What's brown and sticky?

Daniel, our new wwoof host, is teaching me to drive a stick shift today. Oh dear god. At least it will be on the beach at low tide- I shouldn't hit too many things.


I really really like it here. When we got off the ferry from Wellington to Picton (from the N to the S island) we realized we had no idea where we were going to stay. We tried calling some wwoof hosts but couldn't find anything, so we pitched our tent that first night. The next few nights we were able to do some wwoofing in Canvastown, next to Havelock, but left Monday morning because it was really short notice and they had people coming in the next day. We moved on to Nelson and decided to pay for a night at The Bug Backpackers, which ended up being a really great move. The staff was suuuper friendly and the place was one of the cleaner hostels I've been in so far. They had free bikes for exploring the city (of course I get a flat and have to walk back to the hostel to get a new one...), which is when I found the church with the christmas tree display and the choir singing. That night they had everyone help with christmas decorations and had snacks and sangria, making it a proper party. I met this lovely man Saul from Mexico, nearish to Guadalajara; we looked up how to play "Feliz Navidad" and completely rocked out, getting the entire hostel to sing with us. The staff invited us back for Christmas Day, but we had to make our reservations for both the 24th and 25th, which was a little less than ideal, even though it makes sense. We put our names down anyway, and hoped that we would find a cheaper option for the festivities, even though we really liked the vibe of the backpackers and knew that it would be fun if that's where we ended up.


We called some other wwoof hosts and talked to Daniel up in Karamea, who had a posting on the wwoof website as needing some help asap. We had been calling people trying to split up our foursome into pairs, but Daniel said he could definitely use all of our help, so we drove the scary road through Buller Gorge (where the first LOTR movie ends, by the river! Reallllly gorgeous, pun intended) and ended in the small small town of 650 people. Dan owns Saracen's Cafe and the Bush Lounge and Bar, and we sleep upstairs. He had to take a chainsaw to one of the walls yesterday so that we could climb up without going through his room. He's awesome. Jackie and I have gotten to do a lot of our wwoof work IN the cafe, meaning we wash dishes and bake cakes. We've also cleared up the garden in the front and back of the property, and I got to help dig the garbage hole with one of those huge digger things, claw and all. I felt pretty badass. Even though it's not exactly "organic"...

We work with Andrea, the manager, and Chad, the only employee, and we're told that every once and a while they have "Britt Britt" time, where they put on Britney and dance around the cafe. I told Chad this morning that we're not leaving until we see this happen. Andrea is really funny, gossiping about everyone that walks through the door, basically telling us everything we need to know about anyone in town. And she's a really great person to work with because she just makes us food. Or lets us have whatever's leftover at the end of the day. Sooooo many meat pies... oh, yeah, and we made like 70 meat pies yesterday, helping them stock up for the summer season. It's actually a fairly involved process, but not all that difficult, if you have all the right ingredients, but all and all it took 3 days to complete! One day for the filling (chicken, asparagus, cream, stock, salt n peppa), one day for assembling the pies (cut out top and bottom dough parts, add filling and cream cheese, seal in, egg wash on top) and then another to bake them. We were told that sealing the pies was the most important, because they WILL explode in the oven. We've also made Hummingbird Cake (banana, pineapple, walnuts, cream cheese icing), apple raisin cake, bacon/tomato/onion/cheese muffins, and corgette cake (zucchini bread). Then Andrea and Chad just make us lunch, like pumpkin soup and garlic bread, or today we had pizza bread with barbecue sauce, ham, onions, tomato, and melted cheese on sliced bread... amazing! And that's just what they "whip up" at the last second. I've seen the things they make in this cafe- Burgers the size of your face, delicious eggs benedict, pies, giant bowls of coffee... it's magic here.

Also, it being a small world, two more American wwoofers walked in two nights ago, and one of them is the first cousin of Nick Young, someone from Glee Club. Seriously, what are the odds? Theo and his friend Ben went to Carlton, and I knew a bunch of people from there who did the UMinn program last summer, plus Andy Willats, my APES teacher graduated from there. But the boys didn't know any of the people I knew. They're both really nice, and it's cool to have other American wwoofers, because you just have a common understanding of things, or can talk about the Daily Show, or this funny video from youtube, etc. Hoping they'll follow us to Nelson for New Year's Eve, because that party is just going to be off the chain.

We will be here through Christmas Day, where they're having a HUGE bbq at Little Wanganui, Kirsty's (Dan's bbf) hotel down the road. Justin and Lisa are working there today while Theo, Ben, Jackie and I get the bar ready for the Irish band playing tonight. It's going to be a fun party- we met the lead singer last night, Colum, and he's legit from Dublin with thick accent and all, who says I can jump up on stage and play with him! Justin's going to work the bar, and the rest of us are going to be eye candy :) Then, Sudnay is Jessie May's 5th bday party (Kirsty's daughter) and we're having Fairy Bread (white bread, no crusts, butter, sprinkles, cut in triangles). Finally Andrea invited us to her family's bbq on Tuesday night, and told me to bring the guitar for entertainment. So, my task between now and then is to look up more songs on the internet so that I don't bore everyone with the 10 songs I know... must expand le repertoire!

