Day 128: Banff Mountain Film Festival

I am in the middle of three days of working for Carey Park, this time leading the Burma Trail activity.  Burma Trail is a rope attached between trees that winds its way through the forest.  The kids put on blindfolds and try to follow the rope to its end.  Honestly, it is about as much fun as it sounds, which isn't much.  To take up time in the session after they finished (it only took some groups about 10 minutes) we played Camoflage and the Stick Game, both of which I'd be happy to teach you if we're ever in the same geographic locality.

But today, after work, I had something more fun to do than just going home: tonight is the Banff Festival!  I got tickets for this event a while ago through the Alpine Club and it has since sold out.  Basically it's a collection of films highlighting people doing incredible and adventurous things.  Kat and Alana and I headed into town to check it out.  We met up with Antz and used his status as an employee of NZTV to park in their underground lot for free. Then we went for pizza at an Italian place nearby.  Halfway through eating I realized that I didn't have my wallet in my bag.  And our tickets were in my wallet.  Oh no!  But Alana mentioned that some things had fallen out of my bag in the backseat of the car.  So I went back to check the car and sure enough, there was the wallet.  This was a really good thing because if the wallet hadn't been in the car I wouldn't have had any idea where to begin looking for it.  I was certain it had been in my bag, and for once, I was right.

The festival lived up to its hype.  There were short films on mountain biking (so cool with jumps set to awesome music), rock climbing (horrible watching the falls), ice climbing (I don't really understand how they do that), a free solo attempt (successful) of Half Dome (that's no ropes and no assistance! yipes), some mean whitewater kayaking in Africa, including a kayaker going over a 180-ft falls and surviving (he broke his paddle; and yes, he meant to go over), and a German guy who works with low friction materials building a ridiculous launching slide and launching himself into a tiny wading pool a good football field's length away (as seen on YouTube.)  Anyway, it was a great and inspiring evening and I really enjoyed it.  Alana was so inspired that as we were leaving she tried to free solo the SkyTower (see photo.)  She didn't get very far.  But still, it was worth the effort.

Day 125: Kayaking at Carey Park

Today (Sunday) I had some work at Carey Park teaching kayaking.  They had a church group in for a quick weekend camp.  The groups were divided into boys or girls, and were of a variety of ages.  Unfortunately, they only had 30 minutes to kayak, though!  That is not very much time to get them into life jackets, teach them about paddling, put them in boats and let them paddle!  And the schedule got messed up so some groups didn't even get a half an hour!  It was a bit crazy, with kids coming and going pretty fast and no break for me.  Plus it had just rained really heavily and flooded the river a few days before, so the bank was covered with thick, dark mud.  I got mud all over me from lugging kayaks around.  Although it was crazy, it was also fun and I had a good time.  I was happy to have the work.

After I finished work I came back home, and touched base with my friend Charis who I met at my leading on bolts rock climbing course.  I had planned to meet her in town for dinner and then go to church with her.  We met up and had Subway and sat outside under a bus shelter eating it.  Although it had been lightly raining off and on all day, it wasn't cold and it felt invogorating to be in town at night with the hustle and bustle of people all around.  Charis goes to St. Paul's church on Symonds St., which is a beautiful old looking gothic church.  I enjoyed the service (especially the singing) and it was great to see Charis again.  We talked about doing some tramps together during her school break maybe in the South Island.  I can't wait.

Day 124: Choose Your Own Adventure - Explore Auckland

This afternoon Mat, Kat, Antz and I went on a flatmates adventure.  We decided to go and explore Auckland.  We didn't really have a destination in mind, we just ventured off to see where we'd end up.  First we went to Botany Downs, and had lunch at a fast foodish chicken place called Oporto.  It is an Australian chain.  Then I asked if we could hike up Mt. Wellington, which is one of the volcanoes ranging around Auckland.  The answer was, "no," because no one else wanted to (and honestly, neither did I when I saw how steep it was) so instead we just drove up.  At the top were a bunch of cows, some kids sliding down the hill on a piece of cardboard, and some picnicers.  There was a nice view of Auckland from the top, and of some nearby crags that are going to be open for rock climbing soon, I hear.

