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