OKOKOKOKOKOK. Guess what?! Katherine comes in 2 days!!!!! WHOA! That'll just be a ball and a half. Then, as though it could get more fun, Jodi comes in 9 days. Rockstar.

Maggie and I completed our hike through paradise only slightly worse for the wear because it rained most days. But it was beautiful, nonetheless, and pictures from it are posted, if you are more of a visual person. My favorite thing was making friends with people in the campsites each night and then all sort of moving through the hike as a group. We met this guy, Gerald, who is from Germany and is riding his bicycle around the whole of New Zealand. He is doing it because he feels like biking is the perfect speed to watch the world go by. Since NZ is the tiniest, a few days later we passed a couple from our camp grounds hitchhiking near Carolyn's house, so we drove them an hour toward their destination for good traveler's karma. Being the hardcore backpackers that we are, Maggie and I left for the trip equipped with 6 christmas mince pies, which had to be eaten quickly given their considerable weight. Speaking of christmas mince pies, how gross do those sound?? Very. But in truth they are marvelous, like a fig newton on steroids, in a pie, without the pretense of "healthy eating."

Since the hike we have been back at Carolyn's. I swear we'll get around to seeing more of NZ soon. But we are still here because it rules. For example, here was yesterday:

I woke up to Sweet Maggie Smile, we ate a leisurely breakfast in our little mountain cottage. There has been a mysterious white thing on the only bare patch of rock on the facing mountain that we have noticed for a month now, only on sunny days. We refer to this white thing as "White Thing" and finally our fear that it was a creepy white-robed man staring at us everyday drove us to pull out the binoculars that dad forced me to bring (thanks, daddy) and learn that White Thing is a mountain goat!! Not only is White Thing a mountain goat, but he has a Brown Thing friend that we never noticed! So now we can wake up in the morning and say hello to White Thing instead of yelling about his eerie mystery.

Anyway, post breakfast we received a Lentz Family package and gleefully put together the christmas tree they sent and ate Reese's Cups. Thank you so much, Lentzes, you made our day!!Then we worked in the garden for a few hours. Carolyn has started referring to her garden as her "grounds" because they are starting to look posh and polished. The transformation has been so fun to take part in. We actually feel proud of our work when we look at her garden. Then we all drove to town for Christmas shopping. Got pizzas, ate dinner, then made christmas mince pies from scratch! Then we had hot pie and red wine while we watched a movie. It was cold and rainy, which is all wrong for summer, but all right for Christmas. On the drive home a hedgehog ran in front of our car! I've only ever seen one in a cage in Hunter's room! So that was great.

We've decorated the tree at their house, and Carolyn and her family invited us to spend Christmas with them, which is too kind an offer to resist. In the meantime, we'll go grab Katherine and climb a glacier, before coming back to Carolyn's on Christmas Eve.

I miss you for Christmas, family! It still isn't right to be wearing shorts and sunscreen while Santas ring bells on the street. Merry Christmas, everyone!

Allow me to profile the stellar old men who we've encountered thus far on our kiwi adventure. I will list in order of acquaintance.

Ron, 82: jumps fences, drives his house around in a bus, builds sheds in his free time, carries things for us that are too heavy for us. He's 60 years stronger than us, not 60 years older.

John, 76: knows how to operate dvd players and weed eaters, maintains a manicured lawn, gives away soft toys

Jack, 80: walked us to our car from his room in the hospital for those with terminal illness and taught us a cool handshake on the way out

Gordon, 90: stood up to shake hands with us when we walked in the room, worked in a carpentry shed all day, only stopping to fix his daughter's lawn mower when she overworked it that day

These are only the most remarkable. But can you understand why I'm so impressed? Who needs the fountain of youth when being elderly can still be so fun?

Bud rubbing, for those of you who have been waiting on the edge of your seat, is neither fun, nor sexy. A little fun. Therapeutic in its banality. Good ipod time. It's just rubbing the buds off the bottom of the plant below the desirable vines. That's all. But it is one of many little things we learned about grapes at the Speedy's! They were great. They have vineyards of sauv blanc and pino grig grapes (as they say in the biz, ha) plus sheep and cattle and forests for timber. Plus they have full time jobs as a teacher and a social worker. Now as we drive past vineyards we say know-it-all things like, "goodness those vines need thinning" or "wow, they need to get to singling." Cool, huh?

Our week was highlighted by the World's Friendliest Cat, Dragon, who slept under the covers and purred the whole night through, and a pathetically sweet sheep dog, Meg. Dragon, we later learned was a donation from Pam's sister. He cost $1000. He was bred to be sweet. So he is really more of an amiable, furry robot than a cat. Meg is sweet, but unemployed and stunted because she was ruined on all the electric fences as a puppy. Poor thing.

Next adventure: Abel Tasman Coast Track. Then Carolyn's3 - The Remix. Then Katherine and Jodi! Nothin' but net (as they say in another biz.)

Also! I need you all to participate in my poll to the right of your screen, please. This is really important. REALLY REALLY REALLY important.

Thank you thank you thank you

happy thanksgiving!!

