Ok, so I'm not a logger yet. I've been more of a wwoofer this past week. BUT BUT BUT tonight at six I leave for the Marlborough Sounds to jump start my logging career. It'll only be a two-week long career at the moment because dad comes in two weeks, but one never knows where leads like this will take me. Carolyn and I spent the last week doing farmy things and making-over Thomas' room and watching him play rugby. Thursday marked 6 days since I'd seen Maggie and in a miraculous surprise she just walked in the kitchen while I was cooking dinner that night! I was so surprised that I forgot to smile; instead I went with a disgusted "who the hell do you think you are" sort of look. Then my brain caught up and we hugged and talked for 3 days straight. It was great. I didn't realize how much I only felt half-present. The Lentz fam mailed Carolyn a bunch of Martha Steward Living magazines and we spent an inordinate amount of time studying their pages, memorizing tricks to add seasonal spice to our homes this fall and lusting after the cake recipes. It was actually sort of weird how into it I was. But I mean, pumpkin vases?! Christmas light jack-o-lanterns?! Snow votives?!!? Score. I drove Mags to the airport this morning for her commute to Wellington to get her to work on time. It was so worth being up for sunrise because the sky was cloudy pink with a bright rainbow trapped in the pink that made it an illuminated hot pink streak in the sky. Words don't work as well as eyes, in cases such as these.

One night this week Thomas took me on my first pig hunt! Whoa, right?! He was just going one evening and I think he was joking when he invited me, but I ended up going, so careful when you joke with me because I might take you too seriously. We went up to this ridge near their house and the drive there was a four-wheel drive adventure that was sort of an appetizer to the redneck-badass fun. We went through one padlocked gate to get there and when I locked it after us Thomas seemed to disapprove. When I offered to get out and leave it unlocked he just mumbled something about, "no she'll be right, it was just in case we need to get out of here in a hurry." He didn't elaborate on why we'd need to get out in such a hurry, but it gave me a little extra kick of fear to get me started. Thomas gave me no instruction ahead of time, but sometimes he'd just hold up a hand to get me to shut up and listen. We took two of his dogs and went up to a hill top and then just sat under the trees with the dogs, just listening, waiting for it to get totally dark. After a few minutes the dogs started freaking out and we let them off their ropes and they shot away into the woods. Then we got ready to run and listened for their barks. They did manage to bail a pig and brought it close enough for us to chase it at one point, but we didn't get there in time, probably on account of the "bloody slow yank" trailing behind. But I think it was great fun because we didn't catch anything. I didn't have to see how I'd respond to the trauma of actually killing something, and instead I got to run through the woods at night with a gun slung over my shoulder, which is neither something I've done, nor is it something I could have imagined myself doing a year ago. Eventually the dogs got too far away and the barking died down and we headed back to the car and waited. Thomas called them and whistled for them and sure enough, about 15 minutes later Blaise hobbled back. Then we drove down the main road with me holding tracking gear out the window and listened for the beep that meant Swazi was somewhere near by and eventually she found us, too. It was so cool to actually use my ears. So much of it was just hard listening and I can't think of another time that I've had to practice being so quiet or so aware of exercising my hearing. I'd do it again, at least until we actually kill something and I scream and cry and commit myself to veganism.

Thank you Carolyn for inviting me back! Thank you Thomas for taking me hunting! Thank you Maggie for visiting! Thank you sky for pink sunrise rainbows! Thank you Martha for the handy home-making tips! Thank you Wayne for your abundance of laugh lines around your eyes! Thank you world for being so full of life and surprise!

I leave for Carolyn's tomorrow! I'm going to go be a logger! What? I can't explain how the things in my life happen, but they keep happening! This means a break in the adventures of Maggie and Robin as an item. You know, like a couple. Like a committed couple. So I kiss that goodbye, and show you how cool we are:
I had a great week with the girls. One night we went out to dinner in celebration of...I don't know...friendship? We turned Marocka into a place to share a bottle of wine and dance the night away, which was way more fun than using it to sell clothes! It also explains why the owners might have been hesitant to hire a 23 year old manager. Don't worry, everything is perfectly in tact and they'll never, ever do better than Maggie. Nor will I, as it turns out.

