It's that time of year again, or so the stereos at work tell me. They've been blasting holiday music for at least a month, but it's hard to get into the Christmas spirit when temperatures have been over 100 and the sun is as strong as it is here - it's funny listening to songs about white Christmases and snowmen. Somehow the pieces don't add up.
As always, the holidays are a good opportunity for reflection. Two years ago I was in Buenos Aires in the middle of my South American adventure; last year, it was Te Anau, with a nice swim in the lake and a backyard barbeque. The time seems to have gone so fast. Intellectually, two years sounds like a really really long time, but in experience it's been one never-ending journey. This year that journey finds me in Melbourne, and while I'm maybe not the happiest I've ever been, I'm certainly learning a lot about life. Here are a token few pictures to show what it's like:
Downtown Melbourne, Bourke St.
One of five or six window displays in Myer, a big department store, telling the story of Gingerbread Friends.
More downtown - colonial and modern buildings all smushed together. The yellow building is one of the most iconic in Melbourne, the Flinders Street train station.
Wall art is common and detailed and impressive.
Federation Square.
Downtown is full of little alleyways packed with tables and competing odors from many eateries.
Queen Victoria Market, your one-stop shop for all things fresh.
Sunset from our new living room yesterday.
"Your new living room?" Yes, our new living room. Since the last post I wrote, lots of things have changed. We moved to a new house in Preston, a suburb north of the city, that's quite a bit closer to work and quite a bit cheaper in rent. We're still sharing the house with a few other people, but they're not the most social creatures, at least not with housemates, so everyone keeps to themselves. The neighborhood is nice and quiet, and we have a big park across the street, perfect for tossing around a frisbee. Since moving out of our old place, we've run into endless drama with Nicqui. I've honestly been hesitant to tell anyone about it because it already seems like we've had really bad luck and I don't want to tempt the universe or jinx us any more, but at the same time maybe if you guys can send us some good thoughts or Christmas spirit, things will turn around. She did end up finding people to take her room so she moved up to Brisbane and has been acting as a landlord remotely. Long story short, when we told her we wanted to move out (one week's notice, as she requested) she started arguing over how much money she would pay us back of our bond and extra rent we'd paid, and then on move-out day she flat-out refused to pay us back anything. She's done this all via text message and ignores our phone calls. We've done absolutely nothing wrong and tried to right by her, taking care of the place, no damages to speak of, but I'll chalk it up to her being tight on money and thinking she can take advantage of two young trusting travelers. Looking back on the whole thing, it feels rather pre-meditated. Bah humbug. We're not going down without a fight, but I'm apprehensive about jumping into the legal system here. Let's hope justice prevails.
Work is still just work. We were both transferred to a different store, one closer to town in a massive shopping center called Northland. Half of the staff from Uni Hill were transferred, since they hired too many of us for the one store, and we've been getting slightly better hours. Christmas time means late night trade as well, so we've been staying open until midnight trying to sell sell sell. Neither one of us has been super happy about the number of hours we've been getting, since it's still our only job, but Cory just told me today that one of the other girls will be leaving in a couple weeks so we may all be able to pick up more shifts. Fingers crossed for that one too!
In more exciting news, I've got a ticket home for May and June, which I'm really really looking forward to. The graduations and weddings and other events and visits will keep me busy I'm sure, but I don't mind - I want to take advantage of my first trip back home in a year and half. The end of June will see me flying back to Australia to reunite with Cory, maybe pick some fruit, and then travel up through Asia (just a rough idea at this point). Who knows where we'll end up!
