Back in the US of A

IMG_2771.JPG
Originally uploaded by club_rock_it.

I love America. Americans are so imperfect and so perfectly open, and straightforward, and mean, and perfectly flawed. They suspect each other, and insult strangers, and share intimate details of their lives and their children's lives with perfect strangers on public transportation.
Though it would probably make me more glamourous and instrinsically cooler, I wouldn't want to be anything but an American. I have the burden of being the newest scapegoat (and deservedly so) in a world that has always made mistakes and talked too loud in public and enslaved other peoples. Americans are like children or perhaps young teenagers; embarassingly cocksure, beautifully innocent, endearingly enthusiastic, rebellious, and bumbling.
I am one of them. Our wisdom is tied up in our innocence and in our diversity. Our wisdom is hard to see, but it is there, because we are all trying to live together here, and get along, and keep ourselves happy.
I return from far away to the familiar feelings of very real joy (at the profusion of music playing everywhere, the familiar faces on the streets) and very real fear (on the rainy streets at night, in parking lots, gas-station bathrooms). Emotions are unfiltered, and everyone is grasping the end of their very own frayed and taut rope.

(Above is a picture of my brother dancing at his club, dressed like a drunken banquet waiter. It has nothing to do with the above opinions and thoughts, except that he is part of what makes this country so awesome, so beautiful, so rocknroll.)

Controlled landscapes and speech impediments

Yesterday we had a Art Day, going to a gallery in Lyttelton, and to the main art museum in Christchurch. New Zealand seems to be a very fertile place for the arts AND the crafts (every small town has a gallery with local crafts you can buy; knitted stuff, honey, lavender wreaths, tiles, hats, soap, ceramics etc...) and, like the Canadians, they take care of their own.
The art is not only of the beautiful-raku-pot with Moari-inspired swirls variety. It is also cuttingedge, modern, post-modern, made of rubber and spurting water, pop, tongue-in-cheek, urban and dystopian. As well as much more. I mean to say, it's a microcosm of the world art scene.
Looking at it helps me understand New Zealand, because mostly I have been at a loss in understanding this mirror-world on the other side of the planet (the MOST isolated major human settlement) that seems sometimes like a Cali beach city where everyone has the same speech impediment (Oh, that's mean. I'm just trying to highlight how COMFORTABLE and MELLOW it is here, and how familiar.) Their times of Colonialism were much more recent than America's, and they have been affected by the proximity of Asia and Southeast Asia, as well as by the strong British-settler influence. You can read this in the art that's represented, but you can also read another, almost stronger thread running through the artwork. I'm not sure if this is because of the political leanings of most artists, but there is a a concern for the environment and environmental protection that is very strong. It's not something you get into in college and then grow out of around here. It's not divided between different economic classes as much as it is in the US. It's just the natural reaction from living in a place that (A.) has incredible and breathtaking natural beauty to rival anywhere in the world (B.) been farmed and slashed and burned and logged and plundered from the very start, until there are almost NO regions of NZ that look the way they did before Colonization. It's eerie, driving through mountainous regions that stretch as far as the eye can see, all lush a green and beutiful, and YOU CAN LOOK THROUGH THE FORESTS, because the trees are all planted in a STRAIGHT-LINED GRID. Whole sections of the island are tree farms. NOTHING grows underneath them. There are also no animals. There are some birds and introduced nocturnal rodent-species (including the hedgehog- my favorite thing EVER), but you never see anything else. There are TONS of deer here, but only because they are raised for venison. All the deer are in pastures, fenced in, just like the bazillions of sheep, which make NZ look as well manicured and green-velvet as the finest golf course. It's a strange dynamic: natural beauty=totally controlled landscape.

Anyway, that picture up there is by my favorite NZ artist, Bill Hammond. He has pictures up at The Volcano Restaurant, and I am crazy about them. He does a lot of elongated, shag-headed (a shag is a brid like a cormorant) men, that stalk across stained plains and lang from trees. Excellent!

