finally a new update

It's been a month since we updated...oops! Hasn't been to eventful in the past month. Not much to report. We've had a few bad weather days that kept the mountain closed with bad wind and no vis. Then we both got colds and are still trying to get better. Ashley did the video report for the mountain website on Friday morning. You can find it at www.mtruapehu.com Bottom right of the home page there's a "video and pics" box to click on. It's a quick snippit, but it was fun. Thursday night we had our lift operations mid season "jug night" which had a "punter" theme. Punters are basically the people you see up here in retro gear and/or inappropriate clothing. Such as jeans shorts and flip flops in the snow. You'd be surprised to see how many people come up to sight see in warm weather clothes and even high heals!! 90% of these peopel are asian and don't speak english and it's just so funny to try and get them on and off chair lifts!!

We're still hoping for some September snow storms here because we've had a lot of rain on the mountian lately and are already dealing with slushy, spring skiing conditions. We need some snow to keep the mountain open until mid October so we can finish out the work season!

We've finally booked our flight to Australia in November. We're going to spend a month in NZ after the season ends (OCt 11-Nov6). 3 weeks touring the South Island then a week back up in the north near Auckland and the Bay of Plenty and the coastal beaches. It will be so nice to get back to the sun, sand and ocean!! In Australia our plan is to fly to Cairns (upper north) and start our trip with a week's dive trip on the Great Barrier Reef. Then we'll make our way by bus down the east coast to Sydney. We have some friends here that are either from Australia or have spent a lot of time there so they're helping us plan our trip. Should be a great experience and a lot of fun. We'll make sure to work on our tans so that we show up at Christmas nice and gloden.

We haven't yet heard anything final with our plans back in the States but we're still thinking Charlston, SC is where we'll end up. Hopefully we'll spend 2-3 weeks roadtripping from CA and stopping for a few ski breaks along the way! Christmas and New Years in Tahoe this year again finally!!! Then off through Utah to visit some friends working in Park City, then across Colorado and through the middle of the US ending up in FL to see family, pick up our stuff from storage and move. Hopefully that'll put us settled down by February.

:-) Hopefully it won't be too hard to settle down after all these adventures!!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2265130&id=6406809&l=fd38c0936 (facebook photo link)

where we live

found a link about where we live right now and thought it's an easy way to share and show what it's like here:

http://origin-www.newzealand.com/travel/destinations/regions/ruapehu/ruapehu-towns.cfm/nodeid/291.html

We had some more crappy weather last week and Daniel got the flu so was out for a good couple of days. Finally we got beautiful bluebird weather days for our 2 days off this week and I went to Turoa (the ski area on the opposite side of our mtn) and then Daniel and I went to our resort yesterday (monday) and boarded with friends all day. Had a really good time, the weather was clear and sunny and the snow not too icy! They don't get powder like we do back home, they're lucky to get a meter of snow base and most of it is solid ice now! Oh well. Time to get back to work and poor weather for the rest of the week. I'll post some pics soon from our sunny days off. The 2 here are of a typical snow making morning and a typical "ice" sign that one will see posted all over teh mtn!

1 month into life here (By Ash)

The 2 week school holidays are finally over and thank god for it! The past 2 weeks have been filled with long busy days, and lots and lots of people visiting the mountain. We've finally had a few more snow dumps so we've been able to open more of the mountain up and it's finally starting to look more like a ski resort than just a rocky mountain with just a little bit of snow! Last Tuesday, our first day back after our 2 days off, brang in a mib snow storm. All day it had been rain/sleet/snow and finally around 2pm the big, fat flakes started to fall and so did the temperature. So the snow started to stick on the roads and got icy and we told people to start headind down, especially all 2 wheel drive cars---but did they listen? NO! People go to the snow and leave their brains at home. Within a span of 5 minutes we had 5 car wrecks, a few single car slide but a few were 3, 4 and 5 car pile ups!! It's a steep mountain road and, since Mt. Ruapehu is the only mountain that gets snow in the North Island, people don't know what they're doing. Especially since a lot of them are asians and a lot of Indians from Fiji. So, we started a road evacuation 3pm and got done by 10. Luckily the snow was pretty light and there wasn't wind. We, the lift operations staff, turn into roadies when things like this happen and we turn into chain crews. "Workin on the chain gang"! As fast as we could get the accidents cleared and start getting all 4 wheel drive cars out, we got them going then brought out the chains for everyone else. Our of the 75 2-wheel drive vehicles Daniel and I had to chain up in the 2 parking lots we were dealing with, only 2 had their own chains! And one of those was a big bus/van thing and they had no idea how to put them on!

