I'm still rockin'!

Hello all you fans out there,

I'm deeply sorry that I have been a really bad blogger these last few weeks, I know I have disappointed you, but I'm still alive and now when I live with mr. Wi-fi again I thought I'd give you a much needed update of what's going on in my kiwi life.

But first things first. My dearest, most wonderful, bestest friend and soul sis Sarah joined the 25 years club last week. As we currently live half a world away from each other I surprised her by asking the owner of our favourite vegan restaurant in Malmö, Kao's, to make a cake for her big day. Kao helped me out in the nicest and best possible way, and made this amazing birthday cake for Sarah. The only thing I told sarah before was: Go to Kao's and tell the staff it's your birthday. Don't ask why, just do it. And so she did.

According to her the cake was as yummy as it was gorgeous to look at. I soooo wish I could have a taste of this chocolaty treat! So thank you so, so much Kao for helping me surprise my best friend on her b-day! And once again, Sarah - happy birthday! Next year I hope I can celebrate it with you 😘

Other than that I've been very busy at my new job, that's right, I've got a new job - again! It's still at Greenpeace, but instead of doing Telefundraising I now work as a supporter relations assistant and I'm absolutely loving it! It is sooo much to learn and by now I probably know about 2% of everything I should now, but I work with the best people who patiently help me with my millions of questions every day.

So my carrier as a telefundraiser came to an end pretty early.

On Friday we had staff drinks after work and Jesse, who I worked in the telefundraising team with, had a gig as it was his last day at Greenpeace. I wish him all the luck in the world with his music carrier in London!

The same weekend me and Guy felt an urgent need to play monopoly and luckily enough we found a bargain in a toy store: My Monopoly! Which means that we could put a personal touch on the game and name all the streets ourselves. The creative part of it was more fun than the actual game (could be because I suck at Monopoly!)

Other than that me and Guy have explored the area around mount eden some more, we've had the best soya lattes at Shakeys in Kingsland and also at this really cool cafe in downtown mount Eden called Frasers. Soya lattes are our Sunday treat nowadays.

I've also deeply felt vegan happiness since I last wrote. At this food market called Nosh, which is like a 2 minute walk from our house, I found that they sell yummy vegan ice cream (!!!) it's kind of dangerous for my wallet that i live so close to vegan ice cream though..

I've also been introduced to this awesome Asian supermarket called Blissful that sells loads of vegan fake meat products, for a cheap price aswell! So far we've tried dried soy strips, sausages and, my absolute favorite, these amazing vegan fake beef chunks that are to die for!

Writing of food makes me starving so I'm gonna hit the kitchen now and catching up with watching some House of Carda before Guy comes home from work. 

Xxxx and love to you all!

First family dinner

Oooh deeear, I'm in a food choma. Burrito-food-choma - after the first little dinner party in our new home. A dinner party that was followed after a less glamorous day, which involved us accidentally buying a second hand bed online, that we almost couldn't ship over to the house and my infected knee being in so much pain that I almost wanted to cry.

The point is, the day ended well. And now we have a bed - the room is getting more and more ready to actually be kind of cosy.

So, earlier tonight Shayla and Ryan spoiled the rest of us when they cooked an aaaamazing fancy Sunday dinner (to-die-for-burritos filled with fake beef chunks, mushrooms, onion, fresh salad and loads of other yummy stuff. I never wanted to stop eating!) which they served together with a bottle of yummy Champagne.

It is incredible that we are a house full of vegetarians, I LOVE it! The next 6 months here with these peeps is definitely gonna be epic!

Avocados 💕

This is so true, but I will love you forever anyway Avocado!

New job, new house - finally official!

The first official day on as a Telefundraiser didn't start off in the best way.. On the other hand I'm not very surprised that it did start this way either - as a fun, friendly  welcome into the team of Telefundraisers at Greenpeace we played a game outside which basically involved a lot of running and ofcourse I fell over, bam, flying in the air and hitting the ground with my right knee first, haha!

