Lemon & Paeroa.

The thing about New Zealand is you can be just about anywhere doing just about anything, driving, hiking, strolling along, and you end up looking down into these valleys of rolling green hills. The fields are generally designed by sheep, so they aren't really square patchwork pieces on the landscape, they are tiers of ancient footpaths carefully balanced along ridges between dark green forests and golden yellow broome and gore (it's called something like that, at least). The clouds are bright white and thick and they sit at the tops of the hills. The sheep are absolutely everywhere like little cotton fluffs. You can see so far away that the sheep are very very small sometimes. The rivers are either so clear you can barely tell they're there, or opaque and turquoise, you'd never find the bottom. The family here laughed when one of the other girls asked why the water was so blue. But, I knew exactly what she meant. I've never seen anything like it either. And, if you're luckly, wheverer you are you'll be able to see the top of Mt. Cook, always with snow, or the ocean in the distance, grey, blue, doesn't matter, still so beautiful. It can be a perfect spring day, a rainy, foggy morning, or the water can be coming down in buckets, it doesn't even matter.

O, and I know I mentioned that I purchased three hanks of wool from the lovely farm I've been staying at. We all know I sort of don't tell the entire story, sometimes, maybe, when it comes to wool shopping. And at that time I had already planned on buying 2 more hanks, so really I had 5 from this place. And then I bought 5 more (I couldn't have done it without your encouragement, Chris....just kidding, nothing really has an effect on my consistent, constant, yarn-buying habits).

Tomorrow I fly back to windy Wellington and the North Island for a bit.

See you soon! Cass

p.s. L&P is my favourite Kiwi pop. It's delicious and Kiwi As. And "world famous in New Zealand since ages ago!"

Queenstown to Raes Junction

Today I'm on my way out of town to a tiny little spot in the countryside. About a week wwoofing on a sheep farm and hopefully learning how to spin on a wheel, then I'm back to the North Island and homeward bound.

Just wanted to let you all know I'm still here....just very busy!

I've got to post about my trip to Milford Sound and my time here in Queenstown.

Talk to you soon!

Martin's school poem.

For Want of a Nail

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

First day of strawberry season.

Tonight we had the first strawberries from down the road and ice cream for dessert. Or, as we say here ice (Germans don't say cream) for pudding (what Kiwis call all desserts).

I'm not doing very well with one post a day, but I think I will have 30 posts for November, I'm on target now and very motivated. I've even got two posts saved to put up tomorrow. I just need some more time to upload the videos and pictures I've taken over the past few days.

So this is just a quick note to say stay tuned for much more from Ngaruawahia! Don't worry Dad, new reading material is on the way. Love ya, Cass!

Ngaruawahia.

I've spent the last week at a small farm in a little town called Ngaruawahia. It's just north of Hamilton City in the North Island. There were three of us wwoofing there, myself, Tim from Germany, and Simon from Austria. The family who owned the farm were Don and Davina, plus their three adopted children, Martin (5), Dallas (4), and Chance (3). Don and Davina actually have four of their own children who are all in their 20's now. Davina's family is Irish, so two of her kids live in Ireland and two live in Auckland and Hamilton. The three little kids come from Maori and Pacific Island families. The boys are full brothers. Dallas is actually from a completely different tribe who actually fought against the boy's tribe.

Once the older kids moved out and Don needed to cut back on the hard farm work, they started having wwoofers stay. The three of us had bedrooms in the part of the house that the older kids used to live in. They treated us very well and I had a great first wwoofing experience. Davina is an avid knitter and there really wasn't much farm work to do at this time of the year. So I mainly spent time cooking for parties, hiking, and kayaking. We did paint some fences, cut some firewood (well, I stacked some firewood while the boys did the cutting part), and helped out feeding the animals and things a bit too. We played in the backyard a lot. The kids have two big trampolines and we tried to teach them to play soccer. This is Dallas. She currently has a broken toe, which happened on the playground at Kindergarten, but nothing slows her down. We tied Tim and Chance 3-3 in the first soccer game.


Martin and I at the Guy Fawkes Celebration. The neighbours invited everyone over for a potluck and fireworks. I spent the afternoon cooking and made: potato salad, bean salad, broccoli/cauliflower/tomato salad, and deviled eggs. They all got eaten up very quickly.

On my third day there, we went on a HUGE hike. It took about 6 hours and was very, very hard. SO much uphill scrambling and tough downhill parts. And there weren't even many places to enjoy the view. It was fun, but is was really tough too.

This is Tim and one of the trees in the massive Kauri tree grove at the beginning of the hike.


One of the viewpoints, also at the very beginning of the hike. Beautiful view here, but no more for the next five hours of slogging through the mud.


We did find a lot of interesting trees and things. Me looking up at some huge palms.


And luckily I decided we needed to pack a lunch. It's hard to see just how muddy I am in this picture, but I was very muddy.


At the other end of the hike we found this dam that the local waterworks uses to control the flow of the river. We sat here for awhile. Pretty exhausted.


Then we sat at the bottom of the waterworks, still pretty exhausted.


A few days later, Simon and I took the flat water kayaks down the river. Don drove us up stream and dropped us off and we paddled for two hours back home. The river was really beautiful and we had a great time.


Davina put Simon's camera in an old Powerade container for us to take along so we could "make some pictures".

And at the end of the paddle we found a cool little waterfall to explore before we went to the shop for ice cream. The tropical rainforest vegetation continues in the North Island. Apparently things are very different in the South.