Did I tell you that I got fired from Greenpeace? I don't think I've written that yet. I got fired from Greenpeace. First few minutes of my last morning were filled with a man threatening to slap me in the face if I said one more word to him, which didn't keep me loving the job. The thing is, I didn't meet my weekly quota. Nor did anyone I got hired with, so we all joined the ranks of Wellington's unemployed again. It makes sense that Greenpeace only gives you a week to make the quota because they are a nonprofit and can never afford to employ fundlosers. However, none of us realized that the one week was our limit, so we were all a bit surprised to receive the "you can't continue on" phone call after work Friday. I got another day of chance, but it didn't work out. So...

So, given that I only have a month until Dad comes for a month, (yay!) by the time I get a job it would be just about time to give my two weeks notice. Meanwhile Wellington's gloomy frigidity isn't doing me any favors while I hunt for jobs and wait for my lovely roommates to get home. Instead, I'm going to head to Carolyn's next week for the 3 weeks until Dad arrives, then travel with him. I'm so excited for his trip! I'm completely unexcited about the fact of leaving Maggie, but it doesn't exactly make sense for me to be here right now. I won't talk about the leaving Maggie part because then I'll cry on my computer. Right after I decided to go Maggie and I watched Brokedown Palace, in which the girls say the exact words, "at least we're together," in trying to cope with their unfortunate traveling situation. Then we judged the one girl for abandoning her friend and I tried hard to ignore the parallels. On the bright side, Wellington is completely unlike Thai prison. So there's that!

My home life is wonderful when the girls are home, despite its remarkable resemblance to a retirement home. One day Caroline and I were both at home, but both too cold and tired to leave our beds, so we stayed in our own separate bedrooms reading our books and texting each other with important updates. Another night we were all sitting in the living room passing around a hot water bottle as others of our generation might pass around cigarettes or beer. The ultimate sign of our "age" came out last night while trying to plan which night we can all have dinner together before I leave. Tuesday seemed the clear choice, but Eva was extremely hesitant on the basis that she has to work on Wednesday. After a tempt at feigned understanding, Caroline said, "so you can't go out to dinner on Tuesday because you have to work the next morning??" She was afraid of being up too late. As a compromise we've agreed to find an early bird special.

The other big news is that Kichi, the dog we take care of who has no idea he is a dog, surprised us all. He always sleeps on the couch, smearing his hair and his smell all over it so as to transform the couch into an enlarged, lifeless version of himself. When we all are in the living room, we are usually annoyed with him for taking up a valuable seat, and we try in vain to get him to lie on the floor. We've been trying to teach him how to lie on the floor for weeks now with no signs of progress. Until last night. Caroline and I were crammed on the couch with him watching a movie and suddenly, with no apparent impetus, he woke up, jumped down, and fell fast asleep on the floor. We had to pause the movie to gape. We still can't understand it, but it felt like progress.

Off to Carolyn's soon, though I can't remember the last time my "plan" determined my actions, so stay tuned for infinite opportunities for surprise.

So I finished my first week of work with Greenpeace, and am not entirely sure if I will have another. There is a target of member sign-ups that we have to get in a week to be able to move on to the next week, and I didn't exactly make that target. I was one short, so I have one more day to prove myself, or else I'm back to the job hunt. I have very mixed feelings about that. It is disappointing because I want to be able to do it and I so desperately need a job that it will be a real problem if I lose one so soon. On the other hand, that job is extremely hard, and I really might not be cut out for it.