Even though my only pair of tights got huge holes in them I didn't realize how bad my knee was until later on that day. Anyway, I'm not gonna gross you out and tell you more about, so that's it for my traumatic falling over story for now. Point is that it was the funniest way of starting at your new job..

Speaking of new, yesterday we finally moved into our new lovely house (more pics will come later on, promise!) our room is freakin' amazing and I want to live in it forever and ever! The only tiny little detail we need now is a bed, which we're picking up later on today, and some other furnitures and bits and pieces to make it more homey.

We went on a little trip to Kmart with our new house mates Shayla and Ryan and bought ourselves bed sheets and a comfy, winter-friendly duvet. So that's one thing to cross of the to do list ;)

Afterwards we went on a walk in our new neighborhood and Guy looked fashionable in my jacket when we entered Burgerfuel. 

It is a bit dangerous that we live so close to a place that make the best vegan tofu burger my mouth has ever tasted.. And the best strawberry soy shake. I think we always gonna find a good reason to come here. 

First day at Greenpeace and cheap lentil curry

I'm really tired and have wet socks and shoes, sitting at my usual spot in the Aickland University Library to use the wifi for a bit, so I'm gonna make this real quick.

Today we had our first day as Telefundraisers for Greenpeace and it was so much fun! The first two days are training days and it was fun meeting both new and old staff. It feels amazing to be able to work for an organization that I feel that I believe in myself!

In the evenings we still live our fab life on the forth floor in a massive grey apartment building, we have our fab dinners at our desk and we are actually loving it.

Who said a curry had to be hard or expensive to make? With no real kitchen supplies you have no choice but to keep it simpel really, so the one we did yesterday only consisted of red lentils, garlic cloves, vegemite, curry paste, garam masala spice, crushed tomatoes, kale (to make it super nutritios) and some coconut milk. 

A curry expert would never eat this, but with our budget, and hunger level at this point, it was pretty damn good.

Now I'm gonna walk back home in the rain, in my wet shoes and socks and have a brownie in a mug. 

Don't really know the point of this post. Guess I just wanted to let you know that I'm still alive ;)

And then we found a new home

We've been so lucky these last few days. Well, lucky because we've deserved it. We have been struggling a lot. Some days have felt hopeless, depressing and meaningless. I've felt like I just want to go home, like nothing is going our way. But then we've both tried to remind ourselves with everything that actually has gone our way, how lucky we are to even be in this country, to be able to travel as freely as we have, how lucky we are to have met the most amazing people, the lovely people that have inviting us into their homes and lives. Why is it that you always acknowledge the bad things that happens in life, and forget all the good things?

Anyway. I'm not gonna get more deep and philosophic than that today, the point is that the struggle has paid off, cause yesterday we found a house to live in! So now we both have a full time job that we wanted, and a lovely, huge room, in a lovely house, in the lovely neighborhood of Mount Eden.

We went there yesterday on a house view and instantly fell in love with the area. It's so pretty and is filled with cute stores, restaurants and cool bars. (To be fair, any place that have vegan cookies have my heart..)

After the house view, we decided to concur the summit of Mount Eden, the view from the top was absolutely stunning! Even though the mountain didn't seem that high, we could see all of Auckland from up here and we enjoyed looking over our future home area.

It is also, without a doubt, the most amazing place I've ever had sushi at! (Yes, sushi today again!)

Back down in the little Mount Eden village, we celebrated the fact that we gonna have somewhere to live permanently,(with, did I mention, lovely people, in a gorgeous house?) by going for a late afternoon beer at one of the pubs.

The celebration continued in our less fabulous, soon to be ex, home (a shitty little crowded room in a hostel like evironment) when we made burritos with brown rice, fresh lettuce & tomatoes, hummus and this vegan mock rib meat.

We bought the mock meat amongst other fake meat products that we randomly found in a internet cafe/Asian supermarket called Oriental, just off Queens Street. It was like a vegan dream to food shop in there! They had everything and a little bit more (and by everything I mean everything, even fake fish (!) , vegan noodles, sushi stuff, soy shakes, vegan chocolate etc)

We bought some cheap tofu, dried soy protein and different kind of fake meat. 

