riverECHO

This week was all about planning and preparing.

At the winery, we’ve been spending the afternoons making space and cleaning huge tanks to get ready for the delivery of grapes that we are expecting this coming week. The grapes will go through a de-stemmer and then a press. The juice will then sit in a huge tank with the skins until it is ready to be put into barrel. It’s been a learning process and I still don’t understand all of the steps but it’s been a fun way to spend my afternoons. I am genuinely excited for the fruit to show up this week.

At the home office, we went through a time change . . . the southern hemisphere’s “fall back.” Our normal 20 hour difference, which in my mind I think of as a 4 hour difference but a day ahead, has become a 6 hour difference. This means that our normal wake up time of about 7am is no longer 11am in Wyoming but now 1pm. So, we’ve been trying to wean ourselves off the long nights of sleep and get up just a little bit earlier each day. We’ve also been wondering how a work day will work once we are in China or even further west when the time difference is even closer. One thing is for sure . . . as the time change has come so have the turning of the leaves. It is fall in Queenstown.

Another area of planning has been Jean’s upcoming visit. With her help, we have been researching places to stay and go and see all over the South Island. She was a little shocked at the first itinerary we sent her which had us relocating every day. There is just so much to see on the South Island but we are embracing the idea of an actual vacation for Jean and staying for a little bit longer in a few places like Dunedin, Queenstown, and the West Coast.

One area that we haven’t been planning is in our travels and, therefore, are still unable to answer the question “When are you coming home?” We received a wedding invitation today from our good friends, Clay and Steph. They’ve known that we won’t be able to come to their wedding in Montana in June, but they took the time to take a photo of their wedding invitation and email it to us just so we could feel like we received one. We love you guys and will definitely be there in spirit.

We’ve been spending the weekend somewhat battling the rain and were able to escape yesterday afternoon for a short ride, a solid session of BJ’s hacky sack lessons in a park, and dinner and a movie in Arrowtown. Today’s outlook for rain isn’t much better but I am sure we will be able to keep ourselves entertained . . . even if it is a trip to the local pool or a café.