Gobble Gobble Gobble

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!! Unfortunately I had to go into work for a few hours yesterday since Thanksgiving is not a holiday here and Farmers was having a huge one day sale. But I didn't have to work the whole day, just the busy lunch hours. YAY! Nicole walked down the hill with me in the morning because she had to go to the grocery store in preparation for our thanksgiving feast. We grabbed a quick bite to eat at the cafe right by the bus stop, called Mint and we decided to take a quick picture. I should have taken more pictures of the Parade...the main street in Island Bay...but I didn't think about it until I could see the bus coming. I'm sorry!!!
I got out of work at 2:30 and had some time to kill before my bus arrived so I thought everyone at home might want to see where I spend my day. This is Farmers. On Lambton Quay, pronounced 'Key.'
I learned that my camera can do a panoramic shot. So here's the street. This is the downtown area, what you can't see is that farmers only occupies 3 small floors of the building, it's about 20 stories full of offices...at least that's what I'm told. I'll try to get a good picture of downtown sometime.
This is my bus stop across the street from work. And these are the bright yellow buses that we have here that look like bumblebees. There are a few old ones too but these are all the electric ones that are most common. I wonder if that lady knew I was taking her picture...
So, you've all heard about 'the Hill' even though I've yet to take pictures for you. Well, there is another way home..besides a taxi. There's a bus that goes to the very tip top of this mountain, the walk is longer to get home but it's easier. The problem is, it only runs about once an hour opposed to the every 10 minutes like the bottom of the hill one. And the last pick up for the day is around 7:21 and sometimes you're just not done in town by this time. This is a shot of the street where the bus drops us off.
Edward is showing you the other side of the street. Similar view from our house.
Mostly just a downhill walk, this is much better.
Until you get to that hill. That's our street that goes straight up.
Good old Hudson street.
This is our blue mailbox. And these are the stairs to get to the house. See where the railing hides behind the bushes...
it's more stairs!!!
I made it to the top! We have a little people gate and this is the house. At least part of it. That's the inside of the kitchen that you can see, if you look closely, you might see Nicole in there cooking Thanksgiving dinner.
Manuel invited his friend, Tony and his family over to have a traditional thanksgiving with us so we made all the favorites. And by we, I mean Nicole. I did however make biscuits from scratch with Edwards help.
And if you're wondering how they turned out, they were ok. I feel like there's a secret to it that I should probably find out. maybe I kneaded them too much? I would like to try making them again sometime because they actually don't have biscuits in New Zealand. Just scones. Not the same. At all.

New Moon Premier

Image via Wikipedia

Some of you might not be aware that I am a huge fan of the Twilight series of books, but that's ok because it's geared towards 'young adults', which I'm technically not even though I lie about my age regularly. Vampires and werewolves aside, it's a really cute love story with 4 books in the series. The second novel, New Moon, was just adapted into a film version so of course Nicole and I went to the premier...at midnight. With our friend Pip. (not pictured) Edward Cullen came too...since this is his movie.

Good news was that we didn't even have to wait in line, these Kiwi's are geniuses and we had assigned seats on our tickets! Don't worry, we bought our tickets waay in advance and were able to pick exactly where we wanted to be. However, even after grabbing a snack after we met Pip, we still had a bit of time to wander around and with no stores open at 11pm, we took pictures. Nicole and I wanted to be part of the 'Where The Wild Things Are' poster so we are.

The theater is upstairs in this kinda food court thing and there are a few stores in there as well, but it's mostly food. Well, there were all these silver Christmas trees all decorated in the room, pretty much one in front of each store/restaurant. They were all a little bit different from one another but all with the same decorations, like they were each given the decorations and asked to decorate themselves. Cool idea right??
Well apparently the kids working in the record store are the rebels of the group and didn't get too creative.
This is a blurry picture of me and Nicole in front of the GINORMOUS movie poster on the building outside of the theater. What you can't see, is that we're wearing our matching 'Twilight' shirts and Edward is there. I realize this seems a little extreme but people thought our shirts were cool. You get no cool movie merchandise here like you can find at Hot Topic. It's crazy!
Nicole and I in the theater with Edward. I think we blinded the people behind us. Oops.
Ok...this may be a little extreme but I'll tell you anyways. Nicole saw that Border's Bookstore was doing a New Moon launch party and trivia quiz so she signed us up, along with Pip. The girl in the photo with me is not Pip, she's Grace...who's dressed as a character from the book...she was one of the girls that ran the quiz. There were three teams and our team won! Grace said that she was glad that we won because we looked like we were having the most fun. Go figure.
They fed us yummy cake!! Our prizes were actually worth something, these are the movie companion guides to both of the films which tells all about the set design, costuming, makeup(!), production notes and all sorts of things that Nicole and I just love. And we also won a t-shirt!

Tara might be the only one to appreciate this.

Whilst walking down one of the side streets in the city, Nicole and I came across this little pink camper van. We honestly didn't know what it was since we came across it from the back...and written in huge script was 'Princess Is Sleeping.' As we got closer, we saw that the door was open and there was a sign inviting us in, along with a teddy bear up of course. It was a little jewelry store!!

This little Asian girl had all sorts of random costume jewelry for sooo cheap in comparison to some of the stores here that sell girlie cute stuff. I bought a cute chunky charm bracelet and a big owl necklace for 15 dollars. I was stoked because I had seen the exact necklace at a store called 'Diva' for over 30 dollars. YAY!! This is the inside, how cute is this place? I mean really?? ps...if i ever need a camper van, it will most likely look like this.

Look, I have friends! This was taken the night of Nicole and Vanessa's birthday dinner. (Nicole, Jen, Me and Vanessa) Nicole works with Jen and Vanessa. There were more people there...but they weren't around when the camera was there. Except for Neil, but he's the photographer.

I found some more pictures!!!

Most of the pictures on my blog have been either from Nicole's big fancy camera but I had some on my camera that I thought were cool from some of our past events. I won't write too much about them.For the Halloween party, Edward dressed up as a mummy...instead of the vampire that he actually is. This is him with our creepy bleeding candles. He perched here all night.

I surprised Nicole with this picture while we were doing all of the laundry that the German boys brought. I told y'all that the washer was small. (it's the one on the bottom)
These are some cool houses that I saw on our walk to Red Rocks that one day a few weeks ago. These were all facing the ocean because there is nothing on the other side of the street...except the sidewalk that I was walking on.
This weirdly shaped house is just one of those things that you want to go in to just to see what that triangle room really looks like. Is it a room? or a vaulted ceiling? Can you look out of the little porthole??
These people obviously missed the fact that you're supposed to look at boats from your balcony...not be in a boat on your balcony. Either way, I want a boat to be attached to my house someday.
Yes, this is a house. Possibly a 'Bach' which is like a summer beach house here. There's really like no room in this thing but it's awesome.
Hope you've enjoyed the new additions!!

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!!!!!