Some days i would remember them, the vineyard contractors whom I and Mian worked with in 2005.
Timeline:
2002 January.27 I arrived in Invercargill, living with Ruth Shaw, Deborah, and i can’t remember the host father’s name – how terrible.
2002 August, I had an argument with Ruth(and Allan! Now I remember. They were generous really, took me 3 or 4 trips to Stuard Island where they or Allan owned a holiday house, but they paid for the ferry tickets for me, I think it was $80 in 2002, not the cheapest in comparison to my $140 weekly homestay fee; the argument was about they wanted me to take a scenic train trip to upper South Island, estimated to cost over $2000, according to them all their homestay students gladly went on, I think it was too pricy, my mother also refused to pay for it so I didn't, and they were not happy), and had to move out, I started living with the Chernishovs. They became a life long friends.
2002 Oct I passed ELTS and even passed Busary exams.
2003 March after a camping trip with chernishovs in Lindus river near chch, they helped me bought a bike and sent me and my packages and the bike on the bus to Dunedin where i would be attending university of Otago for the next 3 n half years, my mother came to visit too, she saw the flat i was living in, we had an argument, she brough up a lot of things i tried to forget, I cried to Robyn-Jane, my mother left.
2003 i failed my accounting paper, finance, and economics, I didn't and still don’t understand accounting, I hate finance, I retake ecomonics the next year, but I ditched acct and finc forever, I went on my first tramping trip in July with Rob Thompson, Mike Chernishov and Matt Windsor, I flatted with them plus Steve from March 2003 till end of that year, Mike and Steve the brothers didn’t get along living together. I saw Steve’s hairy chest, and he said my english didn’t make sense. I was a bit attracted to him, Steve, we were similar age, he was wild, a kind person inside but forward and direct, shamelessly open, also a smart ass. But i know it’s not worth it, it’s more likely a doomed attraction, nothing that i couldn’t conqur, but not worth me risking my good relationships with his parents.
2003 2nd half year, i retake some commerce subjects and really had to put my head down for studying, I decided to shift my major to Marketing; i passed everything.
End of 2003 I went to an Alexandra cherry orchards, got myself a summer job, the previous summer when driving pass a few orchards on the way back from Chch Lindus river, I fell in love with these orchards, they look so bright, so colorful, so in peace with nature. I didn’t know it well but they looked easy enough; so that’s what set my mind that in the long summers i would come to one of these orchards. I met Liv and Linda, Rose and McIntosh family the orchard owner, I only worked in the packing shed.
2004 another year in Uni, I took up major in Marketing, and Film media studies. I didn’t really understand half of them but i just copy text books.
2004 summer, i went to a crowmwell orchard, there, i met my husband in Oct, a whole new chapter. We started officially going out in Christmas.
2005 summer of Oct and November, weather was cool in south island, me and Mian met in 2004 October, spent from May lived together, and his degree graduate in June, I still have another year to go, so before we go back to cromwell, we went to Arrowtown first for vineyard work, for a different. There we met Michelle the adopted vietnamese woman, in her 30s, Vince, her adopted father in her late 60s, Peter Vince’s biological youngest son, Yvon who’s relationship with them is unknown but treated very differently from their own family, a timid older woman, greying, looked liker in her 50s, according to Vince, negging and negative; but to me, just timid and shadowed.
Vince and his family are religious, he had other sons, and his wife died some years ago, they are from Australia, had their own farm and grew vegetables, they had some 5 or 6 number of sons, Vince’s wife really wanted a daughter so they adopted Michelle from a single mother who was impregnant by a American soilder, when Michelle went back to visit her, her bio mother own a sewing business and struggled for her life, Michelle didn’t like her way of ‘acting’ poor to gain her trust and financial aid. Vince doesn’t go to church, they think church people are not same with them, whoever had true heart for god do not show or need other’s approval, or something like that, they were very pleased we were christian too and more so, we are sociable.
Michelle invited us for dinner, cooked her pho ghe, aparently vietnamese chicken nood soup, Mian was highly impressed with her huge rice bowls, they measured at least 20 cm in diametres…
We lived in a nice little shed next to their property, they had a ginger cat called Boots, cos when she first came from the wild, just a little wee kitten, was not allowed inside the house, she slept in one of them warm bumboots in the cold south island winter. They also had lots of chicken, ducks, and some fancy ducks or turnkey living in the chicken shed, they bred happily, when we woke up for work at 5am every morning, we saw millions of rabbits stood at the landscape stoop and looking at us, and within seconds, they all rushed back into their ground holes, leaving furs and panicky chickens and ducks flying.
Michelle never wanted to marry, 1 from her lack of social enteractions from outside, 2 from her father’s influence regarding to the ‘other people’. She’s happy however. Peter is another story, he’s probably in his 40s then, according to Vince, her other sons married and own business in Australia, himself established farms, owned milking cows, failed them, and started a real estate business, and failed, now he’s here hiring seasonal foreigners to help them out with maintaining vineyards, they don’t own anyting except this cottage, but they are together, happy.
Peter didn’t look like he was married or done anything, I always wondered whats his story.
Michelle as we said, she was uninterested in marriage,
vince is old and unhappy with the world, but otherwise happy.
Yvonne looked scared 80% of time, hardly seen her smile or initiate anything, she lives in one of them rooms, tried to avoid anything to trigger Vince to talk to her. Vince once or twice expressed his displeasure toward her. We never could figure out why.
For me and Mian, it was very very odd these people, almost cult like.
and of course they don’t have a TV, don’t read news paper, they probably saved a lot of money.
when i started first job in Wellington in 2006, I got a call from Vince, say they are in Auckland, somehow remembered me in one of the major cities, thought to give me a call, I said I’m in wellington, actually a bit relieved to not having to receive them, I liked them, but feared them at the same time.
Now I look back, it’s all part of the stories.
