Holy Moly, a lot has happened...and now I'm a farmer! AHHH!

Lets start from right now to the past week and a half or so...

Right now i'm in Karamea which is on the W. coast of the S. island. its pretty much just like jurassic park. population 500, which is spread out over like 6 miles. so yeah, there is nothing here. one very smalll grocery store, the post office (which is inside the hardware store), an isite info place and some hippy store that sells old clothes. YEEHAW! So I got picked up by Hamish, how is LIndseys sister--the woman I have stayed with in Christchurch. He picked me up from this CRAZY, INSANE backpackers (which I will get to later) on thursday morning. He had to take all of this Flax to the estuary because they are building a trail there, etc etc. So i just rode around with him and his truck, with Finn, his dog for a bit. It was rainy and gross out. At one point--during on eof the runs back to ge tmore flax, i stayed with finn and threw fetch with him for a bit. when we got in the car, he started hacking and a piece of his lung, is wear it was his lung, flew up and landed on hamish's jacket. I almost puked. id idn't say anything though. gross. i thought i killed the dog. but alas, he is fine and barking like crazy right now.

SO, Hamish and Margaret----AWWEEEEESOOOMMEEE! I love them! They live on a farm, wtih a small orchard that has pears, apples, an OK plum tree, land lemons. then they have 500 feijoas which is NZ fruit. their main thing is Tea Tree Oil. They are the only organic tree tea farm in NZ which is pretty sweet. so they have all these tea trees and they are AWESOME. i have a cold right now so I have been doing these tea tree inhilations....VERY intense. but they clear you up. Margaret said she would always just give her kids a dot of tea tree oil when they had a cut headahce, flu, etc. ha. So she is HILARIOUS. makes me laugh so hard. just a laid back hippy woman who is very smart and funny. we have a lot of fun together. Hamish is also equally as awesome. he is SO nice! He had to teach me how to use these gigantic lawnmowers that i swear were made in the 1800's and had more patience with me then anyone i have ever met. i kept getting them stuck, or I couldn't push it. ohmigod they are HUGE. so annoying. and he taught me how to use the 4 wheeler, which is pretty gnarly. its a stick shift so thats funny.

SO yeah, i stayed with them solo for about 3 days. they just showed me the ways of the farm....how and when to feed the chooks (chickens), watch the sheep, feed the cat, dog, etc. look after th garden. watch the baby chooks. lots of stuff, actually. they also live right on this MASSIVE estuary. its the biggest i have ever seen. yesterday mark and i walked all the way to the sea----the Tasman. its a GORGEOUS beach.

So my friend Mark, who is traveling here for the year and working, said he would meet me up here. he has no phone and i had no reception and he was gonna hitch up here. AAHHH! so anytime ANYONE passed by on the "highway" (they live on the highway, its realy just a country road) we would run out and see if it was mark. ones a group of biker guys stopped in front. hamish thought it was mark, i thought that would be INSANE if it was...it wasn't. so then finally, 2 evenings ago, a HORSE TRAILOR showed up in the drive. and guess what! it was Mark! I died laughing. hilarious. I was SO happy he showed up! I knew he would, just didn't know when. but just realy happy he is here. i was scared i was going to have to talk to animals all week....

we have lots of chores to do--LOTS of mowing, have to feed the chickens twice a day, weed, pick the apples and pears, and paint one side of the house. so we are busy. mark is mowing right now.......we cant get the other mower to work. i'm taking it as a sign that i'm not supposed to mow??? ya.

So....stilll going back in time....right before I got here I stayed in Karamea at this wicky wack backpackers called Rongo Backpackers. The building, which was small, was painted in rainbow colors so it really stuck out. everyone was hugging eachother and loving eachother......ughhh! hippys! i have nothing against hippys, but this was nuts. 2 poeple started hugging in front of me and didn't let for like 7 minutes ( i counted) and i waslike oh shit i hope she is ok, i hope no one died, and then their arms broke and she was like wow that was great, thanks.......ahh...ok?

The good thing about ROngos was that every weds. they have a potluck dinner. so everyone was supposed to make something from their country, or atleast something good. my fav. was israeli. it was called Shakshusksa??? not sure exactly. it was like a spicy omlette, but not, onions, tomoatoes, and egg...hard to describe but so damn good. so we had fresh bread, couscous with tomatoes and onions, pumkin, lasagna, these asian thing, fruit salad---lots more. i just pitched ina couple of bucks bc i didnt want to cook. and some of those people had been there for like 2 weeks cause the 'got stuck there'--every 4th night is free. so they were all best friends...how lovely. OH but, one cool/funny thing they had there---outside in the back there is this small room thing where they have painting classes a couple times a week AND Karameas ONLY radio station. you can go a play anything you want at anytime. how funny.

So now we back up all the way to westport....westport sucks. its this small town that links karamea to civilization. i got picked up by the 'bus' to go to karamea there. it was more like a small airplane of a car. it was myself, the driver, andt his guy who lives in this town called Granity which is in between karamea and westport. he said the only time he talks to people is when he comes to westport to go the grocery store. so of course he was talking my head off. the ride was interesting and AWFUL. I got car sick. it was the curviest road EVER. and the 'bus' was also the delivery truck for karamea. so people would just tel this guy what they wanted from town ....and we dropped it off. so we stopped like 15 times to peoples houses and stores. hum.

so i felt like shit the rest of the day and was starting to get a cold then...whaa wahh. i know.

now i'm here and we are having a blast! we are both just thinking this whole thing is hilarious. mark is mowing right now, i did garden stuff today. Finn, their dog, is crazy. ive never met a dog with so much energy. he will play fetch with you for HOURS. we played with him yesterday for like 5 hours. nuts. and so strange, we were on the estuary and we were looking at him and he took a poop like a human, sitting on a log. soo funny! whatta crazy dog. he can also jump like 5-6 feet to get balls and such. nuts.

ok, so this blog was to satisfy my mother. i have more stories to say but I will save those for tomorrow or the next day. talk soon! ooxoxox oh and here are some pics of the past couple days and such!