It's harder than you'd think to find a burrito here

It's hard to believe we are in our last week of our last workaway in NZ and only have a bit over a month left in our trip. We are staying with the Pilgrim family who live in the middle of nowhere about 45 minutes from Christchurch. Luckily, the family has been great and we have had plenty of work and other activities to keep us busy. We've spent lots of time playing Lego's and doing art with the kids, Jasmin and Isaac and get at least one game of Monopoly Deal in with the parents, Elizabeth and Paul once the kids go to bed. Also, Elizabeth shares my love of puzzles and we were able to knock out a large puzzle in a day. Our free time has mostly been spent biking through endless farm land and driving to the nearest indoor pool to swim laps. Now that I know Blake can swim a few laps in a row, he will be forced into doing a triathlon this summer.

I will definitely come home much more skilled in the tool world after this workaway. Our main task for the week was to build an extension onto their woodshed, which meant I got to learn to use a dropsaw, nail gun, and an impact driver! Grandpa would be so proud!

using a nail gun

the finished woodshed

We spent a good two hours on Saturday herding sheep from the neighbors property onto a truck so they could be moved to an area with more grass. We got to experience the scare of herding gone bad when the sheep pushed over a gate and all escaped. Luckily none of them ran onto the road, but it took six of us chasing them around the property for a half hour before we finally got them rounded up again. If you've never watched a sheep jump in panic I would recommend finding a YouTube video on it because it's very entertaining.

I was sad because none of the sheep would let me pet them :(

Then they got nice again!

Yesterday, Blake and I celebrated our two year anniversary! We really really wanted Mexican food, because we haven't had any since September since no one here seems to eat Mexican food. Therefore, it was really hard for us to find a Mexican restaurant that actually sounded decent. We finally found one in Christchurch called the Flying Burrito Brothers and decided it was well worth the trip. We feasted on a veggie burrito that was up to Blake standard, enchiladas mole, and a delicious peach margarita. We finished the evening with a walk around the beautiful Christchurch botanical gardens. Unfortunately most of the old buildings around the gardens were destroyed in the earthquake, but the gardens were still pretty cool to look at.


Unfortunately Heinz was having some problems stalling out that the mechanic had no idea how to fix, leaving us with three choices: One, keep throwing money into the car to try and fix whatever the problem might be. Two, keep driving it and really hope nothing happens when we are driving over a mountain pass. Three, sell the car while we are in the biggest city on the south island and rent a car with the money we get from the sale. Number one was definitely not happening, so we decided to put our car up for sale. After three days up for sale, we got an offer only a hundred dollars less than our asking price that we couldn't pass up. The guy came to pick the car up tonight and the whole deal was done in five minutes. For some reason he didn't even test drive the car or even look into the inside before buying it, but we weren't about to tell him otherwise. It's bittersweet having Heinz gone, but we think it's for the best.

Sorry about the lack of pictures- the internet is once again really bad here and won't let me upload anymore right now!