Book Review Time!!

So I have been gone from home for one month now and I feel pretty good.  When I traveled to Portugal in 2007 I always missed home and felt lonely but on this trip I actually don't miss home that much and so far don't really feel lonely.  I guess when you make up your mind to be gone for a certain amount of time you just get used to it.  Anyways I am getting off track in the past month I have read seven books and am halfway through and eighth book.  So the first five don't really count because I am pretty sure you all have read them.  I read the first five books of the Harry Potter series.  When I was traveling at the airport I needed a distraction and know that Harry Potter would do the trick.  Then after that I couldn't stop.  I am saving the last two in case I need another distraction.  Ok so after my Harry Potter binge I picked up where I had left off with the Lemon Tree by Sandy Tolan.  It is a book that describes the history of the Israel-Pakistan conflicts while walking through the lives and relationship of a Palestinian man Bashir and a Jewish woman Dalia.  I have found that I really enjoy books that are historical but they show you a picture of what the history was like through the eyes of a character.  Through reading this book I learned a lot about the history of Israel and Pakistan that honestly I am sort of ashamed to admit I didn't know a lot about.  I highly recommend it.  (A book I didn't read on this trip but is a similar book in that it is nonfiction but with characters to relate to from North Korea is Nothing to Envy).
After The Lemon Tree I read Poisenwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver.  A few friends had recommended this book before I left so I thought I would give it a read.  Poisenwood Bible is the story of a missionary family who moves from Georgia to the Africa, specifically the Congo.  They plan to be there for only a year but while they are there the people of the Congo was given their independence from Belgium and the family ends up staying for much longer than they expect.  SPOILER ALERT (even though studies show that knowing the end doesn't actually lessen your enjoyment of the movie, book, show etc).  During their time in the Congo the youngest daughter of the family unexpectedly dies and after the book describes how the family basically fell apart and all went in different directions.  I found that really interesting because the book jumps by telling the story from each persons perspective so you can see how everyone justifies in their own mind the grudge they hold against their family members.  I also recommend this book.
So now I am reading the first book of the Game of Thrones series.  I have say I am addicted, definitely a page turner.  The book also jumps from character to character but then the story is how all of these peoples lives are intertwined.  It takes place in the medieval times (ish?) and the characters are human but there are some creatures that don't exist so it might be a little bit fantasy.  I don't think I need to describe the plot of these books very much because I would guess a lot of you have watched the show.  I thought the books were going to be like LOTR but I actually find them to be quite readable.
That is all the books for now - as for other stuff...I am trying to decide if I want to buy a car.  I know I want to eventually but wanted to live for awhile without one.  But there is a guy who is working at my farm who is trying to sell his camper van so he goes to a car market and there are tons of cars for sale because everyone is leaving the country after traveling around for the summer so it is a great time to buy.  He is selling his van for $3600 but I think I want something more efficient.  The way they measure it is how many liters it takes to go 100 km (which is weird), the van takes about 10L to go 100 km and and efficient car takes 4 or 5 so I don't think I want to buy the van - although it is a really good deal.  Looking back I wish I had brought my computer, everyone here is traveling with one.  I guess i didn't realize how quickly I would want to buy a car so I could stash my things in it and not have to carry them on my back.  I am thinking about buying a tablet a cheap laptop or having my mom send me mine.  I am not sure yet.  Next Wednesday I am heading to another farm in Whangarei - it about 100 km north and I am staying there for two weeks, after that I am heading even further north to the Bay of Islands for a month.  Will update again when possible!!

More from Caretaker Farm

So I have been in New Zealand for a little over a couple of weeks now.  I feel sort of weird doing a blog post because to honest no a lot has changed since I last posted.  It is weird because I am in a different country but I am not going to new places all of the time.  So I will probably just go a little more in depth to where I am and kind of my thoughts as of late.  At Caretaker farm you work about 5 hours a day for six days then you get a day off.  On my first day off I went to the Auckland Museum.