Done and Done-er

So Mykle just wants to close his eyes and be at home eating a burrito, but here we are back in Christchurch trying to sell the van along with 20,000 Germans . It's Fall, and we are all heading back to whereever we came from (us: the U.S.A. and Everyone Else: Germany) and the trees in the Botanical Garden changed color and didn't even send a memo about it. In the South (where we just arrived from) there is supposedly a typhoon, so thank goodness we aren't there, I guess. I am digging the change of weather, it's overcast and windy. I had a summer, a fall, a summer, a fall and then I'll go home and it will be spring, which in San Francisco feels like fall. Haha. Travelling between hemispheres rules.
We almost gave in and went to the burrito place in town today (I know I mention burritos a lot. It's a motif, o.k? Get over it.) cause the sign in the front said "It's Unburritible". heh. Instead we sat on the bank of the Avon (the river here where people go punting) and ate a salami and baugette and apples and drank gin(ger beer). It was very Ye Olde. We are trying to save some money, cause Christchurch is a Money Hole, much like Our Fair City of San Francisco. Actually prices are comparable, but it's dangerous, cause NZ money is colorful and plastic and has a tiny window in it and therefore looks like a toy. To be played with and spent freely. The exchange rate is like 70 NZ cents to a dollar. This post cost me $4! You figure it out!

I don't think I've posted since we were going to Dunedin. It was a college town experience, and we did go to a show at a cool cafe/club, which was quite a humorous time. We researched the happenings around town, ate kebabs, had coffee, checked out the stencils and graffitti and posters in the alleys, and decided to go to random show listed as "garage rock", with a scary Christmas Tree on the flyer. We were mainly taken with the name of the very first performer on the list: "Banjo Stuey". I mean, how can you go wrong with that? Our intuition seemed to be right.
We went to the show (on St. Patty's, where all of a sudden Kai in her bright green jacket and striped stockings was dressed like a leprechaun instead of just Kai and people kept telling her that her outfit was "wicked, eh!") and the band members were all children, probably no more than 17 or 18 years old. They had fun, their little mohawked friends all jumped on stage and danced and sang, the bass player with the mop of slash-inspired hair was in ALL THREE bands, basically it was really entertaining and funny. Banjo Stuey, however, was an old codger with a huge long white beard and a stony beanie. He played banjo and sang songs with lyrics like "tralala, tralalee" in a tinney, high pitched voice and seemed totally stoked to be there, opening for a passell of punk and metal-head homeschoolers. They seemed to return the adoration. He was like their old-guy mascot. We surmised that they met while hanging out and busking and skateboarding in downtown Dunedin. Who knows. It was great.

This whole trip has shown that we are popular with "the help". I'm just saying "The help" to be mean, what I refer to is: waiters, bar-tenders, club-employees, and anyone who is a younger person in a service position. I'm not sure if we seem wildly interesting/kindred spirits because of our obvious tattoos or silly demeanors or large sunglasses and serious bed-head or what, but we tend to make friends easily with these types. We stopped on the way back from Dunedin in a horrible tourist strip, much like a Reno Casino-complex, to have a terrible and over-priced dinner (which was still very fun) at a swanky place. As we left, the waiter asked where we were staying, mentioned what bar HE would be at, and basically gave every indication that we should stay and make his life in casino-hell a bit more interesting. It made me somewhat sad to leave.
It was flattering too. So far we have bailed on two seperate invitations of a local place to stay from two slightly-sketchy but possibly very fun kiwis (both male). It's sort of interesting to think that if I wasn't travelling with Mykle I would NEVER IN A MILLION YEARS consider accepting these invitations. In this case, though, I was sort of bummed that they didn't work out. Ok, I'm just bummed about one not working out. The other was a bit too sketch; drunken brother, no lights, spray-painted house number and all that.

We are staying at the backpackers in Lyttelton, which is nothing to mention, other than Lyttelton itself is very cool. A town on a hill, you have to drive through a very long, tiled, badly-ventilated toxic tunnel to get there. Lyttelton is home to the COOLEST BAR EVER; Wonderbar, of which there are pictures on my Flickr page, from my first visit there. Across the street is also a VERY awesome restaurant/cafe/bar; The Volcano, whose decorating motif is sort of tropical with strange Louise Bourgois-type sculptures and potted plants hanging from the rafters. I am taking Mykle there for dinner some night this week, after which my ATM card will spontaneously combust. Wish me luck!

P.S>How is the weather? I am sort of homesick, even though that's sort of sad. Much Love.

Green Curry and Big News

IMG_1537
Originally uploaded by kai smart.

