Sunday, September 2

Sunday, September 2

What have we been up to? The "real" world for us (quotation marks because we feel like our time in New Zealand is our temporary/time out/fake life) consists of going to work at UCOL for me and Josh working from home for Massey University. Last week, I picked up 6.5 hours of extra work (extra $$) as an Academic Counselor in addition to my 20 hours as an International Student Co-ordinator. I really like doing the academic work which consists of proof reading papers and helping students develop their thoughts on writing assignments.

We've also stayed busy with our Rotary committments. Last week, we gave two presentations to Rotary clubs. Wednesday night, August 29, we presented at Waikanae which is about a one hour drive south of Palmerston North. Thursday night, August 30, we presented at Otaki also about an hour south of Palmerston North. Yesterday, September 1 (the first day of spring and note I am sitting in the house without the heater on at 2:30 in the afternoon for the first time in awhile), we helped sell raffle tickets for the Foxton Rotrary Club at the Foxton Spring Festival.

Next week, we have two more Rotary presentations scheduled. One is for the Palmerston North club that meets Monday afternoon and the other is the Awapuni club which meets on Tuesday evening. On Tuesday, September 11, we're scheduled to speak at the Taihape Rotary club which is a little over an hour's drive north from Palmerston North. At this point, we've given over 20 presentations to Rotary clubs all over New Zealand.

Also on our to do list is training for the Tongariro Crossing. Remember how we did the Tongariro over Easter weekend and said we'd never, ever do it again because the mountain totally dominated us? If you don't remember, refer to the April 8-9 blog post. Well, we are motivated to train for the next two months and see how we do on the Tongariro Crossing at the end of October.

After 10 days of training, Josh and I are up to 8.75 kms which is almost 5.5 miles a day of jogging/walking. We train by going around Savage Crescent which is a 1.25 km loop. The Tongariro Crossing is 17 kms total (with 3 main areas of steep uphill climbing) so we're working on walking that distance and throwing in some stair climbs at the Tower Building at Massey University's Hokowhitu Campus as well. I'm going to be REALLY MAD if the Tongariro isn't easier to climb after training for two months!

We've also found our dream house in Fayetteville if it stays on the market until we can make an offer. My mom is driving over to check it out for us....one of the benefits of moving back to somewhere you have family and friends. We'd like our move back to be as easy as possible i.e. only having to move the furniture once out of storage instead of out of storage to an apartment and then out of an apartment to our house. We'll see how all that works out.

My brother is suppossedly coming to Australia for his job in the Air Force. I'm trying to contact him for more details but I haven't been able to reach him. It'd be great if we could meet up down under.

Josh and I have also found a new facination with facebook.com's Traveler IQ Challenge. I love geography so taking those quizzes is addictive!

Josh and I hope everyone back home is enjoying college football...especially those Razorbacks. GO HOGS!