Music Break

Guys, this song makes me so homesick. Don't worry, this isn't the news post I promised; that's still coming. I just had to share this.

"I left home a long, long time ago
In a tin can for the road
With a suitcase and some songs
Chasing miles through the night time
Making tracks
With no time for looking back
To the place where I belong..."

Sunrise to Sunset

Well, it’s the Ides of March today. This day has always fascinated me a bit. It makes me want to read Julius Caesar and run around speaking in Latin, but as I don’t have my complete works of Shakespeare with me, nor do I know Latin, I’m making due with watching the episode of Xena which shares the day’s name. Awesome.

I’ve been working on the farm here for six days now, minus my Sunday off, and I’m pretty well settled into the rhythm. Usually I wake up at 6:30 and am out at the milking shed by 7 to start feeding the calves (which we now have tons of; somewhere around 35 with more being born every day), but yesterday was the last day for the farm manager at Hennie and Kerri’s second farm, so Hennie and I went over there to do the morning milking while Kerri and Hayden did the milking here. Hayden and I will be helping with morning milking for the rest of the week until a new relief milker starts in to handle the Woodville (second) farm on Saturday.

So I get up for morning milking at 4:45 and am out at 5:15 to bring the cows in (or head to Woodville if I’m helping Hennie), and we’re done milking by between 8:30 and 9:30, and then we do any last minute chores and come home for breakfast around 10. After an hour for breakfast (we always have oatmeal with raisins, nuts, seeds and yogurt-covered peanuts) I go back out to the shed and help Hayden with whatever he’s doing for two hours until lunch, unless I have a special task from Hennie.

I suppose I should do some sort of introduction for Hayden, so here goes: first of all, I have to say he’s the cutest Kiwi farm boy I’ve ever seen, and he’s my age. BUT, before y’all start with the raised eyebrows and grins, I’ve gotta tell you that he’s married, and has three kids, who are very cute. He’s the farm manager here at the main farm, and he pretty much takes care of all the day-to-day things that need doing unless Hennie feels the need to do something himself (which happens a lot; he’s a huge believer in the “if you want something done right…” philosophy). Hayden’s a nice guy with a love for his work and his family, and never looks at me like I’m a complete dummy when I ask questions like “when Hennie says to cut out the white face calves, which ones does he mean?”

And for those of you that don’t know, white faces have, you guessed it, white faces. They can be red or black and white, and their breed is actually called Hereford.

We have mostly Holstein cows here at the farm, though they are called Fresians here in NZ. Fresians are bred for their milk production ability, but are sometimes crossed with Herefords because of the Hereford’s genes for easy calving and a few other things. Herefords themselves are actually a meat breed, so Hennie only keeps the crossed calves that have conformation (shape) and coloring like the Fresians and sells the ones that have Hereford conformation as meat animals. We’ve also got Airshire cows (bred for milk production) in the milking mob (herds, or big groups of anything in NZ and Australia, are always called mobs), and they cross with the Fresians as well, and we keep all the heifers born from them. There’s one more kind of cow that Hennie keeps in the mob, which is from Holland (where Hennie and Kerri are from) and it’s breed name is long, and in Dutch, so I’m not going to try to get it right. Anyway, they’re pretty cute cows, and Hennie keeps them more for nostalgia than anything else, as they’re a pretty rare breed.

Anyway, back to the day-to-day. At 12pm I go back to the house for lunch for an hour, or sometimes an hour and a half if there’s nothing pressing to do, and I have a sandwich and a nap. Then around 1 or 1:30 I’m back out to the farm to do more chores until 3. These mid-afternoon chores are usually things like mucking out new stalls for the calves, or throwing tires up on top of the silage hills to keep oxygen from getting in and spoiling it. Sometimes I go out with Hennie or Hayden to some of the rented land and move the mobs of dry cows to new paddocks.

Then around 3pm I go out on the four-wheeler, sometimes with Hayden and sometimes on my own, to collect the milking herd and bring them back to the shed. Afternoon milking starts at 4 and we milk until we get done around 5:30. Then I feed the calves their dinner, and then we clean up and head back to the house for dinner around 6:30 or 7.

And then I flop down on my bed and read until 9:30, when I get too tired to keep my eyes open and listen to music until I fall sleep.

