It's Been a While ...

I thought I should try and touch base with those of you who have kindly been wondering where I have been. Despite the picture below, we haven't been lazing around in our "onesies" snoozing; it has been very busy for the past few months.

How I found Agent Smelly one night after a particularly busy day out.
Completely knocked out - I had to carry her to bed!

We finish term officially in NZ on Friday. We have taken on some new hobbies and adventures and hopefully at some stage I will get to fill you in on them all.

Now where to begin ... first of all I thought I'd share that I have been doing some volunteer work. One Saturday a month, for four hours, I assist at a local second-hand shop where all the money raised goes to the local retirement village. Our local retirement village is quite unique. You have the option to buy some land in the village and build your own home or buy one already built (great for some of our local farmers who want to move off their farms but are not yet ready to go into a retirement village), or rent one of the smaller units closer into the middle. As a resident becomes less independent it is possible for them to move into the Residential Care Unit, which is right at the heart of the village. Residents on the whole stay 'in their own home' as they may progress through the care stages of rest home level and hospital level care.

In the first six months of the shop being open we raised enough to donate $20,000 to the care unit so they could buy some fancy shmancy new hospital beds; the ones that lift and help the residents who need help getting into and out of their beds. Awesome ey!

I am really enjoying the opportunity to get out amongst the "real" world and am also enjoying working in a shop environment which I have never done before. I am teamed with a 'senior' person, who are usually much older than I am and so far they have all been so darn sweet.

We check and clean the clothing and other products that people drop off when we are there and then we price them and place them out on the shelves. I generally like to keep busy so am often re-arranging items on shelves to make things look nicer and easier to get to.

We also have eftpos so that's another new thing that I have learnt that I have never done before. I am quite enjoying the actual work involved and have been thinking that one day it might come in handy for me to pick up a part-time job also.

I wasn't rostered on in June due to us having reduced hours in winter so am really looking forward to getting into the shop again later this month.