Help Exchange part 2

Hi all,
Well we spent about 5 days doing some “gardening”(and by gardening I mean digging up dirt, pulling out the weeds then putting the dirt back) in a “charming” little house on the Banks Peninsula (and by charming I mean rat/cockroach infested and smoke stink) with a couple of really nice guys and their 2 dogs. It was a good experience over-all, but I was ready to go when our time was up. It did provide for a trip and lifetime highlight which was getting slapped in the ass by a 60 year old gay priest. And that’s all I’ll say about that.

We have since moved on and now we’re staying in a gorgeous farm owned by a fun couple (Mark and Wendy). The minute we came in the door, Wendy nonchalantly told Gay she was having a dinner party for 10 people that night and Gay had to start cooking immediately. They went out to the local store for food while Mark and I drove through the farm to round up some more fire wood. That night was a lot of fun as we had dinner with everybody and it was a rowdy group. Gay cooked up a great curry dish and some asparagus crepes with some kind of creamy sauce. Of course everyone loved it.
The past couple of days we’ve been doing pretty odd jobs; today I washed their cars, and took a look at their website, yesterday I helped Mark with moving some rocks around, then I literally threw a lamb over a fence. Gay has been helping Wendy clean their guest cottages, gardening and making some dinners. Wendy now wants Gay to make up a menu for the next couple of days so Gay is excited about that. People eat really late around here.

DIY…
Doing the help exchange has been great for interacting with kiwis (ass-slapping included) and seeing how they live. As we’ve been meeting a lot of farm-based kiwi’s one of the main themes that comes up, especially in rural areas, is a very do-it-yourself attitude towards things. Everything as far fetched as building your own sail boat and then sailing it around the world, to the relatively more mundane tasks of building your own 2000sqft house (including plumbing and electricity), fixing your own cars and writing up your own legal documents for when you’re selling or buying property. It’s a very inspiring attitude but they typically work very hard, especially if you have a farm and a lot of land to look after.

Our poor car…
Well our car has gotten yet another bad diagnosis. Bottom line is the motor is pretty much dead. We now have to decide whether to just scrap the car or get another motor for it. We still have a bit of driving to do as we wanted to check out a small city called Nelson which is about an 8 hour drive from where we are. I guess we’ll figure it all out and just hang loose until then.

Some good pictures and video still to come, I'm havng a bit of trouble with our ftp site, here are a couple though..