The life of a help x:er

We've spent over a week in Rotorua now and we're starting to get used to the help x:ing life (which is pretty damn good when you end up at amazing hosts like ours!)

The last few days we've done gardening and I've learned more about plants, weeds and herbs than I ever knew before.

With a whole day left after our gardening shifts, we've been cycling around town a bit, looking for jobs and the other day Trish and Martin took us to amazing Hamurana Springs, with one of the clearest water I've seen in the beautiful woods of huge Californian redwoods trees.

Saturday was another good day when working in the garden and having Trish coming home with a full bag of veggie samosas from the local market in town for lunch. The only thing we had to contribute with was picking some of the tomatoes from the rooftop.

Home grown veggies and herbs is sooo tasty! So much better than from the supermarket. Living here makes me wanna have my own big garden one day..

After lunch Trish gave us a ride to her artist friend Tim, who does so much amazing art! The work we've seen him do is unbelievable, so when he asked us to model for him for a painting we agreed straight away. It's not like anything I've done before, but it was fun and (as strange as it might seem) so exhausting. Who knew just sitting still would make you feel so tired afterwards?

Later on I worked up my energy again when I cooked a roasted vegetable salad for a dinner party that Trish and Martin invited us to. It was at their friends Liz and Steve's house where there were plenty of other people (and other help x:ers even, yay!). A pretty international group representing France, Germany, UK, South Africa, Sweden and of course, New Zealand.

Turned out it wasn't only my warm salad, but everything, was vegan and there were soo much delicious food that I'm gonna dream about.

With a serious food choma we ended the night with watching the mockumentary What we do in the shadows. Such a funny film that follows the life a group of vampires living in a house in Wellington. A bit different from the life of a help x:er I must admit ;)