So prepare yourself people this might be quite long...

So I was on the bus going to Queenstown, I had a jolly little bus driver he was loving life. He did running commentary the whole way there. Please bear in mind this was an 8 hour bus ride… He was actually sweet and very informative I kept trying to nap but would then get sucked into hearing about the farms, vineyards and mountains surrounding us. It was a stunning bus journey, I think I'd almost forgot how beautiful New Zealand is known for being as I was constantly amazed at the natural wonder. On the way we stopped for lunch in Lake Tekapo which turns out to have been my most favourite spot in New Zealand so far, it was so gorgeous, peaceful and serene. Apparently it's the most popular place to get married in the country which does not surprise me. Its this teeny peaceful little town with nothing there but the most stunning lake. Its also famous for some hot spring pools and also stargazing. So after the best bus stop lunch break I've ever had in my whole time of travelling (and I would like to point out in Asia bus stop breaks often involve 7/11s which I am of course a HUGE fan of). We got back on the bus and by now our wee bus driver was getting really excited as we were quite close to Queenstown now so he started talking about Mrs Jones Fruit Shop which is in a place called Cromwell which is maybe 45 mins away from Queenstown. So we were all on edge to get to this fruit shop, there is millions of samples and also all the fruit is grown in her back garden (which is like 100 acres obviously as its proper farmed fruit. So of course when we arrived every bus tour currently on the south island was stopped there for this fruity goodness. There was a ton of people from Asia photographing everything. I didn't buy any fruit nor did I try any as it was all crap stuff left. But you could walk round some of the gardens which I did it was a lovely place and obviously Mrs Jones is onto a winner there she must be bloody minted! Everyone was buying something (apart from me) she also did homemade ice cream which looked amazing. I went for a wee stop and was so happy to see a sign written in Mandarin explain that you could not stand on the toilet seat as it is for sitting on. Hahaha I forgot I wasn't in Asia anymore. This stuff is awesome. It's funny because there is often footprints on toilet seats in Asia as it really happens… Mad world.

So I arrived in Queenstown which was exciting it immediately reminds me of Keswick in the Lakes which is basically what it is. I found my hostel with ease it was great I got free dinner of cottage pie. I then went and met Scouse Helen who I met on Gili T!! We hit the vino instantly wahey! She's been here like 5 days now so its pretty cool I now have my own tour guide!! We end up going for a meal in the oldest restaurant in town called the Cow. I eat a bit of garlic bread as of course I had free dinner, I realise how expensive New Zealand is today its like $36 for a pizza… erm that's like 18quid. WTF!?

So after my one night in Nomads I have to move to Southern Laughter as Queenstown is full so no accommodation anywhere, I cant get into Helens either as hers is also packed. For the time being. I last maybe 6 nights in Southern Laughter which I hate it's a unfriendly clique hostel and its freezing in my room which is more like a caravan cabin thing from the 1970s. Urgh, a few sweet posh kids (18/19) do end up in my room but I cant deal with their young issues of like 'oh god I've not called Mummy today yet' and 'what if you need to be sick when you drink too much?' god seriously. I hate to be ageist especially as a older traveller but my god I can't deal with the posh kids. Give me the kids who were dragged up on the council estate and bottles of pop. They are my kinda people!!!

So I end up moving to the Flaming Kiwi where Helen lives to do work for accommodation apart from , the day before I'm about to move in I'm offered a job selling a famous extreme sport tourist thing to do here. So I turn down the work for accommodation and move in paying full price rent instead and then the job is removed from me as it was 'offered in error' Majorly pissed off. That's not how you treat a backpacker, I ask for a free go of their extreme sport as apology but of course I don't get one. b******s.

So I panic a bit about the job thing and head to the Call Centre here, and of course am offered a start date/trial for Monday morning. So 7 days after being in Queenstown I gotta job!! I spend the weekend going mental with Helen and the others in preparation for working life. Over 6 months have now passed since I worked on the farm. So I'm ready for it now.

So head to work Monday do 4 hours of 'training' or listening to a man tell us how easy our jobs gonna be, there's me and 2 kiwi girls who are sweet, but mental. At the end of the day we spend 30 mins on the phone I get one sale. I'm selling Funeral Insurance, Income Protection and Life Insurance. But actually I'm not selling a thing I'm trying to make people agree to have a call back from a proper person who will actually try to sell them the product so it's not so bad. Target is one per hour eventually. I can handle this until I find a real job I swear. After work we all get a $40 drinks voucher for Boiler Room a cool bar in town so me and Natalie one of the Kiwis head there and get accidently s*** faced in celebration of having a job. We are new BFFs haha. Helen comes and meets us and eventually we roll home a wee bit merry.

