I recently discovered that NZ has yet to be introduced to the joys of microwavable chips. I know NZ is supposed to be a developed country, but what sort of place doesn't have microwavable chips! I was trying to explain what they were to my boyfriend and he thought I was winding him up!

It's over a year now since I first arrived in New Zealand. I've changed where I live, I've changed jobs, but the one thing that remains the same is the difficulty in making friends. It's a very hard thing to try to do....to deliberately try to meet and make friends with people of the same sex. How do you do it without them thinking you're a lesbian and are trying to hit on them? The situation is becoming increasingly difficult as my boyfriend's social life becomes more and more active, whilst mine is non existant. I'm getting to the stage now where the constant meeting of strangers and trying to make conversation is very tiring. I long to walk into a place where everyone knows my name.

Had an encounter with some new zealand wildlife a few nights ago. We were at a BBQ and afterwards we were sitting in the living room of the guys flat. Someone lets out a shout and jumps up and out of a nearby chair saying he spotted something on the floor. A few of the guys started poking around the chair, and eventually turned it upside down in search of the mysterious 'huge thing' that had been spotted on the floor. One guy then spots it, picks it up and turns round...hanging from his hand was the hugest beastie I have ever seen. Needless to say I started screaming and hiding behind people. Apparently it was a weta. Very common here and looked kind of like a very large, fat stick insect. I was going to look up a picture on the internet just to get a closer look, but decided that I'd just get scared and jumpy and paranoid about huge insects crawing around......