It's always fun, having a name like mine, which is more of an universal SOUND than a name, to go places and get funny looks from people to whom your name means "food" (here, in Maori) and "egg" (Thailand). No, we didn't go to Thailand. That's next year (I hope). BUT we have been eating Thai food like there's no tomorrow. Green Curry is like a drug. We both like it very spicy, and usually get beers with it, and then emerge into the sunny day with that angelic-spicy-food-sheen of ecstacy on our faces. I have been somewhat of a bottomless pit since I've been here, eating three meals a day, having dessert, etc....but my ravening hunger was somewhat put off by a bout of food poisoning the day before yesterday. Chalk another strange malady up to the Kai-Smart-Is-Notoriously-Accident-Prone Scorecard. I feel like an invalid sometimes (mainly this past week) and it is not a good feeling.
Luckily, during my illness we were staying at a juggling-themed backpackers, which felt more like staying in a big wind-scoured Germanic beach house (don't ask me how that could happen) than at the usual rambling funky hostel. We hung out with many Germans there (who are all soft-spoken and fresh faced. boy, do they like the outdoors. and they tan like nobody's business! is that fair??!!) and the spunky fire-spinning proprieter, Nikki, who is English, and some others (including a French older man, Gerard, who was SO VERY FRENCH. I sat next to him at the table and painted while he had this for dinner one night; 10 or so steamed mussels, 2 steaks, done bloody, with fresh garlic sliced on top of them, a whole mini-wheel of brie (eaten straight with a knife), and a bottle of red wine. I am totally serious. All he needed was a beret and a gauloise and it would've been perfect!!!!). It's pretty amazing how many actual juggling people show up to an un-advertised house in a tiny suburb in a remote town in the hills in New Zealand. Mykle, being the curmudgeon that he is, managed to get through the entire stay without letting on to any of the juggling Germans that he not only juggles, but also speaks German. It's somewhat infuriating to me, since I wish I could do both. It's also pretty funny.
Picton is the name of the town, and like a few other small places we've been to, smacks of tourist-beach-town-with-no-other-economy-except-yachts-and-"maritime history". A bit uncomfortably familiar to us native Santa Cruzans, who have a creepy feeling when we are put in the place of the people who we distained (no doubt unfairly) as little local children.
Anyhow, our three days was wonderfully spent, and there was fresh-bread baked every morning for the guests, and we got in many conversations about Burning Man, and people's opinions on it (not that anyone except us had ever been, but it's kind of a fire-spinning person's mecca or anti-mecca, so everyone has something to say). Thank goodness we were there, with a nice soft bed, instead of in the van at a campground with a composting toilet (these are very popular in New Zealand. SO are sinks and kitchens run on rainwater collected from the roof.)

Speaking of everyone having something to say, I feel I am now the US emmisary of girls-with-tattoos, I can't even count how many conversations I've had that are started with people telling me they: like my arm/never seen a girl with that much tattooing/ questioning if I am going to get it colored/ how much did it cost/wish they could get something like it...etc. It's pretty awesome. It's an immediate ice-breaker, and everyone is super nice about it, and I end up holding up lines at banks and in gas stations while the clerk shows me their dolphin ankle tattoo.

SO we are now in Christchurch, briefly (for some hours) while I pick up my backpack (YAY) and then we are heading to Dunedin, which is South and then over to the West to do the Kepler Track. I am determined to be jaunty and wholesome and not a vomiting leperous mess. Yay! We shall search Dunedin (a college town of sorts) for the elusive "Rock Show", which are few and far between. NZ seems to follow in the European fixation with House/Break-beats/Techno/Euro-Club/Dub Craze (how long will this insanity last???) and any music that isn't this seems to be Bob Marley. He's like the most popular musician on the face of planet earth.

I hope everyone is well, and would like to share the news that we are coming back earlier than expected. Mykle chose our arrival and departure dates at complete random, and we feel that we have had a very full and exciting vacation so far, and can definately afford to come back a bit early, save money, and get Mykle a burrito before he perishes. Hahaha. We are going to housesit for Mykle's parents for a while (which could be seen as saving money, except that we are still paying some rent on our apt. in SF) and have big happy kissy reunions of joy and spend a lot of time in taquerias.

Fun NZ facts: Schoolchildren wear uniforms that make them look like schoolmarms (tartan skirts that go down to the ankle), Tim Burton movie extras (oh god, the boy's Church of Christ school in Christchurch has the MOST amazing uniforms: black suitcoats with tiny white pin-stripes, black and white horizontal-striped ties, little grey shorts, and black kneesocks with a white stripe at the top. It's devastating. All they need are little skull masks.) or something more sinister... We drove past a schoolyard today with many children all in wide-brimmed red hats (there's no ozone here), which Mykle pointed out made them look like hordes of miniature Spanish Inquisitors.

