Dean’s house+Alex

January 19

 Today we emptied out Dean’s garage. Very fun considering all of his automotive parts from racing, building stuff from his construction jobs, surfboards and about 20 wetsuits… we still haven’t gone surfing because the wind has been too strong. There is suppose to be a storm coming. Today was nice, but yesterday down-poured for most of the day. Chloe and I went on an aimless walk and found ourselves at the sand dunes. The sand blowing over them looked like a river. Then we came back and dis-assembled and re-assembled a rusty workout machine. We had to move it through a door. That took a few hours, but I feel pretty handy and very accomplished now.

I’m currently eating second dinner. I made the first one around 8, but Alex, Dean’s other WWOOFer insited on making Paella. Its 11:15. They eat later I guess. He is from Tarifa, Spain and likes to practice his English with us. He taught me how to make the dish. Tarifa is famous for windsurfing he told me. Alex had a job as an accountant for a fishing import company for fourteen years, but decided to quit and travel around Europe in a camper van for three years. He sold his camper van and came to New Zealand. He told us that he used to have “everything,” a car, nice house, big bed, but that didn’t make him happy because he had no time for his life. Now he rents out his house and lives with the bare minimum, but he is happy. I commented on him eating around 11:30 and he said, “I eat when I want, sleep when I want… its my life.”

The next day when we were leaving Alex was “keen” on giving us a ride to the bus station, which was only down the road. We tried explaining that we could walk, but he insisted on helping us and started loading our backpacks into his camper van. We drove down the road and told him to drop us off, but maybe he didn’t understand and kept asking us where the bus was going to stop. He saw the bus which was going to make a loop and pick us up right where we were but he thought that it was driving away so sped after it. It was all pretty hilarious how unnecessary the whole excursion was. We did eventually get on the bus and made it to the train station, but were about 2 minutes late. In hindsight this actually saved us some money because when talking to the man working at the train station he told us to buy the day pass instead of two separate tickets and gave us a shorter route AND a bus schedule which came in handy later when leaving Swanson, Waitekere.