today is malcolm's birthday! and what did he get for his birthday from me? half a case of beer (robin paid for the other half) and my friendship love. i just liked malcolm up until now, but now that he's 23, things are different. he (and lindsay, even though today isn't her birthday) are part of the exclusive, but ever growing, club of people who i love. no membership fees. no expiration date. mally mally mally.

i have so enjoyed living next door to our asian neighbors during these past few weeks of an apple life. all three of them are inspiring in their fearless forays into english and in their dedication to meeting new friends. their friendship with each other is bravely forged through the muddy waters of accented english and a mutual desire to be in this beautiful country. having them around is like constantly starting a bad joke. a korean man, a japanese man, and a chinese man walk into a bar. . .

i remember during my summer in china how much i loved getting to hear a japanese friend and fellow worldteach volunteer, fumiko, skype her family in japan. the rhythmic quality of the japanese language was nothing i had ever heard before, and i thought it was unusually beautiful. it has been wonderful having another japanese friend to eavesdrop on. a few nights ago we asked kota to read aloud his japanese version of the lonely planet. the cadence of fluent japanese sounds almost like spanish to my untrained ear, and it has the magical capability of making even a travel guide captivating. japanese is the beautiful language i will from now on associate with breathy romance, not italian or spanish.

i was thinking this afternoon how different my generation is from my parents’ generation. remembering the weeks leading up to my semester in ghana both mom and dad commented that going to ghana during a university semester was absolutely unheard of during their youth. europe was their world to discover. i feel lucky that i have been encouraged to greet every inch of this simultaneously big and small planet. every time i take a moment to look around - regardless of where i am - i can’t help but think what a great place it is.

love,
maggie

apple picking update: still hard, hard, hard. my entire body is sore for all of my conscious hours. it takes a break from hurting while i sleep, but then kicks back in the moment i wake. we are intensifying our farmer’s tans and eating about three apples a day each.

living in the tiny caravan update: still fun, fun, fun. we have bonded with the three asians living next door, err, umm, next car over. without their solicitation, we have started word of the day vocabulary lessons. words they have learned so far: exhausting, obligation, strangle. things are going very well.

malcolm and lindsay update: still love them, love them, love them. last night the four of us came into the hopping town of napier for their annual art deco festival weekend. everyone (really, everyone except us and maybe six other people) was dressed up in boas, suspenders and paperboy caps, and sequins. it was so neat! it felt more like being in the 1920s than a weird halloween because everyone was a part of it.

robin and me update: still happy, happy, happy. we are leaving napier in a few weeks to meet my family in auckland while they visit and then off to the south island again and back to one of our favorite new zealand homes, carolyn’s.

just me update: still me, me, me, but more and more i am becoming kiwi. there is a certain way of life here called “bogan” that i am very much embracing. “bogan” is a term that is a bit fuzzy on definition, but i would most closely associate it with “redneck” at home. bogans don’t wear shoes, often times have mullets or rat-tails, wear bathing suits a lot as actual outer wear. with unprecedented gusto, i support all aspects of the bogan lifestyle. my favorite is not wearing shoes. into grocery stores, shops, the bank. you don’t have to wear shoes anywhere! all of us are enjoying the foot freedom. the other day going into the grocery store, malcolm, robin and i all neglected to put on our shoes even though we had them in the car. it’s great. also, i bought my very own jar of marmite the other day! what happened?

while apple picking is such hard work nowadays there are many silver linings to life. one such being that i get a lot of ipod time. ipods, for those of you pre-gen X, are tiny machines that hold all of your music for you. how do i explain this so you may understand? it’s as if all of your tapes - or records - have had the music taken off of them and moved to a little shiny box. it’s magic. let’s leave it at that.

in addition to the lovely periods of music time, when the four of us do get off of work we are so excited to see each other it’s like an everyday smiley reunion! and then when we get home, we make dinner and laugh for four hours and then go to sleep.

maybe the most important thing i have learned in this past week is that anything can be fun if i am with people i love. and thankfully, i am. the second most important thing i have learned is always, always, ALWAYS wash your produce. people like me are picking it, and trust me, i am dirty when i am doing it. i think i heard malcolm sneeze into his bag of apples last thursday. just wash your fruit, okay?

love,
maggie

y'all. apple picking is such hard work.

i am happy but always exhausted. so pumped to be living with malcolm, lindsay, and robin in a trailer that we can tow on our car if need be. laughter to the accident-almost stage every night and every day. we are having so much fun. somehow, despite our tragic picking skills.

