Well since our last blog entry, Chris and I have become WWOOFers, and before some of you start to try and create your own (rude) answers to this acronym, it stands for Willing Workers On Organic Farms. Yes that's right we are 'willing' farm workers (?!).

Now let us start from the beginning and take you back two weeks....

Having had no luck on the job front and no sign of anything on the horizon, despite signing up to every recruitment company in Auckland and sitting through countless, numerical and logical reasoning tests, and even contacting hotels in the area to see if they needed housekeeping staff and applying for a job as a Busser (which were rejected from due to lack of experience! How much experience can you need?!). We were beginning to feel like we would never find work. Then on a hostel notice board we came across WWOOFs, and thought in a bid to save money and experience a different aspect of NZ life, this would be a good idea. So $40 later we registered online and contacted several farm owners in the Auckland area to see if they required any willing workers. The principle with WWOOF is that you work on the farms for 4-5 hours a day in exchange for food and accommodation. Now we just had to wait...

Then on Sunday (3rd May) we were strolling along the waterfront here in Auckland admiring the beautiful view, when our NZ mobile started to ring (a rare occurrence!), desperately scrapping for the phone we answered and to our delight, it was a chap called Andrew who owns 2 vineyards about 1/2 hour from Auckland City. He said he needed workers for a few days to help on the vineyard starting tomorrow (Monday).

Monday morning we got up at the crack of dawn and caught the first bus to Mangatawhiri (south of Auckland) where we ended up spending the next 5 days taking down bird nets from the vines. As jobs go, this proved not to be too bad, although there were certain occupational hazards, mainly involving bees and wasps! Andrew assured us that he only got stung 4 times the whole season (10 months) and after two days Chris had incurred the same number on one hand and I had one on my finger grr! The work also turned out to be a good leg and bum workout as the vineyards were both located on hills, so walking up and down all day has done wonderous things for our quads!

Andrew and Joy, his partner, were very hospitable and cooked us some fantastic meals, mainly involving vegetables (as they were vegetarian) which was very good for us! Only trouble was, with all this hard work we were starving and veggies just didn't cut it especially since they clearly thought us waif-like creatures didn't eat much- how wrong they were!!! We were starving so by the end of the week we were looking forward to getting back to the city for some decent tucker! On a positive note we did get to sample some home-grown wine each day which was lovely and on our final day Andrew and Joy took us on a trip to the Hinua Ranges nearby and we went for a two hour trek to the Hinua falls which was beautiful.

During our work on the Vineyard, we received lots of calls regarding work (typical, the minute you are not sat eagerly waiting by your phone!). Chris got an offered a very good job in Papa New Guinea (random), but after conducting some research, we discovered that they had only recently stopped eating people and our life expectancy would be about 7 days due to the various epidemics that potentially could break out at any moment! Unfortunately on this basis we were forced to turn this down! I was offered a couple of jobs and accepted a 2 month contract at a private hospital in Auckland called MercyAscot starting Monday. So after finishing our 5 day stint on the vineyard we headed back to the city to prepare for working the week ahead!

So I started work last Monday (11th May) and its very interesting working in hospital admissions. Chris got offered a job in New Plymouth, however that's about 4 hours from Auckland so unfortunately not practical now we have based ourselves in Auckland so is still on the job hunt! We will be staying in Auckland for the next couple of months, living in a hostel as we have struck a really good deal with them for long term stay. In fact the hostel is really good as the majority of its residents are long stay so you see the same people and they are all doing a similar thing to us, working or studying English.

In our free time we are still exploring Auckland on foot and this month its the International Comedy Festival so on Saturday we went and watched a comedy show called 'Full English' which was really good. So for now we are back to normal life of work, sleep, eat and save until we can afford leg 2 of the world wide adventure!

We'll update again soon! Chow for now! :O)