Hi. It’s Maggie, Paris’ lifeline here in New Zealand. Guess you guys are stuck with me for the next blog post.

This past week has been quite busy. We started off with a catering job last Friday for a corporate event. And we actually arrived on time! Mainly because Christine (catering boss) told us to come to her place first and then we would all drive together… cause we’re Americans and don’t know what the hell we’re doing. These corporate people really know how to have fun. There was an AMAZING bouncy obstacle course!!! There were 2 food trucks this time and we were separate again, probably because they think we’re incompetent of cooking (which Paris kind of is) so they stick us as the face of the truck and take people’s orders and “serve” them. Serving here literally just means taking the ready made food and handing it to the customer. Easy, right? Somehow, in my truck, I wasn’t even handing the food out…just taking orders; they didn’t even have me doing that. So I was just sitting in the front of the truck taking vouchers from these people and yelling back orders that were occasionally done in order… At one point though I snuck into the food making section (we were short handed), making wraps, and I was best fucking tortilla wrapper there!

The next day we did another catering job in the morning (had to wake up at 7:15am… mornings aren’t my favorite). But there was only one truck so me and Paris actually got to work together! It was me and Paris, a few Bangladesh people, Nils the German, Song an Asian lady, and Greg (boss man) working the truck. Song runs a good truck and she was taking orders and serving, which meant that me and Paris were actually cooking the food this time!!! Moving up in the ranks! It was a lot of fun and we were done early enough so we could go and get some strawberry ice cream from the Clevedon strawberry farm! We’ve been trying to get this ice cream for the past week, but it’s always been closed by the time we got back! But this ice cream, man, is soooooo goooddd. It’s made with fresh frozen strawberries and a scoop of vanilla ice cream, and it’s put into this cool blender-type ice cream maker to make a soft serve like ice cream swirl. It’s delicious. That was definitely a highlight…

We smelled like grease so we were able to take quick showers then there was a Christmas parade in town! It was very cute and had sheep and horses and donkeys in it… New Zealand… It was raining quite a bit, which meant it was the perfect time to wash vans! We washed a dingy first, and then moved onto another ambo. I was up on my ladder washing the roof when I slipped and tipped over onto another van while on my ladder and hit the side of my thigh quite hard. I didn’t touch the ground so it doesn’t count as a “fall.” But there is a pretty large and fat bruise there. It still hurts on pull on my pants… When washing was done, we took a break for dinner, and then at 9pm we went back out and worked insulating a hitop roof for a van. We are slow workers, and I mean slow. How slow? It took us 4 hours to glue plastic foam strips (about 1 ft x 6ft long) to the inside of a roof that was about the size of a 420 sailboat. We even had a spray glue gun that could coat the entire surface area in about 5 minutes, but somehow we took 4 hours. It was a long day of work.

This brings us to Sunday… (*warning: I’m a very sequential person, so I’m writing this all chronologically day by day so this is probably going to be a pretty long post. Good time to go get a snack). As I mentioned before, I am not a morning person. It takes me about an hour to actually wake up (after I’m already technically awake). So after a night like the night before, staying up wayyy past our bedtime, I wanted to sleep in, at least until 10. Get 8hrs of sleep. But instead of getting a good 8hrs, I got a wimpy 6hrs and had a couple coughing fits in the middle of the night. So I had just finished my breakfast when, surprise!, it’s time for Kate and Charlotte’s Christmas pageant. So I was tired and not yet awake and then had to go to church… not a good Maggie combination. But the pageant was adorable and then there was really good tea and carrot cake after. The church here feeds us well, so I’m not mad.

After the pageant, we kind of thought we were going to have the day off, but Mike OG asked us if we wanted to drive an ambulance to Whangarei to the buyer. And since we’re middle children and can’t say no and can’t make decisions, we drove an ambulance to Whangarei! It’s about a 2 hr 30min drive from Clevedon to Whangarei (which is in Northland) and we were cruising along, as much as an ambulance can actually cruise (especially on New Zealand roads), and about an hour out of Whangarei I got a red light on the dash and lost the gas pedal… SHIT. We broke Mike’s ambulance! We pulled off to the side of the road (luckily we were on a downhill and could roll down) and I put it park and then I got 1 more red light and 2 orange lights. So we’re 100 percent freaking out right now. Turned the ambo off, and sat for a second, both of us freaking out quietly. Finally decided to turn the ambo back on and then it was okay again! Phew, we didn’t break Mike’s ambulance. So off we went up a huge steep winding hill and 2 minutes later all 4 lights came back on and I lost gas. Oh shit. I actually broke an ambulance. Luckily we were right on a turn and there was a breakdown section right there! So we turned everything off and then frantically started to get a hold of Mike OG. He just left Clevedon, so it was going to be an hour and a half until he got there to help us. Because we’re crazy we brought bread, peanut butter, and nutella we were set for the night! Mike and Patrick finally came to save us. It started right up for them and the ambo just needed more petrol. We drove in the small Renault, which felt like driving a go cart after driving an ambulance. Sold the ambulance, Mike bought a 36 foot (approx.) sailboat, got Thai food for dinner (thanks Mike!) and then we were back to Clevedon. Also, sidenote, Michael knows about everything: molecules, cars, U.S. history, everything science… and VW vans.

