Fire

This past week in our new hometown of Ohakune has been an interesting one. We were all settled into our new home when disaster struck! I had come home early from work because I could at about 7:30 pm and Vicki and Meaves (the guy who lives in the bus behind us and shares our house) where about to go to one of our friends house for a little bit, so I decided to go with them. About an hour later, we left so that we could get home and watch our Monday night TV shows, Desperate Housewives, Grey’s Anatomy, and Nip/Tuck. It was at this time that we opened the door to our house to find that it was filled with smoke. At first, Meaves, Annie, and I tried to go in to see what the smoke was all about, but Annie had to turn around because the smoke was too thick. So, Meaves and I ran in to try to open the door on the other side of the house to get the smoke out. Meaves couldn’t get the door open so he went to putting the fire out that was next to the pot belly stove. I kept trying to open the door and finally got the stupid lock to unlock and opened the door after what seemed like a few minutes. All along this time, Meaves and I probably took in quite a bit of smoke, which didn’t feel very good the rest of the night. Just after I got the door open, Meaves got the open flames out and we opened up the rest of the doors and windows of the house to get the smoke out. While all this was going on, Annie was calling the fire brigade. The volunteer fire brigade siren then went off and about 8 minutes after the fire was out, 2 fire trucks arrived on the scene(little overkill if you ask me). By this time, we were all standing outside freezing and wandering what had happened. After about an hour, the fire brigade had done their work of hosing, axing and chainsawing through the floor where the fire was, as well as crawling into our ceiling and doing a lot of standing around since there was about 16 of them.

So, the fire chief then told us what he thought had happened. We (mostly me though) had clothes hanging up on the drying rods behind and to the right of the pot belly stove. What they think happened is that a piece of clothing got too hot (which were wet before I left) and fell onto the stove and wood pile. This eventually caught fire, which caught the woodpile on fire, which then caught the rest of the clothes and our box of fire starting papers on fire. This then burnt through the floor and that is when we got home. We found out the next day that if we had been in the house just a few minutes later, the gases in the ceiling would have exploded from the heat and blown all the windows and probably killed Meaves and I! So, that was comforting and I might not ever run into a smoke filled house again. Of course, when this happened, I wasn’t really thinking much about this and it was more instinctive. It also appears that the drying rods that are on the wall are illegal as well as the stone pad underneath the stove, which is supposed to be a foot bigger in all directions. This makes me wonder what else in this shed is not up to code too!

I must say though, this is my first house burning incident and it’s amazing what a fire that size can do! First of all, our entire house reeked of smoke for a few days. Then, everything in the house is covered in soot and is pretty hard to clean off of the walls and such. There are other things that have happened that are weird too. The window on one door is cracked from the heat, which makes me believe the exploding house theory. Also, there is a “No Smoking Please” sign that was untouched and was right next to the fire, but posters and a calendar across the room were wrecked. So, this is our third day of pretty full-on cleaning and we hope to be moved into our house again tonight, as Meaves has been kind enough to let us all sleep in his house-bus with him. We have had to wash everything we own, along with all the beddings and stuff, which will, in some ways, make this place cleaner that before we moved in, sans the walls and ceiling. It also appears that we will no longer have the pot belly stove and they will be replacing the ceiling and the worst of the walls. The worst part for me though is that I lost half of my clothing, much of which was my favorite warm socks, favorite t-shirts, expensive chef clothing, and a pair of jeans. On the good side though, I should be completely covered and reimbursed through my travelers insurance!!

So let this be a lesson to you, my friends. Don’t run into burning buildings, don’t smoke, get insurance, make sure to have smoke alarms (we didn’t, but do now) and extinguishers, and Desperate Housewives saved our house from exploding!