Yesterday Maggie and I made Thanksgiving dinner for Carolyn and her daughter. It was fun to spend a day cooking, since we haven't done that in a while. We definitely had to improvise a fair portion of the ingredients, but if I do say so myself we did a marvelous job. We made a chicken (first substitute) with stuffing and beets (that weren't so much a substitute as much as just a how could you not want a beet?? kind of thing.) We made green bean casserole and kumara casserole that did a damn good impression of sweet potato casserole. We made chocolate chip cookies because people here don't understand that their "biscuits" are no cookies and we've never been able to afford pecans. My favorite stand-in was apricot muffins in place of cornbread for the stuffing (let this be a shout out to the Lentz family stuffing recipe!!) which involved scooping out the jelly bits of apricot goo and letting them dry and then toasting them. Turns out the faint apricot flavor blends beautifully with chicken, so next year we might have to use cornbread in a fit of desperation when we can't find apricot muffins. But now that I've told you our secret recipe you all have to go kill yourselves now that you know it. Sorry.

Today we head to a farm in Blenheim with a couple who we feel good about. They need us to work in their vineyard. Apparently 'tis the season for "bud rubbing," words that I wish I didn't have to use in conversation with strangers for the next week. I'll let you all know what this actually entails. Something to do with grapes.

After bud rubbing, we go on a beach hike for a week, then back to Carolyn's because why leave a good thing? We really feel like part of the family now and actually want to work in the garden because we've developed a personal attachment to those little plants. Carolyn's got a new batch of hens that she was told would start laying in November. Well 3 days ago we got our first egg and there has been one everyday since. Just one, very small egg. Each day it is a little bigger, so today's might even look normal(ish) in an egg cup. Yesterday Carolyn was going through the list of what had been done and it went something like this: "fed pigs, fed chickens, watered tunnel house, planted kumara, collected the eggs - " Maggie and I shot her a questioning look, to which she rolled her eyes and corrected herself, "Egg. Collected the egg." Ha.

Life just keeps working out in our favor. Sort of in an eerie way. Little things just happen every day that we first referred to as "god jokes" (reference Maggie's blog for an example from a couple months back.) These jokes usually involve a prophetic quality or really strong coincidence. Last night the god jokes got to the point where Maggie said, "so maybe we are god....like in Harry Potter they find him and say, 'have you been able to control things and not known why, well you are a wizard.' So maybe soon something will find us and ask the same question and we'll turn out to be god." Not that we would presume to call ourselves gods for any reason other than our ability to predict the future and have things work in our favor. We apologized to god for being so presumptuous, it was just an idea.

Mom, remember how you used to run around gobbling for the week surrounding Thanksgiving? Never thought I'd miss that, but when will I learn to never say never?

Love and thanks to you and all.

We are alive. Do not read that lightly, as it is a much greater accomplishment than it may seem. Maggie and I are free. Free from the crazy and free to laugh with the joy of Carolyn and her household. I wish that I could adequately explain this past week to all of you. Maggie was awfully gracious in her "Ms. Nutty" nickname of our previous wwoofer host. I must call this woman She Who Must Not Be Named (SWMNBN) because I don't want to slander anyone's name, but find myself less capable of Maggie-grace. So SWMNBN is obsessed with two things: biodynamic farming and anthroposophical medicine. (You know what, SWMNBN is a bit cumbersome, so I'm switching to "A.") What are these, you might wonder? They are things that would be totally neat and interesting if taken with a grain of salt. But somehow A managed to suck away any neatness and totally negate the elements of her teachings that could actually be legitimate. Biodynamic farming involves gardening according to plant/seed/flower/leave days that are based on various cosomological determinants. Anthroposophical medicine steers away from modern medicine and focuses more on elements of the soul that must be tapped into for successful healing. It all seems quite interesting, I know.

But let me paint you a picture of A. She looks much older than she actually is, probably from years in the sun without wearing sunscreen, which is poison. Other substances that are poison include (but are by no means limited to) bug repellant of any sort, peanut butter and ice. All of things must be strictly avoided by anyone who cares at all about themselves or their loved ones. I get that bug repellant is, by its nature, poison. But no one, not even her, can make me malign the name of the peanut. So A was not especially nice and we spent a lot of our working time working on the garden sites of her future commune, an endeavor that she has taken on with the help of two other brave souls, Jacques and Jurgen, both of whom we have worked with, though neither of whom we've exchanged a word with. It seems that their anger for society seems to have made them forget that individuals can be good. A was full of interesting ideas like China isn't as poor as it seems, rather it is preparing secret, apocolypse-proof villages so that they will be the global superpower when the End Times are upon us. I realized that she may have been less-than-happy with me in particular one day when we were working on the commune site. We'd been working in the sun for 3 hours straight and I paused to get some water. When I got back she was sitting down and she said to Maggie, "We've got to pay attention to our Lowest Common Denominator: Miss Exhaustion." I mulled this over for a while. Asked Maggie is I was, in fact, particularly weak that day. I maintain that I was working with my typical ox-like strength, though the nickname "LCD" stuck and is used regularly at Carolyn's house.