From Mt. Wellington we headed off to Mission Bay, which had a festival atmosphere since it was a Saturday and nice weather and there were lots of people around.  Matt and Antz were excited because there was a Ferrari cruising the streets there.  We got Moven Pick ice cream and took it to the beach where Matt made friends with some birds and fed them ice cream while Kat tried her hardest to avoid them.  From Mission Bay we drove around into downtown with a sidetrip to visit one of the most expensive streets in Auckland, Paritai Drive.  You can see the fancy houses behind expensive gates and high walls or gardens.  Pretty cool.  From Paritai we went west, checking out the location of the zoo and the transport museum while wandering our way over to west Auckland and then south until we hit the southwestern motorway on which we returned home. 

Day 121: Hanging around Youthtown

I got some unexpected work at Youthtown yesterday and today.  When I was at the boat show, Fiona was telling me that they are working to revise all of their RAMS (risk management forms) and they had put my name next to some of them.  So yesterday I went in to YT and spent a few hours working on writing a RAMS for Camp Craft.  It's all things like knife safety and stove safety and all of that, but you basically have to think about worst case scenarios, like the instructor has a heart attack and dies, and the kids pour stove fuel over everything and torch it off and property is destroyed and people are hurt and emotionally scarred.  Like that.  Then you have to identify ways of minimizing or eliminating or isolating the risks.  It's fascinating stuff, let me tell you (not really.)  It was nice to have a few hours of work, though.  Then today I was back there to do a bit more work, but I didn't get a whole lot accomplished since I took a big break to go for a swim in Youthtown's pool, and then I helped out with snow club that evening. 

The snow club is a club for kids between 10 and 17, I think, although some of the kids seemed much younger than 10.  They join for a school term and get to go to Snow Planet (indoor skiing) every Wednesday night.  They get to play a bit and then take a 1 hour lesson from the staff there and then they come home.  It was interesting to see Snow Planet and to get to do a bit of skiing.  I think I am very rusty.  Plus it was weird to be skiing indoors.  And really cold.  I am realizing that I'm a bit underprepared for wintertime, especially to be working at a ski resort in the south island.  Hopefully Bek will send me some winter gear that will help me to be toasty and warm.

Speaking of working at a ski field, I have had a bit of news on that front: I called up a place called Mt. Hutt, and the guy who hires for lift operators emailed me back.  He has filled all of his positions, but he said that people always quit once the season starts and they find that it wasn't what they had imagined.  So he's putting me on a short list and will contact me if he has a position.  No guarantees, but I am hopeful that I could get a job with a ski place yet.  For now I am still getting work up north, so I will plan to be here until at least the end of May.

Day 117: Introduction to Aid Climbing

Today I attended an Alpine Club Rock Climbing course on aid climbing.  It was held at The Quarry in Auckland, which is a rock climbing crag right in the middle of the city (it's on the sidelines of a sports field behind a boys' school.)  It was a fun course, and fun also because my friend Charis, who I met at the climbing on bolts course about a month ago, was also there. 

When we arrived (I was a bit late because I got lost and then couldn't find the crag!) there was a portaledge set up and dangling from some bolts in the wall.  This was really exciting to me because ever since I've heard of portaledges and people sleeping on them high above the ground, I have been fascinated by them.  They are really cool.  But apparently a pain to set up if you don't have a ledge to stand on.  While I was gawking at the portaledge (it is a collapsable, portable platform that you suspend to sleep on to do an overnight while rock climbing, in case you didn't already know that), Steve, our instructor for the day, started the class by asking everyone what their climbing expertise was.  There were a few people like me who had never set their own protection before.  That is when you use wired nuts (see the picture at above left) and cams (above right) to provide fall protection by slotting them into constrictions in cracks in the rock.  That means you could climb and still be "safe" (as long as your protection didn't fail) a route that wasn't top-roped or bolted.  Climbing like this is called trad, for traditional, climbing.  It has the advantage over bolts that the rock isn't altered when you are finished, because you just take your protection out and no one can tell you were ever there.  But this course was actually on aid climbing.  That's when you have two web ladders, called aiders, or étriers (that's EY-tree-ay; see a photo below) that you carry up the wall with you.  You clip one ladder into the protection as soon as you've set it and then climb up the rungs to get your weight off the other étrier, and then clip that one in.  In this way you are able to climb rock faces that might be too difficult for your skill level if you tried to climb them unaided.

