Some pictures are worth 1000 words. and some are just worth 100. or 10 or so.

Some pictures of my time here so far...




this is me on the Eastern coast of the Pacific ocean...Manhattan Beach, California, USA.






this is me (ok my feet), less than a week later, on the Western coast of the Pacific ocean... the east coast of NZ in the town of Picton.






my first New Zealand meal. a delicious flat white and a oh-so-needed perrier.






no big deal, just driving the truck through the vineyard and eating sauv blanc grapes out the window






Okiwa Bay, the site of the First Annual Highfield Stone Skipping Competition.... where I received a gold stone in the ladies division.






Javiera and Sofia... my sweet new friends and the daughters of one of the assistant winemakers. Mike's wife/their mom, Claudia, works in the marketing department. She's from Chile and absolutely the sweetest.






The Highfield pre-vintage party. Mick, Claudia and Marietta getting their groove on






my favorite meal... a basket of chips (fries) and a pint of beer at the Cork and Keg. mmmmm.....







One glass of Rose and my lawn chair after a long days' work. I've fallen asleep in that chair before...





and of course, my hot pink lipstick and a shot of tequila. And Bri-dawg, one of our other interns.

lab coats

So although this may be a more boring post, i feel it is necessary. Many people have asked me, "what are you doing over there in New Zealand?". Well, here I will answer that question. I am working in a winery... if you don't already know this about me, you probably don't know me and I am really curious why you are reading this blog. Feel free to leave a comment explaining your internet creeping. Which I am totally ok with considering this is the internet and let's be honest, everyone does it.

That said, I am working in a winery called Highfield Estate (on facebook-- please join their group as A) they desperately need members and B) there is an awesome picture of me in the lab sporting an incredibly old sorority t shirt. http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=147432894740&ref=ts). I am working in the laboratory (lab for short). They fondly refer to it as the Chemical Room here in New Zealand and although I feel like it makes my job sound much more technical I also am quite intimidated by the idea of working in a chemical room and therefore refuse to call it that. I digress. I work in the lab, which sounds really cool and like I must know a lot of things, specifically about chemistry and stuff (go ahead and laugh if you've ever had a science class with me... oh right, that was high school. Exactly.) So i'm pretty much science incompetent which tells you about the level of 'chemistry' i am dealing with. I process our vineyard samples, which means, I go run around in a vineyard picking strategic grapes off of random bunches of grapes off of strategic sections of the vineyard. they go in a plastic glad bag that i labeled the day before. then I count 100 berries, weigh them, put them back in the bag, and mash them up into grape juice. i'm not kidding. but I actually really like it and it's kind of nice because I work by myself in the mornings and in the cellar in the afternoons. i basically push buttons and measure things (bad smelling chemical things) and do a lot of cleaning. I'm getting much better with the hose. Which reminds me I have this awesome pair of rubber boots, which kiwis call "gum boots" that are white with green bottoms and a steel toe in them! sometimes I kick hard things just because I can. it's great. and in rubber boots! they are about 100 times cooler than my work boots, partly because the winery bought the gum boots and I bought the work boots, which are just heavy duty man shoes. like carpenters wear or something. I am still breaking them in and they are extremely ugly so, as my father will tell you, I have an instant bias against them. I just wish they would have come in brown!

but enough about boring shoes (exciting shoes are so much better). As far as work goes, it's pretty nice to go to work and go for jogs in vineyards picking grapes and get dirty and stick my hands in grape juice and be outside in the sun and get paid for it and them drink a cold beer at the end of the day. I enjoy that. We started 12 hour shifts yesterdat so i rise at the beautiful and heart warming hour of 5 am to arrive and start work at 6 am promptly. I will tell you right now, God did not design me to wake up that early. But i am coping and it's not actually that bad. so far...

if there is anything anyone desperately needs me to blog about, please do let me know. I love hearing from everyone, even if I don't get a chance to write back to you. So keep me informed of the mundane and juicy and wonderful happenings in all of your lives. yes, even you internet creepers.

things i should have already posted

I am in New Zealand. it is awesome. i will continue to travels so long as I don't completely run out of money. And there was a reason I started a blog. Here, I summarize:

1-- the night before I left for New Zealand, my parents car (that I was borrowing) broke down in the middle of the highway. My last supper consisted of the sluttiest garlic bread I've ever had in my life and a $4 bottle of wine served in a brown paper bag. Please see photos.



2-- Our first work trip was to the coast for a stone skipping contest. Good news: I won. Bad news: I got bit on the butt by a wasp.

3-- men in new zealand sometimes have nipple rings..... it's still weird

4-- last weekend, in the parking lot, my flatmates ute (truck) got surrounded by a gang of bikers. we were stuck there for a while. then he revved his engine on the way out and got cheers. It was pretty awesome.

5--When you battle hoses, you will always lose.


more soon.