I've been trying to stay active, since that was one of my biggest beefs with winter at Ohau. I still ride my bike everywhere I go, and I've just started running again. Yes, running! On a random day wandering around handing out resumes, I went into a running store and started talking to the sales people there about what kind of running shoe I'd hypothetically need, and it turns out I've been treating my feet all wrong for years. I assumed that, with my super high arch, I would pronate (my foot would rotate and cave inwards) and I would need tons of arch support to fight this - really the opposite of this happens, with my super high arch pushing my foot outwards and making me supernate. So instead of lots of arch support, I need none of it. A neutral shoe that lets my foot rotate inwards to realign my body. Yikes. After much deliberation and research and jogging around running stores, I finally settled on a new pair of shoes to replace my old grungy ones, and in only a couple days I can already feel the difference. My feet and legs still get sore, but from using the muscles in different ways, not from being pulled and pushed out of whack. Running feels good again, instead of painful, which is incredibly liberating for me. I can actually run again! I've also been trying to be more conscious of my stride when I run, trying to strike more in the middle of my foot instead of hitting hard on the heel first. This keeps my feet under my body and lessens the impact on my knees....magic. Amazing. How did I never realize this before. Turning over a new leaf just in time for the new year.
Despite being on the other side of the world, not a day goes by that I don't think about my friends and loved ones, and of course at the holidays I think about you more. I hope this Christmas finds you feeling content and loved, that you feel proud and happy when you look back on 2013, and that you're excited and ready to make the most of 2014. Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Feliz Navidad. Sending love and sunshine!
Finally, an update from down under! Cory and I are now in Melbourne and getting our feet under us. Soon after we arrived, we'd lined up a place to stay, which is where we are now: 100 Melrose St in North Melbourne. We were primarily looking for something in the right price range, but during the two weeks we've been here we've realized that we actually landed in a pretty good location, lucky for us. The tram stop is a block away and from there we can get to most places in the city in 15 minutes. Getting to the northeastern side of town is a bit more involved on public transport, but luckily we bought some trusty bicycles so we can pedal anywhere.
So we have a room in a two-bedroom house. Our housemate's name is Nicqui and she's Melbourne born and bred. She's very friendly and talkative and seems to enjoy having us around, so we're getting on just fine. She's decided to move up to Brisbane until Christmas to be with her boyfriend while he works there, and visit her dad and little brother, so we're currently in the process of meeting (or "interviewing" as Nicqui calls it) potential new housemates to take over her room while she's gone. She trusts us to take care of the house and the plants and the fish and even offered to give Cory and I a discount on our rent if we'll be in charge of cleaning the place once a week. Score. We've made an offer to one couple (who also just arrived from New Zealand) but they're looking at other places so they'll let us know soon. We'll just keep meeting people until we find good replacements and everyone's happy.
In other news, Cory and I both found jobs with Kathmandu, an outdoor gear store similar to REI back home. Once we'd found a place to stay that was cheaper than a hostel, we made it our mission to walk around and spam our CVs to every place we could think of. I was aiming more for the cafe scene, looking for jobs on Gumtree and looking for help wanted signs in windows, while Cory was shooting for an outdoor shop, since he really liked working for Hikoi in New Zealand. We were wandering around Moonee Ponds, a shopping suburb just north of us, when Cory spotted a Kathmandu store and went in to ask if they were hiring. As it turned out, the current manager of that store had just been tasked with pulling together a sales team for a new store opening this week, and he needed to find a couple more good people to round out the list. In talking to Cory he discovered that both of us needed jobs and so made an offer to both of us. Yay! Not bad for only being in the country for 5 days. As of now the position is officially only part time, but this turns out to be better because it's hard to find full time work and easier to combine a couple different jobs to fill time and the bank account. Our boss Nick seems fairly confident that he can find us shifts at other store branches in the city (there are many) and so he says that while we won't work full time at one store, we may be able to pick up enough at other stores to make ends meet.
So. We had a day of training last week where we filled out all the paperwork and got to know the products made and sold by the company. We met two of our other team members, both also named Nick (I can see this becoming confusing) - one is from Belgium, spent a couple years in New Zealand with his wife, and seems fairly outdoorsy. The other Nick is Chinese Vietnamese and is here studying nursing - he seems very nice but not particularly interested in Kathmandu's mission of getting people out to play in nature. Hmm. We start work for real tomorrow, unpacking boxes and setting up the store from scratch, so we'll get to meet our other coworkers then.