Holy Christ

Flickr worked, but it's two in the morning, and I've been going to sleep at 9. So I have a random jumble of the first couple weeks on there. WOOOO!!!!
New Zealand Zeal: Pictures of Kai and Mykle's dreamy aimless wanderings

Picture attempts made while BF sleeps

Well, it won't let me upload more than one at a time, so you may get a bunch of different posts, each with one picture. I am trying Flickr again too.
We are staying at yet another quirky backpackers (this time in Picton, in the Marlborough Sounds), the current one is a beauiful rambling house with a huge kitchen , a juggling theme (!), and clean-scrubbed wood everywhere that looks like zen driftwood. We are "living it up" and haven't slept in the van for 3 nights. We got waylaid in Nelson, at "The Palace", a rambling Victorian on a hill, with amazing paneling and a free continenetal breakfast (meaning cheap toast and jam...but free!). We went to the movies and the utterly awesome Farmer's Market (food, pr0duce,crafts, and more crafts). The art in this area is of very high quality. I guess the local clay around Nelson is good, so there are lots of potters (!)

Here is one picture, taken on our boat ride in Akaroa, a couple weeks ago. Look at the color of the water in the background, IF you can tear your eyes away from our beautiful faces!
much love,
Kai

The Gross Post and Bug-bite Report

Disclaimer: If you want to know how our trip is going by and large, please read the preceding more poetic posts. Thanks.

OK, since I love and care about all of your entertainment so very much I am now writing this AGAIN, this time at night in our spare, swanky room at “The Palace” a rambling Victorian backpackers hostel on a promontory overlooking a Shell station and more generally, the town of Nelson, a town that boasts a church whose design is listed as both “Gothic” and “Industrial” in Let’s Go (the guidebook that is our curse but sometimes also our salvation).

How’s that for a super-run-on opening sentence?! How much do you think Mykle loves the design of the church (called “Christ Church”, just to be original)?

So basically I started my EPIC post earlier with a BIG THANK YOU to all of you (Mom, Michelle, Zina, Paul, Jordan, and Halie) for the weather updates (it seems I am doing well here with the perfect hot yet cool-breezy blindingly sunny weather) and well wishes. THANK YOU! Things are pretty aimless, and road-trip groovy, which has its ups (we are free like the albatross- which we SAW…more on that later) and its downs (we don’t know where the hell we are going and don’t really care, leading to major indecision). All we know is that we are going to do the Kepler track at some point; Kai wants to go to Fiordland because it is “Mystical”, and Mykle really wants a burrito*. Some days the plan goes like this: we want technology, showers, and Thai food (that was today). And yay! We got all those things! Good thing too, cause;

We finished a piece of the Abel Tasman track today, 4 days and 3 nights of ghetto-fabulous “tramping” (which is not as exciting and scandalous as it may sound, also known in the States as “backpacking”) through curving temperate jungle/piny coastal woods along the slope of coastline that leads to golden sand beaches and a clear, brilliant turquoise sea. Damn folks, it’s pretty here. All those island paradises that are so beautiful in the brochures but also boast flesh-eating-parasites and scorpions as big as your fist? Don’t go there. Come here instead. It’s like California got really big and also happens to encompass Colorado, Tahiti and parts of Norway. People walk around barefoot in the grocery store. Everyone wears those Maori fishhook necklaces, not just surfers (or perhaps everyone IS a surfer). People say “Wicked” like they’re in Vermont.

BUT, as usual, I digress. Our first backpacking excursion went well, and we had a ball, despite having brought NO wine, books, or even a deck of cards. We love Nature, but sometimes Nature is boring (sorry Mom and Pop), so we had to amuse ourselves by looking for crabs and sea creatures A LOT, and being huge bumbling dorks and making each other laugh. And going to bed as soon as it got dark every night, which helped ‘cause we rose with the sun, like farmers do, and Greg Brown, and Michelle Medina. I like that kind of life. Makes things simple (this from a girl who usually goes to bed at 2:30 am!)