The best part of our week there was meeting John, her 76-year-old neighbor. We worked in his yard for a day and ended up spending several hours at John's house, drinking tea, admiring his doilies and wall-hangings, talking about his wife and sons. His wife died a few years ago and his sons both live abroad, but he is so proud of all of them. It was so nice talking to him. He lives a sweet, quiet life and so clearly lives for the love of his family. He agreed that A can be hard to swallow, but pointed out that they've learned how to get along and that under it all she has a heart of gold. That said, when he sees her across his driveway he yells out, "what are you brewing in your cauldron today?" John forced me to see the good, so for that I am grateful. Also, as we were leaving John asked, "Do you like soft toys?" Not knowing what "soft toys" exactly are, Maggie and I just sort-of smiled and made vague noises of approval, which was enough for John to lead us into his wife's sewing room and let us have our pick of toys that she knitted long ago. I am now the proud owner of a little knitted duck in a cap and scarf that can come with us on our travels and remind us of John's kindness.

Also by the end of the week we had to acknowledge that A is truly gracious in her nursing job where she works the night shift at a "rest home" for elderly folks with terminal illness. Though her flippancy about death came off as cold, she left me with some things to think about. That's for sure. So we came away with a friend in John and some weird, but though-provoking lessons from A.

Now we are at Carolyn's, which rules. Yesterday Maggie and I built frames for several of the veggie beds using tools that you may have heard of like drills and hammers. All by ourselves!! If you ask nicely, I'll teach you how to use them when I come home.

Ok, so. Right now Maggie and I use "home" to refer to a little two room cottage on the top of a hill (that is maybe a mountain?) that overlooks a tree-filled mountain (not a hill this time). From our cottage we can only see trees, no other humans or structures that remotely indicate the presence of humans. Think Lentz Montreat house for those of you who have been there, but without other houses. We can't even see the house of the family who we currently wwoof with.

We are in the Wairoa Gorge, so at the bottom of our hillsides runs an absolutely pristine river. It looks like the very essence of a river. Exactly what every other river I've ever seen can only attempt to be.

Carolyn and family RULE. Meredith Morgan, you will be her someday. We are CERTAIN of it. Today we drove the trailer to a garden center where a bleach blond teenager in aviator sunglasses and rubber boots used a bulldozer to scoope loads of compost into our trailer. New Zealand rules in that way. Like a BMW we saw pulling a trailer or the well-dressed business woman getting out of a beaten red ute. People do what needs to be done without thinking twice about it. Practicality takes precedence over all else.

If we ever get too quiet, Maggie and I just fake laugh until they turn real. Takes about 2 giggles.Last night Carolyn took us and her kids to Rabbit Island with fish and chips and a bottle of local wine. Today we made over the old weedy rose garden. It is now a blossoming bed of color. We have assisted a home vet in flipping over a cow's uterus that was twisted with a calf inside. We have eaten honey from beehives that are a 2 minute walk down the driveway. We have callouses that I am certain will never ever be dirt free. We found Reeses Cups and carved pumpkins. Ron gave us his GPS system, so we can't even get lost.

Superabundant being wells up in my heart, so to speak.

Pictures

More pictures! Some in the "Waitakere" album (formerly "Shine Family") and some in "Mangawhai." There would be more but you have to have a functional camera to take pictures.

lists are less overwhelming

Let's play Bad News / Good News! (You'll get the bad first because one should always end on a good note.)

Bad News: I've learned to be wary of electric fences the hard way.
Good News: I've only grabbed ONE electric fence in all of my time here.

Bad News: I dropped my fabulous camera lens-out, face-down, in the sand.
Good News: It still takes pictures sometimes.
Bad News: In this particular case, the bad news far outweighs the good.

Bad News: Malcolm and Lindsay's new farm turned out to be a little like prison and we had to bail them out.
Good News: Malcolm and Lindsay are back at Gilly and Greg's with us.

Bad News: I had possibly the MOST excited moment of my life when we drove past a sign that said "Eagle's Ridge," and I misread it as, "Eagle Rides."
Good News: HOW COOL WOULD THAT BE?!

Bad News: Maggie and I almost broke into someone's home that we mistook for the holiday house Gilly and Greg sent us to.
Good News: Gilly and Greg sent us to a holiday house that we DID manage to find...eventually.

Bad News: I'm probably getting fat from homemade bread and sinful but irresistible gluttony each night at dinner.
Good News: Gilly is a chef and we eat fantastic food every day!

Bad News: The water was positively ICE when we stumbled upon a swim with wild dolphins.
Good News: WE SWAM WITH DOLPHINS!

Bad News: Nothing, I got nothing.
Good News: Everything ever.

Ok, now I can explain some of the more interesting items listed above.

1. So when we rode horses on that nice beach, I grabbed hold of a fence on top of a cliff that turned out to be electric, which might have been dumb, but a warning sign of some sort would have been awesome.