The store we'll be primarily based at is located in Uni Hill, a factory outlet shopping center far to the northeast in Bundoora. You can take public transport directly there, but for us we'd have to take a tram to the city center first and then catch the other tram heading to work (the aforementioned difficulty of getting to the northeastern side of town). But we have bicycles for this very reason! Cory and I did a dry run of the ride from home to work and found out that it will be a good workout every day - 1.5 hours and 23 kms one way. There are bike paths to follow almost the whole way (Melbourne's good like that) and the terrain is not particularly challenging, but it's still a good ride. My butt will have to toughen up fast to deal with being on a bike seat 3 hours a day (haha). I'm sure half of you are saying "What?! Are they nuts?!" and the other half are saying "Well, that's just the crazy kind of thing I'd expect from you." I'm looking forward to the challenge and the excuse to get my body moving every day. Bring it on. Except when it starts to get up to 40 degrees C every day (stupid hot degrees F). Then maybe I won't like it so much. But the shopping center does have at least one staff bathroom with a shower. Sorted.
In between looking for places to live and jobs and bicycles, we've managed to explore a decent amount of the city. We've hit most of the major neighborhoods you read about in Lonely Planet, and so far we're pretty pleased with Melbourne. There are plenty of parks and bike lanes and trams and markets and restaurants and cafes. And people. Melbourne has more people in it than New Zealand does. Yikes. But with the people come lots of diverse backgrounds, and with that diversity comes a melting pot of cultures. There's a street dedicated to Italian food, and Greek food, and there's Indian food everywhere, and of course there's Chinatown. I even discovered what seems to be a decent Mexican restaurant (they make their own mole!) - we tried to eat there on my birthday but didn't have a reservation and couldn't get a table for over an hour, so we decided to save it for later and be more prepared. Means it must be good, though, to be that busy on a Sunday night. In the CBD, there are lots of shopping centers with food courts that are actually good. In one of them I found the most amazing Indian food ever. For cheap too.
The Queen Victoria Market is amazing. Especially coming from Ohau where we ate frozen veggies because a single "fresh" green pepper knocked you back $6 at the supermarket. At the Vic Market we got two massive beautiful peppers for $1.50. Yesss. Produce is good and plentiful and cheap. There are massive sections of the market (which takes up a few city blocks) for fruit, veg, cheese, meat, seafood, clothes, and other random things. And there's a stand that makes yummy fresh fruit and veggie juices. Me being the juice fiend that I am...I love it.
The one thing missing is meeting new friends, which we're hoping to do more of as we start working and expanding our network of people we know. The fact is, at the moment, I can count on one and a half hands the number of people I actually know in the city. We see signs for quiz nights and game nights and cheap dinner deals and keep thinking, "That would be awesome to go to if we had more people." Hopefully, soon we will. I keep forgetting that although it seems like a lifetime already, we haven't even been here three weeks, and some things take time. For now, I'm looking forward to starting work tomorrow and seeing where that takes us.
Oh! I almost forgot. In the spirit of keeping more in touch with the people I love, I talked us into buying a new phone. A fancy new smartphone that can get on the internet. Oh, technology. My lovely friend Riley introduced me to this program called Viber which lets you send texts and photos and stuff internationally for free. If you have a smartphone and you download the program. So I've done it and we're chatting and if anyone else wants to join me I'd love that. Let me know and I'll give you my digits. That reminds me of this skit, so I'll leave you with a laugh for the day:
So my computer charger has decided to break...like literally split in half. Awesome. This means I don't have much battery left but I wanted to try to fill y'all in on the past couple weeks, our last ones in New Zealand. I'll let the pictures do most of the talking:
The Hooker Valley of Mt Cook National Park, on a moody day.
Hooker Lake with icebergs from the glacier.
Skipping rocks trying to hit icebergs. Spot the rock.
Hiking up to Sealy Tarns, following a very rainy/snowy day.
This is what I wanted from Mt Cook.
Mt Cook playing hide-and-seek.
Of course it starts to clear as we drive away...
Moeraki Boulders.
Nugget Point lighthouse.
NZ's south coast is beautiful.
We went looking for sea lions in the sand dunes here. Liking the Southern Scenic Route when it's not raining.
