around the hostel...

I just thought i'd write a quick note to say what we do around here. and, it will be quick because we do so little! There isn't a whole lot to do, because we're on the otherside of the bridge from the main part of town. not that it matters. we're all pretty pooped after a hard day of work and 98% of the people have toget up between 5 and 7, so we all crash fairly early.
Our adorable roommate Ryo and French Alex brought the whole palce to life and obessed with the swining balls of fire/dancing. Ryo pretty much created a business out of creating the rope with tennis balls on the end for everyone to practice. He and a few others who had a good hang of it taught so many people how to do it. I barely tried once, and sucked so i gave up. Then Alex (who's REALLY good at it, and had the actual ones you light on fire) did it with fire one night. Ryo missed it as was really sad, so he created new ones with half tennis balls with flash lights to give the same effect as fire when they are in motion. Alex then did it again and let Ryo use the fire ones too. he was so excited and giggled the whole time he danced. it was awesome to watch!!!
other than that we play a lot of uno, other card games and read a lot. and eat a TON of chocolate. and sit around and chat. and complain about citrus picking and the hours each day we have to wait. and talk about our home countries and how they differ from everyone elses. it's pretty great.
all this is captured 'on film' and can be seen in my bundaburg album on photobucket.
i must get to bed. i had to sleep in the TV room for half the night because our new roommate snored like nothing have ever heard before. it woke me in the night when i had my ipod on and everything. he sweetly apologzied today for keeping us all alwake and changed rooms. thank heavens!!! so off to bed for me...
love!! more soon. xox

if life gives you lemons...

be thankful you didn't have to pick them!!
oh, what a horror lemon trees are. yesterday, we were put on lemons for the day. if it was anyone other than "the nice one" supervsor, than i probably would have refused. and he kept us happy by saying we'd be on oranges today. they have thorns all over them and can get up to 2" long. there is no way to get at the fruit without becoming a human pin cusion. but, we managed to survive. i think it was because we didn't start until 11... made the day seem to go by fairly quickly. and charlotte was right next to us so we were all mildly amused by each others cries of pain.
unfortunately, we had to return to the dreaded lemons this morning to finish our bins. but were put in oranges by 12.15. Oranges are a joy! it's still hard work, but it's all relative. it's certainly not mandrins or lemons. and you can make more money. the trees are small so you barely have to use a ladder, and the fruit is large so it fills a bin quickly. today marcy and i finished our lemnon bin and got 4 bins of oranges by 4:50. A bin being 1mx1.5m.
i tried to add pictures to this post and the last, but restrictions on our computers won't let me. so please just refer to the bundaburg album on my photobucket site.
Tomorrow is our LAST DAY!! whoop whoop. and we're on oranges all day. should actually be able to make a bit of money and enjoy a friday night out at the pub with charl, liisa, phil, marcy and more than likely others from around here.
We are sticking around Bundy for saturday to get our stuff together and then head to Hervey Bay to go to Frasier Island on Sunday. Charl and Phil have insisted on making us tea and crumpets on saturday as well. I thought it was so funny and great because Charlotte's parents actually have tea and crumpits, and her nan says "cheeri-o". Will be sure to let you know how it is!
miss you all tons and can't wait to see you SOON!!
xoxox

a day in the life...

So, a typical day's food intake of a citrus farm picker is something like this:

breakfast: cereal
bananna
coffee

snack: 2 mandrins

lunch: ham & cheese sandwitch
mandrin

snack: 4 mandrins

supper: pasta and/or salad

snack: 2 mandrins and usually some chocolate in some form (bar, cookie, egg...)

yep. if i'm not an orange by the time i'm through with this job, i will eat my fastly fading and increasingly smelly hat. but, i am currently off to rest and read. i was up rather late last night with a toxic combo of too much coffee and a large group of asians getting d-runk off vodka watermellon (a job hazzard when you pick those, i think) who were up quite late.
more when life gets interesting.
xox

life down on the farm....

so, work is actually going quite well. our first assigment was posted at 7:3pm and our start time was for 2:30am. i was thinking it was an error, but nope! 6 hours to get ourselves ready - including sleep. the 2:30 work was actually not too bad at all! it totally thru off my internal clock. it was so bizare being on "lunch" break when it's only 7am, but hey... roll with the punches. the work itself totally cracked me up. i found it kinda fun even. we were on line, picking the tops and seedy bits out of red and green peppers after they went thru a thingy and gots smashed up a bit. there were times it got so out of control and we were sweeping them back down the belt and i was up to my elbow in stinky red peppers. a good third of them were kinda rotten or mouldy so -- ewwwww! but i just laughed at it all cause i'd look over at marcy in her pretty blue hair net and $20 1981 sneekers that lots their soles 5 minutes in and was completely amused by the whole idea of the 2 of us being in oz and doing that. for our last hour we got to chop the tops off eggplants. whoop whoop! finshed up at 8:30 am and could laze around by the pool all afternoon. i had NO energy and napped a little too much. today we got a new place to work. we don't have to get up until 7:30, but the work is a bit ... not as fun. we're on a citrus farm picking the fruit. first oranges ($50 a bin) which weren't so bad at all and then mandrins ($85 a bin) and a bitch. They have to be a certain size and in 4 hours between the 2 of us we were still just under one bin. we get to tag team though, which is good and the all pay for our bins is split 50/50. good company makes it a little less tough. and it's surpisingly not as physically demanding and i would have thought, but very tiring. i'm pooped tonight! it's an hours drive from our hostel, which makes for a long day. especially when we finish at 5 and don't get picked up until 6:30. 12 hours away but only 7 hours of work. boo. and we get to stay there until everything picked. so, looks like we'll be there for our entire stay. but who knows!
the hostel is still going good. our roommates are really nice; 2 guys from japan, Liisa from Estonia and Christian from Germany. Liisa is working with us at the fruit picking place too. all in all good times. but this tired girl is off to make her lunch and hit the sack.
hugs and kisses! xoxo MISS YOU.

