so, so, so! there has been so much that is wonderful in the past few days that it is difficult to frame this life in words. i will try.

since neither gilly nor greg worked on sunday (and it was the first beautiful and sunny day in quite a while!) they took the four of us wwoofers, four of their horses, and (for continuity's sake "four," but really many more) four family friends to a friend's farm on bethell's beach. as if a black sand beach with rugged undeveloped mountains, baby green - tropical almost - foliage lining them could be any more perfect, it was. some of us rode horses and some of us walked up to the tippy top of one of the mountains that lines the beach to see the perfection that is nature when water meets land. robin touched an electric fence on the top of the hill, looking down hundreds of feet to the water, and it was so beautiful, she didn't even mind. if you had to be a bouncing, dead human ball falling down the cliff to your death it would still be breath-taking.

many cute things have become a part of our days. so many cute things, in fact, that i have developed a bracket of sorts. round 1: two year old Zoe explaining why the chariot in her barn was dirty (it was used on the set of Xena, which was filmed at her farm. duh.) v. toothless baby calf sucking on my hand thinking it was a bottle. baby calf moves on to the second round. round 2: same baby calf a day later at the black sand beach farm foolishly eating a piece of trash v. twelve ducklings so tiny and so baby that they were still in obvious egg shape. dozen barely-not-eggs win. i can't imagine what could beat the ducklings.

robin and i are still loving, LOVING gilly and greg's! we can't believe that we have already been here for three weeks. if it is any testament to this farm and our amazingly generous hosts, we are staying until the end of october after which we are headed to a new farm on the south island. we are committed to not staying in one place for too long, but we are learning so much at gilly and greg's! we are learning how to build fences and make compost and till gardens and distract chickens from eating our newly planted seeds. every day i go to sleep with a supreme sense of accomplishment that until this period of life i have not yet understood. working the land while working your body is an unexpected euphoria.

here's something: another reason we are staying here for a few more weeks is that we accidentally got jobs. the manager at gilly's restaurant hired robin and me to pick up shifts for the next few weeks. today i drove our car to drop off paperwork for direct deposit into my new zealand bank account before returning a movie to blockbuster and getting a new book from the local library! see how much of a life we have here?

i worked at the restaurant as a waitress (with no training, yikes!) for the evening shift this past saturday. some interesting differences between dining in america and new zealand: "entree" means main course in america; appetizer, in new zealand. refills (and cavities) are not free. everyone orders dessert. no one speaks spanish in the kitchen. some similarities i found: wait staff once again appear to be enjoying a perpetual funeral, as we still have to wear solid black. restaurant "culture" is much the same with everyone smoking and cursing in the back of the kitchen. people pay for their food.

look at all of the homes i am collecting. hickory, chapel hill, ghana, and now new zealand. what a pleasure it has been in all of them.

love,
maggie