After an explanation of all of this and some instruction on setting protection, we watched an example climb, by Steve, and then we got to try it out for ourselves.  We "ghost aided" where we did all the climbing but we were belayed on top-rope so if we fell we wouldn't really go anywhere.  I belayed for Charis for a while (aid climbing is also fairly slow, as you work out what size gear you need and make vertical progress in slow steps up your étriers) until it clouded up and looked very threatening, and then we switched over so that I could have a try before it got too wet.  I climbed about 2 meters up on the wall when it started pouring down rain.  We had thunder and lightning, too.  It was all very exciting.  I kept on climbing because for the most part I was shielded from the rain because I was in close to the rock.  I set a nut that seemed a bit precarious, but tested it and it held, so I climbed up on it and worked to set a cam above my head.  I put one in that seemed to hold, but then the wired were bending and since it wasn't my gear I didn't want to damage it, so I went with a smaller cam instead.  I tested this and it seemed to hold, too,so I climbed up on it, but then it pulled out and the nut I'd placed below it pulled out as well, leaving me hanging in thin air on my belay rope (good thing I had one and a good belayer, thanks Charis!)  I decided that with me falling, the rain getting heavier all the time, and the lightning, it must be some sort of sign, so I was done for the day. We packed up the gear in the ever-faster falling rain, but by the time everything was stowed it had also decided to stop raining!  A few of us headed to the local pub for a bite to eat for lunch.  So we didn't get to practice a ton of climbing, and I also didn't get to try lying down on the portaledge, but it was still a good day all around.  Steve has climbed El Cap in Yosemite, and I was telling him how when I was there last fall I was inspired to climb it.  He told me to go for it - well I mean, to practice up and then go for it.  Maybe one day I will!

Day 116: Hutch Wilco Boat Show

I spent today helping Youthtown out at the boat show in Auckland.  It was fun to be there and I got to look around a bit at the bit boats (board by invitation only, which means, if you don't look like you have $100,000 to spend on a boat, you're not invited.  Needless to say, I wasn't invited), fishing poles and fishing gear, life jackets, jet skis, radars, fish finders, and pretty much anything else you could think of that's boat or water related.  Youthtown was there to get their name out about their water programs and boating clubs that they have for kids.  It is really hard to interact with people at a show like that.  They are all so jaded from all the other stands that are trying to get their attention and sell them things.  All we were doing was giving out information... but still it was hard to get people to talk to us.

Day 115: Adventures in Kayaking

I've now done three days at Carey Park, instructing kayaking.  Yesterday it rained almost all day, but it wasn't too cold so we went kayaking in the rain!  The kids weren't daunted by it being wet, but I got a bit cold toward the end, particularly my feet.  I again tried to avoid getting wet as much as possible, but with it raining it wasn't a winning battle.

I have now gotten pretty good at explaining how to kayak and running the session smoothly.  It helps that I've done the same thing 9 times over the course of three days.

Today the weather was nicer and I loved standing in the sun while I waited for the next group to come.  After my last group (which was right before lunch) the kids wanted to go off the rope swing and down the waterslide, so the adults that were with them supervised them.  I sat on a bench and watched for a little while, thinking about how cold the water was and how they were crazy, but then I decided that I needed to go off the rope swing, too.  You run off a little dock that's set rather high above the water, so you have a ways to fall before you hit the surface. I was glad I did it in the end, although when you sink down into the water it gets colder and colder so it takes your breath away a little bit.  But it was fun in the end.  Since kayaking ended at lunchtime, I asked if there was anything else I could help with, and got a job organizing the gear closet and taking an inventory.  That took me a few hours and then I headed home with a happy heart, having had a fun day.  :o)

