Well folks its another rainy Saturday in Motueka; which means that, again, my first day off from being inside the pack house on 5 beautiful sunny days in a row, will be spent indoors. Boo.
No worries though, the internet cafe has endless filter coffee for 2 bucks and so life is good.
Immigration police showed up at the hostel a few nights ago, checking passports and work permits and asking people if they were being paid fairly at their jobs. Apparently I didn't look foreign enough to be asked, so it wasn't as exciting as it could have been. We have only had good experiences with immigration so far-- hopefully with 2 months to go we can maintain that good luck!
As far as work goes: I really kinda like grading apples. I am the only new girl at the pack house, everyone else has been there for at least one year, most of them for many years. The owner is Scottish and I have decided that the Scottish accent is probably my favorite to hear my name in. Standing inside all day in the same spot is a little tiring. There are little stool/kneeler things we can use. It is nice to use it for just an hour or so in the early afternoon-- it helps make the rest of the day a bit more bearable.
Grading apples involves watching a conveyor belt of rollers roll a bunch of apples by in a pretty constant stream. We have to then pluck out the defective ones and throw them in the rubbish trough in front of us. Defects in the apples include: size (if they are too small they jam the machine), bruises, stem punctures in the flesh, rotten bits, russet (yellow marks or rough scarring) in degrees, sunburn (orange tints in the skin, it makes the skin more sensitive), bee stings, and warts (yellow bumps). The first variety of apples we did was Cox Orange Pippin. There were tons of "bad apples" to be turned into juice. Now we are doing Royal Gala apples and they are big and beautiful and have much few defects in general.
I keep busy by thinking about stuff, singing songs, and trying not to look at my watch to find out when the next coffee break is.
I hope you enjoyed your extra day in February! And that the weather there starts to turn around... at least in 2 months when we return.
Cheers!
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2 comments:
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Ashley,
Long time no see! I just found this this morning, so I haven't read any of the posts. Looks like you're having fun though.
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