It’s a good life, really! It’s good exercise, good for the soul to be outside and with animals all day (unless the calves are particularly trying; then it’s just a lesson in patience), and it’s nice to know at the end of the day that you’ve helped provide part of the country with the milk for their breakfast in the morning. Even so, I don’t think I want to be a dairy farmer. There’s pretty much no way of taking a break or vacation, ever, unless you hire someone to do milking for you. Being a dairy farmer means being tied to your farm every morning and evening, 360 days a year.

But for now I’m enjoying it a lot. And by the time I finish here I think I’ll have made back most of the money I’ve spent since I got to New Zealand, which is icing on the cake.

Cow Nanny

Well, I just finished my first full day at Hennie and Kerri’s dairy farm, and I’m bushed. I suppose I’ll just write down a few things, ‘cause I feel like I should.

I got here yesterday evening in time to learn how to feed the calves their dinner. Hennie usually lets the calves stay with their mothers for a day or so after they’re born, but if they stay with them longer than that they get attached and it’s harder to wean the calves later when they’re sent to another farm. The upshot of this is that I’m the one who helps out (if any help is needed) with calves being born, and then I cart them over to the calf shed once they’ve had a bit of time to get used to the outside world. I feed them all once in the morning and once at night while the other cows are being milked. The older ones I feed with a neat little invention called a “calf-eteria,” which has a bunch of nipples attached to a large container that holds milk. This only works if the calves have a sucking reflex, however, and some of the ones that are only a few hours or a day or so old don’t have it yet, so I tube feed those guys until they’re strong enough to deal with the regular feeder.

They’re pretty darn cute, and the ones that were born today (two born over night, two born this afternoon) already think I’m their mom and follow me around, butting my legs and sucking on my fingers. It’s pretty adorable, when they’re not splashing fermented milk all over me. I helped with the births of the two born this afternoon because they were in weird positions en utero. I’ve never helped anything be born before, and I was partially amazed, partially grossed out, and partially feeling totally clueless and incompetent. As with all new jobs, I spend the first day learning how much I need to learn. But both calves made it through alright (one bull and one heifer), though the bull had a narrow squeak because his mom laid down right at the end and he couldn’t get any air. We had to hang him upside-down by his heels for a bit, and then he came right.

Let’s see, other things I helped with today…
I helped with afternoon milking a bit, and found out that I don’t remember as much as I thought I did. They do things differently here than at Cedar Summit, and they have different equipment, so there’s that to consider as well. For instance, they have milkers that automatically come off the cow when the milk flow stops, which I’ve never used before! If a milker came off at Cedar Summit, it just meant that the cow had kicked it off and you had to go down the line putting them all on again.
I helped move a bunch of cows to new paddocks, so they were pretty happy about having new grass.
I helped bring in a herd that was made up of yearlings and spring calves and we had to sort them out so only the yearlings were taken by truck to another paddock (Hennie and Kerri rent land in different places in the area). While we were sorting I realized the importance of always looking at the number of the cow you’re working with. If the Boss asks you ten minutes later which numbers you put into a pen, you should be able to rattle them off, and this means trouble for me as I have NO head for numbers whatsoever. Hennie asked me the number of the first cow that calved today, and I hadn’t even looked. Gotta remember to do that. Anyone have any tricks for memorizing numbers?

Oh, and I got my right foot stepped on by a mother cow at some point, and it hurts when I flex it. “So don’t flex it!” I can hear mom saying from across the Pacific. :-)

No idea what I’m going to be doing tomorrow, aside from nannying the calves, but I’m looking forward to learning more, and feeling a bit nervous about it as well. I hate doing a poor job of something, and I always feel like I’m messing things up until I get a few days of experience under my belt. Hopefully Hennie and Hayden (the main hired guy) will bear with me for a bit.

As for domestic life, the food is good (I eat with the family, and it’s delish), the bed is warm (even though my room is pretty cold), the showers are hot, I look positively picturesque in my blue milking jumpsuit and big boots (before they get covered in gunk), and the family is really nice. Hennie and Kerri have a daughter, Lucy, who’s in 9th grade and is pretty funny, and I hear rumors of a son who’s off at college and comes home on the weekends, but I haven’t met him yet.

I’ll be working here tomorrow and Saturday, and then Saturday night Kerri’s dropping me off back at Murray and Ann’s for the rest of the weekend, so I’m excited to see them again, and stay in their deliciously clean house. Somehow, living on a farm, you start to feel after a while that you’ll never really be clean again. Of all the good things in my life that I take for granted, good, clean, hot showers are never one of them.