Day 113: Kayaking at Carey Park

Today was the first of three days of instructing that I have to do for Carey Park Christian Camp in West Auckland.  They have a school group of year 6, 7 and 8 students in for four days, and they are rotating through a series of activities each day.  One of the activities is kayaking, which is what I'm in charge of.  Each group that comes to me has 1 1/2 hours for kayaking.  So I take them through putting on life jackets, parts of the boat and paddle, how to paddle and steer, and then we get in the boats and paddle upstream.  There are  a bunch of rocks that have been placed across the stream a short distance upstream, and that keeps the kids from going too far.  At the end I have them raft up (a difficult task for some of the groups that don't work together very well) and count off by two's.  Then the one's have a challenge to stand up in their kayaks and do the chicken dance without falling out.  And then we switch and the two's try and do the hokey pokey.  Luckily the water is only a few feet deep so if they fall out they usually just get wet and don't even flip their kayaks.  Although some do.  Even though the water is not deep it is still quite cold.  I try and avoid getting wet at all costs, since I am kayaking all day and wouldn't have a chance to get dry.  After we have finished this challenge (sometimes I got them to do the macarena, too) we head back downstream to a deeper part of the stream, where it opens up into a little pool with a bit more space.  There are ropes suspended across the pool and here we usually play a bit of kayak "basketball" which the kids enjoy.  Usually at least one person falls out of their boat while this is happening.  And by that time the session has ended and it's time to get them out and get ready for the next group! 

I really like being at Carey Park.  It reminds me of Camp Cedarbrook, at home (of course.)  Everyone here has been really friendly, too, and made me feel very welcome.  Plus, they have killer cooks who make excellent food and when you work there you get fed, too!  And there are some flash coffee machines that make yummy hot chocolate and moccachinos.  I'm sure the coffee is good, too, but I haven't tried any.  This job is definitely a reminder of God taking care of me since Anthony from Carey Park contacted me about working.  He got my name from Steven Parker at Adventure Specialties who recommended me.  So I didn't do anything and the work just fell into my lap!

Day 111: Lazy Sunday

It is Mother's Day, May 9, in New Zealand (Happy Mother's Day Mom!), and I have just gotten home from church and am hanging out with my flatmates Matt and Kat.  I thought since I have not much else going on, that I might introduce you to my flatmates more fully, since they are all amazing.

Alex

Alex works for Regal Salmon, which does really nice New Zealand salmon.  I got to taste some the other day and it was yummy!  Apparently Alex's compnay supplies salmon to the Macaroni Grill in the states. So if you go there and eat salmon, you are eating their product.  Alex is really funny in a sarcastic way, and loves to cook.  She just took a Moroccan cooking course and I have tasted her food - it's excellent.

Alex helps out at her church a lot.  She spends a lot of time with the Pacific Island kids that go to the church.  She has a lot of love for them and it shows.  She is a leader for the Jr. Youth Group that meets every other week with the kids who are younger than 13.

Here is a photo of Alex on a recent glowworm hike that we went on.  She's eating a cracker, I think.  So she doesn't always make that face.

Matt

Matt is a certified mechanic at a local shop.  He loves race cars and his dream would be to be a race car driver.  He helped me get my WOF (warrent of fitness on my car - like an inspection) and did some work on my car and only charged me the employee rates.  It was sweet.  He is learning to play the guitar and likes to play video games.  He has a great zany sense of humor.  He is a youth leader at his church's youth group and plays guitar for the worship team every other week.  Matt is also married to Kat, one of my other flatmates.

Here's a picture of Matt eating butter on a stick.  Just kidding, it's actually a mango flavored popsicle.  But it looks like butter on a stick.

Antz

Antz's actual name is Andrew.  He's not sure how he got the nickname Antz.  But it came from somewhere.  Antz works at TVNZ, organizing advertizing and booking ads for in between the tv shows.  Because of this he is a great person to ask if you want to know what's on tv any given night.  He has to look professional for his job so he has to iron his clothes and he has a great sense of style.  Sometimes he gets to meet famous tv personalities and sometimes he gets free stuff (like Avatar on DVD).  Antz takes the train into the city every day for his job.  He is also a bit of a gym fanatic because he goes to the gym every day on his lunch break and drinks pink shakes called Mutant Mass to gain muscle.  He is a video game fan and also a leader for his church's youth group (same one as Matt.) 

Here's a photo of Antz picking out potatoes on a recent flat grocery shopping trip.  He didn't want his picture taken and that is why he is making that face.  It doesn't always look like that. 

