We were 15 minutes late arriving, which I started to stress about, but then remembered that in NZ time, that meant that we were about 20 minutes early. There were a total of seven guests at the party (not counting us), and they arrived between 10 minutes and 2.5 hours after the invitation had said the BBQ started. Actually, the person who was 10 minutes "late" is actually not a Kiwi - the first Kiwis to arrive were Harry and Jonny, who came an hour after the announced start time. I had a bit of a problem with this at first, but now that I know how it works, I can just plan for it, and it's fine. People are, of course, relatively on time for work and other official things, but plans with friends do not seem to run on any clock that I've seen.
Anyway, the BBQ was lots of fun. We just sat and chatted and enjoyed the lovely evening and delicious food. Harry and Jonny say that they usually sit outside every night in the summer, but this summer has been very cold and windy compared to how they usually are, so they've missed it. I am hoping that we still get some of that kind of weather before fall, but we'll see. At least we had tonight. And I really shouldn't be complaining, since the range of "bad weather" is still within very comfortable limits. It's only the wind that is genuinely hard to deal with, and it's been a bit better this week.
We are so lucky to have such wonderful friends, and to be able to spend such nice time with them. I think that Kiwis are very good at relaxing and enjoying time together, without feeling rushed to something else or to do something special. Tonight was a perfect example of this, and J and I both came home feeling contented and happy.
This was right after we first got there - Ollie and Huansi spontaneously raised their hands, and no one told J - oops!
Finally remembered to get a nice(ish) picture of the four of us!
J ended up doing a lot of the BBQing, which was a treat for him, since we haven't had our own BBQ in years, and he used to really enjoying cooking outside when he was at university.
In other news, after a truly wonderful week of day shifts, during which J and I got to spend our evenings together and had such a fantastic time... J is back to evening/night shifts next week. One week of evenings (4:00pm to 2:00am), then a week of nights (8:00pm to 5:00am), then back to a week of evenings. As you can imagine, with me working 9:00am to 5:30pm, the total overlap of waking hours at home on evening shifts is... zero. For nights, we get an hour or two in the evening, but it's just J getting ready for work. It makes me very thankful for all the time we had together this week, and glad that we know that we can get through this and will get time together eventually.
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