Ursa, Queen of Bears

ok wow the last few days have been stressful but brilliant. ok I was at glenorchy, kinloch doing the normal everday thing I do there and Shannon a really good friend that I've kept in touch with over the internet over the past 2 years came up to visit me. It was all planned I knew he was coming and I told my boss I needed a day off etc. had fun went to queenstown, arrowtown (arrowtown is so gorgeous) and cromwell. Shannon stayed for two nights and then had to go. 15 minutes after Shannon left my boss told me I was sacked and to pack my things. I was devastated, I wasn't expecting it and he sacked me coz I was not enthusiastic in the work place. I had one of two choices most prefferable was to get in contact with shannon and tell him to turn around nd pick me up and take me to invercargill. if that failed I had to book my next flight home. After about 40 minutes I finally get in touch with Shannon. By that time I'm stressed, upset, crying etc. and on the verge of booking airflight tickets. Thankgod he came back and took me to invercargill. Shannon is officially a saint and a god send and a life saver, so all bow down to shannon! hehehehe but seriously he's a gem. I then later find out his whole family are gems and within half an hour of meeting them I am invited to stay in their house in the spare room. I was totally taken aback and took me a while to bring myself to accept even though I've always been taught to never look a gift horse in the mouth as they say. So now I've been here since thursday and have been applying for jobs everywhere. Apparently they're quite hard to get here in invercargill which is a bitch. If I can't get one in a fortnight or so I'm going to have to go back to plan B of booking a flight home. Sort of semi-hoping that will happen, I'm tired of travelling and having my life and wellbeing dangling from a thread of hope. Not to mention I miss all my friends and it's F*%#ING freezing here. Anywho I am going back to job searching.

Hope all of you a warm and well seeing as I am cold and could be better.

love and miss you all.

Sharn

Wow. It's been over a month since I put a blog on this thing. I'm soo glad I came to glenorchy. It's gorgeous here. Cold but gorgeous. it's getting into the negative degrees at night. So glad I bought thermals. The work isn't hard, the hours are good, the people I work with are great. My bosses are great (as long as they're not stressing over how long it takes people to do things) the package deal is brilliant. No mobile reception is a huge pain in the a$$ but goodness knows I'm used to it. I really have t take my hat off to my bosses. they're brilliant people. Husband and wife who are very hands on when it comes to running things and they run Kinloch backpacker wolderness hostel, heritage hotel, lakehouse B & B, Sawyers resteraunt, Harry's bar and a shop in town. They also to shuttle pick ups and drop offs for all the walking tracks (ie. multiple day hikes) and boat runs from town to here and from here to queenstown once a week. They also have 3 gorgeous kids (a tad spoilt but gorgeous) 3 dogs and 3 cats. I don't know how they manage it. like I said I have to take my hat off to them.

The place is really growing on me which is nice but it also means I need to move on. I have to wait till I have cash to do so though. which reminds me I have to get onto finding out my IRL number  and etc in order to be paid... I should do that now.

K ciao amigos

I'm having a great time.

get in touch

love and miss you all.

Sharn

hehehe doesn't that sound stereotypical or what? I just don't understand why she get's bitchy about the way I do things when tomorrow is the last day I clean for her. I clean tomorrow then I'm out of her hair, she's out of mine, then hopefully she'll get the bee out of her bonnet so she'll stop snapping at poor eugene. Hmm either it's her time of the month or she's just received a bill that's bigger than she thought it was... o.O

No seriously I don't care that she's being bitchy to me because I leave on friday (bullyah) but she should leave eugene alone, he gets enough crap from his wife (they're soon to divorce).

I can't wait to go to glenorchy. partly to get out of here and partly to get some money and partly because well glenorchy is gorgeous.

any way I just offloaded what was on my chest. I feel better now.

Cheers

Love you and Miss you ALL

Sharn

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

They accepted my application! I'm moving to Glenorchy on the 21st! It's much like what I'm doing now but better. I'll be working for a place called Kinloch Lodge. Four hours work a day covers all my accomodation, food, laundry, internet, movie hire and spa use. Anything over that I get paid $13/15-hr for. HOW SWEET IS THAT! Not to mention they have a view. Hell of a lot better than here (a grafitti ridden  corrugated iron fence with lame ass dragonball Z cartoon figures asking to challenge each other in lawn bowls coz its for the lawn bowls club accross the road). I'll be doing mostly cleaning work *sigh* but I'm hoping they'll spice it up for me because I can also garden, waitress, bartend and babysit.