Auckland Museum

It was a pretty cool museum, there is a lot of stuff from all of the different populations of the islands in the pacific, and if you didn't know there are a lot of islands but a lot of the people of the different islands lived pretty similarly but the stuff was pretty cool to look at.  There was also some stuff about the Maori culture which was the native people of New Zealand.  The museum also had a natural history floor which was cool to see what kind of animals they have (it also pointed out to me what animals they don't have).  Getting to and from Auckland pretty much took up my day off so I didn't get much done.  On my second day off I stayed closer to the farm and spent time in the towns of Warkworth and Matakana.  They are both cute towns about 20 and 10 minutes away from the farm, respectively.  As most of you know food is a highlight so in Warkworth I want to a cafe and had a latte and french toast the french toast had a pile of bacon and lots of maple syrup on it - it was so good - it was the first coffee and maple syrup I have had since I left.

French toast!!

Hitch hiking is very easy to do in New Zealand (sorry mom), you pretty much get picked up within about 5 minutes.  So next I hitched to a winery and had a tasting.  This winery is really good you can get four tastings for $5 but why I really like it is because it is the only place with a wifi connection where my podcasts will download (I have really been missing my TBTL, This American Life, and Savage Lovecast).  Next I want into Matakana and saw the movie The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel...it was pretty good a little predictable but cute and well acted.

This the outside the winery I like to go to

As for the farm - things are moving ahead with the community oven.  We started building the walls today!!  In the photo you can see Fabrice in the green vest showing how to keep building.  The others are some of the other wwoofers.  After we build it, it will have to dry for about six months before we can cook bread in it so I will have to come back and visit on my way back south.

People have asked a bit about the food here and so far I have found it to be pretty similar to the United States.  It is sort of a mix between US and the UK.  The family I am staying with are originally from the UK so we have Yorkshire pudding and stuff like that.  So far I have not had the opportunity to have any vegemite but there is a lot of Nutella.  The weather so far has also been great the high during the day is about 20C and at night down to 10C.  So far the only way it seems like winter is there is currently about only 12 hours of daylight.  I miss home and a miss my friends but not so much where it feel like I want to go home.  Hope everyone is doing well - much love!!

Farm #1

So finding an internet connection is pretty hard.  I am at a library now and I have access to this computer for 1/2 hour and I like to do other things like check email, facebook, news etc.  So I am going to try to convey my first farm experience but I apologize if it seems short, however I will be at this farm for a month so there will be more to come.  For the past nine days I have been working at Caretaker Farm which is near the towns of Leigh and Matakana on the North Island of New Zealand.  This farm gets a lot of wwoofers and while I have been here there have been as few as four but as much as ten at one time.  There is a wwoofer house where the boys live and where the kitchen, shower and composting toilet is.  I share a room with a Kiwa a Japanese girl.  Everyday we are expected to be ready to work at 8 am.  At eight you either have to feed/clean the chickens/ducks/turkeys or walk the dogs (the photo is of Frodo my favorite dog).

 I usually do the stuff with the birds in the morning to get it out of the way.  After that you get assigned work by Audrey, the woman who owns the farm.  She is a tax law professor and self described socialist and workaholic.  She is really an interesting woman who has so many different projects, I don't have time right now but hopefully I will get a chance to write more about her.  Anyways after chickens we get assigned a job.  Currently there is a french guy visiting the property who is overseeing the construction of a community bread oven (see photos at the bottom one of oven one of stairs we built), so usually we have been sent to work with him to clear trees, level the land the oven is going to go on, and prepare the area for the oven.  I believe the actual building is going to take place next week.  Also about every other day I go and work in the vegetable and flower gardens.

