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...

So here we are in Lake Wanaka all settled in our home away from home. Within a week were were both "lucky" enough to find jobs...Dom as a porter in a hotel and I as a barista in a 50's style diner coffee shop (with it's very own harley Davidson and juke box) so the money has begun to roll back our way. We've also found our own pad to live in but aren't moving in for another couple of weeks. It was hard to resist renting the place as everything, and i really mean ...

We've just spent the last ten days HelpXing with the lovely Matla family in Otaki on the outskirts of Wellington. On arriving we couldn't believe our luck when we saw our accomodation.... a cute cottage next to the veggie patch and overlooking an inhabited dove cote. I ran excitedly from room to room opening drawers, turning on the taps, laying on the bed, boiling the kettle in an excited 'we've got our own house again' kind of way. Sonja and Tim were incredibl...

so after a casual interview and hanging around for three days camping to discover the outcome we finally moved into the Bayview Chateau Tongariro as paid employees. The Chateau is an isolated hotel which was built in 1929 set amongst Mount Ruapehu, Mount Tongariro and Mount Ngaraheu AKA Mount Doom from Lord of the Rings. The hotel still holds the old world charm, chandeliers and many of the original features even if it could so with a little TLC around the edge...

To recap, we had decided to make good our escape from the Chateau Tongariro figuring life, and the life of our work visas, was too short to be miserable there. We were then left with the daunting problem of what to do next. We had not only not earned anything significant to ease our financial situation but had also lost the security of a couple of months employment within which to figure out our next move. The first of our two competing options was to make a ma...