The roof that we insulated the other night, we then carpeted/upholstered the next day! A much faster process and it probably only took us 2 hours! We also were able to do some laundry so we have some new clean clothes! Since Michael bought us dinner last night and didn’t let us pay for our part because NZ doesn’t work that way (instead you bring either some wine or a banana cake as a thank you). So we decided we were gunna make Mike a banana cake. So we went to the Laundromat and stuck our clothes in the dryer and then got banana cake supplies. I also made an apple brown betty in the slow cooker, which turned out great even though I had no idea what I was doing and how much to use of what, but it tasted pretty good! And Patrick, Michael, and Steph liked it!

Baked a banana cake Tuesday morning for Mike. They’re eating it and they haven’t died yet, so I think I did okay. I’ve never driven stick shift in my life. I’ve wanted to, but Paris got that job here because she’s actually driven stick before. But Michael sent me and Paris on an errand with Other Mike to get a WOF for this van and another one, but it was a manual one. For me and Paris, it takes 2 people to drive a manual car because we’re special. Paris was driving and in charge of the clutch, while I was in charge of changing gears with the stick shift. While we were in Clevedon it was going pretty well, I freaked out a little trying to get the stick in the right slot thingy, but I was doing okay. But man, once we got to the downtown area in Takanini and came to a roundabout, shit hit the fan real fast. Right as it was our turn to go onto the roundabout, we stalled. And then kept stalling… and then a red light came onto the dash and we broke another van… By the time Other Mike came back to the roundabout to fix the car we had been sitting ducks at the front of a major roundabout for a good 5 minutes. But because Kiwis are so nice, when people came around for their turn, they would always ask if we were okay and if we needed a lift somewhere! If this were Boston, I would have gotten a few good F bombs and middle fingers and a lot of honking… but those are only Massholes, and I’m also a Masshole, so it’s okay… Dropped off that car finally, but then had to drive another manual car back to the Bus Haus. Stalled a couple times in that one too… And people thought that we were insane for waiting for a good automatic for our campervan…. Paggie Waggie would have died already if she were manual. Or we’d still be in Onehunga… We then went to the beach with Steph, Patrick, and Pia. Drank some beer and Paris actually went in the water!

Mike OG is very trusting of us using power tools and such, which has been fine, but give us a razor blade that isn’t an X-Acto knife and we lose our shit. I think I’ve cut myself on each of my 10 fingers in the past 2 weeks. I’ve probably left little drops of my blood in each van we’ve worked on. I’m also very new to the whole handy-woman life style and when we were taking out bolts from the floor of a van, Patrick gave me a socket wrench to use. I know the what a socket wrench is and how and why it’s used but growing up the only time that I used a socket wrench was when I just playing with it because it made a funny sound. So when Patrick handed me the handle part and the attachment, I asked how do you use this, and he proceeded to reply: “is this that a real question?” Yes, that was a real question; and then he and Paris proceeded to make fun of me. But now I know how to use a socket wrench!

The days go by so quickly here! Friday was a blur and we did some more carpeting of boards and vans. We were waiting all day for another roof to arrive so we could insulate it, but it didn’t show up until 5pm! But instead of starting straight away on insulating the roof (that would be the smart thing to do since it takes us 4 hours to do it), we decided that going to a Christmas light show would be a better idea. Which it was. Paggie, Nils, Patrick, Steph, and Pia went at 8:30pm to go see a Christmas light show—Thanks Trudy for the recommendation! (We actually saw that she did this on Facebook and then proceeded to interrogate her about it). By the time we got back it was about 10:15pm, we still had to make dinner because we needed all the energy to insulate this roof. Drank some caffeine with dinner, hung out with Nils for a bit, and then got insulating at around 11:30pm! It only took us 3 hours this time! We’ve improved our time by an hour and a half! Aaaaand, Mike and Mike said we did a good job, so that’s all we need to hear.

Other tidbits:

We know what Patrick’s Disney character is: Oaken, the middle-of-the-woods shop owner in Frozen. Patrick always says “yoo hoo”! (click here for video) And “zzzzzt” like a zipper…

Patrick’s birthday is the 18th so I’m obviously going to make him cake, whether he likes it or not.

We tried a new flavor of Schweppes: lime. And it’s a bright green color and looks like liquid slime. We thought our insides were gunna burn.

No sleep this week… Cool.

Tried the fish and chips from next door. Scotland’s are WAY better. Sorry NZ, you can’t have everything.

Shout out to Papa Celluch for recording It’s A Wonderful Life.

This is probably the most I've written in 5 years so I'm gunna take a break from guest writing probably until July... Bye.