Since I am staying for awhile Audrey has shown me some things to work on in the garden - mainly it is weeding, composting, and planting.  So we do that job until 12:30 then we have a break until 4 where we can go into one of the little towns or cook a big lunch or whatever.  When I first got here there was a girl here from California who was also a climber (I could tell by all the prana she was wearing) and we would go exploring together but she left and mostly the wwoofers who are here now don't want or can't afford to do very much in the afternoon.  Then at four in the afternoon the dogs need to be walked again and the chickens need to fed again.  Then one wwoofer needs to help with dinner and we all eat at 7.  We hang out then go to bed and the day starts again.  I really like working outside and doing physical work, I like how tired it makes me feel at the end of the day.  I have learned some things about farming and something that amazes me about this farm is how little is wasted and how much life there is.  So it is an organic permaculture farm so there are little gardens all over the place.  They also do a lot of garlic but I haven't really seen where they grow it yet but I assume I will be planting it soon.  The animals on the farm include pigs, chickens, ducks, turkeys, spiders, dogs, and cats.  Something I also notice is there are a lot of bugs living in the soils.  Everything on the farm is composted or fed to something else.  I started to get a little lonely this week and start to miss home but I am sure that will come and go.  I get one day off a week and this week I went to the Auckland museum - it was pretty nice next week I am planning on visiting the wineries in the area.  The weather has been pretty nice - mild not very much rain.  I guess they didn't have a very nice summer.  At the farm there is a bunch of clothes we can wear so we don't have to wear our own so the outfits that come out are pretty funny.  I will have to take some pictures to share.

    

Sunshine and Hammocks

Bula!!  I just returned from a six day trip to the Yasawa Islands which is an island chain off to the northwest of the Fiji mainland.  So I guess where I left off I had arrived in Nadi unsure if my boat was going to be able to leave in the morning to start the trip I had booked for the Yasawas.  The boat ended up leaving the next day and the weather from the cyclone that hit Fiji a few days before was clearing up but it was still a bit rainy.  I left Nadi in the morning and arrived on the island of Kuata around 10 in the morning.  The island is pretty small but has really cool rock structures like the one in the picture. 
 For my trip I had booked the most inexpensive accomidations I could find, which meant I was staying in dorms with people I didn't know, there was no air conditioning, cold showers only, and electricity was on only some parts of the day.  All of those I pretty much had no problems with so what we did get were meals, a bed, a bug net for our beds, beach time, and lots of hammocks.  There were seven people staying at the resort that night, most of us were in the dorms, I was the only American but everyone spoke English.  It was a ladies night and there were two
Germans, two Dutch, a Canadian, and a Scot.  Everyone was really nice and it was fun to hear about everyones travels.  Each of my accomadations were run by Fijian people.  I found them to be the most hospitible, kind, and happy people I have ever met.  Most have them have never left Fiji, all the people on the islands are part of one large family, they like to sing and laugh.
For my first day on Kuata I was pretty exhausted from my traveling and still sick so I mainly just walked on the beach, went swimming, and laid around in hammocks (to think of it that is what I did most of the week).

After dinner the Fijians did some entertaining.  It was one of their birthdays so we joined them in a Kava drinking ceremony which is a traditional drink made from Kava root.  Drinking Kava is supposed to have a relaxing effect and it sort of has a peppery taste and numbs the tongue when you drink it.  I hear if you drink a lot it can have a hallucinagenic effects but it mainly made me feel relaxed and sleepy.  They also had everyone go around and sing their national anthems, since I was the only American I had to sing alone and I'm just going to say it: I killed it.  I didn't forget any of the lyrics and got a large round of applause when I finished.  I am going to attribute that to all my nights of karaoke in Olympia.  We also learned a dance, played a game, and did the limbo.  The next day I was headed to White Sandy Beach Resort on Naviti Island.  It is a bigger island and further north that Kuata.  I arrived and didn't feel very well.  I was pretty sure I had a fever so I made myself lie in bed all day only getting up for meals.  It was this evening that I started an involuntary weight loss plan: poop out food before I have the chance to digest it - really fun.  It was a pretty miserable day but by the next day I was feeling a lot better.  Here was the only photo I managed that day at sunset.  This is from the dorms that I was staying in.

