Christian's Update

Well, Laura has been writing the updates, but today i decided that I would do one. So, we are finally off to do some hiking. Last night we took a 3am ferry from Wellington (North island) to Picton (South island). Last night we saw a Burlesque show and some live music (one singer dressed like axel rose!), all events part of the Wellington Fringe Festival. There is a great multifaceted arts scene there. Tomorrow we head off to hike the Queen Charlette Track for the next four days! We have to take another ferry to the track which is mostly costal. The weather here is quite hot and we haven't had the arctic winds that we seemed to get a fair amount of in Wellington.

Last week was my first WWOOF (willing worker on organic farms) experience , and I can only hope that any subsequent WWOOF experience could be as great as this one. We stayed with the Clarke family farm called SMORGanics, and participted in a variety of tasks throughout the week.. We watered and harveseted fresh veggies from there garden, took care of the chickens, chasing all the animals, cows, chickens, and geese, back into the proper paddocks (a daily adventure!), wood chopping, weeding a shelter belt (permaculture feature), drafting their proposed conservatory (sun room)!!, painting a sign (i really enjoyed this!), cooking, drinking lots of tea, and many other things. We really liked eating fresh veggies right out of their garden and fresh eggs!! One highlight of the week was blueberry picking. We have both picked blueberries before, but nothing came close to the farm we went to. You could just close your eyes and stick out your hand and you would have a handful of perfect blueberries. It was really a ridiculous amount of blueberries on this farm.. and they tasted sooooooo good. Laura and I learned alot here and on our last night, she spent the evening taking notes about all she had learned. Thanks to the Clarke Family! We will see you in a few weeks!

So as i said earlier we will be traveling for the next three weeks! So we will be in touch with you all when we can!

This is Sophia. Thanks for teaching us how to play boneknuckles... or is it knucklebones?

One of Laura's daily tasks was feeding the chickens. The chickens frequently jumped over the fence when she came over. Apparently, Laura thought kissing them would be a god reward!

Here are some of our surroundings at Smorganics.
We are off to explore the northern shores of the South Island. Tramping on the Queen Charlotte, the Abel Tasman and whaterer we come across in the next three weeks!

Thanks Rae, Mike, Georgia, Olivia, Sophia, Tui, and Tigerlilly for being such wonderful hosts! We really enjoyed our stay and will see you in a few weeks!

Laura's Email Update #2

It's about that time for another Kiwi update everyone...

Hope all is well back home. Thank you so much for your emails - it was beyond great to hear from you. I've discovered internet time is a bit expensive, but I will try to reply as time goes on. I love hearing about home, and I still get homesick.

So....here's the big news. The Big Blue Bug is no more!!! As of two days ago, we have abandonded him for a younger, green and white version of himself. Unfortunately, Big Blue loved our Camp Elsdon campground outside of Wellington so much, he did not want to leave, literally! We got him there, and there he wanted to stay. We thought our car troubles were over once we got here, but one after another after another thing kept breaking. The kicker is, it is so rusted, it won't pass the NZ version of inspection, due in March. So we have cut our losses and bought a different van off a nice british girl. This one I hope hope hope does not break. We were much smarter and more careful this time, and a couple of mechanics have told us it is a great car.

There actually feels like there is not much to update since we last spoke, because our trip feels like it has not fully started yet - 2 and a half weeks of car buying and car fixing, and a few days of Wellington site seeing. We are posting pictures of Kevin our mechanic who gave us a keychain, some candy, and a hug on our way out, our new van ("white and green striped bug?" - I am accepting name suggestions), and the sites from beautiful Camp Elsdon - campervan park aka home in Porirua suburb.

We are off to try our hand at wwoofing for a week. I hope all is well!
Love,
Laura & Christian

New Van!

Here is the New Van! Name suggestions please!!!

This is Kevin. He was our trusty mechanic that we conversed with daily about our vehicle problems. Without him.. we would probably still be at Elsdon. He was a huge fan of the Crusaders, a rugby team from the south Island, whereas all the other mechanics in the area were fans of the "Hurricanes" (north island). Kinda like being a Yankee fan in RedSox land... a familiar story. He also had 7 dogs!!!

Here is a shot from the national museum, TePapa. The water is so clean and blue in Wellington that people jump in whenever and wherever they want. No pollution from the industrial revolution... that rhymed.

Trampoline!

We also had a trampoline at our campsite that we used quite often!

Leaving Porirua

Here is a picture of Laura feeding "Rhubarb". He was one of the two donkeys that were also staying at our campground.

Mondo again!!!

Mondo looks happy!!

Mondo!!!

so i really miss mondo and i asked my sister to send me a picture of him. I thought would be good to share with everyone that misses him too!!!

Laura's Email Update!

kia ora everybody!

i have been missing my community back home, and i have been away for 2 weeks now, so i'm thinking it is time to write an email.

christian and i are now in wellington, new zealand's capital. they say it is summer here, but you could have fooled me. yes, there are times when in the sun you feel a bit warm and want to take off your sweatshirt, but it is pretty windy and chilly here! they call it windy wellington.

we were planning to be in wellington in the middle of last week, but much has happened to delay that. we bought ourselves an ancient camper van from a car fair in auckland. we were very happy about it, and it is big and blue, so we decided to name it "the big blue bug", to remind us of our beloved providence. we even named our blog after it - currently featuring some lovely pictures: http://www.bigbluebugblog.blogspot.com/. it is a very comfortable place to live in, and it would suit our needs quite nicely, if it weren't quite so lemonlike. it took us 4 days and 5 mechanics to get it down to wellington! part of that we knew when we bought it, so we were not completely surprised. despite the delay, we had some really nice days in crazy little towns with the one mechanic for the town fixing our car. one guy reminded us of crocodile dundee, and another, the most talented mechanic out of all of them who actually knew what the problem was, looked like he was 70 years old but races motorcycles as a hobby.

we are busy touring our new city. there are a bunch of festivals going on since it is "waitangi day" - celebrating a treaty in which the maoris sold their land to the europeans. the treaty happened to be translated incorrectly so the maori did not know what they were signing. also, the first night we arrived and the next, was "sevens", the biggest party the city celebrates each year. it is an international rugby tournament in which the teams use 7 players instead of 14. i like sevens better than the superbowl because everyone gets dressed up in matching costumes, kind of like the price is right meets halloween, and walk around the streets from bar to bar.

finally, we had out first Landmark class on saturday. this class is focused around completing a community project. it seems a bit hard to do it in a foreign country where we have no community, but i think it will be a good way to feel more at home here. we will see how it goes.

i miss you guys, please write and fill me in on your lives. i have a lot more time on my hands lately, so i could even write back.
love
laura

I just wrote a really really long update... and true to form, i lost it all!!! so here is a brief one!

The road south has been magical and problematic. Our bigbluebug has had some serious mechanical issues, but as a result we have been treated to some "kiwi hospitality".

On our first night in Wellington we were greeted by the colorfuly dressed and extremely drunk fans of the "sevens" international rugby tournament. Laura started a sidwalk dance party, and I partipated in a country dance off with a guy in a all red, one-piece jump suit. It was a great first night out in Wellington.

The people of NZ, especially the young Maori, are really fearless. They jump off of anything that has water below it without hesitation. They are friendly and interesting to talk to.

I miss Mondo alot, and oh yeah, i miss all of you that Are actually reading this!