Dear Mom and Dad,

Are you still reading my Blog?

here are some pots. (the travel story is below)

hi family! um, its been a while so here is a story. i wrote it for travel writing class. what do you think of it? any ideas for a title? pictures of pottery coming soon! okay, bye.

Here is the Plattsburg Emergency Room. Here are the little curtained cubicles. Here is Martin, my traveling companion, draped in a hospital gown. He looks better now and is texting someone, somewhere, probably a girl he likes. The use of cellular devices is strictly prohibited in the emergency room. We use our phones anyway because we have been waiting for hours and we are bored.
Here is the pile of year-old magazines that we scoured cover to cover. Did you know that the Dixie Chicks are making it big? Did you know that you can garnish your thanksgiving turkey with orange wedges for festive holiday flair? I hope I remember that for next November.
Here are wire racks of medical supplies surrounding Martin’s reclining bed. I steal band-aids for a rainy day, you know, in case someone slips.
Here is an instruction manual for the blood pressure gauge mounted on the wall, patented 1978. My blood pressure is 120 over 75; pretty perfect, I think.
Here comes Frank. He is our nurse. He’s dragging a machine on wheels. The wheels don’t work so it just bumps and swerves along. He straps a cuff around Martin’s skinny elbow and pushes buttons on the machine. It’s broken. He goes to get another one. I wonder if he knows about the blood pressure cuff on the wall. His tattoos are beautiful and I tell him so. He smiles, once.
There is no urgency in this emergency room. The medical technicians stroll down the bright, eternal hallways. The nurses congregate at the coffee urn, like gazelles at a watering hole, except they’re not all so skinny.
On the other side of the paisley curtain, I hear coughing. Cough, cough, cough, hack, hem, cough. Frank goes to check on big Mr. Cough. He is cold. He feels burning inside his bones. Could he have another blanket please? Below the curtain, I see shoes, soft, little-old-lady shoes. Mr. Cough has a visitor? His wife? No, it’s his mother. He should take better care of himself, exercise, eat better. But it’s hard at the shelter: it’s so cold, he’s gotta eat all the time to stay warm. It’s hard, he says. She knows, she says. Here is a long, quiet pause.
Do you know any vengeful Scottish kings? she asks. I imagine they are performers in a renaissance fair. She serves mutton and ale to rude guests. He jousts. They are part of the modern Celtic revival: I read about it in the waiting room’s National Geographic, May 1994.
Then she asks a seven letter word for Buddhist enlightenmen?. She says ‘Buddhist’ like boooh-dust. Now I am jealous because they have a crossword puzzle. That would be a nice way to pass the time. Mr. Cough farts, loudly. Ewww, I look at Martin. Martin rolls his eyes and begins another text message. Mr. Cough and his mother start talking about chili. She was eating a bowl of his father’s famous chili when she got the call from the hospital.
Martin is hungry. He hasn’t eaten since, since… I go to find the cafeteria. Its past the ambulance entrance, left at the I.C.U., right at the vending machines, and down the elevator to the ground floor. You can’t miss it from there. I don’t make it past the vending machines. All the walking and talk about a chili makes me hungry too. I see cupcakes, hostess cupcakes, and I have just enough change.
Down the elevator, I find the sandwich man. Gosh he is friendly. Red onions is good medicine, he says. Martin wolfs down the good medicine with turkey and cheese, between slices of floppy white bread. I scarf down my two hostess cupcakes, two too many. Now I fit in because I feel sick too. The doctor will see us now.
Here comes the doctor. He looks very important in his white lab coat and tie. The doctor trips on a bag strap and looks embarrassed for one second. Martin and my bags are under the bed. They are packed with guidebooks and going-out clothes for spring break. I thought I did a good job getting them out of the way, but not good enough, I guess.
The doctor nods and hmmms while Martin talks about what happened, his symptoms, how he's feeling much better now. He prescribes some pills and asks what brings us to Plattsburg?. The Greyhound bus brings us, we are going to Montreal for spring break. Montreal, how nice, have you ever been? No, we haven’t. Well, you’ve got to see this and don’t miss that. Okay, thanks doctor. Martin fills out some paperwork and we are free to go.
Here is the button that opens the ER doors from the inside-out. Here is the big-black-Plattsburg-parking-lot night. Here comes our taxi. We drive by McDonalds, JC Penny and Home Depot to a little strip mall. It is not so shiny or new. Here is the Greyhound Bus Station. It is closed. Here is the schedule taped to the window, Albany to Montreal. There is a bus at 12:35am. It is 8:02pm. We hope it comes. We hope there are open seats and they let us on without tickets. We hope they let us through at the border. We hope we don’t freeze waiting here. We don’t. We order a pizza to the bus station. The delivery boy is cute and wears his hood up like an overgrown gnome. Pizza is hot and gooey, and the bus comes, and we get on. Goodbye Plattsburg.
Here is the Canadian border. Here is a border guard. Is he bald or has he shaved his head? It is hard to say. He barks at Martin because he only has driver's liscence, no passport. He would like us to take Canada seriously. We do and he lets us across.
Here is Canada. The highway overpasses are low and the snow banks are high. I fall asleep and wake up in Montreal.

