 35$...for a Humpty Dumpty/Potato Man sweater. Really??!
The yummy cafe where we dined for brunch.
I told you that they drink a lot of coffee here...they just make it so appealing, it's hard to say no. After brunch, we stopped at this awesome Trading Post. Nicole and I almost bought the entire store...not really, but we wanted too. It looks really small but it's HUGE!
Look Kathryn, this matches that bowl thing you gave Mom.
This fake old man...and woman next to him...scared Nicole because she came around a corner not paying attention and she thought they were real. It was hilarious.
More countryside in the big blue truck almost at Mum's house.
SHEEEPPS!!!! I was so excited about all the sheep that I kept seeing out of the windows, you know because sheep are a huge thing in New Zealand. Wendy's mum said that their neighbors had two little pet ones that they leave tied up outside all the time that we could go play with. Nicole was also excited because this was a first for her as well!
The little girl sheep was our favorite. She was so sweet and soft!
I would like a lamb please.
At this time, I was attempting to play with LambBoy but he was just interested in eating. That's really all they do. Eat grass. and poop.
Nicole with LambGirl.
I tried to put my glasses on LambGirl. She was pretty curious but didn't want them on her face. We forgot to take Edward to meet the sheeps because we were just too excited.
However, he did get to meet the chickens that Mum has at her house. Wendy's little sister had no problem handing over her job of feeding the chickens to me and Edward.
I have no pictures of the actually party, but we had lots of people there and we had a great time. And lots of great food! Happy Birthday Wendy!!!!!

I almost forgot about Edward!!

Edward used power tools too to help with the chairs!!

Booo-gie Nights!!

Happy Halloweeeen!! New Zealand is not big on Halloween at all (weird, I know) and it's one of my favorite holidays because you can dress up!!! It's also a favorite of Nicole's so we decided that we should have a party. Not as many people were able to come as we wanted but all of our favorites were there. I only have pictures of about 4 people on here...but there were more. Nicole is getting ready and making spider brownies. She and Manuel had to do all the cooking because I was at work.
Edward was there as a Mummy in the background.
Nicole drew all of these bats and I cut them out. I also put those curtains up...yay for thumbtacks and rubber bands! Martha Stewart's got nothing on us.
We collected all of these black candle holders from the salvation army stores and dripped red wax down these white candles so they looked like they were bleeding. Spoooky! Funny story about these. We put these up the night before Nicole brought home those German boys, you should have seen their eyes when they walked into the living room. We had to explain that this was not the normal decor!
New Zealand punkins are not at all like our punkins at home. They are short and squaty and Thick(!) and green. Theirs are more like a squash of some sort and they eat it throughout the year. These were an absolute pain to cut up. Nicole drew them out and Manuel battled them. We had to go basic due to time constraints and logistics. We have made way way cooler punkins in the past. I thought I would pay a little tribute to Orlando by being Minnie Mouse. I found this great dress and shoes at the salvation army...the shoes were a hideous beigey/brown color and I painted them! I didn't have ears either so I just made them with my hair.
Minnie Mouse and Wednesday Addams (aka Nessa from Kathmandu).

Nicole was one of those little parachute man toys. She had a giant rubber band around her and a stuffed trash bag. It was awesome!
Manuel was Wolverine. He hated growing his beard out for 2 weeks and kept complaining, but it turned out really well! Nicole made him claws too...but they aren't pictured. sorry. All in all we had a great night with great people!

"should we give the strangers sharp steak knives for their food or no?"

