It's raining, it's pooring!

oh my god! the weather has done a complete 180 the last week. Where is was warm last week, actually stinking hot, whole country having drought problems, farm on water restrictions, river so low you could practically walk across the main stream to the other side! This week has been heavy rain, rivers flooding, bridges washing out, grass turning green again (jippie) and to top it off...today when the clouds around the mountain started to break it revealed the most amazing sight.....snow in February! oh my god it's so beautiful makes me want to go out and by my season pass for Mt Hutt and a snowboard straight away hahah. Inside it's nice and cozy because yes Toby lit the fire! the smell of the wood burner brings back so many memories of my time traveling last year. I might have been the only happy person in Canterbury today ;-)

What else..spending most my time either here at Trudy's behind the computer, looking for jobs, working on my CV, standards are a bit different for back home. They practically want you to write a book about yourself. Had help from Gaye and now it's all up to NZ standards. Am very grateful for that! Also through her I now have some contact within Manpower and although the few job they had that matched my skills didn't work out they are very positive so that help me to keep my hopes up. Have contacted all my other contacts throughout the country, keep checking the paper. It's all just taking a bit more time then I anticipated so have to be patient.

Car is giving me grief, was overheating on our trip to Nelson. The Hororata garage, where I bought it, put a new radiator in and some new hoses. But although it run well for 2 weeks it started to loose water again so I figured better run down to the garage to have them check it out. Lucky I did because the radiator literally blew 100m before the garage. Oh well again a new radiator...three times is lucky right! or in my case no... just a little trip to Darfield made me arrive home with the water boiling again. Guess I'm off to the garage again tomo!

I've decided that I can't sit around checking my e-mail and waiting by the phone for that job to arrive so I'm going to enjoy this lovely country. Bought my hiking boots Wednesday! My first real outdoor experience was with Kristy 2 weeks ago. While enjoying a lovely glass of red wine in the late Sunday afternoon sun she suggested we go for a kayak down the Rakaia river. It only take an hour to get down, plus some time to get set up...or at least that's what she said. It turned out to be the most beautiful, adventures and funny 7,5 hours we had ever spent together ;-). Thing is she only had her kayak so we had to drive down to her parent place to get the other kayak. Just a 20 min drive one way. Then we had to locate a car at the bottom, the farm runs down to the river but from the main road it's about 15 min. Then drive to the top, get the gear on, get my kayak adjusted to me. Then came the good part. The views were amazing and like a mentioned before the river was low so good for me. Now big rapids just easy going and every time the current did pick up I was so happy and joehoeing it was brilliant! Then we were supposed to get out at the farm intake put it seemed as though the river just all came together at that point at the current had real great force, we tried to paddle our way back but me not being experienced the current just pushed the front of my kayak back so I turned with the flow. We decided it would be better to find another spot further down so we did. This did mean we had to walk back to the car, then drive back to the top, pick up kristy's car and then back to the river bed to collect the kayaks, I don't have roof racks you see. But because we were further down then the intake we had a little trouble to find the right track, it was dark when we started our search and after seeing literally every track on the 4k long farm, 1,5 hours later we found them and I got home at 23.30! It was great!

Overall I'm doing good. It's confusing at times. I feel torn between emotions. I love it here but I'm constantly asking myself why am I here? is this really where a want to be for the rest of my life? Where am I going with my life? Questions I can't answer, not at the moment. I have to stay positive, the job hunting is more difficult then I thought but will be fine, my car oh well I think it's safe to say I bought a lemon but I try not to interpret these things as signs that it might not be the right choice for me to be here. Although it doesn't always feel right, and I tend to rely on my feelings a lot, it doesn't mean it's wrong. I'm glad I have Trudy who allows me to feel this and cries with me when I miss my friends. She keeps reminding me of what I'm trying to do here, that it's a big thing and that these emotions are to be expected. Oh and Maartje was talking about the emotional fases that you go through with immigration, must google that!