The Great Move

Well my friends, I have again moved on to different things in my life. Last weekend, we moved from the busy, large city of Wellington to the little city of Ohakune. We of course had ourselves a going away party which was very fun the day before we left, which probably was not a very smart thing to do. We discovered this the next day when we awoke to a mess and had to clean the entire house so we could get our deposit back for the house. We also had to be to Ohakune by 10pm to get into the hostel we were staying at, but were 2 hours late, which ended up being fine. A few weeks prior to this, the four of us (which now includes me, Annie, Chris, and the new member being our British friend, Vicki) purchased a car together. The car is a white 1989 Mazda 323 and as soon as we bought it, we had to get almost the entire brake system replaced, which was another $600 on top of the $600 for the car. But, oh well, we will sell the car for more and so far it has been very nice to have our own car, even if we do share it between the 4 of us!

So, here I am in Ohakune now. We have gone from a town where we have everything like 5 grocery stores, over 100 restaurants, multiple movie theatres, and everything is open late, if they close at all, to a town where they have a single screen movie theatre open on the weekends, one grocery store, around a dozen restaurants/bars, about 5 liquor stores, and most things except the bars close at 7 or 8pm. So, we were spoiled! But, in a week or so, the town of around 2,000 people will become overpopulated with people coming to ski or snowboard, as this is the base town of Mt. Raupehu and the Turoa skifield the largest skifields in New Zealand. By the way, Mt. Raupehu is actually a volcano that last erupted only 10 years ago! Ohakune is also the carrot growing capital for New Zealand and it is kind of funny to walk down the street and see a parked pickup full of carrots in their driveway or even a semi drive down the road full of carrots. For those of you who I email somewhat often, talk to online, or even call, things might change a bit. There are 2 main reasons for this. The first is that internet is quite expensive here, at $7 to $9 per hour. Secondly, I don’t have a landline anymore, so if I want to call anyone, I have to make a trek into town, and remember that it is winter here and very cold!

Now onto my new job. I actually haven’t started working yet, so I’ve not done too much the last week. Fortunately though, I emailed the head chef at a place called the Powderhorn Chateau. This is made of the Chateau, which is some really nice lodges for skiers and vacationers, and is actually where Peter Jackson stayed during filming for Lord of the Rings while in these parts, and I have seen his room that was made for him and is is awesome! The other parts of the place are the Matterhorn Restaurant, which is a more upper class restaurant, and the Powderkeg, which is the busier of the 2 and where most people go to. So, I emailed the chef a few weeks ago, looking for work and he responded that he was interested and wanted me to do a trial. So, I found that I actually couldn’t make the trial but he was sweet with that and just put me on the roster anywhase, so that when I arrived here in Ohakune, I was already set to start working this weekend and for the mountain skiing opener.

Finally, we have found a place to live! The first day we stayed at the hostel and spent the day looking for a housing in the town, mainly so that the 4 of us could live together, but we were open to some other options too. Since we had a sign posted up in the grocery store a month prior to getting here, we got some responses from people who maybe had an opening at a lodge or whatnot. So, after many disappointments of looking at houses or calling on ads that where posted but filled, we got a call from a place and decided to check it out. We laughed as soon as we got to the place because it is not exactly the nicest place and looks like a shed. The place has basically one communal room that we all share with 8 beds, 2 of which are doubles, so the four of us each get a bed to sleep and one to put our clothes and stuff on. But, there is also a bathroom and another large living room and kitchen and is fully furnished. The place is heated with either the space heaters in our bedroom, or a wood burning pot belly stove in the living room, which works pretty well, when it doesn’t leak if the fire isn’t burning! Also, there is another guy, my age, Stephen, that lives out back in a trailer and uses our kitchen/living room to hang out in. Almost forgot about the cats! Apparently, we have been told that there are cats that live in the roof of the garage, but we haven’t seen or heard the yet and neither has Stephen, so we don’t know if they are actually there now. So, now that some of you may feel a little bad for me now, don’t worry, I am doing just fine. The place is very cozy and we are actually all looking forward to living here a bit and it is only for almost 3 months! Besides, I haven’t even told you the best part about the place! One thing there is no deposit and another thing is that to pay for rent for one week, I only have to work maybe 4 hours in a week because the rent is only $40 per week per person!!! So, because of that huge factor, I can now afford to buy my ski pass, rent some clothing/equipment, and save up for traveling and plane tickets to come home!!