The vegetarian Kyoto Ribs, that we tried with the burrito, was almost scary to eat. It tasted sooo much like animal meat that I had to double check the ingredients on the pack to make sure it was vegan. So if you're a vegan that don't like the meaty flavour or texture, avoid this product! But if you miss meat, but don't want it from dead animals - this is the way to go!

I am scared to try the fake lamb.. 

Anywho, now it's time to go and meet our future house mates to sign contracts and chat about everything that we need to sort out. Move in is in a week and I can't wait! 

Hello Greenpeace!

Today is a very good day. I just got a call confirming that as of Tuesday next week I will work for Greenpeace New Zealand as a telefundraiser (!!!) I'm so happy I could explode! What makes it even better is that Guy got the job aswell, so after spending about 3 months seeing each other every minute of every day, we're gonna continue that lifestyle for a long time (I'm surprised we haven't killed each other yet, haha!)

So now we're celebrating with toasting a slice of bread in oil in our new beloved sauce pan. You take what you got, right?

Have a great weekend all you lovers!

If I could I'd marry you in a second sushi

So the sweet sushi life continues. This is starting to get too crazy though, I don't think I'm ever gonna be sick of it! Love at first sight for sushi and me (for me anyway, not too sure about the sushis feelings;)

Just had it for a late lunch along with a lush soy shake with caramel flavour from BurgerFuel (I cannot believe that I had something with caramel flavor! I haven't had that in ages = Christmas in my mouth!), we treated ourselves with this after a group interview for a job I really want. *hoping for the best but expecting the worst*

The two apartments we looked at yesterday wasn't at all suitable for us, so we just have to keep looking. 

It is very challenging for my bad patience to move to a new city..

But a major breakthrough was that Guy bought us a sauce pan (!) so now we could finally have pasta for dinner! So I made a traditional backpacker dinner with pasta, mixed beans from a tin, coconut milk, garlic and some vegemite. And it actually turned out to be really tasty (or maybe we were just really hungry)

Back living the big city life in Sushiland

Our lifestyle changed over night when we packed our bags and said our long good byes to Scott, Danni and all the animals and pets that we've been living with for the past week to go live the big city life in Auckland.

We arrived late at night and walked around with our heavy bags until we found our accommodation for the next week, at Empire Apartments. It's an okay place, but definitely not somewhere where we want to stay long-term, so since yesterday we've been looking for other accommodations around the CBD, which seems harder than we thought because of the fact that we are a couple. Most rooms we've found are for one single person only, but we have some scheduled apartment viewings today - so everyone out there, please keep your fingers crossed for us!

Other than that we have started to get more serious about finding work so that we can stay in Auckland for the winter at least. Guy had a successful interview yesterday (!!!) which we celebrated by going to the Irish pub Father Teds, where we did the Weekly Quiz. I love pub quizzes, it's so much fun! 

Unfortunately, our team, Tipsy Tofu came in last.. But we had a good time anyway!

More importantly, other than getting on with the work- and apartment hunting, the best thing about being back here is without a doubt all the vegan sushi everywhere.

Yesterday I had sushi for breakfast (that was a bargain I found in Countdown)..

  

Had sushi lunch at the chain St Pierres Sushi, that defintely is the winner of the best sushi I've had here so far. They make your sushi really fast when you order and they make it with brown rice if you'd like that (which I obviously do, as it's so much more yummy than white rice!)

And today I did the sushi routine all over. Sushi for breakfast and lunch, this time from another sushi chain, Umi and Umiya Sushi, where they have a lot of vegan options and where you just pick up the bits and pieces you'd like yourself, almost like a buffet.

Yes. I definitely admit. I am a sushiholic! So in protest, Guy ditched sushi for lunch and had a tasty vegan (!) Manakish (sort of like an Arabic folded pizza) at Popa's Pretzels.