News + Recap

3-7

Well, let’s get the news out of the way first, shall we? This morning I had my meeting with Kerri, the woman who owns the dairy farm with her husband Hennie, and we got to talk a bit about the job. Here’s the gist:

They need someone for a couple of weeks to do fill-in milking, but mostly they need someone to take care of the calves, as the cows start calving on the 10^th of this month. My job will be to fill in at morning milking whenever it’s needed, and then to spend the rest of the day out with a four-wheeler and a cart taking care of the calves, making sure they’re feeding, chucking them into the right pastures and buildings, checking on the heifers about to calve, and possibly giving Hennie a hand with the actual calving itself it the heifers need it. I’m all for this, as working with baby animals is the best part of the whole farming gig, in my book!

For this work I’ll be paid hourly (we’re going to figure out a good salary in the first two days when they see how much I know, but the base rate is 12.25NZD per hour) and I’ll be living with Hennie and Kerri in their farmhouse about 10km outside of Dannevirke. It sounds like I’ll also have access to a “ute,” which is short for “utility vehicle,” and is what they call a pickup truck, so that’ll be my ride into town when I want it as I found out that my Minnesota driver’s license is good in New Zealand for 12 months. Now I just have to learn to drive on the other side of the road, and on the other side of the car!

All around, I think this job will work out nicely for two weeks or so to make some more money before I hope to head on down to the South Island. I’ll be starting with them on the 9th.

AND, my birthday’s a month from today, and I’m a bit excited about that, even though I’ll be far from home, and 23 isn’t an especially exciting number.

I feel like writing a bit about my insight into the world of shearing and Maori life (not that they’re the same, it’s just that the people I’ve been working with happen to be both) now that I’m done working with PMS, but I’m not sure quite what to say. I guess I’ll just say that people are people all over the world, and that you can’t make generalizations about anything. Having said that, though, here are some bullet points:

- All the people I met and worked with, all of whom are Maori except for two Pakeha guys who sheared occasionally, were heavy drinkers. The lightest was Tina, who would only really indulge about twice a week, and the heaviest of which was Lewis, who was drunk almost every night and had to be taken to hospital the night before I left. It makes me wonder, from an anthropological viewpoint, if this drinking is at all related to their genetic aptitude for addiction like that of many Native peoples all over the world, or if it has more to do with the hard life they live which pushes them toward anything that can make them forget.

- Everyone at PMS seemed pretty disposed toward using violence to settle arguments. Abby, who I mentioned before as being pretty rough and tough to begin with, had a fight with old Uncle Ben the second night I was there, which began over nothing, escalated into name calling, and ended with punches being thrown. The idea seems to be that you have to be able to put up your fists and protect yourself at the slightest provocation or insult, and I wonder again if this has to do with the old Maori challenge customs, or is something just inherent in blue color lifestyle here in NZ.

- It seems that, in the rural areas, whether Maori or Pakeha, there’s a taught deference to the males. Women will argue with their husbands or brothers, but when it comes down to brass tacks the women just have to shut up and take whatever ruling is given. I may be exaggerating a bit here, but that’s honestly what it seems like to me. Even Ann scolded her daughter Emma when she told Scott, her husband, to do something instead of doing it herself, and Emma rolled her eyes a bit. That makes me think that the younger generation may be changing this a bit. Either way, it bothers me to no end, even though I’m in a situation where I haven’t got any guy to have to answer to anyway. Just a burr under my saddle when it comes to this issue, I guess.

- There seems to be a fairly large divide between social mores in rural areas and urban areas. The people who I met in Auckland and even Rotorua had different ideas about life and food and how to do things than the people out in Taupo and down here in Dannevirke. I know this is true to an extent in the US as well, so possibly my being in a new country and seeing with new eyes, as it were, is making these things jump out at me.

- I love the way people talk in New Zealand! First of all, most questions are phrased like a statement, with the inflection coming down at the end, but then you add “eh?” at the end to signal that it IS, in fact, a question. For instance, instead of saying “would you like to go to town with me?” they say “how would you like to go into town with me, eh?” Also, verbs are turned into phrases in an interesting way, so instead of saying “I’m chatting” you say “I’m having a chat.” The same is said for “having a feed,” “having a sleep,” “having a listen,” etc. I dig it.

That’s enough for anthropological talk, I think! I’m having dinner with the pastor and his wife tonight, and it makes me feel like Anne of Green Gables having dinner at the Manse.

And now, two pictures! One of the gang, and one of the shearing sheds.