Any way I'm taking the bus down there on the 21st (8 hour bus ride... blah) I have to spend a night in queenstown before catching another bus the next day to Glenorchy which is about a 45 minute drive north west of queenstown. I went through there once when I was in queenstown with sylvia when we were heading to horse riding. It's absolutely stunning. Simply can't wait. Christchurch is just not the place for me, sorry I know you love it sylvia but yeah I love the queenstown area far more because as you say the mountains are rediculous.

Anywho.

Thats about it.

Love and miss all of you.

Cheers

Sharn

I accidentally poured boiling water over my hand last night when I was seperating pasta from water with a colander. It's alright now. Hands all red and stings constantly but at least it hasn't blistered or anything like that. I pinched my little finger in a door (yes any one who's on lord howe island it's the same finger just in a different part of a door) which has given me a tiny blood blister and I have a wopper of a blood blister on the end of my toe coz I accidentally kicked really hard. I feel like at the moment that I'm just meant to get hurt. Also I'm still waiting for jobs to respond to my applications. I blame it on the fact that it is now the weekend.

Hope every one is going well and I hope every one wishes me to get a bit of better luck... who knows it might work.

Love and miss you all.

Sharn Simpson

looking for a new job, prefferably down south, I want to see a proper friggin snowy winter man. There looks like there'd be a promosing cleaning job down in invercargill to clean the school and some offices. Rent is cheap down there as well which is a pluss. Only draw back is I don't have a car so if there is no public transport to these places or somewhere within walking distance of them then I'm sorta screwed. any who. thats my update for the day. Cooking Tuna Vinagrette pasta tonight! yumm almost can't wait.

Love and miss you all,

Sharn

Gah I wasn't hired by Octagon! starting to get worried again. oh well that's something for me to do tomorrow. don't worry sharn. take a dee breath and calm down. you'll get hired somewhere soon.

wow it's really hard to make friends at this hostel because I counted 11 people ALL SPEAK GERMAN! it's really hard to join in a conversation that you don't understand. It's almost as bad as back at school when the chinese, daniel quiggin and ashley james would get togethor and all speak chinese even though I'm standing right there and was part of the conversation all of 2 seconds before hand and they just decide to switch languages. sigh. oh well I'll keep trying. hell that's all I CAN do.

Miss you guys

Sharn

It was pretty awesome. It's really schmick on the outside but all the staff are so laid back. Last night, some guy when he reserved his seat said he was a trumpet buff and wanted to know if they could have trumpeter play for him (with a cost of course) so they got in the oldest and best trumpeter in christchurch to come in and play for him. Can't remember his name now but I was flabbergastered. A trumpeter brought in just for one person. My face was -->    O.O

 

Any way I was out the back doing dishes. There were two cheffs. Tucker who's an asian guy, so much talent you should see him create a creme brulee... wow. Then there was Johan (Yo-hahn) he was from austria and took care of most of the meat stuff. Before now I had never seen any one flip a steak like some do to pancakes, full on tossing it like.  that was a bit wow. Then there's the kitchen hand, Dean he did a bit of everything. He put the sauces on the dishes, kept track of the tabs, helped me with the dishes, chopped up ingredients helped keep everyone on track that sorta stuff. He was a bit nuts but funny, he was like a cross between chris mason, bradin and my friend amelia. He had me laughing half the night. but ewww he has dreadlocks! dread locks = turn off! I don't know why but I find dreadlocks sooo unappealing. you wouldn't really expect that of me seeing as I am a hippy but yeah.
Crystal is my boss and she looks like a mix of the woman who plays phoebe from friends and and and ummmm oh I know the actress that I'm thinking of but I don't know her name and I can't think of any movies she's in. Don't you hate that? any way she's really nice.

Any way umm what else? oh yeah my umberella broke so had I had to buy another one today. Today was the scottish band competition in cathedral spuare so any one within a kilometre could hear bagpipes most of this morning. umm thats about it.

