Since Australia....

So, most of you probably know this story by now, but for those who don't read on....

After Aussie, I got to go home for a week which was pretty awesome. I flew into Christchurch to meet Mum and Dad who were still there from Christmas, and so I got in at like 1am on Monday morning and we drove straight down to Timaru and stayed at Grandma's. Had an awesome couple of days there, hanging out with fam bam, picking strawberries, playing in new tractors and eating epic homekill. So good!

I was only there for a few days, on the Tuesday we had to leave about 3pm to go up to Picton to catch the unnaturally early morning ferry home. We stopped in Christchurch to have dinner with some more family so that was cool to see everyone - super bonus! We eventually got on the ferry around 1am, and so Mum and I managed to find some chairs to pull together to use as a makeshift bed so we got a little bit of sleep. Somehow Rusty managed to stay awake the entire time....

Home was cool! It flew by pretty quick and I hardly got to see anyone but I managed to catch up with a few people which was great. I also managed to sort out my suitcase and bring some extra things over that I wanted and drop off some summer stuff at home so Mum can bring it over with her at Easter.

Kahu enjoyed Strawberry Picking!

Picking them Strawberries...yum

The creepy ass ducks in Palmy that Kahu insisted on making friends with

The weird ducks that kept trying to bash heads but skillfully avoided

Flying over one city or another....probably Brisbane

Its reassuring to see your bag being offloaded at one airport

Singapore Airport are really into their flowers in the Airport thing

Unfortunately, while I was at home, I got an e-mail from the family I had been in Aussie with saying that I wasn't going to be permanently employed by them (I had been on trial in Aus) so that put a real dampener on my time at home as I was freaking out about what I was going to do when I came back to London!

But I managed to enjoy the rest of my time at home, it was nice to be on holiday for a bit for me and not have to worry about where 2 little children were at all times and just chill out.

I made it back to London, after some seriously epic flight time. I left Wellington at 4pm on Sunday, flew into Brisbane and had like 6 hours there - luckily Kate came to pick me up and we went and got KFC and lollies haha. Then I flew to Singapore, and had like 6 hours there, and then flew to London. I got to Heathrow and there was a massive customs queue, it took like an hour, so then my bag was all by its lonesome on the caersol. I ended up getting back to the house around 6pm Monday evening London time, and just crashed. Slept pretty soundly until about 6am and then forced myself to go back to sleep until 9 haha.

Tuesday morning, I chatted with the mum about what went wrong - as I thought everything had gone pretty smoothly while we were away. It tuns out I did the nanny part of the job ok, they just weren't comfortable with me living with them. According to her, I tried too much to be a part of the family - which is kind of what I thought I was supposed to be, and it was a hard situation as we were on a massive family holiday! But I really had no foot to stand on, so that was it. I was lucky in that she said I could work out my trial, which meant another week with them while I found a new job and house etc, and she was happy for me to stay an extra week.

Well, it ended up that that Tuesday afternoon, while I was in Central London poking around, I got a call from the Nanny agency saying they had found me a temp job. At the time, I wasn't aware of how long it was for or anything, but I jumped at the chance - and it wasn't really worth it! I ended up in this house in Camden with 3 kids who were 8, 6 and 3. I turned up to this house and pretty much 5 minutes later the mother left me to serve the kids dinner - it wasn't exactly a pleasant situation to be in!

It wasn't the happiest week I've had and I felt pretty shit cos as of Friday I had nowhere to go as I was not going to be able to cope staying in that job much longer. I think half the reason I didn't enjoy it there was because I was still really gutted about not being made permanent at the other job and trying to make sense of that, as well as being super jetlagged. The mother wasn't happy with the fact that the agency hadn't told her that I had just flown in from NZ and so she had to let me finish early etc so I could sleep as I wasn't coping well without sleep! But anyway, it pretty much just turned out to be disaster week, and I was very glad when it got to Friday!

I ended up going back to the Aussie's place as I still had some time left to finish with them and they were more than happy for me to do so - which was a lifesaver! So I went back there and ended up working 5 days for them which was brilliant, as it meant I was paid and also had somewhere to live for another 2 weeks.

I worked for the Aussies for another week, and had some days off inbetween where I was flitting around meeting other agencies and friends and just trying to keep sane in the whole situation! I was really lucky that I ended up finding a post on the Kiwis in London FaceBook page about getting people to work at the London Eye, because that has been my saviour since then!

Anwyay, after I moved out of the Aussies, I stayed at one of Mum's friends places for a night as I had to go to London Eye training the next day, and so I did that which was super quick and easy, and then Jen and I went to the Aquarium and it was awesome. We had such a fun time there, and here are some photos to prove it -

The Skate Rays at the manky fish, not me....

 I think this is a pretty good place to stop....so I'll stop here! I hope to finish the rest of it later!!