Meeting the Locals

Every morning I wake up to the soothing sounds of president Barrack Obama's deliberate rhetoric slowly oozing out of the radio of Bruce's yamaha radio system playing Public Radio New Zealand. Upon slowly emerging out of bed, a quality I have become particularly good at completing at glacial speeds, I enter the kitchen to greet Bruce and the morning cup of coffee. A few mornings ago, I finally commented on how it feels at times odd to wake up every morning, in one of the places furthest away from the U.S. geographically speaking, and still hear so much news about the goings on of Obama and New York City and yes, the financial crisis. Bruce, having grown up on the remote western coast of New Zealand's south island, didn't seem to find it odd, but instead said I would have to realize that to everyone else around the world, the United States is kind of a big deal. It is the biggest economy in the world he said and for that everyone is focused on the place. This prod quickly evolved into the most interesting conversation I've had for quite some time. Bruce at one point commented that for a while, everyone he knew and seemingly New Zealand as a whole had sort of lost hope for the United States. He had seen the Bush administration as a form of the third reich rising to power and that the U.S. as quickly being pulled away from all of its democratic principles. You often hear how the rest of the world hates America. Now, however he spun the conversation around as to how in such a short period of time, and one momentous changing of the guards, so to speak, there is renewed confidence in the United States. Immediately I couldn't help but think back to November 4th when Obama was elected with such unanimity. I was standing in a stairwell with my good friend and house mate, Jimmy Singer in the Slocum dorm at Colorado College. We were putting up posters for our monthly synergy house potluck, and we knew the decision was soon to be announced. Suddenly we heard seemingly the whole dormitory complex erupt with screams and shouts of celebration as people bounded out of their rooms away from their television screens to celebrate Obama's victory. A gigantic party throughout campus had just begun which would culminate in a massive parade of streaking across campus later on in the evening. I couldn't help but smile and relay the story to Bruce as we stood in the new garden we were building for his house. I began thinking amidst all of the harsh criticisms that are already coming around onto the Obama administration, (myself having not spent enough time or effort to make any personal agreement or disagreement with the criticisms), I felt reassured that elsewhere in the world people again had faith in the U.S. as a leading nation even through such tough times.

On another note, my homestay here is going quite amazingly! Bruce is a highly evolved human being, one of the most intelligent I have met on my travels and he is seemingly good at everything else as well. He is an awesome builder with an equal skill for teaching as we have learned some great tricks of the trade pouring cement for a new communal garden (shared with friends) and a separate greenhouse on their property. We have learned to make boxing for cement, dig ditches for irrigation chanels, and how to install those. We have started to learn of soil fertility when we went to a local sheep sheering shed to shovel trailer loads of sheep shit to integrate into the garden to organically fix nitrogen. Also we have been hard at work eating as many eggs as possible since the chickens can't slow down their egg production and eating them is simply too hard to pass up.

More about Bruce, he was in the newspaper this week for his recent climbing expedition to Pakistan, where himself and three other New Zealand climbers climbed an unclimbed subpeak of K7 in the Himalayas. The climb was an incredible cone of sheer granite rising two thousand metres from base (around 5000 metres already) to peak. I have been working with a friend I met on my travels here named Tony, a fun-loving, very musically inclined and personable new-found buddy of mine from Nova Scotia. Bruce, a new friend Lars (another traveler from Germany), and I have been introducing Tony to climbing as we all share a similar passion. Personally I have been attempting to get climbing often and improve me abilities in the wake of Bruce's prowess. I am becoming much more confident in my climbing and look to go to the big mountains soon and do some longer climbs in the Darrans outside of Milford sound. If you are curious I suggest google-ing some photos of the Darran mountain range...pretty incredible.

Our other host, Swenja, is an equally incredible person with a clear love and passion for life that she always brings to the dinner table or conversation. I look forward to getting to know her more since she has been gone this whole previous week on a yoga retreat for instructors on the Sunshine Coast of Australia. She runs a yoga practice out of a studio Bruce built for her, 50 feet from the front door of their home. I've got another week and a half here, and it will be tough to leave as they make me feel so comfortable and at home. Yet, I'm sure I will be back in and out before my time in NZ (N zed... zee is not a letter here..it is zed). That is enough to fill in the gaps of my past week here...hopefully some photos will accompany although it takes a long time on this application...come on google get it together!