WWOOFing – Getting started

12Oct08

My WWOOF brochure arrived on Friday so I’ve been busy going through the listings and highlighting the ones that appeal to me. There are over a thousand places to stay throughout New Zealand but they only have limited space at each. Ideally I’d like somewhere on the South Island to begin with, and I want to work with animals at least a little bit if at all possible. I’ve e-mailed a few places already including two llama/alpaca farms and a place that grows organic veggies to use in their pizzeria and restaurant. It’s not just veggie growing; they also train you up to make pizzas and teach you about hospitality which I think would be invaluable if I want to get a proper job over here at some point. There are also some places which specialise in aquaculture (collecting mussels, paua etc) which I think would be really interesting but a lot of those are pretty remote and I need to be somewhere where I can get access to the internet, even if it involves a walk to the nearest town. I’d go mental without a way of keeping in touch with people.

It’s a glorious day today. There are lots of people down by the lake having a swim and I’d be one of those people if I actually had something to go swimming in. I’ve lost almost three stone since I last bought swimming gear so my old tankini is too big on me to stay on in the water. I haven’t seen anywhere in Wanaka that sells swimming stuff which is odd considering how much of a touristy, watersports-loving town it is. There is, however, a good chance that I’ve just overlooked things like that whilst in my usual unobservant state.

In other news I’ve finally had my hair cut and have taken to backcombing the shorter layers on top. I blame this on my long-developing fascination with the goddess that is Siouxsie Sioux, who I believe is one of the single most incredible and inspiring women ever to have existed. The one thing that worries me is that I’m going to end up looking like a 22 year-old emo and be associated with shitty bands like My Chemical Romance. On the other hand, most of the kids that backcomb their hair nowadays have no idea of the goth culture that spawned this type of hairstyle in the first place and just do it because every other bugger is doing it.

I’ll get down off my high horse now for fear of sounding like a miserable old hag!

The rest of my day is going to involve reading my book, training my pet up on WoW, obsessively checking my inbox for replies from the organic farms I’ve applied to and hopefully speaking to Andrew if he has time to come online before he goes to his second NZ job expo. I missed him this morning because my alarm decided to be a pain in the arse and not go off when I asked it to. Sometimes I swear that technology just doesn’t want us to keep in touch. Between his failing hard drive, my shitty internet connection and my phone’s malfunctioning alarm it’s getting pretty hard to have any sort of lengthy time together online. Bah!

Filed under: Day to day   |  5 Comments
Tags: andoo, beauty, planning, wwoof