Thursday 28 January 2016

~Holiday~ Part 1 :)



It’s Monday morning, the 25th. I’m not too sure whether I’ll get this posted online today, or whether I’ll get there on the weekend. I’m doing a very extreme thing, typing this up on Word, lol. It’s mostly because I don’t really have internet access with my laptop, I need to do a very out there thing and walk into my Nana’s office and press the button on the router to connect – but I’m feeling lazy and can’t be bothered! Haha

So I thought I’d give you lot a split post of my holiday, mostly because I don’t really want to forget anything and also because I don’t think you really want to be reading a very, very long post. So, two sections it is!
Well as you know, I’m on holiday at the moment, yesterday I arrived back in Rotorua for the night after my trip to the East Coast (sorta). So I’ll start from the beginning…cue the lead in music ;)

Last Monday morning Nana and I left my place in the north, prepared for a nice trip back to Rotorua with not too much traffic and the weather not being too extreme in either direction. Said goodbye to everyone at home, including my Pipsquiggilysqueak and off we went. I have to admit, it felt rather surreal after all those months of planning and thinking and planning some more, bouts of excitement and serious thoughts of, “do I really want to go??”
We made it to Drury in record time, only an hour and a half? It was a great trip, I shouted Nana McDonald’s for lunch and on our way back out again she handed me the car keys. Looks like I’m driving! That was weird in itself, driving an unknown vehicle in that short section of motorway but not really motorway, more like a two lane highway thing, before we pulled off towards Coromandal. I drove all the way to Matamata while Nana dozed, it seemed a little odd but I didn’t think much of it at the time – I was too focused on NOT crashing my Grandmother’s car, especially when there was no insurance for me on it. It definitely makes one focus, very well.

Eventually we arrived home in Rotorua, went off to pick up her cat, Sweetie from the cattery and then chillaxed at home (gosh, chillaxed is actually an acceptable word on here?!). I guess you can say that night, it all went downhill fast. Nana had caught the bug.
*rewinds the tape back to Nick’s birthday party* My Great Aunt and her partner arrived on the Friday, however he had somehow caught this nasty stomach bug, leaving him out to the count and the rest of us politely avoiding him at all costs. Saturday night, my Great Aunty now has the bug, earlier in the day she handled a vast amount of food in the food preparation, some of it got cooked, some of it didn’t. Uh oh, looks like we may have started an epidemic! The worst part was, we had about 30 odd people over that night, this was not good. So yeah, now Nana has this awful thing and she’s out to it pretty fast. Leaving me absolutely mortified, feeling like a sitting duck…I got straight on to the email, letting Andrew know that if the worst were to happen, sorry to disappoint but I would not be coming to them!

Nana was pretty unwell for Tuesday and Wednesday, not eating until Wednesday night, Thursday she still wasn’t too good. Every day I would wake up and sort of ground myself – “am I feeling sick yet?” Nope! Back home, Dad was suddenly hit with the bug, leaving Mum and Nick terrified about catching it themselves!

Fast forward back to Thursday, I packed myself up for the next stage of my holiday. Called Andrew’s family to tell them I was definitely coming and basically got really assertive on my immune system stating that I would NOT be getting this bug, so it better jolly well do its job! Haha

I met my Aunty, Uncle and two cousins at the bus stop, as they were coming up to stay with Nana on the few days that I was away, my bus arrived, I was eventually allowed on board and then finally – at least half an hour behind schedule, we were off. Breathes out a sigh of relief, I’m finally on my way! Talk about excited, lol.

The trip sure was interesting, going through all these towns that I’d only ever heard of but never knowingly been to. Mum had suggested to sleep whilst going through the Gorge, but as soon as I saw it my eyes almost popped out of my head. It’s beautiful in there, I was definitely looking at everything I could, sleep? Yeah nah! I'm sure Bee would've loved it for the photo opportunity it provides, although going through on a bus proves quite difficult to capture good photos through dirty glass.