From left to right above: Tina, Abby, Uncle Ben, Lewis, and one of Abby's brothers who I don't remember, and his son down at the table.

Meanwhile...

Well, it’s been a while since I wrote anything, and that has mostly to do with the fact that I haven’t felt very well the last couple of days. Laziness can pretty much cover the excuse department up until that point!

Let’s see, last Sunday I went back to the same church I went to the week before for their “potluck service,” which was fun. Everyone brings food, and they do some singing and reading and such before the meal, and then discuss the readings while eating brunch, and then finish up with communion afterward. I haven’t seen anything like it before, but I liked it! I got to talk a lot with Pete and Shelley, two residents who I’d met the week before, and then was invited to Ann and Murray’s (another super wonderful couple from last week) for lunch. Of course, we were all still pretty full from the potluck, so I think inviting me for lunch was just an excuse to be their friendly selves and have me over to their house. So I spent the afternoon with them and their daughter and her husband (who’s from Canada, and who’s accent put me right at home) and their two kids, all very nice. Ann assured me that if I ever needed a place to crash, or if I wanted to move out of the shearing complex, I could stay in their spare room rent free, which was so generous and out of the blue that I almost couldn’t believe it. She’s the sweetest sort of grandmotherly-type lady, and I think she misses having her daughters at home to fuss over. I told her a bit about how I thought we Americans are sort of naturally suspicious of people’s intentions, and how I’d been caught off guard a bit by the Kiwi’s “I’ll go ten miles out of my way to lend a hand” attitude, and she laughed and said that she thought it had more to do with living in Dannevirke out in the backwoods of the North Island, as it were, and that everyone just knew everyone else, so when a stranger popped in it was pretty exciting. But they dropped me off at the complex that afternoon with a repeat offer of a room if I wanted one, and I said I’d be in touch.

Oh, and another thing about Sunday; the reading was the bit about not worrying about what you’ll eat or wear, and the birds of the air and the grass of the field etcetera, which made me smile because the verse at the end, “do not worry about tomorrow for tomorrow will worry about itself” had been running around in my head all week as I worried about where my next job would be. Thanks for the heads up, Big Guy.

So Monday was rainy, which meant no work, as the shearers won’t shear wet sheep because the lanolin in the wool combined with moisture can give you boils, which, I gather, aren’t too much fun. Still, I think I would have taken the boils over the work we did from 6am to 5pm on Tuesday and Wednesday, which was crutching (shearing the wool around the back end of the sheep to clean them up before the REAL shear) about 4000 lambs, seventy-five percent of which had flystryke, which means they were covered in maggots. My stomach’s turning now just thinking about the smell. Sufficed to say, it was not pleasant, and combined with my once-monthly superhuman sense of smell, I thought I’d really have to call it quits by noon on the second day. I made it through, though, and that night I dreamt about maggots and didn’t get a whole lot of sleep.

Thursday, or rather, yesterday, dawned rainy again, so no work, which was just as well as I was laid up in bed most of the day with a stomach ache. I figured it was the aftereffects of the day before, but it kept getting worse and worse until by 9pm I couldn’t stand for more than a few minutes without feeling like I was gonna keel over. This meant I missed out on the only opportunity to go with the guys to the Golden Shears competition, which is the grand nationals of shearing competitions, and I was pretty bummed out. I felt a bit more lucky, though, when the van that had left came back at 10:30pm with Lewis having driven pretty darn drunk the whole way back, so I’m nudged into believing my stomach ache had a bit of purpose to it.

I woke up this morning still not feeling top notch, but my stomach’s a lot better now, and I even went for a short walk this afternoon and had two small bowls of oatmeal. No work today, tomorrow or Sunday, it seems, while the Golden Shears is going on, so Wednesday turned out to be my last day of work without my even knowing it! Good thing I got a couple of pictures, which I’ll try to put up soon.

Tomorrow is the last day of the Golden Shears, and I’d really like to go, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to swing a ride there, and a ride back with someone who isn’t “pissed” as the expression is here, is even less likely, and so I’m beginning to wonder if I’ll be able to see it at all. I really want to, but I guess this may be something that I’ll have to miss and hope that I’ll have another opportunity someday.

And now for future plans: On Sunday Ann and Murray are picking me up for church, along with all my stuff, and I’m moving out of the complex into their place in town for a few days now that my stint at PMS is over. I’m meeting with the owners of that dairy farm I mentioned on Monday to talk things over, so we’ll see where that goes, and if it doesn’t go anywhere I’ve already had two offers from people at church with possible positions, so there’ll be that to check into as well.

