Three weeks of snipping, bending, and wrapping grape vines has past, but the pain in my hands has not. The current vineyard we are at has some extremely unruly vines that one by one are being tamed into the shape of motorcycle handlebars onto wire. It is kind of amazing to see such a transition. Tony has come to join the wrapping team with me and is doing all of my trimming, which is slowly easing the pain in my hands. In the middle of the night my right hand swells up dramatically, followed by my thumb and first three fingers going to sleep. It is a tricky situation because when I elevate my hand to alleviate the swelling, it only worsens that numbing pins and needles feeling. Luckily Tony has hands that are not as sensitive to the work as mine. The days of wrapping go by pretty fast as long as the days are warm, but it can be a dragging day when your toes are cold. My daily attire consists of wool socks, winter boots, fleece thermal pants, hiking pants, a long sleeve t-shirt, a base layer shirt, a hoodie, an outdoor lined rain jacket, a scarf, fleece lined wool flap hat, and gloves. I feel like the kid from a Christmas Story on a daily basis and today none of the layers even came off. Tony describes it as outdoor factory work because you are doing the same thing about 450 times for 9 hours. We get on the van in the dark, ride to the vineyard, trim wrap and repeat 450 times, ride back home on the van in the dark, eat, sleep, then repeat. One girl on our team nailed it right on the head when she said that even though she is outside all day, she feels like she didn’t even see the light of day.
So far New Zealand has been an amazing collaboration of different experiences, cultures, and scenery. One of our favorite past times is people watching and there is no better place than the grocery store. To fully understand how this all works, you have to start with the parking lot. All parking lots in NZ are very structured and serious, there is an entrance, an exit, there are signs everywhere, the rows are one way regardless of straight parking spaces, and of course you are driving on the wrong side of the street. If you have ever been a victim of any US postal service parking lot, then you can understand what I am talking about. Once you finally make it through the maze of where to park, the job of getting into the grocery store begins, which is equally as confusing. Each grocery store is pretty much set of the same, you walk through double doors to a foyer where the entrance and exit begin. This is not like America where it is an ambiguous sign above doors that people ignore, you must comply. To get into the store you have to go single file through a one way waist high metal turner and the only way out is to make your way all the way around the store and through the checkouts. I do not want to know the chaos this would cause in case of a fire. Once your are in the grocery store the fun really begins. I am not sure where else in the world I have ever seen so many countries represented in their quest to buy food other than Blenheim NZ during vineyard pruning season. This town only has 26,000 people and I find it simply amazing how many cultures, nationalities, and diversity a grocery store can hold at one time. Imagine walking into your local super market and seeing people from Chile, Argentina, South Korea, Thailand, Fiji, Samoa, England, Poland, Germany, Scotland, Ireland, Czech Republic, Israel, Indonesia, India, and god only knows where else. I feel like North America and Africa are the fewest countries represented, but if you look hard enough you will still find them among the crowd. Looking at what people are wearing is truly a fantastic hobby of ours in these smorgasbord of humanity. You can see anything from waist long dreadlocks, businessmen, a man with a jumpsuit mullet and gun boots, dirty dismal looking vineyard workers (we would fall into that category), people wearing gun boots and shorts, lots of spandex pants (even ones with the solar system printed on them), women in red sequin hats, orange construction vests, lots of gypsy pants (kind of like MC hammer pants), gold chains, rat tails, men in tank tops ( they call them singlets), and of course lots of just normal looking people. When you walk through the store you hear languages from all over the world, strange combinations of food, and see Dr. Pepper in the international food section. Needless to say I can wear anything I want to the grocery store and feel completely acceptable, I repeat ANYTHING. Tony has worn his bear print forest green fleece pajama pants, both of us in socks and flip flops (jandals as they say) with goofy winter hats on and no one even blinks an eye. I love the laid back atmosphere and truly “no worries” attitude about who you are and where you come from. The food is not quite as exciting, since Kiwi’s taste falls right in line with British cuisine consisting mainly of meat pies, sausages, and potatoes. One thing is for sure, the sausages and pork are not anything we normally eat and especially not here. Tony said it best when he stated that, “I don’t know what they do to their sausages, but there is no pig in this world than can taste that bad.”
