Eat Christmas Outing

A couple of weeks ago my boss, Nic, handed me an invitation to the eat Xmas outing. She did't tell me or Ed what we were going to do. It was a surprise. The plan was that we were going to meet at the shop at 12:30 and do the outing and then open the shop at 5:30. So yesterday I didn't work for accomodation (which was fine with me since they keep on putting me on bathrooms) and instead I went to the outing. It turns out the outing was going sailing and it was awesome. We get on the boat and the pass out some beers and we just relax and sail on the Tasman Sea. We sailed out to the middle of harbor and out to an island. Apparently this is the island where all animals entering NZ used to be quarantined for 3 months.
We sailed around the island and then attached the boat to a buoy so we could enjoy lunch. The lunch consisted of more beer and cheese and crackers and strawberries and chocolate. Yummmy. We hung out on the boat for about an hour and a half just talking. It was really the first time that we were all just hanging out outside of work and it was fun. There's a part of Wellington called the Hutt and we were comparing it to NJ. The Hutt takes a lot of flak from Wellington kind of like how NJ takes a lot of flak from the rest of the states. It was pretty funny to talk about. Unfortunately my sunglasses were a casuality of the outing since they fell off of my head and into the water. We started sailing back around the island and heading toward the harbor again when I turned to Ed and said how I really didn't want to go to work after this. Not even ten minutes later Nic told us that we were going to keep the shop closed and go out for more drinks and dinner instead. Woo hoo!!

But before we could go out we had to get back. The ride back was interesting. It started to rain a little and the wind really picked up. It turns out that to catch the wind one side of the boat needs to be in the air. For the whole way back we were all riding on a tilt. So essentially one side of the













boat was always leaning into the water. If you tilt your head a little and look at the picture you'll see what I mean. For the pic on the right, the woman on my left is Nic my boss and Ed is the guy. The shirt I am wearing is free because it was left in a room and was brand new. It had a tag attached that explained that it wouldn't fit into their bag so they hoped that someone would take it. I always have followed directions well. No comments about the picture, I know it's a bad one of me.














The guy with the pink crown on is Norm. He is my other boss and Nic's partner. In NZ they have these things called Christmas crackers. Two people hold an end of this long tube and pull. Once they pull a the tube cracks and out comes presents. Everyone got a different colored crown and then some plastic toy. I got a thimble. Norm got crabs. The woman in the grey sunglasses is JoJo. She is from the Hutt and Norm kept on making comments about the amount of peroxide in her hair. His jokes definetly reminded me of the Jersey girl stereotypes back at home. The guy in the yellow crown who is steering is Barty. He helps out at the store when it's busy. Basically what he does is try to have all the customers buy mushroom burgers since they are the most expensive. Normally we sell five mushroom burgers in a day. When Barty worked once they sold 30. The other guy in the picture is Mark. Despite the fact that Norm was calling himself El Capitain, Mark was the only one who actually knew what to do with boat.

Once we safely docked we all met up at the pool hall and drank some more and played some pool. It was fun except for the fact that I am terrible at non-American pool. The balls are smaller and the table is bigger. It's wicked hard. After some pool we went out to eat at this place that would be considered a pizza and pasta back home. Norm and I started talking about pizza and the differences. Here they only have gourmet pizza. It is impossible to just buy a slice and it's unheard to just get a plain pizza (you will also get weird looks if you call it a pie but that happens in some parts of the US too). Norm was explaining to everyone how he was in the US once and got a slice of pizza. He said how he was amazed at how big it was and he had no idea how to eat it. I explained that what he should have done was use the paper plate,fold the pizza in half and eat it. They were all flabbergasted by this idea. Eating gourmet pizza involves knifes and forks since there are lots of toppings and since there basically is no crust. Well halfway through dinner I showed them how I would normally eat the pizza. The were amazed as to how I folded the pizza. Norm equated it to watching Asians using chop sticks, "It's an art form."

It was a pretty funny night. I got made fun of a lot for my accent but it was all in good fun. The best part of the night was the fact that Nic and Norm footed the bill. It was a totally relaxing day and it was good to just hang out with some more Kiwis.

Wednesday is the King Kong premiere. The red carpet is going right down the main street where I work and the movie is premiering across the street from my hostel. I have to work the whole day which I was kind of bummed about until I heard that Jack Black won't be at the premiere since he is doing SNL. Since he won't be here it means that he won't come into eat and fall madly in love with me at first sight and wisk me away to the premiere and after party and a quicky marriage at the library (where the justice of the peace is always in). I'll take a break from work and take some pictures of all of the other people that are going to walk the red carpet though.