even my thumb joints hurt from picking for nine hours. must stop typing!

love,
maggie

robin and i have safely arrived in the hawke’s bay region of new zealand! we were welcomed by the loving arms of malcolm and lindsay last night in our tiny caravan that somehow we are all sleeping in. this morning we got up early enough to see the sunrise, ate breakfast, packed lunches, and picked snack time apples from the apple trees seven feet in front of our caravan. waking up to new zealand continues to be exciting and beautiful.

robin and i start our nine hour apple picking work days on monday. malcolm and lindsay have been picking for a few days now, and they are feeling the burn. i am scurrred. but we will get good at it and soon be rolling in dough. maybe rich enough to buy each one of you a ticket to move here!

yesterday during our drive robin and i were trying to list all of the food we have eaten straight from the plant. literally picked it ourselves and then eaten it. lots of time it still has dirt (i call it “dirt” here, which is really my euphemism for horse manure) on it. we have come up with this so far:

peas
string beans
broad beans
apples
pears
plums
tomatoes
cucumbers
lettuce
fennel
bell peppers
lemons
limes
beets
arugula
silver beet
spinach
strawberries
boysenberries
raspberries
cherries
broccoli
cauliflower
custard apples (they are crazy and delicious!)
onions
carrots
spring onions
radishes
grapefruit
heaps of herbs including: thyme, basil, rosemary, cilantro, parsley, sorrell
a grape (i made a mistake and ate a not yet ripe one. much too sour.)

food that we have picked and then cooked a little bit before eating it because it’s kind of gross otherwise:

eggplants
corn
potatoes
squash
zucchinis
turnips
pumpkin

and we are only halfway through the summer. and haven’t even hit the fall harvest plants! this life is yummy, in all the senses of the word.

love,
maggie

last night i grew a new freckle. it’s on my heel, and it’s already blending in nicely. no one ever believes me that i can feel myself growing, but i can. i remember telling people about my discovery early along the mostly smooth course that was getting to know new friends in ghana. this personal revelation was the only speed bump on the way to glorious friendships.

it happened tonight during my towel time as i was lying on my bed. i can only feel myself growing a new freckle in the rare moments when i am in the quiet space of being alone, being on my back, and being peacefully awake. growing a new freckle feels like a tiny and persistent ant is dancing in a single spot on my skin. every single time.

on friday and saturday evenings while robin, meta, and i were staying at saint gilly and saint greg’s beach house, i went out into the incredibly low tide bay where we found the most spa-like mud. the kind of middle of the night black mud that feels like wet silk. the kind of mud that is produced by millions of years of volcanic formation that appears only during low tides in shallow, get low get low get low get low, bays and the kind of mud that costs 200 dollars an hour to have rubbed on your body by a “technician” at a spa. both of these nights we rubbed the black mud all over our entire bodies then stayed out in the sunset and let the heat dry us into a crackle and then let the ocean wash us clean. it felt perfect. when perfect is accurate, you know? i had a dream on friday night where i had black mudded half of my body and left the other half my regular white color. in this dream someone took a picture of it and put it in a museum and the picture was titled “Ebonme and Ivorme.” robin and i tried out the picture setup yesterday afternoon. it was better in my dream.

in other news, robin and i took meta to the airport today and wished her a safe trip back to the united states. after ten wonderful days with us, we all are tired and happy and impressed by all we got to see. it was so lovely having meta here, and i was constantly grateful for her unnecessary, but much appreciated, generosity in funding many of our expeditions! we saw giant kauri trees and sat on wonderful beaches and had a “perfect day at sea” and ate chocolate and drank wine and snorkeled and went to sleep early and woke up early. my only regret (not at all regret. i say regret because i think i am supposed to.) was that i spent a solid ten of a 36 hour period reading a john grisham book. i couldn’t help myself! we are on a (year-long) vacation.

AND WE SAW AVATAR, AND IT IS FANTASTIC. i love aliens?! who am i now? the most stunned i have ever been after three hours of sitting in the dark. great, great, i always want to be surprised and pleased like that, great.

in a few days robin and i will leave auckland to meet up with malcolm and lindsay to hang out for a bit before all four of us start working on an apple orchard. i suspect malcolm will be making serious bank. i suspect i won’t. eh. i’ll learn. and then jacob comes to new zealand and then my family follows a few days behind and then, boom! - it’s the middle of march and we will have been here for six months. where does the time go? probably to starbucks for a non-fat latte and then to the gym and then gets home for dinner with its grandkids.

love,
maggie