Work, Christmas and New Years Eve

Finally, the luck seems to have found back to us. We found work as dishwashers in the beach restaurant Frontroom in Waikanae. Each of us has four days of 5-8 hours, but it is enough to earn money. Apart from that, we always get the days of colleagues that are not coming, which is pretty often. We take everything possible and never turn down an offer, now we are focused on earning money. This also means, that we rarely see each other now. As they only need one at a time, we work alternating. Sometimes, I go in the morning, return around early afternoon and my boyfriend takes the car to go to work. He then only returns at midnight and of course, we both just want to sleep then. Sometimes it is the other way round. We know more about each other from what our colleagues tell us. Especially now, around Christmas time it is busy as hell and when I am done with my work for the day, I am also done for the whole day. But I really like my work. Probably that’s mostly because of my colleagues, who are all very nice. Everyone is making jokes and looking after each other. For example, I have never time to even put away the dishes that I washed, so everyone was looking to help me. Per working day, we get one meal and it is always so delicious.

Another good thing is, that a friend of ours, who has a house close to work, is going in a longer road trip, with her self-prepared caravan, and needed someone to look after the house and cat. So, we even found a more than suiting accommodation and that completely for free. It is a small house, with three bedrooms, living room, kitchenette, two bathrooms, small garden and terrace with view on the sea. She made almost all the furniture on her own, mostly from drift wood. Absolutely perfect! This means, being alone is not even bad, because for bad days, you have the television plus a big collection of good movies – as she is working as an art director for movies – and on good days, you can just go for a walk at the sea, which is only five minutes on foot. I actually loved, having a routine for some time and get some time off from the tourist stuff.

Until the end, we didn’t get into Christmas mood. The 24this anyway not a public holiday as in Germany, so I had to work normally until 16 o’clock. In the evening, we met at our German friend’s place and had a Christmas barbecue together. It was raining, which was the only thing that matched the German Christmas expectations, but not the good ones. I tried to get some Christmas mood with putting Christmas songs and me and my German friend were singing along, but the guys only stared at us as if we were crazy. After the barbecue, we ate the dessert, that we brought and which was also winterly themed with spekulatius and drank egg nog. The rest of the evening, we spent talking, drinking alcohol and watching TV. It was a very nice evening, but not very Christmas like. The 25thand 26nd were officially free and we were relaxing at the beach.

New Year is also not celebrated as big as in Germany. Shooting rackets privately isn’t allowed anyway, probably because of the fire hazard with all the dry fields. They don’t have the tradition of “pouring molten lead on cold water and tell someone’s fortune from the shapes” and I couldn’t even find lead anywhere and neither fortune ladybirds made from chocolate. The only fireworks would be in Auckland or Wellington and apart from that it is only the countdown and then drinking and partying as every other night in the year as well. Event though, they are the first country in the world to enter the New Year, it doesn’t seem to have any importance to them. After work and shopping groceries, I went home and we prepared dinner. Our plan was to go to Wellington to see the firework, which for us was important, as we were already separated from our friends and family in Germany. Some of our colleagues were also planning about coming along. But then, everything should come different than thought. I got such an intensive headache that I had to lie down. For two hours, I was lying in bed with a massive migrane – I had never had it that bad before, I couldn’t see, I felt sick and was literally crying from the pain. I was just hoping for it to end as I didn’t want to start like that into the New Year, it could not be a good sign. After being so sick that I had to get some relief, it got suddenly better and turned into a slight headache with which I could live. Until then, it was already too late to go to Wellington and we hadn’t even eaten yet. Our friends also were too tired to go and part of them was still busy with the dishes until 3 o’clock in the night. We were happy of having refused to work in that night, the first and only time we refused a working offer. Probably, the migraine was consequence of me not drinking anything the whole day as work was so stressful and I didn’t even have the time to stop for one minute. I know I had had a bottle of water right next to me, but didn’t touch it the whole day. We just decided to take our pizza to the beach and ate there, sitting in the back of our car. The fresh air was very comfortable and I felt better soon. When it got too cold, we went back home and watched a film until midnight. The policemen in their cars in our streets apparently as well. Probably they had the task of arresting anyone making illegally a firework. At midnight, we made a toast to each other with champagne on our terrace and whished us a happy New Year, watching the odd forbidden rackets going into the black night. We skyped shortly with our families, who still had more than eleven hours to celebrate their New Year, and then went to bed at 2 o’clock. That would be the saddest New Year in my life. The next day, I had to work at 9 o’clock. We would decide in the morning, if I was fit enough to go or if my friends would take the morning and I would go in the afternoon. The next day, when I told my colleagues at work about my bad night, everyone was so caring and from that day on, everyone was looking at how much I drank and every hour they brought a new bottle of water, forcing me to drink up the other one, which they had brought before. I really love these guys and am really gonna miss them. We spent so much time together and grew really close.

Photo gallery