Goodbye camper, hello farm life

The time has come to blog weekly once again. Soon we will both be back in to the swing of working so time will just melt away with most of our free time in the evenings spent simply eating, showering and going to sleep. We spent most of Wednesday emptying out the van and moving back into our old house. It's hard to believe it's been almost a year since we first came here and it feels strange to now be moving back in. Cleaning the camper was one of the least favourite jobs of the week but it wasn't as bad as unpacking. That's always been my least favourite job, for example I don't mind going food shopping but it's the coming home and having to unpack it all that I really dislike doing. We found homes for everything and got creative with some cardboard boxes that are now being used as bedside tables (one of our tables from last year has magically disappeared). Our towels seem to have been taken by Jono and trashed. I'm surprised Candy hasn't noticed this but the navy one is now covered in bleached out spots and the remaining red towel is currently on the garage floor after being used to mop up petrol. She's usually quite aware of where her belongings are so I'm surprised she hasn't twigged that these towels have gone astray. Luckily she went and bought us new ones and she plans on buying us new pillows as well as there is only one free one on farm available. We managed to get the van looking ship shape and on Thursday we drove it back to Christchurch to drop it off. Our car luckily passed it's warrant of fitness this week so we didn't need to borrow the farm car to get it back up there. You feel so tiny driving in a little car after months of dominating the road in a Ford Transit. It took longer than expected to go through everything to return the van. We did have a lot of chit chat with the ladies going on but I hadn't expected it to take 2 hours. We were worried about some scratches on the window that we weren't sure if we'd caused but they didn't seem too fussed and because of a huge chip caused by another customer the whole window screen would need to be replaced anyway. I think she appreciated our honesty really. We headed to K Mart after and picked up a cheap duvet and cover that will hopefully provide more warmth than the bedding we had been supplied with. After being in the country a year we had to order NZ licences but these unfortunately didn't turn up to the farm so we also visited the AA centre to get new temporary licences issued and order new ones to be resent to our address. Hopefully these ones do arrive. Soon we won't have much time together so we used some of this week to start working out what we wanted to see and do around the country in summer. There's some things we missed out due to the weather so it would be good to get to see these things if possible before leaving. The rest of the week has been spent enjoying just relaxing and not having to do much. We've signed our contracts and negotiated pretty good pay rises as well as cooked our favourite meals that we've definitely been missing. I wouldn't say I'm that happy to be settled down again but it is nice to have a different change of pace and lifestyle after a while on the road.Read more