Kat

Kat (Kathryn) is a full time student, studying teaching.  She is married to Matt and they just celebrated their second wedding anniversay.  Kat works several jobs in addition to her studies.  She packs kiwifruit on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights.  She also cleans her church on Saturday mornings.  Kat is very good at expressing herself.  She loves to eat French Toast and Baked Beans on Toast.  She is also pretty keen into motorsports (to keep up with Matt) and I think she knows quite a bit about engines. Kat claims that our flat grocery shopping trips are the highlight of her week.  I hope that is not officially true.  Here is a photo of Kat selecting some apples, which look nice but turned out to be pretty tasteless.  Kat also helps out with the youth group when she is not packing kiwifruit.

I will miss these guys when I move on from #18 Sturdee Road, Flat 2.  They are all amazing and have been really helpful to me since I have moved in.

Day 110: Indulgence and Archery and Progressive Dinner

Today was Saturday.  It's nice to have a little break from getting up early and working hard.  They may be planting strawberries today but I decided that I didn't care, and that I needed a little break.  I was still up at 8am, though, and I made some ginger scones from Anica's tried and true recipe.  They are delicious!  My flatmates appreciated them too. 

Next it was off to the Ellerslie Convention Center where there was a show on called Indulgence.  It was supposed to be for Mother's Day, I think and was billed as "Everything a Woman could want."  I don't know about that, but there were a lot of nice things there.  I went because Alex was there selling salmon for her company and she had an extra ticket.  I wandered around, trying samples of salmon, and wine, and elderberry liqueur (yummy) and cucumber vodka and fancy cheeses and amazing yogurt and chocolate.  I learned that hot smoked salmon has a nicer texture than cold smoked salmon.  Regal Salmon (Alex's company) does a really nice black pepper and herbs hot smoked salmon.  I ate a lot of it.

I left the show at about 1pm and headed into town to catch up with Youthtown again.  Brian and Chris were doing an archery session for a group of kids and adults with cochlear implants, and Brian said if I wanted to volunteer I was welcome to come and help out.  Cochlear implants are an implant that allows a profoundly deaf or hearing impaired person to have a sense of sound.  I was interested to meet the kids and also to help with archery so I went along.  People who have had a cochlear implant still have to wear a hearing aid and have a little clip that attaches to their hair, but otherwise there's no way of telling that their ears don't work normally.  I noticed that a lot of the girls wore their hair down to cover their ears, and some wore hats that made the hearing aids less noticeable.  We had a group of about 15 or so, and we had a fun time, doing archery and playing archery games.  Sometimes I had to speak loudly (because it was noisy where we were) to make sure they could hear and understand me, but for the most part they were like any other group of kids.

I did a little bit of reading on cochlear implants and apparently it depends on how old you are when you get one as for how well it will work.  People who are born deaf and get them when they are very young do the best, because their brains have to learn to interpret the sounds they are being supplied with.  If someone can hear and learns to speak and then becomes deaf, they may also do well with an implant because they already know how to process sound.  But someone born deaf who doesn't receive an implant until they are an adolescent may never learn to speak or be able to understand speech.  This is because their brain may have taken the space normally used to interpret sound and started using it for other processes.  Apparently after a certain age, if you haven't learned to speak, you never will.  And apparently cochlear implants, while allowing people to hear, don't provide the same quality of sound that a hearing person would experience, but they do provide enough meaningful sound to interpret speech and other auditory information.

When I got home from archery I headed out with Antz to a progressive dinner that his church's youth group was doing.  We travelled to four different houses and ate yummy food: appetizers at one house, then soup and bread, then chicken wings, salad and garlic roasted potatoes, and then an amazing dessert spread: lemon merigue squares, eclairs, ice cream and fruit.  Everything was really delicious and no one was lacking in things to eat!  It was fun to hang out with people and visit some new locations in my neighborhood.  Oh yeah, and it was a funny hat and/or wig theme: everyone had to have a funny hat and/or wig.  Antz let me borrow one of his.  I wore a cowboy hat for the evening.