2. Maggie and I just returned from a mini vacation from our vacation in which we delivered Malcolm and Lindsay to their next wwoofer hosts and then spent a night at Gilly and Greg's bach (NZ crazy word. Pronounced "batch" and basically means holiday home, but maybe smaller? People rent it out, you know the drill.) They supplied us with the key and insisted that we enjoy ourselves, explore the area, and take our time. Their generosity is absolutely boundless. Anyway, approximately 20 hours after saying our goodbyes to M & L at their new house of tennis courts, a swimming pool, a sauna, etc., our phone rang and it was a whispering Lindsay calling from inside the sauna, begging us to come back for them. Of course we did, though we couldn't really imagine the problem. Turns out, this couple had utterly failed to mention to M & L that they have 3 teenagers or that they were expected sleep in a tent outside for MONTHS or that they have a 3 page set of stringent rules. Some of the more memorable included: Breakfast ends promptly by 8:30 and there is a zero-tolerance policy toward eating between meals (even if you've purchased your own food). Girls must have their hair pulled back at all times. Boys must never have facial hair. Couples may never touch. The list goes on. These people run a portable rock climbing wall business and the guy happily told M & L about his method for keeping Maori kids off the wall. This clever little man (seriously, he was small) has a rule sheet (yes, another rule sheet) printed only in english and he makes each kid that wants a climb read the sheet to him. Well many Maori children aren't so hot at reading english yet and "if the kid can't read, the kid can't climb." Apparently teachers always offer to translate, but nope, the kids have to read it themselves. What a guy.

So we rescued our friends and brought them home to the warm, open arms of Gilly and Greg. It was quite a homecoming.

3. Gilly had drawn Maggie and I a map to assist in our quest for their bach. Well the map had some curves on it and the bach was a neat little square labeled, "19 Cambells Bay Rd." After turning on a street that was, in some way at least pointing to Cambells Bay Rd we found number 19 and happily leapt out of the car. We hugged, did a little dance. All very excited about our little home away from home away from home. I promptly took a picture of the house (this was pre-sand incident). I piled my arms high with sleeping bags, sneakers, and night bags, while Maggie's absolutely ranneth over with sushi and baked beans that we'd picked up from the grocery store on our way. Following Greg's careful instructions to go aroudn the side of the house and unlock the back door first, we ran to the back. It was a sliding door and inside we could see a lovely big bed. We commented on how nice the bed looked, how there was even a computer. We exchanged loud exclamations about how much nicer it was than G&G led us to believe. Except, no lock on the back door. So we moved to the side door. You can imagine my surprise when, as I fumbled with the lock, an elderly man approached the door from the inside. We stopped in our tracks. Unfortunatley, I was the first to speak. "Um...are you staying here?" The man does not honor my question with an answer. Fortunately, he laughed. Asked us what number we were looking for. "19." "Which street?" "Cambell's Bay." "Mmm. Well, this is Clinton St. You need to drive down to the end and take a left." Maggie managed to blurt out, "Oh my gosh, we're so sorry. Oh my gosh we're SO SO sorry." As we turned away in utter humiliation, the man said that we weren't the first to make the mistake. I suppose we should take some solace in that fact, but I couldn't get over the thought that he had watched us pull up to his house, jump around, take a picture, walk around the back, talk about his bedroom, and try to get it. THEN have the audacity to ask if he plans on staying in his own house. OOPS.

4. G&G also recommended that Maggie and I explore a peninsula reserve called Tawharanui (pronounced taf-ran-ooo-eee, to everyone's surprise.) We pulled up at a bay in the reserve and found a beach. As we started to walk down the beach a girl stopped us and told us that we should walk the other way beacuse there were dolphins down there. Clearly we expected to just see some fins in the distance, but we were excited nonetheless and headed in their direction. Well turns out, by "dolphins down there" she meant that the dolphins were RIGHT THERE. The was one man, waist deep in water, just playing around with 3 dolphins. The water was perfectly clear, so you could see them the whole time and they were just right there. So after a few moments of awestruck observation, Maggie and I stripped off our sweaters, scarves and jeans and began the cold climb in. The water was positively ICE, but that was completely beside the point. We only had to walk in waist deep and the 3 dolphins swam up to check us out and proceeded to swim around us for about half an hour. Eventually the one man there left, later other people wandered up and waded in, jeans and all. We met several people in frigid water, in our underwear, playing with dolphins. They seemed so big when they were so close! New Zealand rules.

The end.

We rode horses today on the world's most idyllic farm. It was the greenest of green hills leading up to a cliff over the beach. I couldn't imagine any single feature that would have made it more beautiful. (That is, until Maggie pointed out that Caribbean green water would have done it, so fine, that might be THE single feature. Still pretty good.) Maggie and I rode a horse with one eye, who leaves you feeling a bit like Ichabod Crane when viewed from the side of her empty socket. But we rode a horse! We both had a great time, even though neither of us understand how there can be people who are not afraid of horses. And these people exist all around us! YOU might even be one of these people. If you are, I can't understand you. I can appreciate them very much indeed, I just harbor a healthy fear of them right along with my admiration.