I thought maybe I would talk about our trip by highlighting of all the beauty we saw (jellyfish that looked like a frilly red and pink crinoline Victorian lampshade, albatrosses dive-bombing the water like there was no tomorrow, yet ANOTHER perfect beach with perfect clear water and flat golden sand and giant fern trees hanging over it like a resort landscape-designers wet dream) BUT INSTEAD I am going to tell you about the trials and travails. We are, as you all know, not the most geared-out REI-friendly sporty backpacker-types. We take to the jankier side of the whole experience, and we kept having to assure ourselves that we were LEARNING from this experience, cause Abel Tas is (supposedly) the easiest tramp we could do, and therefore the one we could use to get a feel for what we would need on the trail. Such as chocolate. And books. And more than one can of fuel (whoops!) Luckily, there are kind (or just really polite) German couples that quietly populate every natural area around here, that will loan you Ibuprofen and fuel and insect repellent (are you getting the jist of this?).

The first fun fact is that I don’t have a normal ergonomic backpack with me (my folks sent mine to Christchurch by way of Antarctica, and it has not yet arrived…eeep!). Mine is a purple and teal wonder from the Italian equivalent of Wal-Mart (no, it’s not Invicta, I wish it were!) which is about 3 inches too short for my torso. After a couple days of pure pain, I am now used to it. I just would picture sherpas lugging loads of mountain climber-compressed oxygen up Everest in bare-feet and then I would be alright. Or maybe the muscles in my back have died.

So I have (according to Mykle) early-stage leprosy (it’s a hand rash! NO, I don’t know where I got it, it formed the day I stepped on the piece of jellyfish!), and he has (according to me) a eye pustule (which is actually a sty, which is just as bad when you have to pull a blob of flesh out of it and then his eye fills up with blood….don’t worry folks, I took pictures!). These were our afflictions BEFORE we decided to go hang out in the wilderness with no insect repellent. We took showers tonight and got to count the bites. The culprit is the sand fly, whose bites (wonder of wonders) do NOT bother me as much as Mykle. They do itch, don’t get me wrong.

I am also suffering from a weird ankle pain that makes me hop around like a gimp, Mykle had crippling and very annoying back pain all three nights, and we both have big scratches, which make us just look badass. As if we needed help in looking such on the trail, with our baggy and patched cargo/carhart ripped-hoodie beanie-wearing haute couture. Get us in the wilderness and suddenly we become stony travelers. We had many humorous travails with our food setup (next time we shall bring MORE FOOD and no tent…Kiwi tracks have swanky huts that you can stay in with windbreaks and kitchens and toilets and such. We opted for the camping cause A. We are cheap and B. It was a Kai hazing ritual since she carried the tent), one of which involved an enraged Mykle punting (our only) pot into the ocean with a mighty kick, after the stove and pot fell over three times because of gale-force winds. We retrieved the sucker, only to find it has a huge dent. No Mom, Mykle sometimes does NOT respect the cookware, but this is balanced by his almost religious fervor in the proper seasoning of cast-iron pans.

All in all, we had a great time. The natural beauty is amazing. The last stop on the treck was near a lodge, where we were able to get cold beers, an over-priced anti-pasti platter, and make friends with an Argentinean waitress. These places are not road-accessible, so you have to take a helicopter (we wish!) or a water-taxi. We rode back to the beach where we started in one of the latter. Then we had the surreal pleasure of riding in a boat on wheels pulled by a tractor back to where our caravan* *was parked. This, as Mykle pointed out, is old hat if you’ve ever been to Burning Man.

*We think you that there should be some kind of Burrito IV that Californians can take if they are away from guacamole and carne asada for more than two months. It’s essential.

**You have to say “Caravan” and “Take-away” and “Toilet” here so people will know what you are talking about.

I hate the internet

Wow, bummer, I just wrote a REALLY long post about tons of stuff complete with personal messages to all'yall, and then the "program preformed an illegal operation and had to be shut down". So sorry, but I'm too food deprived for a repeat performance. Oh well. Maybe in a couple of days/. I love yall.

Ease and Freedom and Secret Hatred

The ease creeps up on you, the intoxicating air steals words from your lips.
Two days of filling a wooden cart with ice and drifts of beer bottles, of crackling outdoor fires and roasting vegetables and meat in wood ovens, getting shiny fingertips from grease and the sparkling night sky.
The Antarcticans are awed by the presence of night and the number of stars, but I am too. I can't remember the last time I saw so many, sprays of them, shards, multitudes. The San Francisco sky of milky purple citylight and fog has been all I've seen for quite a while. Everyone points out the Southern Cross, and wonders at the patch of sky below it in the Milky Way, which is eerily devoid of lights, a velvety black empty place in the firmament. To Mykle and I, it brings Madeline L'Engle to mind, and the Echthroi. We finish each other's thoughts and sentences. Snadwich remarks with glee on our particular descriptions of things, that come from growing up in the same town, and being such good friends for so many years.
Antarcticans keep stopping me and telling me 'I never saw Mykle smile ONCE on the ice, and now you're here and he looks so happy! I can tell what he was missing!'
Sandwich, who was a close friend of his down there, refutes this, but it is still nice to hear. Being surrounded by so many ice people is great but also frusterating. My secret pissed-off center that sometimes wants to scream "FUCK ANTARCTICA!" is much repressed. I've only been asked if I am going to be "on the ice next year" about 700 times. Right now I should be sending out my resume. Damn it.

