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'.

Auckland.

Auckland is a port city on both sides. When you fly in you can actually see both coastlines and the ocean because NZ is really quite narrow at this point. Even though one quarter of all Kiwis live in Auckland (around a million people) it isn't that big at all. One day I spent awhile down at the harbour.


I love the colour of the water here. It was sort of overcast, but that just made the water more turquoise.


This is the beautiful old ferry building. All of their old buildings are made out of sandstone.


The main park in the center of Auckland is the old cemetery. I spent awhile wandering through. Most of the grave markers are completely illegible since salt water destroys sandstone very quickly.


And back home, I hung out with Liz and Jonathan, and little Oliver who has a sore tummy and only wants to lie on his belly. Poor kiddo. I liked to bounce him around and I'd do anything I possibly could to make him smile.

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.

I forgot.

To post here the past two days, I think? I thought about it last night as I was falling asleep and realized I had completely forgotten about, not only my November challenge, but posting here in general.

It's too easy to do that sort of thing while traveling. Yesterday I had to guess the date and I was off by two numbers, not to mention had to idea which day of the week it was. I guessed close to the correct time, but I had to judge by the level of the sun.

Don't worry though, I've got a good post for later today. If I can get it to work.

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