New Zealand Bound: Hail to the Emu

Here we are again, it's been a few weeks! I am going to start with my first offshore fishing trip with Chris. We took his boat out to an offshore reef and anchored at about 8m depth. We stayed in the same spot all day and managed to pull in 16 snapper larger than 30cm, as we felt that the legal limit of 25cm is too small. It was a good day but the weather was a bit rough coming back in. I managed to get this picture of Mount Maunganui on the way out, it gives a different perspective.

We've been sticking pretty close to home lately, not a lot of desire to go out and about with the rain still falling. I read in the paper today that we have had %150 more rain this winter than is normal, maybe next year will be a little dryer.

A job opportunity has arose from all the time spent socializing with Chris next door, he is the managing director of an accounting firm downtown. It turns out that they are in need of some IT support, and as it so happens I have the necessary skills. So far I have been with him on a trip to Auckland for the national IT meeting. (there are 6 offices in total spread around the country), and done one day at the office to familiarize myself with their setup. From the looks of things there is a lot of work to be done. Fortunately they are very flexible with the work hours, so I can pretty much set my own hours.

2 weekends ago we had a thunderstorm move through, and I think it was the first time here that we experienced thunder. To add to the event, a large amount of pea sized hail hit the ground which made a lot of noise on the metal roof. I was getting concerned for our car as it sounded like it was getting larger, but apparently it was just the intensity that was increasing not the size.
It looked a little like snow but the picture doesn't do it justice. The neighbour's kids each saved their own bowl of hail in their freezer.

We had heard that the lambs were out on the Mount, so off we went for a walk around. It was sunny but very windy and it was a good thing we had our sweaters.

The next day we made a break for it to tour an animal farm that is within a 1/2 hours drive, and even though the clouds were thick it didn't rain on us. They have a wide variety of animals on the farm, from eels to Canadian Elk.

My two favorites were the Clydesdale that kicked the fence in an effort to elicit corn and the parrot named Joey. They sell bags of corn to feed to the various animals and as soon as that horse saw us approaching with a paper bag, he started kicking the fence and snorting. Aidan and I had great fun feeding him from our hands, Aidan giggled at how much the horse's hairy lips tickled. Joey was a very talkative and entertaining feature. He asked what your name was, how you are doing, what are you doing....and then he would bend his head down near the corner of the cage and say "scratch?" He would stay in the that position silently soaking up the scratch as long as you were willing to continue. If you stopped, he would look up and say "Scratch?" again....very cute.
The emu was intimidating, but I allowed him to eat the corn from my hand which only pinched a little. It is freaky to see a bird at eye level or higher come up to you with huge eyes. They could easily strike your face before you were able to do anything to stop them. But he was very well behaved.