First day at work I do ok, Nat is having a bad day and appears to be sacked halfway through the shift she tells me she's gonna leave tomorrow, the boss then comes over to me and tells me I'm doing good and no idea what he says to her but she doesn't come back!! I see her once more in town a few days later by which point I have also departed the glamorous lifestyle of the call centre and she tells me shes off to Straya Mate to earn some real cash. Fair play!

So some funny call centre things. On my official day 2 I get sent home early as I can't do any sales so they tell me to chill out and go home and come back tomorrow all refreshed, I wonder if they could tell I was hungover? But when you call people we are calling Australia, and pretending we too are in Oz its all very weird. Australia is the most abused country in the world when it comes to calls like these so they really hate it as they are stalked their whole lives by call centres, so sometimes they're like 'oh hold on I need to turn down my tv' and then blow a whistle down the phone in your ear. That's nice. Or they tell you they're on witness protection which of course if they were they wouldn't be allowed to tell anyone never mind a call centre agent so that one makes no sense I think its to baffle you. I just ignored it and continued with my script. They also ask if you have a husband and would you like one for a visa. One man asked if I'd had sex last night, he said he wanted to know personal things about me as I wanted to know about his finances so it was a fair trade. I didn't give a s*** so if people were rude to me I would just cut them off instantly, I'm not getting paid to listen to crap like that. So I had some funny calls and some lovely sweet little old people bless them.

But lucky for me after 2 days of working there I was offered a job working for a tourist attraction called Odyssey. It is a sensory maze - its so much fun! So lucky me, after I was offered the job I wasn't starting properly until the Monday and it was Thursday by now so I still worked Thursday and Friday night at the call centre as by now it felt like free money as I knew I didn't have to make an effort to get sales anymore haha, so that was nice and chilled for me. My first interview was cool I told them how amazing I am with people and I explained with me being from the north I have the Northern Charm, which obviously worked so I was called back for a second interview where they made me go through the maze by myself which was scary as its really dark inside and I had no idea what it was. It was a fun but creepy journey haha it was awesome though I was loving it although I rushed through as I was so excited/scared/nervous by the whole situation. And one of the rooms reminds me massively of Jurassic Park which freaked me out and I couldn't even get out of that room as I kept getting lost haha. Then once I was out of the maze I had to sell it to them which was good crack, I went for it massively and the owners boyfriend was like 'wow can I have that' as my sale of the maze blew them away I was so buzzing about it and I kept the mystery of the maze as we cant tell people what's going on inside. So like an hour later they called me to say 'welcome to the team' yey! Happy days and it was the job I actually wanted out of all the ones I'd applied for so I was happy happy! And pretty much guaranteed fulltime hours, which is sweet. 6 days a week of working in a playground for adults. Wahey!! Even more wahey is that a ton of hot boys come in everyday and I get paid to chat them up and photograph them for our facebook page! What a life!

So living here is pretty awesome and me and Helen invented a thing pretty early on of whenever something is going wrong or bad things are happening or people are moaning we respond with 'its ok because we live here, we live in Queenstown' when we first arrived we loved telling people this exciting news. As many people are just here on the Kiwi bus passing through or on their own road trip. This is the most exciting part of NZ so people look really envious when you tell them this. The reality is there is no accommodation for everyone, the jobs pay terribly, everything costs so much money here and there's nowhere to buy new underwear that isn't a trip to Frankton. But its still absolutely beautiful here.

So not long after I've been in Queenstown Prince William and Princess Kate are visiting my new hometown for the afternoon, they do shotover jet which is the best thing to do here I think. It's all very secretive, like we all know where they're going to be but all the roads are blocked so you can't see them it's very annoying. So I'm working with Jenna, theres a kid called Kane who is our honorary staff member he's 8 years old and his parents own a deli a few doors down from us so he plays in our place instead of the deli as of course its way more fun for him here and we are all really cool bless him. So Kane comes over for a bit chatting about nothing and then he's like 'oh the prince and princess are going down our street soon, how boring' and we're like 'erm what!?!' and send him to his parents to find out the crack. So he comes back like 'yeah in a minute they're coming I have to go' so me and Jenna run outside the shop and sure enough the street is blocked off a few police and all the people are on the other side of the road to us and then 2 cars come down, a lovely black one with a flag with the Lions on and I can see a baldy head… Its Wills! And then they're driving right past us Kate is closest to us and is looking at us and waving! We are the only people on our side of the road so it was definitely us she was waving at yey. We were so excited!!! A real life Princess waved at me!! I'm not a massive Royal fan although of course I do love Harry but Kate n Wills are pretty awesome so I'm being a proud Brit today and feeling very Royalist! My Gran would have been over the moon she would have taken out an advert in the Shields Gazette telling people about this!

