ROOKIE - sunday 14 october

Weather: -10.c, -30 wind chill

Sunday morning sleep in, then off to a church service at 11am. The chapel here is called "chapel of the snows" and it sits super cute in a prime viewing spot out to the ice field.

At noon my shift started. We spent the day training, and ran an exercise drill out of 155 (the dorm i'm staying in). It was a great day and i learnt some new things. The terminology is VERY different here for all the firefighting equipment and even more confusing (this is for the kiwi firefighters) is that in america the male connection of the hose or "attack line" fights the fire whereas back home it's the female - meaning that the connections are all different at the hydrant etc... have to be one step ahead of the game for that one!
Here's a couple more;
(kiwi) dividing breeching (usa) gated Y
(kiwi) collective (usa) simease
(kiwi) hose (usa) attack line
(kiwi) tools (usa) irons
(kiwi) outlets (usa) discharge
(kiwi) truck (usa) engine
and then of course we work on the metric system! phew my brains getting a hammering! i feel like a rookie again! I heard a few laughs the first time i jumped out the truck to be a guide for a guy reversing, i did wonder why he wasn't looking at me out the side mirror. I thought "man this guy's good" then realised i was on the officers/passengers side of the truck! i forgot the driver is on the left here!

Actually i had driver training the other day out on the ice runway, there were 3 vehicles in action, two coming towards me, i noticed they had stopped as seemed to be laughing inside the vehicle. Then i realised i was driving down the left hand side of the road. "crazy kiwi"