We were ensconced for two days in a bucolic paradise; an organic farm/Bed &Breakfast/handmade hippie place, where there was a two day party. We all camped all over the place among the laden fruit trees, and ate fresh berries with whip cream and handmade pizza with mussels. They have the most wonderful invention here: alcoholic ginger beer, which is pretty much my favorite thing. I have been eating and eating an moving my theory that love makes you fat. I have made a point of remembering every name of every ice-person I have met. I am doing very well. Hooray!

Yesterday we climbed a mountain. We were above planes. The forest itself was very rocky, with bumps of moss and gnarled roots and very short and twisted trees. (Very LOTR, my dear brother) Above the tree line it was all vistas of majesty and rolling saddles between mountains in green and red and gold.

Today we are free for the second time since I've been here (no people with us, though that was awesome in itself), and it is very exciting with just the two of us, and the whole island spread out before us. Of course we have only vague ideas of what the hell we should do with our freedom from travelling companions and party-hopping. We will soon attempt the Abel Tasman track (look it up). We are thinking a three day trip, and have decided to bring only food and camping supplies. We never change our clothes. You just dive in the ocean and get wet and then let the wind dry you.
Happy Spring everyone. Write me or comment me! How is the weather in Santa Cruz/San Francisco? I have forgotten how to type.

Non-ironic Dophins and Haystack Hair

So I've filled up two memory cards worth of pictures but Flickr will not let me upload. Maybe if we get somewhere with technology.
Here, there is none to little technology, but everything is very accomodating of us. Paths through the woods, public bathrooms...etc. We have begun to long for an oil rig or some other waste-spewing sign of mankinds' essential un-grooviness to take the burden of another pristine and vivid tropical paradise bay off of our eyes. I'm joking.
We are enveloped in the Northern tropics of Golden Bay, whose tiny downtown is brightly painted and full of Thai import stores boasting the newest raver-wear, an Organic food store, and many coffee houses. People seem to be dedicated to living the good life here, there are communes up the wazoo and much chilling going on. The natural beauty and silence of it all (barring crashing waves/waterfalls) forces your mind into relaxation. Not that we stop needing coffee every morning, the caffienation makes you very aware at the vividness of evrything. The sky is 20 times as blue, the sea is a combination of alpine-lake turquoise mixed with ocean-grey. I could write a whole post just about the color of the water. Don't tempt me. The rivers, streams, springs, water that pours out of the hills that are the verdant and teeth-gritting viridian of those Moari jade necklaces that everyone wears....the water is marbled and deeply beautiful purple, green-blue, grey. No Pacific flat grey-blue round here folks. Yes I have been painting it. I document I document! Never fear!
We have been swimming, diving off rocks into deep river pools, we have seen baby fur seals flopping and bumping on the beach like children in too-long pants, we have seen the rarest dolphins in the world, only about a meter and a half long, twisting under boats like they don't have a care in the world. What are they called?....Hooper's I think. Small things. There are a lot of tribal tattoos and dolphin stuff around here, worn non-ironically. Not that dolphin stuff is ironic. YET.
I spend a lot of time trying not to worry about money. Stuff is VERY expensive. But we are taking the free camp spot when we can get it. Trevor and Sandwich are still with us, and they are wonderful. My hair looks like a haystack and I have been wearing cargo shorts (!) like they are going out of style. Mid-afternoons we get so lethargic it is a serious business just to attempt sitting up straight. I really need to hike....expend some energy so that more will be made, we still have not made a Plan. Everywhere there are Antarcticans in similar deep-chilling mode. We are going to go for some tramps (hikes), that's all we know. Yesterday the plan was simply "swimming". This weekend we go to another Antarctic party, this time at a Kiwi's house/farm which apparently has an outdoor wood-fired bathtub and a persimmon orchard. It's a two day thing, so we will be able to save money on camping (see what I mean about my money worries!?)
Life is hard.;)I actually do miss you all.