October already!

It's October already here in ChCh, and while everyone back home is gearing up for Halloween, fall, and Thanksgiving, kiwis are revving up for summer, barbecueing, and Christmas. I have not quite gotten used to the fact that we're entering into spring. It smells and looks like fall, but it will gradually get warmer and turn into summer before long. Can't wait!

Today has been spent doing more tedious work looking for jobs. I have been accepted as a registered nanny for the nanny agency to which I applied, which is spectacular news! I now have the ability to browse through the families in the agency to find a right fit for me. The frustrating part has been finding that right fit. A majority of the jobs are part time, and I am looking and longing for full time work. An advantage, however, is that part time work now (with school-age children) could result in full time work in November when school lets out for the summer...so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I will be able to find a family that is at least half as wonderful as the ones that I have cared for back home!

I made a favorite lunch of mine today: grilled cheese and tomato soup! Ultimate comfort food, in my opinion. The cheese here isn't the bright Kraft Singles orange that I'm used to...it was white and from a company called Mainland Cheese. Bret and I have grown quite fond of Mainland Cheese since our arrival in ChCh. The six television stations repeatedly play the same silly commercials, and our favorite is for the aforementioned cheese. This man is talking about celebrating 'cheese day' in NZ and giving us all these important facts about Mainland, and at the end of the commercial they raise the Mainland Cheese Day banner across the town center and it reads "Mainland Tuesday". The old bumbling workers raising the flag look dumbfounded saying "You meant Tuesday, as in Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday...?" and the main man says "No, cheese day as in cheese day!"...the kiwis are basically poking fun at their own accents. Tuesday and cheese day sound exactly the same! Okay, I know that commercial is hard to imagine, and I wish I could show you, but Bret and I have been unsuccessful finding it online or YouTube! So the lunch was entertainingly yummy, to say the least!

Yum-O!

The rest of the afternoon has been spent in our separate 'offices', working. Bret has set up shop in the lounge and I have claimed our lovely room #8. Researching the internet, scouring the websites for jobs that sound interesting and are nearby, is absolutely exhausting. We are both very cautious about not settling for the first opportunity that might present itself, ensuring that we make the most out of our experience here in the land down-down under! My moments of relief came from Amadeus, sleeping outside my window in a laundry basket, a short 'catnap' of my own, and The Office (an older episode, but still funny). Looking forward to working...