Yesterday, the guys left to go to Raglan. It's a surfing town on the west coast of the North Island. I decided to continue heading south though because I only have a few more weeks to see the rest of NZ! Today I'm in a town called Rotorua. It's full of hot springs and Maori cultural areas. The entire town smells like sulphur. Tomorrow I'm going to the museum and maybe to see one of the Maori shows and traditional dinners. This is supposed to be the best place to do that.

Chance gets ahold of Simon's camera.

Chance is very, very tech-savvy. Give him 30 seconds on the computer and he's found a Fireman Sam video. He also really loves tech gadgets. He would listen to my ipod as long as I let him and happily switch through songs. Also, he doesn't want to be in any pictures because he wants to be the one taking all the pictures. And he's just SO cute, you can't do anything but hand over your camera that's worth several hundred Euros. And end up with a whole set of pictures taken from 3 feet off the floor, like these ones.

Simon.


Me.


Tim.


Steal the camera and 'capture Chance'.

Haka.

Here's a good one for you.

Haka is a type of traditional Maori dance. It involves a lot of chanting, quick movements and changes in position and posture. They are performed for a lot of reasons: ceremonial, communication, amusement, war. The most famous haka is the one that the All Blacks, New Zealand's national rugby team, perform at the beginning of all of their matches. This tradition started in 1884 when the first NZ rugby team toured New South Wales, Australia. The NZ teams have been using the same haka since 1906. It's called Ka Mate (which means I die, in English. It tells the story of

Maori:

Leader:
Ringa pakia!
Uma tiraha!
Turi whatia!
Hope whai ake!
Waewae takahia kia kino!

Leader: Ka mate, ka mate
Team: Ka ora' Ka ora'
Leader: Ka mate, ka mate
Team: Ka ora Ka ora "
All: Tēnei te tangata pūhuruhuru
Nāna i tiki mai whakawhiti te rā
Upane... Upane
Upane Kaupane"
Whiti te rā,!
Hī!

Loose English Translation:

Slap the hands against the thighs!
Puff out the chest.
Bend the knees!
Let the hip follow!
Stamp the feet as hard as you can!

'I die, I die,
'I live, 'I live,
'I die, 'I die
'I live, 'I live,
This is the hairy man
Who caused the sun to shine again for me
Up the ladder, Up the ladder
Up to the top
The sun shines!
Rise!

The boys in New Zealand all learn different hakas at school. Martin, the oldest one here at the farm I've been staying at, has been practicing his haka a lot. His little brother, Chance, has caught right on and has been practicing alongside. This afternoon Chance was sleepy and didn't really want to do the haka for me, but we worked some things out and I let him take about 100 pictures of me and the cat so that he would let me make a clip of the haka.

It was a rainy afternoon, so we had to stay on the small back porch. Martin drew the bear on the chalkboard as a background element for the movie. He would also like to say 'hi' to my Mom whom he chatted with on the phone the other day.

Once we cheered up Chance (he's three and was sleepy because we had went over to a neighbour's house for dinner the night before and he was up late), he pulled it together and did a really good job.



A couple outtakes.

Chance forgets the words, my camera runs out of space.

Martin decides that professionalism involves holding your breath and convincing your little brother to follow along.

Kiwi BBQ.

Today I was in charge of all the cooking for the BBQ party we attended to celebrate Guy Fawkes Day. We went to the grocery store and got all the food. I made bean salad, potato salad, deviled eggs, and broccoli-cauliflower-tomato salad. It all turned out very well. The boys painted a fence and I worked away in the kitchen. We just returned from the party and we had a great time. We talked to a lot of people about the local things to do and we are going to hike up over the mountain range in a couple days. There is also a really great river to kayak on, so we'll do that too. Another family invited the three of us to dinner. We also had lessons in rugby (I have a good pass, thanks to Mr. Gaskell, my grade 5 teacher). And we drank a bunch of different Kiwi beers.

This is sort of the celebration that marks the beginning of BBQ season (like May 24 in Canada) and it was very chilly out tonight. My hands are frozen and I can hardly type, but I wanted to get my daily post in ;)

Back with more tomorrow, Cass

Happy Bonfire Day!

Tonight is the night that New Zealanders celebrate the fact that Guy Fawkes was caught and did not successfully blowup the British parliment buildings as he was planning to several centuries ago. Generally everyone here has a BBQ and fireworks on the weekend. Since this isn't considered a national holiday, we'll be celebrating tomorrow night. I sort of wish I was already in Wellington because we just saw a news clip and this Guy Fawkes celebration will be the biggest one they've ever had.

I think it's all very interesting that they name the day after the bad guy and then set off fireworks to recognize that he couldn't blow anything up. I am looking forward to the festivities tomorrow.

Right now I'm in a tiny town called Ngaruawahia. You saw it like 'narrowahere'. There are two other wwoofers at this farm, an Austrian guy named Simon and a German named Tim. They are both very nice. When I arrived this afternoon they were painting the porch. It's been quite rainy here so the farm work is a bit on hold, but I could see all the sheep and lambs from the porch. The family here is Davina, Don, and three kids, Martin, Dallas, and Chance. Martin has decided that my name is Cheese and I spent the afternoon building him a school bus out of lego. Of course, I made it with all the yellow blocks and this was hardly acceptable because there aren't any yellow school busses here. Dallas has a broken baby toe because she is completely wild. Chance is the smartest three year old I have ever seen. He can use the internet even though he isn't allowed to. He actually managed to locate the Bob the Builder game site and start playing the games in the two minutes his mother left him with me. I was amazed (and had no idea he wasn't actually allowed to use the computer. Makes sense, I suppose).

There is all sorts of hiking and canoeing and wonderful things to do here. I'll be back with more later!