i am a bad monkey because i have not written a blog post in a long time. bad, bad monkey. oh well.

christmas is here in new zealand, except not in a way that i really understand at all. it's sunny. it's warm. they keep trying to convince me that it's "normal" and "fun" to have outdoor barbeques on christmas day. what they don't understand is that christmas is really about a month of the year when one gets fat because one is stuck inside while trying to avoid parricide. that being said, it's been lovely being in the garden wearing sunscreen while i hum christmas carols to myself.

after only a two week interim from carolyn's house which was filled with a week at the speedy family vineyards and a few days of camping on the breathtakingly beautiful abel tasman coastal national park, robin and i came back to carolyn's family in nelson a week and a half ago. what is nice is that since this is our third trip to carolyn's, it feels so natural and so much like home. we have in some ways been neglecting our wwoofing duties to tend to the christmas fattening up. we have made christmas mince pies which sound BBbbisgusting but are delicious and are something akin to a glorified fig newton. we are making shortbread today and hanging up christmas lights on the porch. last sunday we decorated the christmas tree and tomorrow night i am chopping a hole in carolyn's ceiling big enough for santa to get through. it is christmas, for sure, but in a bizarre way.

bugs have been all over the place as have god jokes. bugs: a few mornings ago i woke up to a dead moth trapped in my hair. awesome. two nights ago robin and i had a midnight scream fest as we were almost feasted on by a bug the size of my palm. bug central. god jokes: two of the people we met on the abel tasman track were a french girl named audrey and a guy from alaska named chris. the fun thing about the abel tasman track was that we got to know people hiking it fairly well because we would all end up at the same campsites together in the evening. anyway, we left audrey and chris after finishing the track thinking we would never see them again. only to find them standing on the side of the road three hours away from where we had last seen them looking for a hitchhike ride. naturally, we picked them up and took them to their next destination. god joke, right?

fun that i've had my first "pick up a hitchhiker" experience now. well, not my first, as one time during high school it started raining really hard in the middle of the day and i offered a ride to a woman who had been walking her puppy. she didn't seem like a killer, as she was carrying the puppy wrapped up under her shirt.

robin and i got a fantastic(thankyouthankyou!!!) package from mom and dad filled with christmas goodies and many, many contraband items from home. in september at customs in auckland, we were forced to give up all of our unpackaged, homemade goodies to the near nazi new zealand gaurds. and here it is, three months later when mom and dad send through the mail homemade cookies and crunchies and the drumroll item . . . natural cotton! carolyn's family really loved all of the prizes, especially seeing and touching the cotton, but to be safe in that we don't infect the new zealand countryside with the cotton weevil, we put the cotton in a plastic bag and sprayed it with bug spray. ha! bite me, customs!

it is amazing and incredibly lucky how much we have been able to find homes in new zealand. we were extended christmas invitations by both gilly and greg and carolyn's family. since we are on the south island, we are going to stay with carolyn's family over christmas and be thinking fondly of our other new zealand family in auckland and even more fondly of our first families back in the US. what a life where i get to love so many people all over the world. i can't help but think of my ghanaian family and camp family and carolina family and wishing them all so much love. hallelujah.

love,
maggie

hoooooooooray! marmie and daddy AND booshi are coming to visit in march! THIS IS THE BEST THING I HAVE BEEN INVOLVED WITH ALL MORNING! and i already cleaned out a chicken coop, so that's saying something.