we've not written a blog for a while as I guess we've not really had that much news to tell as we have mainly been working and saving money (ughh). But here are a list of our highlights over the last couple of months....

I celebrated my 23rd birthday! Dom rustled up a homemade chocolate cake and a boysenberry jelly for me (with sweets inside!). He's so cute. The day before my birthday i did arrive home from work to find the house smelling suspiciously choclaty and cakey but no cake in sight (he's good at hiding...believe me i searched high and low) but later when i went to have some yogurt out of the fridge and found the pot to have a cocoa handprint on it it was confirmed that indeed he had been baking. I was spoilt with friends and family sendings thoughtful gifts and cards over, thank you everyone! I spent the day working at a childrens holiday club which i was employed as a supervisor to run over the two week easter holiday period. I really enjoyed doing this.... visit to a goldmine, cooking scones, going to the cinema, playing tig, making gruffalo puppets. For my actual birthday myself and the other supervisor planned a PJ day... so off i went to "work" in my PJs, played with the parachute, made a den, watched Space Jam and drank hot chocolate....not bad for a days work eh! Talking of playing tig, in New Zealand when you're "it" all the other kids chant "Mellissa's it, Mellissa's it, Mellissa's in the rubbish bin, eating chocolates one by one, now she's got a hairy bum"... i found this out the hard way with 40 or so kids all singing and pointing at me but i found this just enraged my competitive streak even more.... mu-haha-ha-haaa!

Our Californian friends Eddie and Devon who we met earlier in our trip came to stay with us for a few days as they were passing through Wanaka. It was awesome to have their company and although Dom and I were working in the day we spent the evenings swapping travelling stories and laughing.....laughing so much infact that at one point Devon literally choked on her drink! Devon is a nutritionalist in the USA so we had many interesting conversations and recipies to swap.

Zumba.... I love it! I've been shaking my butt, shimmying my boobs and thrusting my pelvis along to the latin inspired tunes. 'Booty Shake' is my favourite routine (have a look at this clip on youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mda6E-yAeHg&feature=related ... watch the dude in the pink gilet (lol)) The cool down to 'if you like pina coladas" is particularly good too. Dom has also been playing for Wanaka A FC if he can fit it in around work. That's ma boy!

We hiked to a glacier which was pretty spectacular (as was the delux picnic i made). It took about an hour to drive to the starting point of the walk (about 54km i think). 40km of that was gravel, dirt, unsealed road where we had to dodge around cows and sheep, drive through fords and repeatedly turn off our windscreen wipers which kept coming on as the vibration/bumpyness of the road was so intense! That's New Zealand for you! The walk, although mainly uphill, was worth every second... swing bridge, beech forest, waterfalls... we even heard a massive crack when we reached the glacier but couldn't see an avalanch so must have been on the other side. When we sat on some rocks to have our picnic (penne puttanesca recipe a la Phillippa Edwards) little mice kept popping up beneath the cracks, very sweet but I had no intention of sharing.

We did a bladdy bungy jump! Yes we actually paid real money to be strapped together and throw ourselves off Kawarau Bridge (where the originally bungy was created in 1988). We were really psyched to do this, even more excited when getting strapped together, still excited when standing on the platform, but when i had to shuffled forward so my toes were over the edge the penny dropped (why the f*ck am i throwing myself off a bridge??!!!!). Just then the bungy-dude started his countdown. '3....2' and at 2 I turned to Dom and said in all seriousness "I can't do it". But it was far too late for second thoughts and sure enough where Dom went at the count of '....1....GO' I had to follow. Next thing I know we're off the bridge and hurtling towards the turquoise river below, me clinging on to Dom for dear life and shreiking with terror! Wicked experience, we'd both do it again in an instant. What made this jump extra special was our kiwi mum and dad, Liz and Geoff, came to watch and support us. It was really lovely having someone there to and capture the experience with. We spent the rest of that day exploring Arrowtown which is an olde-worlde gold mining town. The autumn colours were simply gorgeous, we had a pot a tea in a quaint coffee shop and strolled hand in hand around the chinese mining settlement.

So those have been our highlights since arriving here in Wanaka but it would be remiss of us not to mention that, like a Chelsea Champion's League campaign (yes Dom wrote this bit), there's a lot of uninspiring though necessary effort surrounding the glory. We've come to a point where the we are no longer inspired by our situation. A number of things haven't worked out as we had hoped. In no particular order: acquring a ski-pass proved to be too expensive, I was unsuccessful in succeeding with my back up plan of getting a mountain job, we are not saving as much money as we would like from our dull and unrewarding jobs nor seeing each other enough (due to frequent opposite shifts) to be able to 'enjoy ourselves' or 'make the most of it' as we would like, and we feel isolated in our cold (freezing!!!) house (we miss you all!!!) This all in itself is not the problem, this is life and we are where we are through our own choices, but it IS causing us to ask all too frequently the question 'what are we getting out of this now?' Given that we can't find a convincing answer to this question to justify staying a further 4 months (until we would have to leave due to our flight commitments) we have decided to spend 2 more months here before heading back via Japan, for as long as our budget will allow. This will give us enough time to get our fill of the surrounding countryside (Mellissa can't wait!), maybe do a couple of days of snowboarding, and to see out the football season whilst not being too depressingly long a time to stay at our jobs. Oh, and maybe we'll try squeeze in a skydive too!