The reason I'm really writing is to say that we rode at a Shine family friend's farm and were next to their garage petting a calf that would suck on your fingers when you held out your hand. Then Gilly took us in the garage to show us a chariot. That's right, a chariot. A chariot from the set of Xena: Warrior Princess. TURNS OUT, the woman who lives at this place was often a double on the show and much of it was filmed in the area. One of the Shine's horses also often made appearances on the show. I for one don't care at all about Xena, but eat your heart out, Jodi.

Finally, if any of you are interested in prime NZ real estate, there is a beach front farm down the road that just went on the market. Only $12 million, so you'll all have to battle it out to see who gets to be the lucky buyer. Good luck.

Price List

I forgot to express my concern with the prices of things in NZ. I'll just offer you prices at a glance.

Busted NZ Price List:
1. A car...........................................................................$400 - normal car price
2. Car insurance for 22 year olds for one year.........$ 146 (really?!)
3. Mascara on sale........................................................$22.50 (what the..?!)
4. A moleskin journal....................................................$50 (!)
5. A cup of coffee...........................................................$4.50
6. A solid knife...............................................................$14.95
7. A 2 liter tub of icecream..........................................$ 10-15

Some weirdness there, for sure. Fortunately I don't want any mascara and I really needed car insurance.


Also, part of the trouble with traveling all the time is that one has to put one's lotion in a little travel bottle. Well I had to put mine in one of those tiny bottles with a little spray top because the others were taken with more important things like shampoo. But lotion is too thick for the spray to run smoothly, so whenever I use it I have to push the spray.......get a tiny squirt of lotion......wait for the tube to refill.....push the spray......pathetic squirt.......tube refill. Takes FOREVER to do a hand, much less a leg. Anyway, the Ever Supportive Maggie watched me do this today and after a moment she looked at me with disgust and said, "That makes you suck so bad." It'd be too hard to divorce her now though, so I guess I have to keep her around.

This morning was a morning of planting seedlings that will hopefully show themselves for spring, which is hopefully on the way. Since last I spoke I've learned how to construct a mighty chickenwire fence that not even chickens can get through!

It's amazing because somewhere between getting here and now, Maggie and I have really started to have an actual life here! It is really more of mini-life beacuse it sort-of exists in a small little globe of a few people, a routine, and a setting that are all way different from my regular-life, but still really neat. Take yesterday, for example. We woke up early so that we'd have time to buy car insurance before heading to the restaurant that Gilly works at to talk with the manager there. We are going to work a few nights here and there at the restaurant while we are still in the area, and then hopefully we can work there down the road if we settle somewhere in this area for a while. Then we drove into Auckland and picked up camping gear we'd left there, then to a shopping center to pick up essentials like a gas can since our gas gauge doesn't work, and now that we're "adults" we have to be prepared for anything. Then we stopped by Ron's bus for a hello that turned into a cup of coffee and a tour of the bus that didn't take long because it's a bus. Then cooking dinner with Gilly and the others because one of her daughters came over for dinner. It all just feels so normal, in a really nice way. I'm excited about moving around though because there is an endless amount to see and do.

The other day I worked on a fence with Ron for a long time and we got interrupted by Gilly running outside and yelling that we had to go for a drive because there'd been another island earthquake and the tsunami was expected to hit west auckland (where we are) at 3:33pm. By "go for a drive," she meant go watch it hit, not drive away. I told Ron where I had to go and that I was pretty sure the world is ending. We said our goodbyes (like goodbye forever goodbyes, just in case) and then we piled in the car to go to the beach. We ran up the cliffs to get a good view and then struggled with hoping one came for the cool factor and praying one didn't because we could see people on the beach. The people lived on, enough said. After a while we thanked god while wishing better luck next time. The only one of us who had to ride home in the trunk was Tansy because she was the only one who couldn't resist climbing through mud pits.

I've learned about worm tea (water you can get out of a tap from the bottom of worm composts) and cow jaws versus sheep jaws and why that sometimes means you've got to sell a cow. I've learned about herb gardens and lemon tart and eye fillet. I've learned that my nails will never be clean again, so I should stop wasting precious rain water trying. I've also learned that I can be wholly happy, miss home, miss college, miss andrew et al., all at the same time.

Hooray for life, eh?

REF

Pictures are up!

Wait till you see my....CAR

I BOUGHT MY FIRST CAR!! Maggie and I have never been more married as we are right now. Sharing a car, a family, a wwoof profile, a cell phone. It's hard for me to convince myself that we aren't. We found a lovely (ha) grey toyota corona that is nearly my age BUT only has 120,000 kms on it. It is automatic, which is a relief because we have more than enough to think about just keeping the blinkers and windshield wipers straight. It certainly has its share of problems, but it has a semi-working tape player AND reverse, which all cars aren't lucky enough to have. It is all very exciting. I've never had a car to call my own and I've definitely never bought such a serious toy for myself. Maggie and I can't quite believe it is actually OURS for a while. We've named it Shine, in honor of the Shine family that remain our kind hosts.