Part of me is itching to get on the road again (I know, I know, wasn’t I just saying I was tired of living out of bags?) and head down to the South Island, but hey, I have all the time I want for that, so I may as well just cool my wanderlust for a bit. In the meantime, I have to recuperate from this stomach virus, so I’m glad to have a nice place like Dannevirke to rest up.

Possibilities

2-25

Woo today has been a good day! I swear, when you just open up to possibilities and tell the universe what you want and trust that there’s Someone up there looking out for you, things start to happen.

Granted, I’m counting my chickens before I cross the bridge, or however the Nesses mangle that saying, but I’m feeling good about things, and here’s why.

Remember that guy I met in the coffee shop where I had breakfast last Sunday? Well I went back there for lunch today because I had the day off and decided to spend the day in town. I went back for lunch and he remembered me and we talked a bit as he made me my fish and chips, which is my favorite meal when I’m in British-type countries. He said that he’d be glad to introduce me to one of the farmers he knew, and if I came back at four o’clock he’d drive me out to the farm so I could see the place. I’m still not used to people being so friendly, and so I’m cautious of even good-hearted intentions like his seemed to be, but I said ‘what the heck’ and decided to give it a shot. He asked me what my name was, as we hadn’t properly introduced ourselves before, and I told him and he said his name was Cor, and that he’s from the Netherlands, which we talked about for a bit.

So I spent the afternoon at the library catching up with the family via Skype, and then came back at 4pm as Cor was closing up the place. He’d been talking about how he had three business ventures in New Zealand since he came several years ago, and I figured one was the café, one was his dairy farm, and he asked if I wanted to see the third one since that was where his car was parked anyway. Turns out the third thing he does is build coffins! I was slightly creeped out at first, I’ll admit. I immediately thought “Lyss would love this guy. A Scandinavian farmer who builds coffins.” They were beautiful, though, and made of all kinds of wood, and in all sizes. Anyway, after I’d ooed and ahed a bit we took off down the road from Dannevirke towards Palmerston North and went for about ten minutes before coming to the milking parlor. As we drove Cor told me that the farmer owned two farms; this one and one near Woodville, and that one of his men had given his two weeks notice recently and another had just had an accident with a truck gate falling on his foot (don’t worry, the labor union was there and decided the farm had no fault in the matter, it was just bad luck), so they needed an extra pair of hands. I met the farmer’s wife first, who was doing the afternoon milking, and we talked a bit about what they needed and what I needed, and then we exchanged numbers. She seems very nice and capable and I said I’d call her in a few days as soon as I knew what my last day at PMS would be. Next I met her husband who was mixing feed for the cows (the cows graze year round but are supplemented with things like coconut oil husks and grape skins from the vineyards) and we talked for about five seconds as he was really busy, and he said that he wanted to talk more to see if we were a good fit, as he didn’t want me coming somewhere I’d be unhappy and they couldn’t afford to hire someone without decent knowledge of farms and such, and so I said again that I’d call in a few days and we’d talk some more, but that I was looking for something temporary and that provided housing and would be glad to give them a hand.

And then Cor drove me back to town and we talked about how he’d lived in Bolivia for a while, and how he’d been an ambassador there for the Netherlands, and about cows and farming and all kinds of things. When we got back I said I’d most likely see him on Sunday morning for breakfast again, and he said that would be just fine, and I should see if I could bring Rodrigo around to speak Spanish with him sometime, and I said I would.

All in all, a very successful day, I think. Granted, I don’t have the job yet, or even know if it’s the RIGHT job, but I feel like these kinds of things fall into your lap for a reason, and there are too many good coincidences happening for them to be coincidences. It sounds like a door opening, to me, and I think I’m gonna put my best foot forward and see what happens. Wish me luck!

Journal 3

2-22

Someone actually found my Yank accent attractive today! This is a big deal, guys! Everyone’s laughed at it whenever I open my mouth, so this is a big step! I’m feelin’ good about it.

