One Week Gone

Liz here:

This blog has been slow to start, once we left the boring wait of the airport, but we promise we’ll keep everyone more updated now. There’s already so much to write about. Jen did a good job of summarizing Paihia, this beautiful little summer tourist town right on the bay. It reminds me a little of northern Lake Michigan towns, Petoskey or something, except with palms instead of pines, seashells instead of zebra mussels, scuba diving shops instead of go-carts. There are still all of the hotels, restaurants, little gift shops, ice cream shops, and even a fudge place.

(They have different flavors, though. Rum and raisin is very popular for both ice cream and fudge. There’s something called ‘hokey-pokey,’ and lots of boysenberries, and strange fruits I’ve never heard of. Also maple syrup is a classic ice cream flavor, which sounds delicious.)

We’re working for accommodation at Centabay Lodge, which means from ten to noon every day we clean the place, along with two girls from Peru (Holly, 27, and Fio, 23) and a girl from Canada (Sky, late twenties.) The manager, Jack, who’s probably in his mid-forties and is apparently some kind of big-shot golfer in NZ – he just won a tournament and got his photo in the newspaper – tells us what to do and then has us up to his balcony for tea and “biscuits” (which are actually just chocolate chip cookies, silly Kiwis) when we’re done for the day. Also, he has made fun of me twice for being “blonde” now, and Jen and I are trying to decide if he’s creepy or just a jokester. He’s a character.

Ryona, though, his daughter? She and her little orange dog Murky are like, my favorite part of Centabay. She’s the most talkative and affectionate eight-year-old I’ve ever met. Jen taught her some card tricks, and she goes to the beach with all of us. The other day she helped me clean the kitchen.

Oh right, so cleaning? Two hours a day, we clean the big common kitchen, the common rooms, the bathrooms, the bedrooms people have left. We do the laundry – washing, folding, hanging out on the lines (all of the sheets and towels always smell SO good.) Basically we're migrant workers. Also, a few times a week, we unload luggage from the tour buses to the big fancy hotel next door (it takes like twenty minutes) and then we get free dinner at this giant gourmet buffet. Yesterday was the first time doing that - holy crap was it amazing. Basically never have I eaten so much. But damn, do you feel like you've lost your dignity when you are crawling around on your hands and knees in a bus's luggage compartment hauling out rich ladies' giant bags.

Don't worry, there's fun stuff though: we've been swimming in the ocean, laying on the beach, and kayaking out to the islands. (The islands are like PIRATE ISLANDS.) (Ha - you should have seen Jen and I lugging these two hundred pound double kayak across the town's main road. We were going about half a mile per hour and almost got hit by about eight cars.) We've found so many cool seashells. We've been out to the bar (they drink shots out of tea pots! Ha!) and met a bajillion cool people at the hostel, sat in the hot tub and done pilates together in the morning. Yesterday Jen and I went for our first hike, up the big hill/small mountain behind town to a lookout over the bay. It's really jungle here - there is such a diversity of trees and ferns. I'm going to be an old-fashioned naturalist and take samples and make drawings of everything. I can't wait to learn all of the plants.

More later - today we're hiking to Haruru Falls!