It may sound like it was hell, but it was actually pretty fun. It was a good feeling to be so useful and helpful for people. The next day, which was a beautiful day, I had people coming up to me and remembering me by name and tahnking me. Even some young kids remembered and now they say hi to me and are excited every time they come through my line. It's funny because I think back to all the times I skied at the same places back in Cali and I never got to know any of the employees....maybe it's just me and my sunny disposition ;-)

Most of you will never believe this, but I get up before 6am every day (escept our days off--then we get up at 7 for breakfast)! Daniel has to be up at 5:30 to be with the de-icing crew first up the mountain, so I get up and have a nice, long hot shower (which you can't get after work since everyone uses the hot water) then I hop online to chat with friends and catch up on the news and stuff before breakfast. I even have time to make coffee and enjoy it! Which I'm doing right now :-D

It's just about 7am and I have to eat breakfast and get going. Hopefully this had helped you all see a little into our lives here. (There's more to it, but I'll get Daniel to write more later) We miss you all back home--just like we miss real Diet Pepsi, BBQ sauce and fried chicken! Write us and send pictures and let us know what's going on back in the good ol' US of A.

(The pictures are of a fun sled ride after work, sunset from our 'back porch' and few sunrise pics from riding up a chairlift at work)

2nd week in review

One more week down and the season's finally really here. This week marks the start of school holidays and the opening of the rest of the mountain. The first week was good practice with smaller crowds and now the next 2 weeks will be filled with large crowds and busy days. Ashley got to use her loud vocal skills down at the bottom of the bunny slopes doing ticket checking and queue control on the beginner lift. What a long, loud day that was! You'd think after watching the few hundred people in front of you make their way onto the lift correctly that people would learn themselves and have it down by their turn...WRONG! Even after doing the same thing over and over again they still couldn't get it right. Amazing! But it was a fun day, and helping the small kids was a great experience.

Daniel finally got some good de-icing practice clibing towers and getting used to the methods. Now he's ready to get going with those early, cold, windy mornings.

This past weekend brought us some fun 4th of July patritisiom and we bonded with the other 6 Americans here in Staffies. Ashley wore a small US flag tucked into the front of her jacket and got a lot of comments and "Happy 4th of July" wishes from the locals. Even met a few more Americans---one from Novato, CA even! (that's only 15 minutes from Petaluma) We ended the night with a few cases of Budwiser hanging out with all the other staff living at staff quarters. Even all challenged the nationalities to singing the national anthems of all their countries...you'll have to wait to see the video on that one!

We've had the past 2 days off; our normal schedule will give us Sunday and Monday off, so we've been resting and relaxing. Took a hike to a nearby waterfall and read a few books. Enjoyed the winter rain and snow and a few movies. All in all, a good winter weekend :-D

Hope you all had a fun and safe 4th of July weekend. Enjoy that sunshine and don't forget your sunblock!

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 ;-)

Finally made it!

After what felt like a week solid of traveling we finally made it to New Zealand and our final “home” on Mt. Ruapehu! Our journey started Wednesday night at 11:30pm when we took off from LAX on the HUGE Qantas A380 airbus...a full 2 story plane! Inside it felt normal until you started thinking about the fact that there was an entire level above you! Ashley took a little journey around and walked up the stairs once in the back to take a look but didn't see much. 15.5 hours is a looong flight. Even with the great personal entertainment systems at each seat and the extra leg room and wider seats, there just isn't a way to sleep comfortable (or, in Ashley's case, at all). We both watched 4 different movies each and a few tv shows and played some video games. It was really strange for it to never get light until right before we landed. We were basically running away from the sun the entire flight and it finally caught up in Australia! We had a 8 hour lay-over in Melbourne, and after the run-around of having one bag make it through to baggage claim and finding out the other 2 (supposedly) were checked all the way through, we headed to downtown Melbourne city and walked around for a few hours. It's a large business city with many different 'precincts, city sub-sections, of different nationalities and personalities. We enjoyed walking around a sampling food from all over the world and were surprised to find out that the area has a large Asian population. Guess that makes sense since Asia is so close.

