Surrounded

Last night the town I'm currently staying in, Blenheim, held their annual Christmas festival. It involved brass band renditions of "La Vida Loca" (yes, the Ricky Martin song), people dancing with scarves in a circle and fireworks. The fireworks were nice. Not a huge display (it's a tiny town, so I wasn't expecting a New Yorkish display), but a nice little show. The weird part was that I was standing in a fairly large crowd of people (like 100 or so) and it was stony silence the entire show. A little kid was asking his mother what makes them catch on fire or something, but there was no oohing or awwwing. It was kind of weird.

There's an ad on television for a show on later tonight: Rick and Steve are the happiest gay couple around. What is THAT about? Is it a sitcom? A documentary?

Right now it's elf. I love elf. I'm watching it with a room full of foreigners. This is typical everywhere I go. They are all so different. There are some Asians talking, someone who sounds vaguely Russian/Czech or something and some Germans. Supposedly there's a Scottish person here. Not much in the way of conversational opportunities. :(

Today I got my first real NZ job (one that required a tax ID number and everything). I am not sure why they needed the tax information. It's hard to tax nothing. It was a speed-based pay scale, which is never a good prospect for me. The only thing I do quickly is being slow. So... after eight hours of work, without stopping for lunch because I was already so slow, I earned a whopping $70 or so. That's around $40 US. Before the 20 percent tax cut. :( I'm only going to do this for a few days. Nobody else is hiring so close to Christmas.

Anyway, I've gotta go. I just got the two-minute warning beep!

Cheers everyone!

Mare :)