Manuel and I are both home one day when the phone rings and Nicole says she met some Germans (Manuel is German) at work and she was bringing them home for a BBQ. Our reaction was something like "OooK". So when Nicole gets home, she explains a little more. She works at an outdoors shop called Kathmandu and these backpackers came in and they seemed really cool so she invited them over. See, I told you, people just let strangers in over here. It's awesome.
These are our Germans. Julian and Nico are behind the couch, David and Manuel on the couch. Manuel and Nicole helped them plan their trip to the south island since they've been there before. Julian and Nico were traveling together and they met David last week. Julian and Nico were a little more quiet than David, he was nonstop and said 'like' more times than me! We grilled out and had a great time with them, so good in fact that we invited them to spend the night here instead of in their van, do laundry and take showers. So fun.I thought I had some pictures of the 6 loads of laundry that we did...the washers are really small here so it was only about 2-3 real loads. All I could find was the one of Edward with his Twilight detergent.
The boys ended up leaving all of their things at our place for the day and then come back for their laundry at night. We made dinner again and they brought two more Germans with them! I honestly don't remember these girls names except maybe Maureen and MaryJam (i swear that's what they were calling her) By this night, Julian and Nico were much more open and so much fun. We spent the night playing games and they even met Edward!!!
Nico thought the idea of Edward was awesome and wanted to make sure that he got to be the one to hold him.
This was an exceptionally beautiful sunset that Manuel captured the night we grilled out with the boys.

'Michelle, do you wanna go on about a 2hour walk?'

Last weekend, all three of us were off work and it was a beautiful day, so Manuel and Nicole asked me if I would like to go on about a walk. I asked the basics like where are we going? How long of a walk is it? Will I need provisions? I was told that it's only about 2 hours and it's a place called Red Rocks. Ok, sure. Sounds like fun. Nicole thought that we should stop and eat at this little family owned place called the Bach, said like 'batch', before our journey.
This was probably a good idea considering that our '2 hour walk' was really 6 hours. And that was only because Nicole and I hitch-hiked back. (don't worry, we were picked up by two older women, it's a very common thing to stop for strangers here.)
This whale was at the visitors center, the hike included the old rock quarry and there was some history of shipwrecks and other things in there. If you look closely, you can see Edward on the fin!!
This was a good distance into our walk. This part was easy because it was flat, there was some places that we had to walk through deeper sand and a whole area of small rocks that were kinda shifty. Plus it was really windy...but not cold.
Manuel and I way ahead of Nicole for some reason. Usually it was just Manuel waay ahead of us. This might have been when we had to chase Nic's sunglasses...they literally blew off of her face. Told you it was windy here.
Pretty.
This is me at Red Rocks. See, they're red. It's known because there are sooo many rocks and boulder things all around that are normal and then you turn around a corner and they're all red. Kiwi Kraziness.
Have I mentioned that Manuel likes to rock climb...even without gear.
King of the Mountain.
Nicole captured me looking like a silly as I was trying to figure out what that stuff was. It's some form of kelp that is really long and tangle-y. When it's out of water, it dries so when you stomp on it, it makes the loudest crunch ever! ah, the simple pleasures in life.
After Red Rocks is the seal colony! yay.
So we were only able to see about 4 but we were able to get really close to this guy.
We were on about a 5 foot tall rock and Manuel was on a rock a bit higher to get this picture. We couldn't get too close because apparently these things can get vicious. This was the end of seal season so we'll have to go again in the fall and hopefully we'll see a lot more!
The end.

Michelle + power tools = good idea???

Hello! So yet again I will start another blog post by saying I'm sorry that I haven't written anything in over two weeks but I have several things to post. So this picture above was taken from our deck on one of the most gorgeous days that I've seen, Manuel even said that this might be the best view of the South Island that they've ever had. Pretty right?? Yeah...it's not always like this. You're probably wondering what I've been so busy with that I can't find time to sit down and update this thing, I started my new job and worked alllll week long. After having a month off, this was not fun. At all. The people see nice enough but it's just a pain to get all dressed up just to sell some perfume. I much more prefer doing something with my hands so, in our spare time, Nicole is teaching me how use some power tools!

She bought this outdoor furniture...that I don't have a picture of, sorry...on TradeMe, which is kinda like Craigslist/Ebay for New Zealand. It was in a sorry shape and she's refinished the table and sewn new covers for the chairs but hadn't gotten around to actually finishing the chairs. Here I am using the sander/buffer like a pro...please note my safety goggles and glasses.

Are you impressed?? I should have a picture of the finished products...I'll get one of those up for next time!