Campsite at Purakaunui Bay, which we finally found in the rain and the mud after heading down the wrong (very muddy) road and reversing all the way back up... the Catlins are not for the faint of heart, it would seem.
Purakaunui Falls.
Angry south coast.
Finally back in the beeches :)
Lake Monowai.
Our friend's dog Yuki just wanted some love.
I know this is a bit short on the narration, and I apologize. If only my charger wasn't broken! It's our last night in New Zealand (yikes!) so we're going to enjoy it before we have to fly away tomorrow. Next update will come from Oz! xoxo
Somehow an entire season has come and gone, almost without me knowing. I've been working a lot, and when I've played it's been up at the field where I work, so...things have just felt normal. Not noteworthy. But as I'm packing up to leave Ohau and continue onwards in my adventures, I realize I haven't shared very much about this winter and the past few months of my life. This post has been a long time coming, I guess, so I've pulled together a few snapshots and stories to sum up the season:
The shack at the top of the chairlift. Cory's domain.
The view from the top shack. Lodge waitresses Katy and Mary on the lift. The mountain in the lake is Ben Ohau (this is important for later...)
Boredom + extra snow = snow throne. Complete with homemade yarn beard.
A refreshing change of scenery - hiking up the North Temple Valley with Cory and Lyn. So nice to get out in the bush again!
Junction of North and South Temple Valleys. Looking down the South Valley.
Another good adventure with Lyn - climbing Ben Ohau. Across the lake you can see the access road to the ski field.
On the shoulder of Ben Ohau. Orientation: the ski field is above Lyn's head, access road zig-zags up by her left shoulder, the Lodge is right behind her, and the village (my house) is to the right of the small lake by the left edge of the photo.
A cool perspective of the ski field, located in the snowy basin the center of the photo. Hemis, one of the best backcountry runs accessible from the field, is seen just to the left of the main bowl, just to the right of the little patch of cloud - like a straightaway between two ridges of rock.
Happy Lyn and Happy Kendall.
My favorite view. The river just says, "Come hither."
Lake Ohau from Ben Ohau.
It can be truly beautiful on days like this one, when it's not foggy or rainy.
Rental shop on the mountain.
Cafe.
Base area on closing day. Not much snow left... My ticket office is between the snowboard bench (left) and the people (center).
Fellow ticket tart Tamara jumping for joy that it's the last day of the season.
View from the deck.
That's our little ski field. No trees and almost no snow.
Beginning of the season....
.....end of the season.
Working at Ohau has definitely been a mixed bag. It was nice to have a winter after chasing summer for two years, but by the end of it I learned (rather, remembered) why I was chasing summer - I like sunlight and outdoor activities too much for me to be content with the darkness and limitations of winter. Every day was the same: wake up, press snooze on the alarm a couple times, go to work, snowboard on my lunch break when it wasn't too windy or foggy, come home from work, eat, sleep. Repeat. Not much variety or adventure that didn't have something to do with the ski field, at least until the end of the season when spring challenged winter's grip.
The people we worked with here are all fun to be around and interesting in their own respects, and it's been nice meeting new people. I found, however, that there were very few people who I really connected with, and it feels a bit strange to end the season without having gained more than a couple new friends. Maybe it's that everyone working here is on a transient, season-driven path, while my own path feels different somehow (but don't ask me how, because I don't really know, not yet).
I'll look back on this season fondly, but right now I'm very much looking forward to new things to come. When I finish writing this, I'll head back to my house, finish packing up my things, put the finishing touches on the cleaning, and hit the road again. Cory and I have a couple weeks left in New Zealand before we have to leave, so we're planning a last road trip to explore some more of the South Island. The plan is: Mt Cook, Moeraki Boulders, Dunedin, Southern Scenic Route, Invercargill, Te Anau, Queenstown. Boom. From Queenstown we'll sort out bank accounts and selling the car and other puttzy things before flying to .... Melbourne! It's a bit of a spontaneous move, and about as different from Ohau as you can get - city environment, lots of people and good food and culture and activity. Sounds refreshing. We've got working holiday visas that will let us stay in Australia for a year, though somehow I think we won't be there that long. I'm chasing summer again...