We are still with Gilly and Greg, Malcolm and Lindsay, and things are still great. The only problem is that is has poured rain every day for a week, leaving the farm a mud pit and leaving us with limited tasks. After completing the requisite inside chores, we've had two days of mostly pajamas and books, with a few errands in between. Unfortunately we started a 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzle a couple of days ago that consumed our minds until we finished it this evening. EXCEPT for ONE missing piece. Sucks. Maybe Tansy ate it. She would.

We did manage to go to a yoga class this morning, and in the afternoon the rain stopped long enough to let Maggie and I go to a hot mineral spring about half an hour a way. It wasn't quite what you'd imagine - more a swimming pool than rocky steaming mountain springs - but it felt great and was so hot at its vents that it could easily burn. The landscape is like a fairyland and the foggy rain has only made the hillsides more mystical.

We built a whole herb garden a couple of days ago and about an hour after filling it with herbs we noticed the chickens going to town on their convenient fresh greens. We had to chase them away and then scold Tansy for her utter failure as a watchdog. Thank you Katherine for noting my spelling of chicken "coup" in the last post. It would now seem a rather prophetic error.

I've learned a lot about baking bread and growing microgreens, which Gilly and Greg grow in old packing containers. You can plant tons of varieties (peas, radish greens, beet greens, flax greens, etc. ) and then you just trim them when they are long enough to eat, but small enough to be tender and add them to your nightly salad. Easy, fresh and delicious.

So we think we will be here another week or so, then head north for a couple of weeks, then down to the South Island after it has warmed up a little. We definitely need to stay here through the rain so that we can earn our keep in the nice weather. Right now a puzzle is all I have to show for the day's labor. How embarrassing.

Better work in better sun. Love and misses all around!

REF

thebestthebestthebest!

I ate a lamb chop today and then I ate second one! I also saw a lot of lambs today and couldn't believe how cute they are. The essence of innocence, right there. Now happily digesting in my vegetarian belly. Tonight is just a Sunday night and without any warning Gilly created an absolutely superb feast for dinner tonight. It was the first night of the season that it has been warm enough to have a bbq outside, so Greg grilled lamb chops, steak, chicken and prawns. Add roasted potatoes, homegrown pumpkin, fresh home grown salad, fresh home-baked-from-scratch-by-us-today bread, home-brewed wine from home-grown fruits, home-brewed beer, and caramelized bananas with chocolate ice cream and you've got yourself quite the Sunday dinner.

Maggie and I arrived here on Thursday evening and from the first moments it was a warm, welcome home. Gilly and Greg live out in the suburbs of Auckland, far enough from others that one feels completely isolated in country side when working outside. Their home is lovely and cluttered, making it easy to really make myself at home. They've got two dogs, Tansy and Dobby, cats, horses, chickens, a few black lambs, and a plentitude of plants. They've also got the pleasure of two octogenarians, Margaret and Ron, who live on the property as well. Margaret is Gilly's mother, and both she and Ron are unfathomably fit and energetic. This morning Ron came in during our breakfast and when we offered him french toast he laughed at the thought, having eaten hours earlier. When digging the other day, Ron watched us for a moment, took over, and finished our job of hours in minutes flat. Margaret used to be a florist and now lives out her days in her garden, making it a miraculous fairyland. Everything is the richest baby green and flowers hang all over the garden. Callalillies the size of my head are the weeds. Margaret is who I'd love to be at 82. She is sharp and fierce and funny, and clearly quite kind. Upon meeting Maggie she grimaced, saying she's never been able to stand that name. Stuck with Margaret, she did. Great first meeting moment.

There is another couple of wwoofers here, Malcom and Lindsay, both of whom are from Virginia and just graduated from school. It has been fun to have them around and the meals all feel like we are a happy little hodge-podge family. Maggie and I spent the entire first day mucking the stables! Maybe that's what it was called...really it was digging out manure to prepare the spring gardens with fertilizer and make clean beds for the horses. It was hard work - exactly what we wanted. By the end of the day my shoulders ached and I was bruised to the bone on my blistered hands. And I was happy as a clam. We've fed chickens and collected eggs, weeded the garden, cooked, etc. This is sort of the ideal work hard, play hard scenario. Working is physical and outside and makes you tired, and playing is physical and outside and makes you tired. The landscape out here is unbelievable. Today we went to another farm to load up a trailor with bales of hay and we had perfect views of valleys and green rolling hills dotted with sheep, and the ocean in the background to boot. We could even see a fine orange glow on the horizon of the Australian dust creeping our way. The green is the greenest green that ever greened. Words fail.

Gilly and Greg have also given us some fantastic cooking lessons. We've baked bread each day from scratch. Today we really went all out with the sweet loaves, adding every sweet, fruity, spicy bit we could find and dotting the top of the loves with chocolate buttons. Yesterday Gilly showed us how to make sherbet with oranges, limes and grapefruit from her garden. Saturday morning Greg made all of us poached eggs (fresh from the coup) on toast (fresh from the oven), and Sunday it was french toast with homemade plum sauce (from the plum tree outside.) THIS is how I hope to feed myself some day. It actually works!