I’m not going to say where the bus dropped me off, or where Andrew and his Mum took me after that, but it was a good long trip and now I can finally say I’ve met this crazy friend of mine ;P haha. And it wasn’t even slightly weird, I thought anyway. It seemed so normal talking to them in person, as if I went out there quite often :)


I won’t bore you on every little detail, but Thursday night through to Sunday morning sure was interesting. A very drastic contrast to staying with Nana, where she has neighbours surrounding her and hearing someone sneeze in the next house over the fence is not uncommon. Staying at Andrew’s was more like, you can hear every single bird, I don’t believe I heard any car go past. It’s so quiet. These two places are at either end of the extreme compared to home for me, where it’s quiet but not too quiet. While you can hear the neighbours but only when the wind is going the right way. Right now, as I write this, it seems there’s some form of concert going at one of the neighbours, they’ve got their music up THAT loud, and it’s only 10am…
Anyway, I got to hang out in the woolshed and watch Andrew and his Dad crutch some hoggets for a while on Friday morning, before going for a ride on the horses with his Mum and sister. The idea I think was to look for cast sheep in one mob, I was more focused on actually riding – (which was so much easier than when I rode Socks at Chantelle’s!) and not falling too far behind while leading the horses back down the hills. While also not letting Blaze (the lovely horse I got to ride) shove me into too many thistles when he tried scratching on me haha.
They finished the crutching up over two or three hours after lunch, so I just mostly hung out and chatted with them up in the woolshed again. I think I do need an award though…not once did I mention the smell of those sheep. To be completely honest…I never noticed the smell. What is wrong with me?!?! ;)
At some stage, I can’t remember when, I was shown around their small museum which was rather neat. And we went for a drive to the top of their farm in the Argo. That was a pretty neat view, I have to say! Played a few games of Rummikub, where I’m ashamed to say I only won one game…and played a few games of Checkers, where most of the time was spent in fits of laughter after one of us made the most stupid move without thinking about it. The competition was pretty fierce, yet I only won one game, although it was the last one and for some reason Andrew didn’t want to play against me again too soon after that…lol

But if you’re interested to know, after meeting him you soon realise he’s the type of person who walks around the house with a gun at night. No joke. :P Nah, they’ve got a possum attacking the trees in their orchard, so we went out for a somewhat unsuccessful possum hunt late on Saturday night.
Sunday morning came around way too soon, we left their place at 7am with the intention of taking a slight detour round to this waterfall and swing bridge. It was gorgeous over there, and so loud! We went for a quick wander down a walking track on the other side, saw my first Weta Hotel and such, before heading back in time to catch my bus.

The bus back was rather, unexciting but not pleasant either. Ten minutes through the Gorge one girl pushed the emergency stop button and soon got told off by the driver as she said she wasn’t feeling well. He made her go sit up the front with him. Mental note: Don’t press the emergency stop button unless you have a good reason to! But once we stopped up in Opotiki the driver looked out for her, which was good of him. Gosh I felt so bad on the way back though, sort of got myself a headache which might’ve been to do with a number of things. Might’ve been hungry and thirsty, but I wasn’t too keen on adding to the stomach contents and it might’ve been the heat and the traveling, but I’m not too sure about that either.
Once we got to Whakatane though, an awful noise started up. Have you ever gotten a leaf in your aircon/fan system? I think that might’ve been what happened, but strangely the sound was only coming from one venting system across the aisle and one seat forward. It was a rattling, vibrating, scratchy sort of sound all the way to Rotorua. I nearly died from the pain of it! But I blame the guy who got on and sat under that vent at Whakatane, he put his bag above the vent and then the rattle started…then he promptly went to sleep! Argh!

