England...continued

The first couple of days was rather overwhelming. It was raining when we first arrived; everything was so expensive; and the swine flu was the biggest news headline. Well it seems that four weeks later nothing has changed; its still wet, things are still ridiculously expensive and the swine flu still features daily on BBC. However, one thing has changed - i have a job!

I am working for my great step uncle at place called microbee-google it if you are interested in finding out more but over the course of the last two weeks i have been doing something intersting things such as climbing ladders up tall buildings, drilling, cutting down trees, mulching and shreeding paper - things that i havent done much of before and its great being outside - when its not raining much of course. Its also good to be earning £ and this helps out for when i go off around Europe and the UK.

Since my last blog entry another thing has changed and Dave and I have gone our seperate ways. I moved into my great step uncle and aunties house (Dave and Hazel - and Becky their daughter and Quiddy their dog), while David stayed at his sisters for a bit longer before joining up with his Mum in Wales for a short stint before heading south to Bristol and Newquay. I decided to fill my pockets up a bit more first.

We did however explore a bit more of London Town where we tubed into the Natural History and Science Museums (spectacular places!). Wer also went to find Big Ben which after looking for quite some time at our map and in the far distance pointing and discussing that it should be in that direction we looked straight up and lo and behold it was standing over us. Duhh! We also headed to "LoveBox" on the 18th and 19th for Daves birthday. LoveBox is a two-day music festival at Londons Victoria Park, much bigger than anything i had been to previously. There were no limits on buying alcohol, lots of yummy food on sale, and plenty of good music. I lost Dave at the end of day one and ended up meeting his sister Renee and Paul in town. He returned to Worcester Park the next morning a bit worse for wear and after waking up in some random suburb. We repeated day one and headed back into town on the tube where we made it just in time for Ladyhawke, a good NZ act. The weather could have been better as we went in our t-shirts, we still hadnt learned by then.

The following Sunday we meet up again and travelled to Clapham where we went to Ben and Jerrys Sundae in the Common, a family friendly music festival serving free icecream (with the draw back being long queues and pie eating weather conditions). It was good fun.
Its funny seeing so many sights that you think of synonomously with England; yellow number plates, the tube, black cabs, red telephone booths, red double decker buses; and of course all the place names; Picadilly Circus, Leicester Square...

Just this last weekend been i went with the family down to Devon where we went to Wendys 60th, a Keighlee (not sure of spelling), basically a barn dance. We drove down on Friday along the motorways and the beautifuk back country roads to a little hunting lodge where we slept for the weekend. It was another 1hour drive to Teignmouth where wthe part was on the Friday night. There was a three-piece band and one of the guys got us sorted into groups and taught us the moves and the dances. It really was alot of fun - another new thing for me. Wendy asked not for a present but a donation which would then go with money from the bar towards her friends project which is building a school playground in Tanzinia. We raised over £500 ($1500 NZ) so that was great news. I thought that this was such a generous thing to do - imagine if we all did this for one or two of our birthdays in our lifetime??!!

We all met up on the Saturday and hung out. Becky and I went to the "Pier" which is like Englands version of Time Out arcade. Its the only use i have found for the dam 2 pence coins. It was so much fun but pretty addictive. I set my limit of £5 but we just had to go back the next day. A good thing to do on a lovely (not so) summer day! We were late for the annual water festival but i did win a coconut by knocking the cans off the shelf and did take a photo of one of the boats dressed up as "Hogwarts" - for you Hannah. We ate leftovers from the night before and i had a pleasant English afternoon tea (im getting use to these). We also had a lovely walk after reaching the otherside of the inlet my what is the oldest running ferry service in the country. See the view yourself....

On Sunday Great Granny shouted us Sunday lunch at the yacht club where i had my first serving of Yorkshire pudding, yummy!. Theres me wrapped up in a hoodie and jacket on the seaside in a deck chair you can hire, and the view from Great Grannys window overlooking the south sea (and the car park - which makes for interesting people watching).

So theres a shortened account of what i have been up to for the last three weeks and i would be interested if you gave me a shout about your happenings.....peace....Daneo