To many funny stories

Last night as we were out for a late night walk, kind of in search of food. Kind of.

As we walked down the sidewalk with a lovely girl we met from London we suddenly smelled something that didn't agree with any of us, much. I knew I recognized it but couldn't pin point it. One of the girls thought maybe it was burnt rubber and then suddenly Alicia said, it's Sulfer! Ahh yes, then I remembered that yes we were told the city reaked of sulfer. Then we found a late night snack to hold us over... Oh boy, how do I actually say this? 

McDonalds to try a Georgie's pie co. Mince meat pie! Yep I ate at McD. for the first time in a REAL long time. 

Georgie's is a pie co. McD's apparently bought out in NZ a few years back and just started selling their pies. 

It tasted like a pot roast. It needed some ketchup but it wasn't bad. One was enough. 

This morning Alicia and I went to the grocery store to stock us up for a few more days. I asked a worker there where the granola bars where, he pointed me in that direction and then caught up to me quite quickly. He asked if I needed anything else and I told him no but thank you. He said I just wanted to hear you talk so I could hear your pretty accent. I LOVED that! Haha! I have never thought of myself to have an accent or for anyone to find Americans from the west coast to have a pretty accent.

I told him I'd talk to him all day long! :) so we talked a lil more and then moved on to the egg isle! 

We cleaned the hostel today for 2 hours in exchange for our beds. Another first experience for the both of us. It really wasn't bad and could have been SO much worse! In fact Alicia told me that if I had to scrub toilets she was going to take photos! I think its funny that she thought she wouldn't have to clean them with me. 

Our job was and is during our stay to go into the rooms that have vacated beds from the night before and put a new trash liner in the rubbish can, flip the mattresses, and put a new fitted sheet and pillow case on the bed. That's all. Easy! We were finished before our 2 hours were up and went to ask them what to do next. They were shocked we were done already. I told them we were fast workers and as soon as those words left my mouth I remembered Tisha Peters telling me that Americans are way more efficient? was that the word? then kiwis. I was seeing this as a good example. I td Alicia we needed to work slower tomorrow.

We both agreed this wasn't bad to do and it allowed a fantastic insight to the place we are staying. It's really a clean place as we already thought before we even started cleaning. 

We went to the Maori cultural experience and feast tonight. It was the reason we came to Rotorua and well worth the money! It was like going to full Hawaiian luau with a feast. We were picked up by a bus at our hostel by a tereffic Maori driver named Dennis "the menace" and when we arrived we walked they a village to see and hear about their tribal games, ways of making, and warrior practice. We  ended the experience by feasting on a lot of great food cooked in the traditional ground pit. A Maori guy asked A. where she was from and then made a bit of a (good) scene, obviously he liked Portland Oregon! Right before desert, after teasing us a bit more during the meal, this guy made an announcement to the 100+ people that were there. In this announcement he told us desert was being brought out but maybe (especially if we were backpackers or from PDX, OR) we would want a 3rd or 4th helping of dinner! My he table we were sitting at got a good kick out of that. We thought it was funny (& true!) as well! 

On the way home the bus driver sang us songs (we sang along) from each country we were from. I don't know how he knew so many songs! One of them was "she'll be coming around the mountain", great song! I used to sing that with my dad. So as we all sang it the bus driver came to a "round about" (I mentioned early on in a past post that these are popular here) and he circled it at least 5 times! In a full size bus! I lost count at 5 when my head started to spin but I was laughing and Alicia... Well she was somehow sleeping thru this excietment, missing the last few minutes we would have with Dennis. Everyone on the bus said good bye and yelled out to us, safe travels as they dropped us off at the hostel. Then they headed off to their hotels.