So Queenstown is basically a beautiful place in the world. It's so stunning here it hurts. Lake Wakatipu is just wow. Super pretty. The mountains are gorgeous and the walks here are just amazing. Queenstown Hill is a good walk it's like about an hour to the top if you're not super unfit and like 30 mins back down, and the views at the top are just incredible. I did the walk on my first few days here and I've never been one for going for a nice hike but this totally made me get exciting about hiking. So of course 4 months on I've walked this a ton of times now, alone with friends, with friends you meet on the way up. No matter how or when you walk up there it's always just wow! Last time I went up it was before all the big snow and there was snow up there and it was so nice to see snow again!! You can also walk up the gondola the views are good there too obviously but they don't beat QT Hill for me. The walk isn't as nice either as it's mainly no views the whole way up and it's very steep but still good for you and works your ass! It's so nice living somewhere where you can just walk 5 mins out of town and be on these amazing trails, it's all so accessible here. You really appreciate nature here. Also in New Zealand there is no boxer kangaroos, no killer spiders,snakes etc. You don't go in the woods worrying about what you might encounter whereas in Australia you do often have to think of things like that haha. So its nice to not have the stress of that, however to be honest it never hugely bothered me in Oz anyway!

Not long after I arrived in Queenstown, I was working one night in Odyssey and I got the news I had been dreading getting since I left the UK, poor Tracey Ridley had lost her fight to cancer. I read it on my phone at work, and just instantly felt sick and couldn't talk. Luckily I didn't have long left at work for my shift so I just tried to carry on, didn't say anything as I was scared if I said it out loud it would unleash the tears which I just don't think would ever stop. It's truly one of the worst things I have ever been told. She was one of the worlds beautiful people. She was one of the most special ladies I have ever had the pleasure of meeting and getting to know quite well. I described her in Melbourne to my fellow call centre workers as the most inspirational person I have ever met and that is always how I will remember her. Even writing about this now a few months on I'm still in tears. She had such a terrible battle with cancer and she never moaned about what she was going through, she helped me put a lot of thing in perspective about my own life and just how I see the world in general. I have so many memories of her, I knew her for about 7 years and from the minute I met her in Longbenton I knew she was gonna be one to watch and god was I right. The first work night out we had together she was giving Craig lapdances and kept going missing and then you would find her crawling around on the floor going under peoples legs. She was one of the funniest people and just always had me in stitches. I loved her spirit and I loved how she was so blunt. She certainly raised not just a lot of money for cancer charities and also the nurses who looked after her she raised so much awareness which is hugely important and luckily someone like Tracey will never be forgotten. She is the brightest star in the sky.

It was hard hearing such bad news when I was so far away from everyone who knew her. This isn't the usual thing to say I suppose but I would have loved to have been able to go to her funeral just to hear what was being said about her. I hear of course in typical Tracey style, she had her funeral planned to the last second so it was extremely personal which of course a funeral should be. When I left the UK we kept in touch a lot, maybe not so much towards the end of her life as she was very sick and wasn't online as much but we spoke a lot when I was in Australia as she often couldn't sleep due to her meds and of course I was awake as I was 12 hours ahead so we did spent a lot of time keeping each other updated in our lives. She always used to threaten she was going to turn up in Oz to surprise me. That would have mental but brilliant! She did tell me her number one holiday destination was Bora Bora which of course she never made it to as she was very sick and she couldn't get travel insurance bless her. So I am taking this on as a personal challenge for me to get there for her one day. So yes obviously I was absolutely devastated to hear that she had passed away but then at the same time no one wants their friends suffering. So maybe it was a blessing in disguise. Rest In Peace Tracey!!