That day I walked to the other side of the islands to a different beach.  I went with two friends of mine - they were a canadian and a scot both working as teachers in Australia and were in Fiji on holiday.  We took snorkel gear and did a little snorkling.  One of my friends started to feel very sick - I am pretty sure she had caught part of what I had because she was pretty feverish so we soon went back.  That afternoon I also did some snorkeling off the beach we were staying at and it was amazing.  I wish I could have pictures but I don't have an underwater camera.  What was really awesome here were the coral structures.  They were massive!!  I had been waking up early because I was still on American time but it was nice because I would be up for the sunrises.

Before we left one of the guys climbed a coconut tree for us to have a coconut - it was amazing the tree was very tall.

So the next day, Saturday I was headed to my last destination which was Nabua Resort on Nacula Island, I had to say good bye to my friends I had made but was headed to the most beautiful area of the Yasawas.

The water here was just so blue and clear and the weather had gotten really nice.  There were also a lot more people staying at the resort so it was much more lively.  The first day I arrived I didn't do much - just read, swam, laid in hammocks again.  Dinner was amazing with fresh caught fish, eggplant, spinach stuff, it was way more than I could eat.  The Fijians again entertained us with song and dance.  The next day I went snorkeling at the best place in the Yasawa's it is called Blue Lagoon - it was the best snorkeling I have ever done.  I probably saw hundreds of fish and over one hundred different kinds of fish.  The coral was also amazing here as well.  My (scary) highlight was I saw a snake it was about a meter long and it was white and black striped it was very beautiful because it was almost shiny but it scared me.  I asked the boat driver about it and he said it was poisenous!!  I finished snorkeling and got a drink at the bar

The next day I packed up and took a long boad trip back to Nadi.  I had such a good time.  It was nice not to have any contact with computers or any technology.  I got some good reading in - I will probably finish book four of the Harry Potter Series tonight!!   I have more picture and experiences to share but must say good night.  Tomorrow I am headed to New Zealand to start my WWOOFing - I will keep you updated.

 

Rough Start

So I want to preface this post with the fact that I have taken no pictures yet so there are going to be no pictures.  So it has been an intense couple of days so far.  It started with getting an email from the airlines that said that my flight had been delayed and the delay would cause me to miss my flight from LA to Fiji.  They were different airlines so it was complicated.  So I rushed to the airport hoping I could get a flight so that I wouldn't miss my connection.  I got put on standby and felt pretty optimistic.  Then I got to the terminal and I met people that had been waiting to leave Seattle for days.  I got more nervous.  I don't know how but I was the first person on the stand-by list but the flight was overbooked by two passengers.  About a half an hour before the flight I received my boarding pass!!  I was so excited I think I was the only stand-by passenger to make it on.  So my flight to LA was great and I arrived at the gate for my flight to Fiji and saw that my flight was canceled.  I guess there had been some (and still is) some flooding in Fiji and a cyclone was going through at the time my flight was supposed to take off.  There was a guy there who had been trying to get to Fiji since Thursday (it was Sunday night) I went to the front desk to see what I could do and they said the flight was not canceled.  Great - I checked my luggage.  About an hour before boarding an announcement says that the flight has been delayed from 11:30 pm to 8:00 am the next day.  So looks like I am spending the night in the airport.  I tried sleeping in weird positions on the awkward benches and on the floor spooning my valuble stuff but ended up not getting much sleep.  At that point no one was even sure the 8 am flight was going to happen.  After talking to some people they said flights had resumed going into Fiji so off I went.  The flight was long but not too bad and pretty smooth.  I arrived in Fiji and it is raining.  It turns out there isn't much to do when it rains.  I had missed the first day of the package deal I am going on to some of the more beautiful islands and hoping to start that trip tomorrow but it is a possibility the boats are not going out yet.  I guess several people got stranded on the islands for several days during the storms so they are being cautious.  I am starting to calm down here - there are a lot of cool travelers that I have already talked to but most are leaving because they were stranded on the islands for the past several days.  More from Fiji in probably about a week.  Internet access looks like it is going to be sparse but I think it will be kind of nice.