For the past few weeks I've been in NZ's Bay of Plenty, doing plenty of free labor in exchange for room, board and kiwi hospitality. Megs and Stuart are developing 10 acres in whakamarama (pronounced fuka-mara-ma) to be a commercial herb farm and also sustain the family.

Megs adn Stuart (owners) are funny folks who ditched the corperate life in London to raise their kids (Samantha 2 and Alex 5) in the fresh air and cow shit that is rural New Zealand. They are intelligent, busy and hilarious. Always swearing about something and opening a beer to celebrate something else, usually at the same time...


Farming it up

Coworker Tom and I shared a pimped out trailer, compelte with a sunset viewing porch, long drop outhouse and fire heated bath. Unfortunately, a strong Tauranga breeze blew the outhouse over which broke the bath, but we got that fixed right quickly, before anything got smelly...

Things I did, Things I learned
-planted, weeded, pruned, harvested, cooked, ate
-mulched, composted, brewed compost tea
-fed the cows, chickens, worms and children



-chainsawed, split wood, painted stuff, fixed broken stuff, built stuff
-gathered many pine cones (a throw back to my glen alpine days)
-daily easter egg hunt/egg collecting


To compliment the rugby and heavy drinking, Megs and Stuart are into natural healing and I got my first reflexology treatmetn (extensive foot massage that connects to the rest of your body, maybe...) In conclusion, I like farming, chickens are silly and someitmes it's hard to tell a pumpkin froma mleon til you eat it.

Howdy folks,

Well its been a while so here's the latest. Exams: DONE. Wellington with Cassi: MORE FUR THAN A BARREL OF REALLY FUN MONKEYS. Backpacking the Abel Tasman: BEAUTIFUL. Here are some pics courtesy of the good people at google images.

Does your belly like delicious things? Well then I reccomend you give it the gift that keeps giving: HELEN"S INCREDIBLE APPLE CAKE. It is moist, fruity, and yep, guaranteed deeeeeee-licious. Here is the recipe...


2 c peeled, cored and diced apples (about 2 apples and you dont really have to peel them)
1 c sugar
125 grams melter butter
1 egg, beaten
1 1/2 c flour (white, wheat, whatever)
1 tb baking soda
1tsp cinnamon and nutmeg and allspice
a pinch of salt
1/2 c walnuts (or other nuts)
1/2 c raisins (or other dried fruit)

a.) mix up the apple and sugar
b.) in a new bowl, mix up the butter and egg
c.) add the egg-butter to the apple-sugar
d.) sift (or dont sift) dry ingredients in
e.) add nuts and raisins
f.) turn mix into a greased pan (8"x8" works, proably could use 2 loaf tins or muffin tins or anything really)
g.) bake at 350, about 50 minutes (in the 8x8 pan, less in small pans)
h.) cool for 10 minutes and turn out of pan.
i.) enjoy! warm, cool, with ice cream, for breakfast, in a box, with a fox!

Launching the Essay Factory!

Yep, if you'd like to get a better idea of whawt I'm studying, please visit my new blog at http://essayfactory.blogspot.com. I might also put up some book and movie reviews to lighten up the academic rhetoric... so check it out!

APPLE & CINNAMON WINTER PANCAKES

Did you know that apple pancakes are national dishes of Croatia and Slovenia? Yep, that's the truth. Bob's your uncle.

One cold Auckland I woke up to a cold tile floor which inspired some cullinary comfort so here is the rought recipe for my new favorite breakfast.

1 egg
1 c self rising flour (or reg flour + 1 tsp baking powder)
1 apple grated
1 tb cinnamon (and nutmeg, all spice anything else delicious
a little sugar
enough milk to thin it out (1 c?)
anything else your lil belly desires: honey, raisins, dried apricots, walnuts, almonds, sunflower seeds, cheese...

So mix it all up and cook in a hot skillet with butter. Drizzle those bad boys with a little mayple syrup and you'll be ready to face the frosty world out side. You might even be overjoyed like this Croatian gent!