Hope all is well with everyone back home! Don't forget I love to hear from you!!!

Alpaca and Horses and Emu, Oh my!

I like it here. Kelly, our farm dad, is a great guy. Super funny. Works us long hours, about 4 a day, but it's not so bad. We take lots of breaks. He's probably the closest thing to a real cowboy that I've ever met. He rides horses bare back (everyone rides horses here, esp Maori kids, Jax and I almost got run over by a kid riding a horse ON THE SIDEWALK in Opotiki. I was less than pleased. But yeah Kelly goes on horse riding bushwalks in like groups of 40.. they all meet up and take a ride through the bush and I'm going "I want to play!"), wrangles sheep, builds his own houses, cooks up nachos (and other delicious food. We're learning so many dishes here in NZ. Kiwis just know how to cook. We are well fed). Plus, he's best friends with Lynn, our previous host, who's my new hero, so we know he's good people. Lynn warned us that people get hurt here, though, because Kelly likes riding his horses everywhere... So we were all worried, but it's so not bad. He gave me and Lisa a riding lesson the other night, he's a great teacher. We rode bareback too! Got walking down no problem, but then Kelly did try to get us up to a canter right away, and it was muuuuuch more difficult. Maybe that's what Lynn meant.. anyway, we wanted to actually go on a walk with the horses, but our time has run out here at Upsand Downs Farm. I wish we could have stayed longer, but since we somehow acquired a schedule it hasn't worked out.

When I first called Jackie back in August to see if the invitation was still good for me to meet up with her and Lisa in NZ, I assumed that they had already made a bunch of plans. See, I've only ever really gone abroad with a group (Piedmont Choirs and Glee Club) or my family (Paris/England) or on a program (Argentina), and I've always had an itinerary. Always. So I just figured that J/L had already figured out what they wanted to do. So I ask

Me: I mean, is it still okay for me to come? I don't want to mess up your plans.

Jackie: Um... What plans?

Me: You mean you don't have an itinerary already?

Jackie: Um... What's an itinerary?

And that's how we've been operating. No schedule, just floating on the wind, letting the universe direct us to new opportunities. Being open to staying or leaving whenever we want, taking the time to stop at random wineries or take random walks along the side of the road... it's been very freeing for me, not NEEDING to be in any given place at this certain time in this specific attire and sing this set of songs. None of that. Just... whatever we feel like. And that's what we do.

But NOW we have this ferry ticket next week that was wicked expensive so we can't miss that. And Lisa has friends in Hawkes Bay, which is on the way to Wellington, so we want to stop there, meaning we have to cut our wwoofing gig with Kelly short. Then we have a few girls that we connected with through CouchSurfing, so we have a place to sleep in Wellington. And Justin Laufer just got into NZ from Oz last night and he's meeting us in wellington for Jackie's birthday! Oh, right, that's why we have a ferry ticket- Jackie wanted to celebrate "22" in wellington, and her bday's on the 7th, so we made the ferry ride for the 9th. That was dumb, we should have given us more time in Wellington, but I wanted to be on the south island to meet my uncle (well, my uncle in law's brother..?) and thought that I needed to be there in early December for various reasons which turned out to not be necessary. But whatever, it's actually kind of nice, because I've been in touch with him over email and he's THE MAN and he's set up all these wwoofing and temp work stuff for us through mid january which is much more than we're used to. We can barely plan a day ahead. But yeah, we're going to be able to replenish our bank accounts, which is fantastic, since we all like having beer money. I mean souvenir money.

ANYWAY, the point is that, suddenly, after about a month of not making any concrete plans, suddenly we have the rest of the year planned for us. And that's just so bizarre. I'm not really complaining, but it's interesting. I don't so much like being tied to a schedule, because floating on the wind is so much more poetic.

I'm soooooo excited to meet up with Justin! Eeeeeee.

I'm slowly but surely uploading pictures to my flickr account- my photostream is cmanderson113, please check it out!

Going to attempt to kayak later tonight. We'll be in a sort of marshy area, so hopefully there will be enough water... that always helps...

Don't know when I'll get internet again before Christmas, so don't expect a new post for a few weeks. I'm going to try my hardest to NOT pay for internet for a while. Again, depleting bank account, but soon to be better!

I want to leave you with a list of all the animals on Kelly's farm:

Chooks (Chickens)

Roosters

Geese

Ducks

Sheep

2 Goats

4 Horses

2 Emu

5 Alpaca

I keep saying it's like Old MacDonald's farm. This German wwoofer showed up today (seriously, Germany, wtf!) and said "I feel like I'm in a zoo!" True dat, Tim. True dat. I also keep thinking of a lyric from BNL's "If I had a million dollars"

If I had a million dollars I would buy you an exotic pet

Like a llama. Or an emu.

And that's kind of my life.