Basically me and three other members of the "Street Team" go to a different Wellington location everyday and try to get people to sign-up as Greenpeace members. It is very cold and rainy, and usually the day is an emotional roller coaster. I go from feeling hopeful and really enthusiastic about people, to being really disheartened and miserable about people. The more I've learned about Greenpeace, the more I've grown to appreciate them, which keeps me glad that I am working for them. I find it really hard to ask for money and I have to work to muster the courage and enthusiasm to approach every single person who walks past me. I don't think this is the type of job I'm meant to have long term, but I would like to get better at it. My team leader is incredibly nice and the other two people who got hired with me are great too; unfortunately, they did not make their goals this week so they are done.

For all of the rude remarks and times I was ignored this week, there were so many times when someone thanked me for doing my job, or passed me by but came back a second later once they realized what I said, or signed-up even though they are unemployed or on benefits. I've met some incredibly kind souls this week, often in the most unexpected bodies. It has been a valuable lesson for me on judging books by their covers. For that I am grateful.

You should sign our Save the Whale petition! NZ parliament votes Wednesday on whether or not to legalize whaling again. I voted no:
http://www.greenpeace.org.nz/action/iwc/action.asp

Peace out.

I got a full time job today! With Greenpeace! I am a "frontliner" (aka street fundraiser.) This has always been a job that I am glad people do, and even more glad that I don't do. Mostly because it requires an assertiveness that I will probably have to work hard to muster. But it'll be a good fear to face. I feel so awkward about having to ask people for money, even though I know that it is the purpose of my job, and it is money for a cause that I support. I have lots more to say about it, but don't feel like it right now, so I'll try again tomorrow! In the meantime, just know that the financial downfall is coming to an end and Maggie and I both have full time working girl jobs! G'night.

Five nights ago as Maggie and I laid in our car talking before sleep we realized that it was the one year anniversary of our graduation. One year! And what were we doing? We were in our car with the seats back, bundled up in sleeping bags, parked on the darkest cul-de-sac we could find, hoping no one would notice us spending the night there. We were even pulled up as close as we could get to a trailer in front of us, so as to be better hidden within its shadow. It was sure to be the utter opposite of what the University of North Carolina hopes for its bright young graduates. Vagabond girls sporting university sweatshirts and sweatpants (so as to advertise the fine education the preceded the current bout of homelessness,) clean because of stealthily snuck camp ground showers, trying to fall asleep unnoticed by the unsuspecting residents of Picton. But what they don’t know about the situation is that we could not be happier to be there. That we are there laughing and feeling grateful for the many opportunities people have given us. They don’t know that we saw 3 shooting starts within the first 10 minutes of lying there, before the stars disappeared beneath the fog of our breath on the glass. They don’t know that peanut butter and jelly is our favorite food, so eating it every day actually works out pretty well. They don’t know that I couldn’t imagine an alternative course that my life could have taken up until that moment, and that a bed is great, but in the end I’d wouldn’t choose to be anywhere else.

That was five nights ago. Four nights ago we slept in a tent in the middle of downtown Wellington. Tomorrow, Maggie has her first day of work as the new manager of a trendy little store on Cuba St. in downtown Wellington. I know, right?!!? After much self-mockery about how far a year has taken us (sneaky sleeping in our car), we set out on our Wellington job search. Little did we know where two days would take us. Maggie and I have long since learned that we only have to make a plan to have a plan-changing opportunity sneak up on us. Maggie applied for a sales position at this store, and next thing she knew she was the replacement for the manager who is leaving. She is even going to be buying the clothes for the store because they owners "don't have much of a fashion sense." It's incredible. It is just so ridiculous and exciting and amazing. They don't know that Maggie has $33 dollars in her bank account, which is not enough to buy her outfit from the store for the first day of work, but now she has a yearly salary. They don't know that this job means we finally get to fill up our car with gas, which we were waiting to do until we got jobs. She went from an unemployed car-sleeper whose dream job was a checkout girl at New World (grocery store: think Harris Teeter quality) to a big city manager with a career, a car, a house. Whoa. This was def not our decided plan, but it is bigger and better. Maggie will be able to get sponsorship, then residency, ultimately sealing her stay in New Zealand.

