This is the huge rooster next to a pretty large rooster.

Well, we got dumped off on Sue and she is awesome and lives in paradise! It is so pretty and there are baby cows—so perfection. Sue actually has a collection of animals: dogs, cats, cows, goats 4-legged and 3-legged, horses and chickens (the one animal Mags is not allergic to; it’s a miracle). I for one am terrified of chickens, ask Teresa, I tried to feed her chickens and I nearly jumped out of my skin. But here the chickens literally follow me everywhere. It’s the worst! There is also a terrifying rooster who is a giant, but we became friends later on; he’s quite all right now. Gem the dog is the best!! She’s so sweet and can play for days! To earn our keep here we are in charge of feeding the baby cows milk, the larger cows grain, blanketing the horses, feeding the chickens and collecting eggs. This is all really not much at all maybe 20 min in the morning and night and even better we get to sleep inside! Oh and the eggs…we have eggs for days, our cholesterol has probably risen 10 fold since we have been here.

The second day we were at Sue’s she dropped us off at the BusStop (name of a car dealership) where we had thought we found our perfect van. However we got dropped off at 8 and they didn’t open until 9, so we hung out on the side of the road for an hour…it was and experience. Finally we took it to the mechanic who said it was very sound and to go to the VTNZ (New Zealand DMV, way nicer than our DMV and we only waited 3 minutes), then back to the mechanic, then to the panel beater where we found out we had a lemon on our hands and should not buy this particular van. We had to drop the van back at the dealership but didn’t plan far enough ahead to figure out how to get back to Sue’s if the van didn’t work out. Luckily New Zealand is the land of getting in cars with randos, so we hopped into a car of one of the people who worked at the dealership and he drove us to Sue’s. We were so disheartened for the rest of the day.

That night we found out just how much Maggie is allergic to everything. It’s official she is dying. The poor thing wheezes through every night it’s so sad, she’s such a trooper! In order for Mags to survive with all the animals she takes 4 different medications double doses of 3 about 2 times a day.

Raspberry cream donut, Maggie clearly approves.

The next day we found another van to go look at! This time we have rented a car for a week so we are not dependent on the kindness of others and to make Grams a little less mad. We drove to Auckland City, which was about an hour away and our first time on the motorway (highway). All the kiwi’s said that traffic was going to be bad…no traffic is a breeze compared to the US! Their traffic set us back maybe 10 minutes. Maggie is also a pro at the roundabouts. The van looked good, pricy but good, more importantly we got to go back to Little & Friday for donuts!!! We came back to Sue’s and long behold there is João. Apparently Ian was having family in so he dropped João off at Sue’s as well. However there are not enough rooms in the house so he got stuck sleeping in a tent (it’s ok he likes it). We took João being here as an excuse to get more ice cream, this time a triple scoop! For some reasons Kiwis think America only has soft served ice cream. They always ask us if we have hard ice cream, of course we say no because we don’t know what they are talking about and we think it’s some New Zealand treat, nope turns out we are just very dumb! That night Sue had some friends come over and we had a BBQ and so much food, so good!

***WARNING*** MY TURN TO DRIVE ***WARNING***
Up until this point Mags has done all the driving because that’s how this friendship works. She drives so she doesn’t get car sick, I ride because I like being chauffeured. But at some point I will have to drive so we took advantage of being in a smaller city for me to test my skills. Mags is clearly meant to teach people, her only advice was it’s easy just don’t get hit, oh ok Mags. Driving on the left side of the road is actually super easy, the hard part are the roundabouts, they are terrifying. But what’s harder than a roundabout? Blinkers, that’s what. The lever for the blinker and whipper wipers are on opposites sides here, so I let people know I’m turning by using my whipper wipers as indication. However I did not hit anyone or anything (New Zealand has so many birds, a lot of them flightless so they don’t move out of the road like birds do back home) and no one hit me!

When we got back apparently the rooster had fallen into the water trough and Sue had it wrapped in a blanket trying to warm it up. Eventually she put it under the blow dryer and he was all hunky dory after. The next day we spent most of the day weeding. SO. MANY. WEEDS. We worked until about 5 then Sue came out said everyone is done we are drinking! We quickly fed the cows and off we went to her friend’s place.

Her friends live in a barn, an actual barn. They moved into the barn shed to build the horses a better barn. There is a main shed with couch, TV, kitchen, and bathroom; then all the kids, Connor, Caiden, Alicia, and Logan each had their own one room shed with TVs. It’s actually pretty cool! All the kids are ready to start building a house, they even have a plot of land ready. However they have to build a new arena before they even start on their house. The kids say its always the same horses before people. Some how I can very much relate to these kids. They are some of the nicest people we have met so far! We ate too much probably drank to fast (New Zealanders can really drink!). We had drinks that you can’t get in America so we felt very cultured. We also might have a job connection; the oldest brother works on one of the mountains he said we could probably get jobs there, so he’s going to get a call come winter!

Today we woke up very slowly and are having a recovery day, which is good because it’s a very rainy day. However I love the rainy days because it really does look like the pictures where it’s purple blue and bright green, so pretty. It’s also helpful because Sue’s house runs off of rainwater. She said we would be fine but I was very nervous about using up all the water so I’m super happy it rained! We dropped João off at a gas station, apparently that’s where you can catch a bus to Tauranga. It was like dropping a kid off for school, we are going to miss him. He was great at making breakfast, and second breakfast, and dinner. Before we left him there he told us we were like “drunk people in the dark”. Maggie and I have never heard a statement that defines us more, we never know what the hell we are doing or what our next steps will be.

FUN FACTS AND RANDOM PICTURES

People in New Zealand are average height. I'm not considered a giant and for the most part everyone is a lot taller than me! This country is really the best.

Kiwis are so nice its so hard to mean or upfront with them when you don't like things. But the family we hung out with says go ahead and lie and be mean no one cares...we dont think we can do it.

As middle children we are literally the worst bargainers ever, we just feel bad about saying a lower price...we make other people bargain for us.

They BBQ at Christmas. We have already been invited to a lovely woman's family Christmas if we are in the Auckland area...we just met her today!

So everyone here tells us about how bad the sun is and how fast you get sunburnt because the ozone layer is so thin, but no one can tell us why the ozone layer is so thin. I feel like that would be one of the key things they would teach kids in school, we will get to the bottom of this.