Love and miss you all.

Sharn

well its rainy and dreary in Christchurch and I don't have a raincoat. I've also been moved into a cheaper room that stinks of mouldy socks. My trial night has been moved to tonight which = EXCELLENT! Hopefully I will be hired and within a fortnight I shall have my first pay cheque... hopefully.

Well I figured out where I went wrong (Though I'll never regret it) I shouldn't have started travelling by having a care free fun time. I should have started as I am now. Pretending as if I can barely feed my self, working for my accomodation and looking for a paying job. The fact that now it's not pretend is really fucking stressing. Cried myself to sleep last night. Feel a bit better coz of that. Going to stick it out for a while though. Half of me is screaming to catch the next available flight back to brissy. But if I don't stick it out for at least a month I will never forgive myself. Hope all of you out there are swell. If you're religious then pray a lil prair for me and if not then just hope the best for me and wish me well ok?

Love you and miss you all.

Sharn

zomg zomg zomg zomg zomg AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!

arrived auckland Feb 14th
What Sylvia and I did. Stayed at a family friends place. We walked around the edge of sky tower and jumped off it (300 metres!) we went to the museum and had a cultural experience and the winter gardens (Absolutely gorgeous) and went quadbiking (Fuckin' ay man! awesome fun and beautiful surroundings)

Rotorua on the 17th
We went to the hot springs and a polynesian spa sooooo nice. Went to the Agro dome went on a virtual free fall that was simulated using a giant fan. Super fun but hell and a half for people with long hair (spent the next 2 hours deknotting hair) we went zorbing, doesn't look like much but fuck it's fun. Saw a sheep show which was funny (I got to milk a cow! feels sooo gross but I got a certificate of Udderance). Ummm we also did a kiwi tour and got to see some new born kiwis (So CUTE!) and then went on a Hitai experience which was a full on maori show and showed us their sacred spring and sacred lands and had a hangi! YUM earth cooked food. soo nice. and then a night walk through rainbow springs nature park. Saw some more kiwis but also rainbow trout and eels and tuatara and kea and a red sacoya tree (Its american) planted there 80 years ago and it was huge. equivalent size of a 650 year old sacoya tree in america. Talk about NZ soil being the equivalent of steroids for trees.

Queenstown 21st (Yesterday)

Today is relax day. shopping and booking what we're going to do. Sky dive tomorrow. Fly by wire, bungee jump and canyon swing the next day. Horse riding and luging on the day after that. Clubbing tomorrow night

We get to christchurch on the 26th

We're hoping to do a LotR tour and a hot air baloon whilst we're there. Sylvia flys back to Brisbane on the 28th :'( Going to miss you sylvia!

Any way having a ball getting broke.

Love Love!

Sharn

hey guys well I've finished putting all my information and music on my new mp3 player and a girl Bonny wants to buy my laptop off me. She says she won't have the money for a month or so. When she buys it I'll be on the internet alot less. But in a month or so I will be packing my stuff getting ready to leave that's no big deal. Work has continued to chop and change my hours around and I'm starting to get really peeved. I know its because I'm the only one who won't openly complain. All the others have 5 days a week and one of them doesn't even like working there! So I'm once again searching for work. I feel like I must be doing something wrong it's rediculous. Oh well up side of it is that now I have saved enough money to cover me travelling completely (Thankyou Sylvia and your mum for repaying that money it helped alot)

It helps that I have no rent. I have no idea how I would survive if I had to pay for everything rent, food, electricity, telephone. Well actually I do have to pay for some food and a third of the electricity and telephone bill. But thats basically nothing. Thank you mum & dad. Golly don't you just love your parents sometimes?

well thats about it.

cheerio then.

~Ursa~

90 Days and counting till NZ. Who ever doesn't count down the days till they go travelling isn't excited enough! Spent the last three days putting information, word documents, photos, pictures, videos & music on my Mp3 player. I'm only about a third of the way through all my music and I've already used nearly 12Gb. It's gonna take me ages. Absolutely buggered today after work but we had chinese for dinner tonight which was awesome.

Alright catchya l8r

ciao amigos

~Ursa~