What does this mean for us, you might wonder? For us, the not-gay-together-maggie-and-robin couple? It means that really, the end of our New Zealand journey together has come to an end. It is very sad. We spent much of today mourning its loss, along with the loss of Maggie's youth and freedom. We got a few solid hours of crying over each other done today. I don't think we realized the sick depth of our co-dependency until separation became imminent. Since I still have to say my goodbyes to NZ (and Carolyn's and Gilly and Greg's) I still want to go to those places for my final time, even if Mags can't come along. I'm not entirely sure how long I'll stay in Wellington, but I'll just try to save up a little money. I will at the very least be here until Dad visits in early July. Living with Caroline and Eva is perfect. It seems like we have all known everything about each other forever and get weirdly dramatic about everything together. Girlfriends. Gurlfryndz.

Since I started this blog post Eva got home and said she got me a job today. See? You NEVER know what is going to happen! It is at Kapai (think Subway, but salads and healthier and better) where Eva has worked for a few months. It won't be full time, but it will hold me over for the moment. It is fantastic. Plus, one of the stores is in a food court, and some days we will get to work there together. Then, some day when we are career women we can laugh together over cocktails about the days when we worked at that subway for salads in a food court. I'm pumped.

You never, ever know.

Ok, end of the suspense. I have my hair. All of my hair. I don't have $1000. After so much anxst, so many polls, so much consideration, we never heard back from the people doing the project and our plans mean that we can't be in Dunedin on the dates when it happens. I suppose it wasn't meant to be. I appreciate the encouragement, though. I really like to think that I would have done it, had the opportunity arisen in the end. I felt silly about all of my dramatic deliberation because I had conversations about it with multiple female friends of mine, only to find out later that they had already done it and it was no big deal. Heidi failed to mention it completely in our whole convo and then emailed me later with a picture of her bald head. It was so not a big deal that she didn't even need to mention it. Jessie, a friend from UNC who is also in NZ, received an email with a link to the ad and then I saw her the other day and was surprsied to see her short hair. She jumped the gun and shaved it off 6 months ago because she was in Singapore and it was hot. These women are perfectly capable of maintaining perfect cool about it, whereas I fear that I would use mine as a badge of cool for the rest of my life. They are truly the cool ones.

Maggie and I finally have a winter plan! We can't promise that it will stick, since our plans rarely do, but it is our "plan." We leave Queenstown tomorrow and go to Dunedin to spend a night with a friend. Then we head back up to the ferry and jump over to Wellington. We've now said bye to the North Island 3 times, but for some reason it is always a lie. We received an awesome offer from Caroline, Eva, and Eva's cousin Laura to come live in Laura's house for free until the end of June while Laura is out of town. It is a great house, in a cool neighborhood and we like Wellington and will seek out jobs for that time. We have to work, and we figure we've got the best chance of getting jobs in a bigger city. Plus, living with Caroline and Eva is just about the most fun I can think of, so that works out pretty well. THEN on the last day of June (maybe) we head to Nelson for our final weeks at Carolyn's. We aren't AT ALL ready to let go of that place yet. So we will work there as well and leave in mid-August in time to sell our car and visit Gilly and Greg again. Dad is coming for all of July, so that will let me have the flexibility to travel a bit with him. Carolyn said that we can work as cleaners and cooks at the house where the lumberjacks of their logging business live during the work week. I don't know why people give us such incredible offers, but we keep accepting them and it has yet to be a mistake.

Queenstown has been a lovely place to spend two weeks. We only had to work a week of our two here, but we got to remain at our hostel for free. Our boss even gave us tickets to the movies, which is a big time treat for us right now. Being in Queenstown is a lot like being back in college. A lot of young, social people working and playing and drinking a lot. It's strange to fall into this world after so many months in a totally different life. I've gotten so accustomed to rural life that I surprise myself with my reclusive tendencies now. I think I'm not so good at being a socialite anymore. I can see it changing if I stayed longer, but I'm happy with the idea of spending winter with the people and places I've come to love most in this country.

I gotta go find a job.