WWOOFing (continued)

Some highlights from my week of living with an amazing German family in my very own railway carriage:

• The family. They were so warm and welcoming and totally let me into their lives. If anyone wants to try WWOOFing in New Zealand, I highly recommend them. It was so nice to eat family dinners, hang out in their cozy house, meet their friends, etc. I babysat a couple nights and got to read Quinny a bedtime story which made me realize how much I miss spending time with kids. So cute! Quinny and I talked about our adventures we'd had in "other lands", to him the world is all so magical.

• The food was amazing, I think I'm spoiled. We had venison steaks (deer farms are really big here), amazing fresh fish (the thing was like a sole but HUGE) dishes, delicious stir fry, and I finally got to try New Zealand Yams (shiny bumpy red veggies about as thick as my big tow but twice as long) which are actually pretty good. And after a hard day's work we sat around with a beer or glass of wine and ate yummy bread and cheese.

• I got to stay in my own cozy little railway carriage. It was all so relaxing. Some nights I did nothing but sit and read a book, or (most often I'm a bit ashamed to admit) watch a bit of the first season of Desperate Housewives. What can I say, guilty pleasure. I made it through the entire first season by the end of the week...

• The town. It's Christchurch's main Port and is what remains of an old volcano. One side was eroded by the ocean creating what is now the harbor. The town is small, the main street is about like that of Multnomah Village. It's surrounded on three sides by tall hills and on the other side by water.

• The time ball. One of only 5 working time ball stations in the world. I was their one and only visitor of the day and got my own personal tour of the castle like building. The ball drops every day at exactly 1pm and was used by ships. They would note the difference in time between the ball and the ship clock and use that for navigation, before radios could broadcast the time directly to the ship.

• The famous Wonderbar. Saturday night I figured I should go out and visit the place, especially since it's famous throughout New Zealand and was only a ten minute walk from my house. To get there you have to walk down a staircase, through a parking lot, and then up a maze of ramps to even get to the place. Once you're there you see a bunch of manakins with various colored lights, mirrors surrounded by barbie doll heads, strange things protruding from the ceiling, hilarious vintage ads lining the bathroom walls. The live music was horrible, and I'm not sure why, but I took home the free cd they gave me. The only line I could even understand was "the earth has it's faults"...something something...The band consisted of tight jean wearing guys who I'd guess were about 18. The guitarist didn't move anything but his hands the entire time, completely straight faced. The lead singer mumbled into the microphone, off key. The drummer was decent at least. The place was mostly empty, must have hit it on a slow night, or perhaps it's always like that. The room with the band was filled with the band's friends, and the other room was filled with old people playing pool...hmm...

• I saw penguins! And a dolphin too! I felt super touristy for going on a "cruise" of the harbor, but it was fun getting out on the ocean, and much like the time ball station, the boat was filled with an amazin 6 people including myself. Winter is definitely the time to travel folks if you want to avoid the crowds. My WWOOFing hosts teased me throughout dinner for being such a tourist, but it was fun. Both the penguins and dolphins are the world's smallest.

• I went on a hike up to the rim of the volcanic crater and around it a bit. The view was incredible! I fell into a nettle bush though and stung my finger. Apparently the nettle here is quite vicious. It still hurts (3 days later) after I run my fingers under cold water...strange. I'll try to post a few photos later, still haven't uploaded them onto my computer yet though...

So, that's some of the trip, don't want to bore you all with even more tiny details. Oh, but one surprising fun thing that I found at the Lyttleton museum in the geology section (the whole museum was in a house, the geology section a single bedroom sized room)--authentic ash collected from Portland Oregon from the St. Helens eruption, crazy!
Anyways, now I'm trying to get my life back in order for classes, yuck! Sorry for such a long winded post, congratulations for getting through it!
love you all,
Sarah