Working Hard

Phew! Working in an apple orchard during the New Zealand summer is not easy. For the last two days, so far, we have been doing apple thinning on an orchard where we take extraneous fruit off the tree in order to lighten the weight and make sure all the remaining fruit become well developed. It's a pretty tedious process, involving setting up our own ladders, climbing up and down, and getting up pretty high in order to get all the fruit. Even after our first day, we knew it was going to be a pretty strenuous 6 weeks, and if we manage to make it through to the end, we will both be pretty darn tan! We apply lots of sunblock, however, and we both wear hats to keep our faces shaded, but it is HOT. 


There are two other Czechs and one other Kiwi guy who works with us--we take different rows, though, so we don't interact too much. The owner is a perfectly nice guy and he has an adorable young yellow labrador running around. He likes plastic, which we learned the first day when he chewed the top off our sunscreen and tried to get at the bottle as well. I also noticed, when the owner John discovered our sunscreen bottle, that the plastic water bottle I had brought was nowhere to be found. We found the cap, but never the rest. Oh well, he's such a cute dog you can't really mind.


Our night last night with Mark and Pam was lovely. John and I went early to grab some dinner at the pub where we were meeting. We had a nice time with Mark and Pam, talking about what we both have been doing since we left Cardoness. However, Mark and Pam's last day there is Sunday, so they have invited us over for a barbecue before we go to our Ukulele concert on Saturday night. Weekend plans already!


After that we headed to the movie theater in town to see Harry Potter! It ended up that we got there two hours early, at 10 p.m., but the doors didn't open until 11. There were already three girls sitting outside waiting, so John and I decide to join them. By the time the doors opened, there were quite a few people waiting and the theater ended up being totally full by the time the movie started. There were some extremely enthusiastic fans, as to be expected. People dressed up, brought wands (a.k.a sticks), two guys came running in with suits on house brooms. They catered to the madness by having trivia before the movie as a way to pass the time and practically handed out their "Harry Potter" ice cream they had created for the event as a prize for a correct answer. John and I stuck with hot chocolate and a latte. John was rather amused by the crowd, though of course he said it was "just sad." However, he did not end up sleeping through the movie like he said he would do and instead ended up watching the whole thing and even laughed at the funny bits! He liked it, I know it, though he will insist otherwise. Don't believe him. :)


But we left the theater at 2:30 a.m. (good timing actually, as there were only three previews before the actual movie), and got home and to bed by 3:00 a.m. only to wake up at 7 for work--which has made this quite the long day! We are hoping to adjust to the physical demands of the work soon, and in the meantime keep looking for any work (and we mean ANY work) that will take us indoors!