Well Maggie finally got to see her Bruce Springsteen, even if it was just from working the food trucks. I am not a super Springsteen fan but he’s all good in my book. What I loved more was how American people got for this concert. There were American flags everywhere: on stage, they used them to usher people, flag bandanas, and some people just brought full American flags, it was great! Before the concert got started we had to help set up the trucks. This means we got to ride in a freezer truck, which was of course cold but also pitch-black. I image that’s what dogs feel like when they have to ride below the plane…people never do that to your animal buy them their own seat if you have to!

The only thing I wanted out of the Bruce concert was to not have to sell kababs. When you are in a truck that sells kababs it’s the worst because they take the longest to make and people get upset even when you tell them there is a wait. And the kabab line never dies down you serve people the whole time with no breaks or lulls. Luckily at Bruce there was only going to be one kabab truck out of 7 so our odds were good. Maggie got to work in a small struck that just sold hot dogs, burgers and fries. Her truck only had 3 people, who were veteran food truck workers, and apparently they were never that busy and she was right by the stage! I on the other had got stuck with the freaking kabab truck! I had 8 people I was working with and 6 of the 8 people had never worked an event before! We were doing kakbas, nachos, burgers, falaffle everything, hot dogs, fries and salad options. I was training people while making food, taking orders, fixing the cash register, calming the crowd, and doing runs to the truck to get things we ran out of…I saw Bruce once for maybe 5 minutes. But all is good it ended up being a really fun night anyway, I swindled multiple people into getting me ice cream so I’m calling it a win. Again I had highest selling truck even after the fiasco.

That night we stayed at the boys’ house except that night everyone was home. This meant Abi, Jahid, Maria, Maggie, and I were sharing one room with one couch and 3 mattresses. It was like a huge sleep over! In the morning we had to catch our 12-hour 7:30 bus. All the guys woke up early even though we didn’t get home until 3 that morning. We said all of our goodbyes and took photos. As I was walking out the door all the boys just kept handing me food to take with me, they really know me well. It was so sad to say bye to them we really want them to come visit us in the south island or even in America. Hopefully I will get to see them before I leave NZ.

The bus ride took a very interesting turn when a very agitated man approached the driver and got upset about missing his ferry because of traffic. He started making threats and wouldn’t leave the poor driver alone. When he came to sit back down (he was sitting one seat behind us) he started asking for people’s names and making threats to passengers. We were about 30 min away from wellington when the bus pulled over and 5 police cars surrounded us. 4 officers boarded the bus and struggled to get the loony tune man off. Outside there 4 officers one of whom had an automatic riffle pointed at the bus. This was the 1st time I had actually even seen police in NZ and who knew they carried guns? (Every time we tell people we are from America they make a big stink about how we have the right to bare arms and how that’s so dangerous). We finally made it to our bus stop and hour late and the police had to take everyone statements and we had to give our contact info because we were seated so close to him at witnesses, we hope to God we are not called later. On the plus side we got a free ride in a police car back to Paggie Waggie. The Kiwi police are so nice; the officer who drove us to our car joked around and even guessed that Maggie was like my mother.

The next morning we drove Paggie Waggie onto the ferry and we were finally off to the south island! When we made land in the south island Maggie said the south island is so much better, I honestly think it’s about the same but that’s just me! Our 1st stop was the post office because we had to mail out letters. It’s taken us a while to find a post office; we have been carrying around our letters for a while now. But the funny thing was that because we are millennials we were just so confused by the stamps. They weren’t the sticker ones; you actually had to lick them, gross. Our next stop was of course a winery! The next day was Mardi Gras my second favorite holiday! Of course they don’t know the joys of Mardi Gras here but that’s ok I will teach them. We had cake, beer, cookies, fries, icing, and biscuits. We even went to a beer garden, because we don’t go anywhere without trying the beer!

The next day was spent at wineries, I’m trying to learn about wine and drinking it: one to appease Maggie, two I think it might be a good talent to have. At one winery we got contact of a possible job offer which would be awesome! They same woman also told us to schmooze the contact she gave us. Then she looked at me and said “but you don’t look like a very good liar”. Which is so true I’m a horrible liar and everyone knows it but I didn’t know just my face gave it away. After a few wineries I can’t remember how many, we made our way to Nelson. We were in the middle of watching a movie because we were quite tired from all the wine when there was a knock on our door. We slid open the door and there were our Germans, Lara and Stephan!! So now we are back with the gang traveling around Nelson!

End Notes

Now that we are in the South Island we don’t have to worry about tsunamis instead we have to worries about earthquakes, which are way more common