Coffee art, sheep traffic and farewells

This week I've been upping my game at the coffee shop for our most regular customer, Marcia. When I first started I was told she likes it if you use the foam from the milk to draw a smiley face on her coffees for her. I've decided that's far too mundane so have been creating butterflies, bumblebees and even a rabbit this week. Now that I've set this standard I do fear it's going to be hard to maintain and thinking of ideas each day may be a challenge but she absolutely loves it! She's sent pictures of them to all of her family apparently so it's definitely worth it for how much she enjoys it. I work next to the Barker's shop which sells a huge range of fruit squash, or syrup as they call it here. The brand sells in many supermarkets throughout NZ but because this is the original shop they often have discounted products that have gone slightly wrong in production. Our coffee shop has a connecting window into the Barker's store so as I'm making milkshakes I always have a glance in to see what is in the reduced section each day. We've been buying the juices and then using a reusable ice lolly maker to make tasty squash lollies for us to have when it gets hot, which it has been doing a lot this week! On my days off I made us meatballs which Nick very much appreciated and I throughly enjoyed. We do need to make the most of having good cooking facilities because as soon as we go to campervan life we'll be rather limited by what we can make. We had to say goodbye this week to one of our friends from our original farm, Jan. His time working was up and he's all set to go on his adventure around New Zealand. We headed to the old farm and it was really lovely to see everyone again and even meet a few new faces. I was surprised to see that he'd cooked for everyone which was very kind of him. He was quite upset about leaving and it will be sad not having him around but it's too easy to stay in the comfort of familiar people and one place, pretty much like we are doing, and it only becomes harder to leave later on. We've already decided we will be visiting him in Germany at some point when we do our Europe exploration. I got to experience another first this week and that was being late home from work becuase I was caught behind sheep on the highway! A 100km speed limit road and they walked sheep down about 1km of it. I was leading the line of traffic so I tried to keep my distance and help herd the animals forward. They were walking mainly on our side of the road so that meant every so often a car coming the other way could slowly come past us. The worst part was an impatient driver, probably 20 cars behind me, decided to speed up along the line of traffic in the wrong lane, cut in front of me narrowly missing the car facing towards him and then weave at speed between sheep and cars to get through. It was great for him because he was then speeding off but he left a previously organised herd of sheep in complete caos all over the road. Some people have no patience or think about the after effect of what they are doing. I on the other hand quite enjoyed inching along behind the main thing New Zealand has more of than people, sheep.Read more