She would meringue, and do the salsa

Well, it's been an eventful couple of weeks! I didn't take the coffee shop job because it required me to work all my weekends, and after all I didn't come to New Zealand for the awesome opportunities to advance my in-store cafe career, I came to see the countryside, which most of my friends do on the weekend. So instead the last couple of weeks haver been spent applying to temp agencies and seeing the countryside on the weekends! Amazing.

Kevin and Shawn went with us to hike around the Port Hills to the southeast of Christchurch. We spent the day there and hiked over 10km.

The best part was definitely the playground on top of the hill, in particular this swing set. I had to set the timer and slide down the slide in less than 10 seconds to get that shot! You people don't know, don't know the trouble I go to.
Anyhoo, then we hiked around the edge of the peninsula and climbed around tide pools and whatnot.

We walked over one hill, narrowly avoiding some very scenic houses, and down to the beach, where Shawn (the Canadian) suggested it would be fun to dip our feet in the water. Even Erin felt that the water was a bit cool for this.

By the end of the day we were totally exhausted, and some of us were becoming less than photogenic, but fortunately we randomly ran into Amy and Carl on top of the hill, and they gave us a rather cozy ride down to our car so we wouldn't have to walk the 10k back!
Since I'm not a cafe employee I've kept my daffodil job.

June and Anne are the women who taught me everything I know. They live a few kilometers from the farm, and have been picking for years.

They always leave me in the dust at the end of the day, but they're fun to talk to, when we can understand one another through our thick accents. In any event, it's a nice locale.
As Erica so delicately mentioned in her last comment, I am dating a british guy at the moment and having a great time going salsa dancing and ineffectually gate-crashing private parties. Unfortunately Peter is leaving for south america and eventually going back to London in a couple of weeks, so we're making the most of it and galavanting about the north island next week to see the sights. So one more week of work, then vacation, then I hopefully come back to a temp job with one of my four companies. With any luck I'll have a chance to make another update before leaving for the north island, but if not then remember this, if my aunt had wheels she'd be a bicycle.