Short clip of the band and updated itinerary

hi everyone...

Band Update
My band, The Immigrants, is making huge waves in the Nelson scene. Not only have we been asked to play an outdoor gig at Nelson's newest bar every Saturday (for actual money, PLUS free beer), we're also playing Air New Zealand's Nelson social gathering next Wednesday.
Last Saturday was our first gig at the new bar and we had a blast. Below is a small clip Gay shot using my camera...this one is only about 50 seconds but there's more video to come as it gets compiled.

Nelson Summer
As Gay mentioned in her last post our travel plans have been postponed until May as I finish up a project which I've spent quite a bit of time on since I started working here. Not only did I want to see the project through, but it's a great excuse to be in Nelson for another summer. Although the weather hasn't been so great there is still the laid back atmosphere and lot's of cool things going on.
For no other reason than to have a nice bulleted list; here is a nice bulleted list of our summer activities thus far:

We spent about 1 week at a friends holiday home in golden bay (mentioned in previous post)

We went berry picking.

We went to the beach and got burnt.

Comet McNaught has been in the area and we had the unique opportunity to go for a night time ride on motorized quad bikes to a remote area to catch a view of the comet without the glare of city lights.

tommorrow, the mountatin bike national championships are being held in Nelson so I'm hoping to check out some of the action.

and, a late summer trip to TAHITI (yes, TAHITI)is in the works..it's going to be great..more on that later..

also, Gay is planning something very secret for my 30th bday. so more on that as well..

yes, exciting stuff.

Our Ever Evolving Travel Plans
So a couple of posts ago I gave everyone a brief glimpse of our very exciting, very bold, very George Bushian manifest destiny otherwise known as our "travel plans". Which not only included a tour of all of Asia (including Nepal and Bhutan), India, Japan, Australia, Bali; but went as far as Dubai, Turkey, Greece, London, Costa Rica and I even had the audacity to bring up the possibility of going to Iceland.
Well, after a good dousing of cold water, some hard slaps to the face and several kicks to the groin, we have skimmed our itinerary down. a tad. It's still pretty bold and it's going to be a wonderful trip, but our visions of traveling literally around the world are going to be shelved for the time being. So here is what we're looking at right now:

Australia -> Bali -> Southest Asia (Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam) -> Japan ->Beijing->through to India making various stops along the way->tour most of India->then if we have enough money we do a little side tour of Greece and Turkey; if not, then back to Bangkok and then back to the States.


The good part about this itinerary is that we have the flexibility to expand if we want to instead of being bound by the round the world ticket. It would have been nice to do the full trip but we didn't want to be stressing about money all the time.

Anyway, more pics and videos to come. I hope everyone had a great new year/holiday time and everyone is doing well. Thanks to everyone for checking in on the blog and keeping up with us.

Jon

change of plans...

Travel plans are on hold for a little while. Jon has a project at work he needs to stay on for so we won't be leaving until end of april or beginning of may. I'm still leaving my job at the end of January but not sure what I will do after that. I'm hoping it won't be too difficult to find a job for a few months, although I have to wait for a change of work visa for that to happen also.

We had a great two weeks holiday. We had the house mostly to ourselves for a week then we went to a friend's batch up in Golden Bay for new years with a bunch of people. Actually, they had two batches right next to each other so we didn't have to camp like we thought we would. We spent most of the time just hanging out, walking on the beach, playing silly card games, and drinking a lot of beer. We even went cockling, which I think is just like clamming. You go out during low tide and find little clams buried in the sand, then leave them to sit in fresh water for a while so they expel all the sand and grit. Then boil them, open and pull the snotty-looking meat out. Al (our host) made pancakes with them. I wasn't brave enough to taste them but Jon did.
It was really nice to get away, even if it was cold and rainy most of the time.

I think that's all the news for now, check out the pics below. the first half are from lochmara lodge and the marlborough sounds, second half from new years at the batch. i got a bit carried away with the koru (the plants that look like fiddlehead ferns):
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