So back into Queenstown life, it turns out this is like a hub for Geordies. Having spent a long time travelling now and meeting around 5 people from the North East, I have found the rest of the Geordies living here. Chris arrived first and then his mate Robyn arrived they're from South Gosforth a whole mile away from my old house! And then Laura, Robyns cousin turned up. Then I met a girl from South Shields in Cookie Time. And we are just everywhere. In the shops, bars, cafes! Chris works with Jess who is also from the toon. It's so good we have a Geordie Massive!! Its just good as the one thing I miss from home is the accents so its lush saying the word radge and not being judged haha. I ended up finally escaping my hostel and moving a hotel (sounds random but its true) and I live next door to Laura, Robyn is 5 doors down its class! I'm living with Emma and Ellie two beautiful Swedish girls and A girl called Sophia who is a kiwi. I'm not a huge Kiwi fan to be honest. They're weird. And say thing like Tin instead of Ten. A funny one is d*** instead of Deck. Haha there is a video on you tube of a man all like 'my next door neighbours wifes always on my dick, kids are always hanging round my dick' it's highly inappropriate but hilarious! We do have a token Kiwi called Keegan who we love though he's a good guy and he is extremely forgetful and never says hello only 'have you seen my….' And its mainly 'car keys, eftpos card (bank card), driving licence. He makes me laugh a million times over he's wicked.

So it was my birthday when I was still in the hostel everyone got me a huge tub of cookie time cookies it's a famous cookie shop here its amazing best cookies ever. They got me a big bottle of vodka too! They are the best!! I have some good friends here. Lauren, Hannah, Helen and the boys Rob, Jon and Ben. All the best of course the geordies too and my swedes! There is tons of us here in a group but they are my main guys! And we drink, laugh and cry together a lot which is lovely!! So on my birthday a ton of us went for a indian like 20 of us which was nice just like being at home! But it was bring your own wine wahey!! I had like 3 nights out in a row for my 29th it was brilliant! I do love to be centre of attention haha oops. 3 messy nights indeed!! I think around the time of my birthday was when Chris got some Extra Joss from Asia for us! Remember Joss from my blog from Bali? It's the energy sherbert! We love that s***!! It sends you mental and then you cant sleep for days! He's got it for us a few times now we love it!

Another day it was Queenstowns Winterfest, we had tickets for Thriller in the Chiller which is a massive boxing match. Basically celebrity charity boxing. So there was me, Rob, Helen, Keegan, Matt and Josh. I went to the hostel to drink before we went I had a bottle of bubbles in about 30 mins so basically I was pissed when I left to go to the event, then me and Helen had a bottle of wine there, then another one. Then they said people can fight like the audience! They were to have one female match and a male match. Rob put himself forward he's like a brick though so that was obvious. I was like 'ooh should I do it?' and tried to make Helen do it too so we could fight each other. I tried to put her name down but she scribbled it out so I put mine down and then guessed my weight as 70kg which was the same as the girl who filled out the form before me as I thought if we're the same we'll get picked. It was total logic for a drunk in reality. I really weigh like 62kg so I was just a bit under… we knew a waiter at the event which was all black tie and fancy dan so I had a nice dress on obviously. So we asked him to find out who was fighting, he came out like I don't know who but a girl called Tracy… I was in!!! f*** yes! So I downed another glass of wine for luck… haha oops. Next thing I know my name has been called and off I go to the ring, the guy takes me specs off and I'm blind as a bat oh dear. They give me the microphone. God knows what I say… probs something like 'eee I'm a Geordie, I'm smashed weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee' oh the shame. Next thing the bells gone and this b**** has knocked me over. Bad times. Haha I might add now these are comedy boxing gloves like huge fat ones that don't hurt you. I climb up determined to not fall over any more so I just box like hell, I am shattered I think I'm going to die, all I can hear is 'Tracy put ya head down' so I do that and continue to box. Of course this lass is battering the living daylights out of me, I am way to drunk for for this. Ooops! Anyway I don't die but I officially lose. I get my specs back and the guy has to remind me where I came from. Awkward. So anyway I am a famous boxer now. Something else for my CV! Best thing about this whole thing is that Mrs Morren is dead proud as she was something of a bruiser when she was younger so thinks I'm finally following the family lead haha. Love my mam!!

So yeah another exciting moment was serving Kim Dot Com at work, he was super rude obviously but anyways I still finally met a 'famous' person. Whatever. Next time I'm sure it's going to be Bruno Mars.

So yeah this is it for now. I've caught up a bit. Next time I will explain about our family holiday to Wanaka, going to Arrowtown, stargazing and my messy past few weeks that include broken bones and the police of course. So until then much love my lovely people peace out!! xxxxxxxxxxxxx