18. Feb 2009

Well it’s been 10 days since I last wrote something. All that time we have been in Melbourne, where actually nothing interesting happened. But I can still talk about it a bit.

First thing when we arrived to Melbourne was of course finding place to stay. Didn’t know any places there, so we just went to the city centre and tried to find something there. First place we went to were full, but they recommended one other place, so that was where we headed and that’s where we stayed till leaving from Melbourne. That place was huge, expensive and not so nice.

In the backpackers we met 3 Estonians all together, so quite a lot compared to previous encounters, only 3 in 3 months. What was even more surprising was that we went in the same high school with one girl, Annika. She went in the class higher than me. So the world is real small. Also one thing I noticed when talking to the Estonians was that it was really weird talking in Estonian again. And Annika had 2 more Estonian friends who we also met. So 5 Estonians in Melbourne. Too many Estonians already.

So what good did we do in Melbourne? We watched 2 new movies: “Underworld 3: Rise of the Lycans” and “The curious case of Benjamin Button”. Underworld wasn’t anything special actually, but defiantly better than second one, but first is the best. The Benjamin Buttons story was pretty good, I recommend watching it. They put something that is really hard to picture into a movie and not so bad actually. We watched it in the Moonlight Cinema in Melbourne Royal Botanic Gardens, not in the real cinema, so I’m guessing in the real cinema it would have more affect.

What else? Hmm, we listened to Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, we didn’t see it, but we heard it when we were sitting in the park drinking beer :P. Spent quite a lot time in internet, doing nothing or looking for a job, well Kaupo did mostly last one :P. We ate lot of different food in there, because we didn’t make any food ourselves we ate out all the time, so we tried to eat different things. There is lot of Greek and Chinese food. Saw pretty much all Melbourne from one high building. And we drowned in smoke from all the fires. Because the wind turned it blew all the smoke on Melbourne.

Because it started to get quite depressing in Melbourne, too many people, all the smoke, expensive, no work and nothing, well not much, to do. We found a place called Sheperton from the internet and got information, that there should be some work around there we came here. But it wasn’t really easy to find a place to stay for night, because there are quite a lot of people, which isn’t good thing for us. Also we registered in local government job agency, but they didn’t promise us much. That is where we sit and wait at the moment. Because there is so many people and too little work we have to wait here, when any farmer calls they pick people who are waiting here. Things with farms aren’t good at the moment, because of the heat and other stuff, so it will be long wait probably. There are 7 other Estonians waiting for a job here.

Anyways yesterday when we arrived here, something really interesting happened, that is rare to see, especially in Estonia. While we started walking from train station to information centre one guy stopped his car next to us and asked if we wanted a lift. We were really surprised didn’t know what to say, but in the end we accepted and he dropped us off to information centre, so we could ask about accommodation in here. And they guy said that after we find something and start walking towards the city he could pick us up and give us a lift where ever we need. And he actually did. I actually haven’t seen anything like this ever before and I think this is something awesome, something I want to do someday; I want to be like that one day.

Now we keep waiting in here and hoping that we will get some work soon.

I hope next time I write here I can talk about our fruit picking stories.

All the best!

PS! I am thinking everyone who are back home and not so far away from there and hope to see you all soon.

26. February 2009

Ok, here I am again. Still alive after 1 week of picking pears :P. Not much has happened otherwise tho.

We got the farm job by the noon after waiting in the government agency office. They just came in and said names who were picked for fruit picking, we had to come back in few hours and they explained all. In the evening we already headed there. We were chosen together with one English couple, James and Annie, who also gave us a ride there.

In the evening we were already setting up our tent in the place we were going to stay. It wasn’t nothing special, we had some shitty toilet, showers and kitchen. Nothing luxurious, in kitchen we didn’t even have a stove so we had to use our own gas one.

Next day we already headed off to work, woke up at 6 am and were ready by 6:30, when we got our bags, jumped on our tractor and headed on the field. By the noon it got quite hot, so had to drink quite a lot of water. Worked till like 2 or 3 pm and by that time we had 2 bins each. Btw we got paid around 35 dollars a bin, anyways that was told to us, but still gotta check if we got that money. I didn’t like this job much so I am not gonna talk about it much, I think farm jobs are more kind of for ripping off foreigners, who want to get second year visa. But Kaupo liked it so you might read more about it from his blog. The only cool thing was our tractor I think :P and got to do physical work a bit.

Now we are back in Sheparton in the same hotel and in the same room too, weird, at least we can leave blanket and pillow what we “loaned” back here.

Don’t know exactly what next. Maybe we are going to visit Kaupo’s relatives or already head off to New Zealand, we will see about that. I’ll keep you updated.

So long, take care and live your dream.