After work yesterday Greg and Gilly took us to the beach nearest their house. It is a black sand beach called Bethels beach. It is one of those places where you can easily pretend that you are the only person on earth. It is rugged and vivid with flawless, soft black sand. We watched the sunset and hiked back to the car through the incoming tide. Tansy almost drowned because she wouldn't drop the rock in her mouth. (Tansy is obsessed with rocks. Greg walks through the house collecting rocks, reminding her that that is his driveway.) Our jeans were soaked and we encountered a group of horses who offered Tansy her second brush with death that evening. We were wet and freezing to the bone by the time we made it to the car, but all filled with happy.

So it's good. I wish my words held more power. I wish they could paint pictures for you. OR I wish that they invoked teleportation. Alas. Guess you'll all just have to come visit.

I DO miss you all. Home is always a wonderful place to be.

Deep love,
REF

Aucks

Friends! Hello! Great news: we are still alive. Greatest news: no bad news! We are still in Auckland, but tomorrow we leave for our first farm! It belongs to a couple named Gilly and Greg, who seem slightly crazy and mostly wonderful. We know nothing about their place, except that it is 20 minutes outside of Auckland, they have 3 grown kids, they have "naughty" chickens, and ponies. They recently had a Virginian couple at their place, but we don't know if they will still be there. We think that Greg will help us with the car-buying endeavour, which has put our search for a car on hold. (Daddy, I know you don't want us to buy one, but trust me, I'll explain later!!)

We've spent the past few nights in our quiet hostel. We bought a lot of fresh groceries at a large store like a Harris Teeter and without even trying EVERY item we bought (save for the English tea) was a product of New Zealand. It was refreshing. Now we have to work to get through all of the fresh food before we head out tomorrow. The avocado in my bag keeps rolling out onto the floor, which looks suspicious to everyone else in theis internet place.

So far the most surprising thing about Auckland is how internation it is. The streets almost seem more full of foreigners than New Zealanders and with each step you hear a new language spoken. It's great to get the diversity while still being expected to speak English. Everday I find myself relieved to be a native English speaker and ashamed at being ONLY an English speaker (again, sorry Daddy, I'll try Spanish again when I get back.)

Maggie and I have set up bank accounts and officially filed with the tax system. Feels responsible. So far our NZ BFFs are a couple from Chile who work at our hostel. They are really really nice and we've spent hours sharing homeland stories. Today a conversation with a Scottish man quickly died when I said something about my apocalyptic fear of running out of resources and he said that it is all America's fault. He was sort of kidding, but I didn't know where to take the convo from there.

I have to interrupt myself because at the moment the place we are in just errupted with excitement at a parade going down the busiest street of Auckland that consists primarily of topless women in American flag underwear riding motorcycles and streaming American flags behind them. People keep asking us if today is a major American holiday. Is it? This is sort of embarrassing. It seems kind of like an official parade though. Hmm.

Ok, we gotta go find out the deal.

Love to all.

REF

Pictures now!

There are some pictures up now! Don't look if you don't like trees. Also re-think your thinking if you don't like trees.

Also! Maggie made a blog and there is a link in the list of links to your right! Goody!

Here we are!

I am here! I am here in the first country in the world to see the rising sun each day, the first country to give women the right to vote, and a country that is 100% nuclear free despite its production of the scientist who first split an atom. Auckland also happens to be a city that can sustain flora from just about any region you could want. We've seen wisteria in full bloom beside palm trees beside blossoming cherry trees planted near sidewalks lined with kauri trees and gardens of yucca and camellias. The trees in the city parks are ginormous and people just walk past them as though it were completely normal to have thousand year old trees lining your path.

Maggie and I finally arrived in the city around noon on Friday after many hours in the air. We had to land in Christchurch because of fog in Auckland, then wait, then fly back to Auckland. Maggie and I embarrassed ourselves with a minor panic about how we would now have to reschedule everything to now start on the South Island, forgetting that Qantas OBVIOUSLY can not just leave us in Christchurch. We weren't thinking clearly.

After we got into the city we found our hostel and spent the entire day wandering around, forcing ourselves to stay awake until a reasonable bed time. We made it until 8:30. We found the International Exchange Program office, which we thought would be like a desk with brochures, but turns out it is a really nice office with tons of computers and bulletin boards and people to help you figure out where to go. It was absolutely teeming with young travelers, none of whom were American, and it seems like it will be really helpful. It's great to feel like you have a place to go where someone will actually help you. Though most everyone we've encountered has been really friendly. Especially a bank teller who changed money for us, but also told us about every cell phone company, every bank, every internet cafe, etc. The people in line were not as thrilled with our friendly helper as we were, but we were glad to have him.