I know it's a bit irresponsible moneywise to eat out all the time, but in our defense it's all really cheap and where we live at the moment we don't even have a sauce pan, plates or anything whatsoever to be able to cook with, which is very annoying since we just carry around our bags of uncooked rice, pasta and beans..

Gotta go now, time to find ourselves an apartment! 

Happy Camper 2.0 - Easter Edition

Happy Easter everyone! I hope your weekend has been as good as mine has so far. 

We just came back to Tauranga after spending a couple of nights away, living a camper life in a tent at a camping site close to Coromandel.

The weekend didn't start off very good though. After a road trip in Danni and Scotts awesome nightclub van, we arrived to the camping site and went straight to the supermarket to buy some Easter wine for the night, which we all had looked forward to all day. 

Little did we know that it was Good Friday, which meant that we wouldn't be able to buy any alcohol, anywhere in the whole country during this day. Yay..

But - the evening made a quick turn. From feeling stupidly miserable, to have the best time with so much laughter that my cheeks hurt when we ended up having the most luxorius evening at restaurant Manala. 

Because, thanks to Guy and Scott's mum Caroles Easter gift to all of us, we realized that we could afford to treat ourselves to a massive delicious dinner at this really nice restaurant, where we were allowed to buy wine as we bought food. 

So the Good Friday literally turned out to be a really good Friday. Especially the food was over the top! Woodfired vegan pizza, with shoestring fries on the side.. A vegan Easter dinner dream!

We continued the evening in the nightclub (aka the van), where we listened to music, drew on a piece of wood and danced sitting down so that the whole van was shaking - so much fun!

The day after we went on a little trip to Hot water beach. We had heard so much about this place. About how if you bring a spade you can dig yourself a hole in the sand where you can sit as if it is a jacuzzi, because the water underneath is superhot.  So on the way down to the beach we hired a spade and were super excited, but the beach didn't really meet our high expectations.

I don't know if it was because it was Easter Saturday, or if it's always like this, but the beach was insanely busy. We also realized that it sure wasn't easy to find a good spot to dig our own jacuzzi, as the only area on the beach where it seemed to be hot underneath the sand, was just a small area where everyone else gathered, just to feel the heat under their feet.

To be fair, it was pretty cool to feel it because it really was boiling hot, but we didn't get much use of our spade and personally I though that the waves were too high (have I mentioned how freakishly scared I am of sea and waves?) to swim in. I know. I'm a coward. But the rest of the gang ha fun in the waves and we ended up having a nice time in the sun and then having the best soy latte and chips at a nice restaurant by the beach.

Even though it was a lovely day, one thing really pissed me off (and that still pisses me off when I think about it). On the parking lot, there was this car that someone must've hired from WickedCampers, with a stupid graffiti saying "If we aren't meant to eat animals, why are they made with meat?"

Ha,ha - very funny to put a message basically saying "hey, let's continue exploiting millions of innocent individuals in the world" in everyones face. 

I know that I shouldn't put energy on being annoyed at stuff like this, cause it is soooo immature and stupid, but I just can't help it. It is just so unnecessary. As if the meat industry needs more commercial?

All I want to say to Wicked Camper is just (sorry for my language, but I can't help it): Fuck off you ignorant bastards!

I just felt so frustrated, but thanks to Twitter I could express my anger towards Wicked Camper, and felt a lot better afterwards. 

It could also be because of the veggie stir fry with noodles that Scott cooked for us when we came back to the camping, that made me in a much better mood. 

So overall - our little camping trip had many ups and downs, but I would do it all again. It was over way to quick. We came back to Tauranga earlier today, tired from not being able to sleep very well in a tent, we went for a chill on the beach by Mount Maunganui, went for a pizza and chips (and a piece of avocado sushi!!) and then made an attempt to feel a bit more productive by walking up this mini mountain next to Mount Maunganui, climbed up a tree and took funny selfies. 

Now i'm gonna eat some more chocolate before it's time sleep in a comfy bed, finally!

HAPPY EASTER!

Love,

Sarah and Guy