Thanksgiving Pt 2

I just thought I'd put up some pictures of our Thanksgiving feast. Enjoy.

The 4 of us who moved from the States together; Kate, myself, Silvana, and Alexa

Someone brought the pavlova- its not a feast in NZ without one. It's basically meringue, whipped cream, fruit, and chocolate. Not bad.

Figuring out how to carve a turkey via internet. Useful.

Successful feasting!

But wait, there's more!

Instead of going around, saying what we're thankful for, there was a board to write on. I thought it was a good idea.

Thanksgiving in a Foreign Land

As this is my first time not having Thanksgiving at home, this is an especially momentous landmark for me.  My family doesn't even do big Thanksgiving, since half of my family's in England, and the other half is all over the States, so it's hard to get everyone together.  For the past few years, it's only been my parents, me, and maybe my great-great-aunt.  So not having a ton of family around isn't even a big deal to me.  It's missing out on the traditions and helping my mom to do every little thing.  I miss being able to go out with my friends to shady bars in Pittsburgh on the night before Thanksgiving.  It's the little things really...  I've also realized that unless I live really close to my family, it'll be hard to get to see them for Thanksgiving every year now.  I now I feel like I've been shoved out into the cruel world to prepare Thanksgiving dinners on my own.  Ok, that might be stretching it a bit, but this is an emotional time right now.

To remedy being in a country that does not celebrate Thanksgiving, us Americans are putting on a huge Thanksgiving dinner.  I think we're expecting around 25 people.  We've got two turkeys, thirteen pounds (roughly 6-7 kg) of potatoes to be roasted and mashed, so many pies, and all the other fixings.  I've been lucky enough to get canned pumpkin from my mom in the States, so I don't have to boil and mash my own pumpkins (how do you even do that??) So staying true to American tradition, I'm taking shortcuts in my cooking, and it'll be delicious.  I also have my mom's recipe for stuffing, which is the best soooo I'm excited about that.  I've noticed that they don't really have cornbread here (understandable, but sad).  This means that I actually had to look up a recipe and make cornbread with real ingredients, not just a box of Jiff cornbread. This is NOT American.  It took effort and I had to use so many ingredients.  I don't even think I've ever made non-Jiff cornbread before.  This is a Thanksgiving of firsts for me here.

But in the end, I hope today's feast with friends rather than family will be just as much fun, but I will nonetheless be filled with homesickness.  I'm sure my mom is crying right now too.  Don't worry, Mom, I'll come over next year.

Happy Thanksgiving guys.  Hope you slip into happy food coma dreams.

Oh yeah- one more week until the Hobbit premiere here in Wellington. We're all excited.

The Struggles of International Job Hunting

I have come to the realization that either a) one should have a job lined up before deciding to pick up and randomly move to another country or b) one should study the time period of when best to arrive to find a job swiftly. Rather than just going and then waiting a month to find a job.

Upon arrival in New Zealand, I was certain I would find a job in two, maybe three weeks. I have been here over a month now, and I JUST got a job yesterday. I start on Tuesday. Now, I don't want you guys thinking that I just sat on the couch all day for that whole month and didn't properly look for a job. Most weeks consisted of me looking up jobs that were hiring online before leaving the house, then hiking down to the city library, printing off anywhere between 5-15 CVs, and then walking around the entire city and dropping them off. I also took leads from friends who said their jobs were hiring. On days that I didn't go into the city, I also applied for jobs online. I probably dropped off around 30 CVs, only to be called back by four places, one of which was today, after I already accepted another job.

At first, I looked only at bars and cafes, since my main experience is in cafes. However, the more desperate for a job I became, the more I started branching out. I applied at retail shops, waitressing jobs, even a few hotel jobs (concierge, maid, whatever). After three weeks of hearing nothing back from places, I decided to go to the Temp Centre in Wellington, which offers either shift work or temp positions which last anywhere from a few weeks to a few months. However, I've only been offered one shift from them so far. Thankfully I  heard back from a bakery which I've applied to two weeks ago.

From what I can gather, though, since this is the end of term here in NZ, there are a lot of university students who may be planning on staying here for the summer and have snatched up a lot of jobs in the last month, or have gone from part time to full time. My friends who I came to NZ with got jobs within the first two or three weeks that they were here, but because they arrived two weeks before me, it was just enough before the end of term to miss the wave of students looking for jobs. If I had known that this was the end of term, I most likely would have come earlier. As it were, I came at a bad time, and despite all of my searching, it still took a month to find a position.

So let this be a lesson to everyone, if you don't already have a job lined up, it's best to figure out what the market is like when you do plan on going. I'm just pleased that I've found something now. And hopefully there will be plenty of happy posts after this.

Fireworks for Guy Fawkes Day made a very pleasant birthday

Until next time...