my first, my last, my everything

friends and family! i didn't know that a blog was something i was going to create until now, just now. i have been going back and forth about it because in theory they are inexplicably worthy of judgment, but in reality, they seem to be the best way to tell you what i am doing.

here's what i am doing: i am successfully living in new zealand because i am not yet dead! whoopie! so far, so good. for those of you that aren't aware, i am here with the one of the world's loveliest ladies, my good friend robin, with whom i graduated from UNC. we have been here since friday, september 18th, and already it seems as if a small lifetime has passed. maybe a bee's lifetime, but it feels like we have been here forever, nonetheless. on thursday we are headed to our first organic farm where we will be doing work of some kind. we are hoping that it will be outside and easy and hard and pay us one million dollars per hour. we'll see.

i won't be usuing proper grammar most posts of this blog because i will usually be paying for internet, and despite my mom's greatest efforts, i sometimes still have to think about where those snarly little commas go. i also won't be capitalizing sentences or proper nouns because it is visually displeasing for me to see jagged words. watch this: Jumping versus jumping. do you see how the latter is infinitely more enjoyable?

i am thrilled to be here, and although i feel guilty admitting it, i am thrilled that this is not the developing world. this is not ghana or rural china. everyone here definitely speaks english, and i don't stick out as a white person. am i sounding like a republican? shoot me.

the one thing that i need to tell everyone about is my now second favorite tree i have ever seen. only one other beats it, and that tree is a baobab in the center of the university of ghana in accra, ghana. i miss that tree. but! on our first afternoon here, robin and i stumbled upon this unusual park that housed the most fantastic trees. they were huge in a way that was impressive but not scary and they had the air-duct thick branches that literally touched the ground begging you to be a part of them. and then! there was the perfect, actually perfect, tree whose trunk was at least twenty feet in diameter and it was hollow on the inside, but still thriving with bright new spring green leaves! what a strong, resistent, and complicated being, that tree. i got inside of it and was sitting in a teepee sized tree home. the grey roots looked like sleeping elephants and rhinos. my zoo tree. i can't wait to see it again tomorrow.

love,
maggie