Day 109: Team Building and Leadership Development with Youthtown

Today I ran a program for Youthtown that focused on Leadership Development.  It was for a group of Year 9 and Year 11 students that are members of their student council.  We had about 50 students, split into two groups.  We took half the kids and did initiatives and team games with them, while the other half did a high ropes course with a company called Tree Adventures.  Then we had a break for lunch and worked with the other half of the group.

The cool thing about this event was that I planned it and I was in charge.  My bosses Brian and Fiona had to be in a training that day so I was able to step up and head things up.  It was a bit stressful, but everything ended up working out perfectly.  I was pleased that they trusted me to take charge.  I planned out the games that we would play, suggested ideas for the leaders to use to debrief them, and went over my plan with all of the leaders for that day.  I was happy that things went well and that I was able to be energetic even though I was in extreme pain from planting strawberries the day before.  I think the kids had fun and maybe thought a bit about leadership, and we only had a few minor injuries (scraped knees from the gravel surface we were playing on.)  I've led things similar to this before, both with camp and with Diakon, but for some reason it's hard for me to carry confidence into each new venture.  It's as if I've never done it before and anything and everything could go wrong.  I try to tell myself that it's not that different from work that I've done before, but it can still take a lot of talking up to feel confident.  Something that I need to work on, I guess.

Days 107 & 108: Strawberry Planting

I got a call earlier this week about a job that I'd applied for last week: strawberry planting.  They asked me if I was available on Wednesday for some planting.  I was told to show up at the fields at 7am.  So that's what I did this morning.  I packed myself a lunch last night and some warm clothes and some water and sunscreen.  The fields are pretty close to my house so it doesn't take me long to drive there.  I arrived at about 7 and stood in a line to get my employee number and clock in.  The time clock has a keypad on top which you punch your employee number into.  My number is 1748.  Then you open a little door on the side of the time clock and put your right hand in and make all of your fingers touch the pegs.  On the top of the machine there's a little picture of a hand with lights at the fingertips so you can tell if you need to adjust your hand placement. You move your hand around until all the lights go off.  It all seems really high tech, because once you get your hand set up properly the machine says "ID verified" and off you go.  I highly doubt that this machine is reading your fingerprints or something as advanced as all that, because it is attached to the side of a shed in the middle of a strawberry field, with mud and dirt and peeling paint all around.  If anything the only thing that the machine verifies is that you do indeed, have a hand.

So once that is sorted and you are all signed in and it's been confirmed that you do have a hand, you get a sheet of labels from the office with your employee number on it and you get a strawberry planting tool, called a knife, and off you go.  The knife is a thin, blunt rectangular piece of metal attached to a handle.  It is used to shove the roots of the strawberry plant into the ground.

After a short walk to the field, you are given a row to plant.  The rows are raised beds, with black plastic over them.  A series of offset holes has been punched in the plastic, four across.  You stick your employee label to the plastic at the end of the row and plant one strawberry plant into each hole and work your way down one side of the row, then turn around and come back up the other side.  The strawberry plants come in crates and are delivered by tractors.  It pays to grab a bunch of crates of plants to start off with because there aren't enough in one crate to finish the row, and if you wait to get them later, it just means a long walk as the tractors drop the crates off spread out along the rows so the ones nearest to you are likely to be used up by other people planting next to you.  I found the best method for planting is to dump a bunch of plants out of the crate and carry it farther down the row.  Then I work my way back to the crate, pushing the plants along the plastic and planting them as I go.  After a very short while you can get pretty fast at planting.  You lay the roots of the plant across the hole and stab it down into the earth with the knife.  If you do everything right it only takes one stab to get all of the roots into the ground.  If not, you may need to stab again, which slows you down.

When I arrived for my first day of planting, I met a guy named Parminder.  It was his first day as well.  He asked me if he could keep his lunch in my car, since he'd gotten dropped off for work.  I said sure, and most of the day we worked on adjacent rows and chatted a bit.  I got to know him a bit better on the second day, too.  He is from Punjab, in India, and he speaks Hindi as well as English.  He has only been in New Zealand for about a month.  In India he used to work on the stock market, and he hopes to get back into that in New Zealand, eventually. 

