Thursday, June 25, 2009

1st week in review (by Ashley)


1st week is about done and it's been really fun! Got moved into our lodging and started work training. It's quite an international place...we work with people from all over and a few of the girls I work with in ticket checking are from Finland, Chile, France and 2 or 3 from NZ. I've been placed as assistant supervisor over ticket checkers, and I'll be supervisor when our manager's day's off :-) Moving up in the world! Ticket checkers are part of lift operations and the "lifties" as they're called. That's what Daniel is when he's not de-icing. You should really YouTube "deicing at Whakapapa" to see what that entails...it's some crazy sh*t!! All the lifties had yesterday off while the de-icers and ticket checkers did individual training. All ticket checkers are girls (for the obvious reasons that they're nice, have more patience and people are less likely to be confrontational with a girl if there's a problem with their ticket--ie: they get caught with someone elses pass). Well, since we finished training early and the de-icers had a full day planned, we had to wait for all them to get done before getting a bus down the mountain....so we all got the task of digging out the load and unload ramp for the main lift that's opening tomorrow. We had about 2 feet of snow and ice to dig down through to get to the unload platform and then started on the load ramp...but, unfortunately, these small girls aren't the most experienced with snow/ice shoveling and using pick axes and all. It was quite comical at times, made my heart race at times when I caught them doing some kinda dangerous stuff like swinging the pick axes WAY too close to eachothers heads, but we finally got a lot done and today I'm sore!! As a bonus during the season for each person we catch that results in them getting their ticket pulled (like using a copy, fake, someone else's for instance) we get a $50 bonus. Not bad eh?

Finally today we've got the day off and they've organized a bus for us to go to Taupo(the nearest large town) so we can go shopping and go to the bank and post office and set up our tax numbers so we can get paid. For all of you who laughed at me for bringing my French Press coffee maker will be happy to know it's me who's got the last laugh now! I can only take so much of the instant coffee until I crave a good home brewed cup in the morning. We have good coffee up on the mountain, but when we're getting up at 6am every day, a nice hot cup will be so nice. Please, anyone, feel free to send Peet's! ;-)

The past week has been absolutely beautiful up here, sunny and clear, but the clouds came in yesterday and it started raining last night. Not sure if it's snowing up on the top, hopefully it is since they ski field starts a good 2000 feet higher in elevation than us. We need some good dump days to get the season going. And, since we have Sunday and Monday off, we want to get some early season boarding in and get our "sea legs" back!

For a time reference for everyone, it's now 8:30am Friday here, and 1:30pm in CA Thursday (3:30pm Central Thursday) For those of you with Facebook, I've posted pictures online from our last weeks in the States and our 1st week down here. This link should also work for everyone: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2265130&id=6406809&ref=share WARNING: There ARE party pics in this album--view with care ;-)

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