After wearing ourselves out walking for about 4 hours we went back to the airport only to find out our flight had been rescheduled to leave an hour later than planned. By now, we had been up for almost 2 days and were just ready to get here and sleep! The 3 and a half hour flight to Auckland was a bit cramped, but at least Qantas has really good food, and free wine (on both flights)! So we were able to survive. Making it through immigration was a breeze for Daniel since we had our visas already processed, but didn't think about the fact that Ashley got a new Passport a month ago and her visa was processed on the old one...oops! Right then and there we found out how nice New Zealanders are, everyone was so smiley and friendly and took care of processing the visa quickly and we went right through after maybe a 10 minute delay....just to find our bags the last lonely bags on the carrousel but Ashley's snowboard nowhere in sight. In our traveling the past few years we've found it's never a good sign when the baggage assistance people know your name! They were waiting for us to tell her the snowboard hadn't even left LA with us! I guess it sat there for about 10 hours before hoping a flight straight here and arrived sometime Saturday morning and was delivered to the hotel while we were out exploring Auckland Good thing is that we didn't have to deal with carrying it on the shuttle to the hotel at 1am :-D

Finally, we got out to explore Auckland and hit up the Vodafone store and purchased a local prepaid SIM card and get a local number. So our phones are now officially off. Daniel's for good, and Ashley's number is on hold until December 20th when we get back. Our new number is +64211750191 and, for probably $5 a minute, you can call us all you want!! jk, ok so we won't expect many calls, it costs us about $.50/min so we'll call when we can. We'll also try and update this blog as often as possible with photos and video, just depends on how much this internet actually ends up costing. We have wireless here at the staff lodging and it's costs $.10 per MB of usage...whatever that really adds up to!

Sunday morning, bright and early (well, DARK and early—before the sun was us) we boarded the train south for our 7 hour journey to National Park. It took longer than normal because of a small engine fire and a lot of track work...nothing serious right?! lol! Our new boss picked us up and the train station and drove us about 15km to the staff lodging in Whakapapa Village, our "home" for the next 4 months! We've started to meet the other staff and they come from all over the world. Quite a few Americans actually, others from Australia and New Zealand obviously and from other places such as France, Germany, England, and even Latvia (shout out to all the Lennon's out there!) We were taken up to the mountain today and got our uniforms issued, got our bearings, bought a few last winter clothes supplies and came back down to chill at “home”. Daniel bought some new snowboard boots and a used board so he's all set to go! Work starts bright and early Tuesday with our induction and training and the ski field opens Saturday! Time to get back to the working world! http://www.mtruapehu.com/

It's finally Monday afternoon here...I think it's Sunday night back in the states...the date and time here is still a strange concept. We left Wednesday night, arrived in Melbourne about 15 hours later FRIDAY morning, and got to our hotel about midnight Saturday morning. To calculate our time here, just subtract 5 hours from CA time, or 7 hours from Central time...but then ADD a day. It's 3:15pm Monday here, and about 9:15pm/11:15pm Sunday back home. Start thinking too long about the time warp and you'll go crazy! we finally both got dual time zone watches so we don't have to keep converting time. Ashley set her second time for PST and Daniel set his for CST...we'll never NOT be confused with that now!

Hope you all keep in touch with us and keep us updated on summer life back in the Northern Hemisphere...we're off to enjoy a snowy winter!!

Pre-NZ travel timeline...our final weeks in the US

So many flights and travel arrangements to remember!

*Monday June 8: Delta TLH-ATL-SFO 5:30a-10:30a...Spend monday night in SLO (Courtyard)...one last hurrah with the college peeps! (While also prepping house to hand off to a property management company for new renters)

*Tuesday 6/9: Return to Nor-Cal by way of a night in San Jose with Mom.

*Wednesday 6/10: A night with family in Berkeley.

*Thursday 6/11: P-Town for a night... a nice relaxing day of getting out stuff done, packed, stored and ready to go.

*Friday 6/12: A night with family in Santa Rosa...who's down for a tri-tip BBQ? Need I even ask!?

*Saturday 6/13: Day in San Francisco and pick up Jess from airport in the evnening for a night of city fun (Union Sq Marriott)

*Sunday 6/14: fly to So. Cal. Virgin America 12:45p-2:15p...BBQ in Huntington Beach--can't wait to see everyone!!!!! (Residence Inn HB/Fountain Valley)

*Monday 6/15: Beach day...finally back to the great Southern California beaches...no more hot sticky days at FL shadeless beaches with their sugar power sand that sticks to everything and blows everywhere in the slightest winds of a sneeze! (not a fan, can you tell?!)

*Tuesday 6/16: A night with family in Buena Park

*Wednesday 6/17: Our LAST day in the states!! ...can someone say ride to airport?

We leave Wednesday night from LAX for a 15.5 hour flight to Melbourne at 11:30pm...how do we fill that one last day? Suggestions welcome :-D