The planting day passes fairly quickly - it's mindless work and you can get into a pretty good rhythm, broken only by a 15 minute break at 10am, another one at 2pm and 30 minutes for lunch at noon.  This leaves planty of time for contemplating life and the world and other deep thoughts.  We worked from 7am until 4pm, and they work in all kinds of weather, rain or shine.  It's hard on the legs, though.  After the first day I was so sore.  It hurt to bend down for any reason.  After the second day it was even worse.  It has taken a couple of days to be able to move without pain.  I wonder if it will be bad again if I go back and plant more next week?

On my second day as an agricultural worker I had to finish a line of plants that I'd left the day before.  That was terrible because as soon as the workers are finished they turn on the sprinklers and water the plants.  Right after they are planted they look pretty terrible - all wilted and withered.  But once they get some water on them they revive a bit and I feel much better about their chances for survival.  But all that watering on my partial row from the day before made the ground very sticky with this terrible, clayey mud.  It clings to your feet and builds up unnaturally off of them.  Your feet become very heavy and difficult to move, and because the ground is wet you don't want to sit down to plant.  The mud is so annoying that I saw one person planting in his socks!  I frequently used my knife to scrape mud off my feet, but it was impossible to get it all off and it would very quickly build up again.

Strawberry planting was an interesting experience.  It's not difficult work, although it is physically demanding and so tough on the legs, but if I do more of it I may be able to get used to that.  I actually enjoyed the satisfaction of finishing a row (which took anywhere between 2 and 4 hours, depending on how long the rows are.)  It is pretty cool to see a whole field transformed from black to green.  But the hardest part by far was the physical exhaustion and stiffness.  I met a few people who are agricultural workers and follow the work around the country.  I am certainly glad that I don't have to do that but that I have other options for work.  It was also interesting to be one of only a few white people doing the planting.  Most were Pacific Islanders or Indians.  It can be a challenge to see myself as one of them.  I mean, we're both doing the same job, but again I'm thankful to my education and other resources that I don't have to do that work to survive.  I can see how it would be pretty depressing not to have options beyond unskilled labor.

Day 105: Glowworms!

Today I went on a glowworm hike with John, Alex and Holly.  We drove about 20 minutes east, to a town called Clevedon, and hiked back into the hills in search of glowworms.  We found a few, but not heaps.  It had been raining so that could have been part of why we didn't see too many.

Glowworms (Arachnocampa luminosa) are a member of the spider family.  They are worms that stick their heads into soil and eat stuff, but they have no way of excreting their waste.  They glow because that is a reaction happening to get rid of the by-products of their food.  In reality it is their bums that are doing the glowing!  Glowworms are found in caves sometimes, but we found them in little gullies in the earth, like the steep sides of a trench formed by a stream.  In the photo above, you can see that John and Alex and Holly are amazed by the glow worms.  Since it was night, though, they don't really photograph very well, but below you can just see one in the middle of the photo:

And here are me and Holly, pointing to some glowworms and looking really impressed.

Even though we didn't find too many glowworms, we had fun hiking around in the woods in the dark and playing hiking games like the rhyming game.  It was really fun to spend time with John and Holly and Alex out in the woods.

Day 104: Pacific Fruit

In the last several days I've had the opportunity to sample several kinds of fruit common to New Zealand that I've never tasted before.  These are golden kiwifruit, guavas and feijoas.  Golden kiwifruit and guavas are shown in the photo.   Golden kiwifruit are like green kiwifruit, only I think they tend to be a bit smaller, and they have a lighter, more subtle taste.  A bit less sweet, I'd say. We have loads of golden kiwifruit lying around my house at the moment. My housemate Kat gets them underripe from her work (at a kiwifruit packing plant) and brings them home to ripen.

I just tried guavas for the first time last night.  To eat one, you kind of squeeze the insides into your mouth.  They are sweet as well, but the skins taste very bitter.  They also have very hard seeds, that you just swallow because they are too hard to chew.

Feijoas are my favorite new fruit discovery.  They are oblong in shape to eat them you scoop out the seed and pulp from the inside.  They are tangy and delicious.  By the way, they're pronounced Fee-JOAH.  Both feijoas and guavas grow on trees in people's backyards.  My kiwi friends tell me that they never pay money for feijoas because someone with a tree is always giving them away.

And that's your introduction to Pacific fruit!