The hostel that we are staying in right now is kind of like a creepy youth club farm. That doesn't make sense. So it is right in the center of downtown on the hipster cool shopping street, in a high rise that seems really nice. But it is completely geared toward being young and cool and wanting to stay out late and drink a lot and see party-auckland. Maggie and I are in a small room with 6 boys that smells like a small space with 6 boys. We haven't met all of them yet, but we did wake all of them up when we got up at 6:30 this morning after a great 10 hour sleep. (As you can imagine, none of them were there when we went to bed at 8:30.) We were unimpressed with one a few minutes ago who told us that he has been here for 3 months and worked 2 days, but now lost his job and just took a "boring road trip." Hm. The others seem perfectly nice, but we spent much of the morning scouting out a new hostel for tomorrow. And we found a great one, outside of the city center with a sweet French man running it who let us make the reservation on a promise, since we didn't have a phone number, address, or money to give him. We're looking forward to the move.

So far we've found 2 music guardian angels. The first was yesterday, when we passed a man playing a banjo, the second was at a farmer's market this morning when a guy was playing the guitar and singing James Taylor. Oh, I forgot about our third! We also found a group of Hare Krishnas dancing their way down the street. Maggie was so excited by our find that she started giggling and dancing and singing with them. It was sweet as pie.

Maggie keeps forgetting that this is not West Africa, so everytime we buy something she is really suspicious and demands to know the return policy. She just bought minutes to top up her cell phone and the clerk was really confused when she asked about a return policy since they just give you a receipt with a serial number. When he said there isn't one she almost yelled, "well then will you put the minutes on my phone right now?!" I pulled her away as the man promised that it would work. Hope it works.

This morning we found a farmer's market and bought apples, oranges, bread, cheese, and a pastry. I also found God in a container of homemade olives, sundried tomatoes, feta and olive oil that we bought from an Israeli man. If it wasn't perfection it was remarkably close. We've walked everywhere, which feels great. So far the cheapest food we've found is Subway, which is a disappointment indeed. Oh! Except for dinner last night we were wandering and found a little booth on a corner surrounded by Asian people who turned out to be Korean, buying Korean pancakes. Maggie and I bought veggie pancakes that tasted infinitely better than they sound. Turns out, Korean pancakes are delicious! They even had a sign on the booth stating that "for health reasons they only use olive oil or grapseed oil." And they are even cheaper than Subway.

We think the plan for now is to hang out in Auckland long enough to figure out our car situation, then head to a farm about 20 minutes outside of the city to stay with a couple named Gilly and Greg who sound perfectly wonderful in their emails. After that, we are thinking of heading to the South Island until summer peaks in the North. But who knows what will really happen.

Hope everyone of you is happy.

REF

My Address

Though I do not plan to be in any one spot long enough to have a mailing address, Maggie and I do have a PO Box through the International Exchange Program, so we can collect mail periodically:

Robin Fail
C/O IEP - Work NZ, PO Box 1786
Shortland Street, Auckland 1000
New Zealand

Also, if ever we want to talk to each other, the time difference is 16 hours ahead of the East Coast, give or take an hour because of daylight savings. So 6 pm on Wednesday in Charlotte is 10 am on Thursday in Auckland. Hope this helps.

Sorry about "where the hell"

I would like to begin by apologizing for the horrible title of my blog (worst word ever). It happened after much frustration and deliberation. I hoped that it would be some sort of clever pun using my easily pun-able name. I thought about "Failsafe Travel B(Log)," but it lacked a certain something. Katherine suggested "Epic Fail," which I turned into "Epic (of) Fail," but that didn't translate in a web address. As the suggestions went downhill fast ("Rockin'Robin'sBlog, "Robbin'MeBlind," "RobinFail'sDownUnder," "KiwiFruit" (like the fruit of my journey), and something about a bat mobile) my frustrated response was the title and web address you see before you. Sincerest apologies.

The idea of blogging has always made my skin crawl. I hate the fact that I just had to use the word "blogging" and I hate the idea of putting my writing out there for the public eye. The latter issue is really more about the sort-of presumptuous nature of assuming others care what you say, more than it is about any fears that the public who aren't my parents will seek out my writing. But I decided that a blog (shudder) is, in fact, less presumptuous than mass emails, since it the ball is now in YOUR court, my friend. Rather than forcing an email from me into your inboxes, I will let you read my words only as you see fit. My discomfort with this also has a bit to do with the fact that I still don't know basic grammar rules like where to put punctuation near parenthesis or quotes and what commas are, so if those errors are pet-peeveous to you, you may not want to read on.

The idea is that I will update this during my time in New Zealand whenever I have time at a computer. I have absolutely no idea if I will actually do this. Having never kept a blog (gross), it might prove difficult to maintain, but I'll try. For those of you who somehow arrived here without knowing this already, this is intended to be my record of a one year or nine month (or any other amount of time) trip to New Zealand to work on farms and see beautiful things with my friend Maggie, a fellow recipient of an anthropology degree that we haven't yet figured out how to use.

We leave for New Zealand on Wednesday, at which point we leap forward in time and miss the all of Thursday, September 17th to arrive in Auckland on Friday morning. I am trying to ignore my fear that Thursday, September 17th was supposed to be the best day of my life, but I decided to skip out. Fingers crossed that that fear remains irrational.

So this is my introduction. How does one end a blog (still hate it) post? Is it like an email? Do I write my name? You all know my name. Do I say, "sincerely?" Probably not. Bye? Not right either. I'll just stop now.

REF