Life goes on in New Zealand! Our working life has become a little more absorbing as we both get stuck into working in the Salty Dog Inn. It's just what we needed, lots of hours, good pay and good fun. We even get the same days off! It gets a bit knackering though, with early mornings following late nights...but thoughts of white sands and clear waters in Thailand keep us going!

Matt sweats away all day in his corner of the kitchen, impressing everyone by having mountains of veggies all pre-cut and the pizza oven nice and clean! Cal on the other hand prefers to keep herself entertained by self-humiliation exercises; eg. a nice British family with two lovely children order a meal (80% of customers are British!), the mother says 'My daughter wants a margarita'. Cal is a little shocked that one so young should be allowed alcoholic drinks, but then the mother looks up and winks and says 'without the red onion please'. Cal's sleep deprived mind understands perfectly...red onion must be Mum's secret code for alcohol - one non-alcoholic margarita coming up....just to check though she asks the family again later if they only wanted 3 meals and one drink. No, 4 meals. But the margarita...? Is of course a pizza. With no actual real non-code red onion. Wink obviously not intended and badly timed. Mother offended that Cal would think she would feed her child alcohol. Needless to say the rest of the meal didn't go too well either, and parents concluded ditzy waitress was hungover instead of very tired. How rude! Ah that was but one incident of many believe me....

We have concluded that largely for the sake of Cal's sanity, we had better use our 2 days off a week to rest and have therefore decided that picking mandarins in the beating sun on those days is a bad idea. So now we'll use them for fun and frolics in the beating sun instead! Lots of fishing, swimming and sleeping planned. We'll go back to the mandarins if the hours dry up in the pub, but it's unlikely because there are lots of weddings booked...so for now the weekend comes on Wednesdays and Thursdays for us - yay! We've been exploring all that can be reached on foot in the local area and have found some lovely spots nearby. We discovered there's a good reason why Donkey Hill has it's name...

We're really enjoying going to church at Lifeway too - we told the pub the only time we couldn't work in a week is a Sunday morning, so our shifts on Sundays start straight after church. It's good to hear what God is doing on this side of the world, and some very exciting promises are on their way to fruition! We usually have time for a nice cuppa or a bite of lunch with Jo and Amie too, and Africa is getting really big now. She can crawl, has 2 little teeth and pulls some highly entertaining faces!

Only just over a month left of this little routine, and then we hit the south island and the open road beckons us into its welcoming arms once again!

Thanks for all your messages and emails! xx