And there have been a million and one things I’ve been meaning to say in a blog post, and now of course they’re all gone. Let’s see. Well, if you happened to look at my Twitter feed last week you’ll have noticed that New Zealand taught me not to eat strange fruit even when it looks familiar (a lesson I obviously should have learned sooner). What happened was that I was on a walk and saw a tree with golden cherries on it. It was very Narnia-esqe. Anyway, I thought to myself that they looked so much like cherries they must indeed BE cherries, even though they were golden instead of red, so I tasted one and since it tasted good I ate the whole thing. Two hours later my throat was closing up and my stomach was twisted in knots. It was quite discomfiting. But I slept it off and the next day I was fine again.

Yesterday I learned another lesson from the great land of Aotearoa, vis, always take your camera when you go for a walk or bike, even if you don’t think you’ll need it. I missed an opportunity to get the sun putting rays through the clouds over the mountain range behind the complex. Major bummer.

But speaking of biking, I’m now partially independently mobile! I asked the Boss if he knew where I could get a bike, and he said he had one that he never used which I could borrow. It’s turned out to be a mountain bike with spectacularly low handlebars and a crooked front wheel, but it gets me up and down the hills here and provides me a way into town when I want to go and everyone at the complex has had one too many beers to drive.

Work has been going fine here, and I even got to try my hand at making a couple of blows (what you call a stroke with the clippers) on a sheep myself before I was reprimanded for flicking the clippers outward and cutting too far away from the skin. But hey, it was my first try, so good on me, I think. Wool handling has become easier, but I still hate being pared up with certain shearers. Uncle Ben, for one, is constantly cursing the sheep and will step on one of their legs hard if they wiggle too much. Not a pleasant shearer to work with. Sean, on the other hand, who is yet another Maori guy distantly related to the Boss, is great fun and will talk to you while you’re working and almost never cuts a sheep.

I’m also getting more used to life at the Complex. We haven’t had any more rowdy nights since my last post, which has made me less nervous about things. I’ve also decided that I’m going to be working here through the first weekend of March, which is the Golden Shears Shearing Competition, and then I’ll head off to my next job. Granted, I don’t know where that will be yet, but I have a few good ideas. One thing that this shearing contracting job has taught me is that I’d rather work on a farm and be involved in the day to day tasks than just going to one, shearing, and heading back home again. So that’s something learned.

And another thing I learned about today, which some of you may know about, and which really saddens me, is the death of Bjorn Norgaard. He died in a skiing accident recently, and even though we were never really close at school I had classes with him all through high school, and I know he was a great guy. Very funny, laid back and a very nice person to be around. I’ve been thinking a lot about him and his family today. I hope those of you in Northfield can help them through this, and I’ll be praying for them as well.

And as if one disaster per day wasn’t bad enough, there was another earthquake in Christchurch today, which is a town on the South Island. I didn’t feel anything up here, but I’m pretty sure the two islands are on different tectonic plates. I haven’t heard much about it, except that it may have been worse than the previous one, and many buildings have been destroyed. I was hoping to go down and see how the city was doing on my trip around the South Island, but now that this has happened I feel a bit of a tug towards going there to see if I can help rebuild. I don’t have any building skills, obviously, but I feel like helping hands in a disaster area can always be put to some use. More to come on these developments, I hope.

Anyway, I didn’t mean to end this post on a downer, but that seems to be the way it is. I’ve been a bit sad all day about everything, but I’m confident things will be alright. Until next time, I hope all of you are doing well, and I miss you.

2-24

Well, I’ve been a week in the shearing sheds already. And I’ve learned, over this week of waking up around 4:45 every morning, that I can fall asleep sitting up as easily as lying down! Woohoo!

I’ve also found out what a crazy sweet tooth I have. I find this out every time I live somewhere that’s not within walking distance of a corner store. At about 10pm every night I crave chocolate, and if I buy it now in preparation for the nightly craving I just eat it all too fast ‘cause it’s sitting around! Terrible.

And I’ve found that I really miss having access to the news when I want it. Basically everything I know about the world has gotten to me in hourly news broadcasts over the radio at work, which you can hardly hear over the shearing machines. Lately all the news has been about Christchurch, obviously, and so far as I can tell there’ve been 75 people killed and around 300 currently missing. I’ve been listening every time they talk about relief efforts, but it sounds like the only thing I’d really be qualified to do if I went down there is to help the college kids clean up debris, and they’re already restricting numbers because they have too many volunteers. I did donate three dollars via a Vodafone text initiative, though!

Anyway, I feel like I have a lot of anthropological things to say about New Zealand, like more lingo talk, and my frustration with the macho, patriarchal attitude of the rural folks, but I’m not in the mood just now, so bear with me and I’ll try to have a better update next time!