success! we FOUND NEMO!!! apparently he's off the coast of the whitsunday islands...

First, i am currently uploading picutres. so please click on the link to your right and check 'em out. there will be new ones in the NZ folder as well as a new folder for Carins. Enjoy!
Now the update. so, we are slowly making our way south. and slowly making our way to less warm weather. (i'm cautious not to use the word cold, as i do know about the stupid amount of snow NB/NS just got. it's unfortunate, really).
We stuck out another day in Carins to hangout with Michelle. Pretty worth while, as we got time with her, had another day at the lagoon, and got to walk home in the most crazy down pour of rain i have experienced in ages! it was a good laugh.
We then hopped on a bus from Carins just as a tusnami warning came into effect. There were lots of alerts and people were evacuated from costal regions, but nothing came of it. We headed south to Ayr where we were supposed to work for a couple of weeks. unfortunately, there wasn't much along the line of work right at that time. so, thanks to a very nice hostel operator, we hung out and had supper there and then got ourselves booked right back on the next bus to Airlie Beach. It was our next stop, and it just happened to come up a bit more qucikly than first anticipated. We got in touch with sleezy pub crawl orgainizer Graham from Carins (please see photos) who was able to get us into a hostel for a couple of nights and book us on a boat to sail the Whitsunday Islands. Airlie Beach was about as active to us as Carins. Actually, even less so. More lagooning (see photo on right) and lots of resting as Marcy had a myserious tummy illness, which just today seems to have cured itself.
On Thurs. the 5th we boarded the Atlantic Clipper along with 46 others and set sail. God help me if i know why it's called the Atlantic Clipper when it's no where near the Atlantic. Just another point in case that australia is just backwards. We quickly made friends with 2 Irish lasses who we ended up sharing a cabin with. The cabin was what Tara (irish girl #1) called the bottom of the titanic type room. where the poor people got shoved. Which is a fairly accurate description. We were back where the crew slept, but that was fine by us cause we got our own toilet and shower. That first night was crap weather (rain every 10 minutes and gusty winds) so Tara, Kela (irish girl #2) a couple from the UK (Gabby and Edd) and 2 other girls played cards and had as much fun as possible on the lower deck of a rocking sail boat. Up and attem bright and early the next day where they dropped us off at Whitehaven beach lookout point and for a walk/lay on the beach or swim (if you wanted to bother putting on a stinger suit). It was absoutely breath taking. the true picture of paradise. We then went snorkeling where the coral was much more beautiful than in Carins, but fewer fish. Most of the day, as we sailed, we were fed huge yummy meals and lazed on the deck working on our tans (with 30+ on of course). We docked that night and had a great time socialzing with everyone. Up again the next day for more snorkeling up near a point on one of the islands where there's a big 6 star (didn't even know those existed) resort that is frequented by celebrities. In fact, we saw JZ's boat docked when we finally made it back to shore. The crew told us it was his, and why would the lie. Plus it's called LZ (Lazy-Z) and below that is written Georgetown CA. Yes, i took picutres. i love my celebrity gossip and boat sightings.
That night, despite having a bad case of sea legs, we went out with our friends from the boat for bite to eat and a few drinks.
After an overnight bus ride we are now in Bundaburg settled into our working hostel. We spent the last 2 days in Makay where i can honestly say there is NOTHING to tell beacuse, already a small place, was a true ghost down due to easter weekend.
The place we're staying at is nice. The fridge was raunchy. Enough to make me gag, and that dosen't happen easily. So after a leisurely shopping trip for work clothes and grocoeries, marcy and i tackled it. i felt i couldn't be more like my mom than arriving at hostel and cleaning the fridge. but it had to be done and it now sparkles and smells of yummy vanilla cleaner.
Hope i didn't bore you all with my rabling update. I know it lacks funny stories, but i got about 2 hours sleep on the bus last night so i'm not up for much else right now. Enjoy the photos!
miss you all.... keep me updated on things at home! xoxo