But now I’m just sitting here at Nana’s waiting for my friend Jessie to come over and pick me up, before heading back to her place in Te Awamutu. I’ve known Jess my whole life, she’s basically the bestie who I hardly get to see but when we do catch up we get on like a house on fire. It was funny actually, Mum said to me before I left home, “Don’t get up to trouble with Andrew when you go to Gisborne…” then she sort of thought about it, and said, “Actually, I trust you going to Gisborne. Don’t get up to trouble with Jessie!” We may not get up to the same sort of mischief our Mum’s did when they were our age, prank calling and such, but we could get up to some serious trouble making if we really wanted to ;)
The News was kinda sad last night though, talking about the young surf lifesaver who drowned the day before. I was just sitting there desperately trying to hold back the tears as they described this 17 year old who I’d never heard of before but he sounded like a really neat person. Also while thinking to myself that life is just so cruel. Especially when you think of the poor 5 year old who fell underneath a Fonterra tanker the other day, that one was a little too close to home I think. It really makes me appreciate how lucky I am, sure they were both doing something they enjoyed, but still, I dunno. Normally I wouldn’t be too affected by it, think oh that’s sad and then move on, but it must’ve caught me at a bad moment… I feel kinda guilty for having had such a fun weekend, while at least for those two families it was the worst weekend for them.

Fast forward now to Thursday 28th, I'm on the Intercity bus on my way home - I'm almost there, one more town away. Intercity sure has been a different system to go through, I can't say I like their terminal at Sky City, after having a slight scare in the public bathrooms there - I don't think I'll ever go in there again, especially not on my own. Otherwise, yeah, I honestly can't wait to be home. Figured I'd upload this now as I won't get much of a chance for a few more days at home I think, photos aren't uploading for some reason on this one, so you guys will just have to wait a bit and I'll pop them up in part 2.
Just another 20 minutes to go, probably less. I'll chuck up part 2 in a few days once I get my bearings again. :)

7 comments:

  1. Wow! Sounds like you've had a great time! Bet you're glad you left the bug behind! :P

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    1. Oh yes, definitely glad to leave it! Lol

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  2. Chillaxed yes I think so....

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  3. Haha, that whole time in the woolshed, I was thinking, I hope you're not minding the smell too much... :P Trouble is, I don't notice the smell of sheep at all, because I'm used to it. You'd be the same with cows, I guess? Also the condition of the sheep. Better condition sheep do tend to smell better...

    And the checkers, didn't you win two games of that? I dunno, the defeat was just so humiliating, I mean, you still had over half your pieces!!! :P Might not tell anyone that though, would be too embarrassing... :P

    Aye, that life saver incident was pretty sad... Didn't hear about the 5yo, but there's always something to keep you sober aye?

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    1. That awkward moment when instead of publishing your comment...I deleted it. And the stupid thing is that you can't go "undo" so then you need to copy and paste from the email system, and then go through the whole "I'm not a robot" process, on your own blog. Interesting lol

      Um, yeah there are some farms, one in particular actually where as soon as I drive in the gate it stinks, all the bought in feed, high input farms stink. They're all pretty different.
      Hmm, OK if you think so, I don't mind taking a bit more glory from the checkers games! lol yeah better keep that one quiet :P

      Ah, you didn't hear about it? Your Dad was talking about it, that's how I heard about it, think it played on the radio at the time.

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    2. Haha, awkward... Mine lets you undo no trouble, it gets annoying, when someone posts the same comment twice, presumably by mistake, I just delete the second one, but then every time I log back on, it brings it up again...

      Yeah, every farm is different I guess. Our sheep have no supplement feed, so that eliminates a lot of trouble instantly...

      Haha, yeah, I'm positive we had three, and you won 2... The second one by so much, it was just too embarrassing to consider!!! But then you vs my sister would be interesting, a couple of nights ago I beat her after only losing about 6 pieces. I made so many doubles I ran out... :P

      Ummm, was it? Hehe, okay... I normally listen to the radio, too, can't remember him saying that at all though!!! Must've been the stress of shearing, all that heat, cooked my memory or something... :P

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    3. Lol, should've had a game against Laura - that would've been interesting. Ok sweet, I don't mind taking more credit against you! Ha!

      Lol, excuses must.

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