Bloodshot eyes and 20,000 miles later, here I arrived back in my own little cranny of the world, my own room. 9 weeks without a phone, or a working clock, it feels rather comforting to be back home. The last 2 weeks of our NZ en devour we ended up staying at the same family farm one hour north of Auckland. Everything ran relatively smooth for the majority of the two weeks, except the family had two daughters, Denvah(7), and Khendra (10). They were just fine for a a few days, but after that, these girls' mission was to annoy us as much as possible, it seemed as if it was their gauge of enjoyment. Always stealing out belongings and hiding them, always taking the hats off our heads, stealing our food that we brought to the house, throwing my OJ in the garbage bin, the list could go on. We treated them really nice, and would go out and play "Spot Light" with them, their little game they made up. The night before we left the mom of the place got really angry at me because Khendra left the house to her in tears...the mom was yelling at me, telling me to grow up and act like an adult. I wonder what Khendra told her happened, because what did happen was they wouldn't stop asking Feigum for piggy-back rides, they said they wouldn't leave us alone until they got rides. So I says to them....I says "your mother wouldn't like to hear that, no friends over for 2 years (in a sarcastic, kind of joking tone). Khendra flipped out, got very angry and nailed me really hard with the television remote a few times ( this is just after they were holding knives up to us), then she bolted out the door in tears. This lead to the mother coming in and giving me a good yelling, and making me apologize. I was stunned. These little devils terrorized us all week, worse then any kids I've seen for portions of the day when they weren't at school, and now I had to apologize for it? That was hard to swallow. I wouldn't call it a negative situation, it really made things more interesting out there on the farm.
They dropped us off the next morning (june 21) at the bus stop, so we could get to our 7:30 PM flight in Auckland. We went to the library to burn some time then hopped on our 12 hour flight towards San Fransisco. We departed at 7:30 PM Saturday in NZ and landed 12 hours later at 12:15 PM Saturday, June 21. We had roughly 12 hours to burn until our 12:45 AM flight to Minneapolis. We toured Haight-Ashbury and Golden Gate Park and did a ton of walking, then came back to the airport to board our flight to MPLS. We took off at 12:40 AM and landed in MPLS at 6 AM on Sunday the 22nd of June. From there we hopped on the light rail towards downtown to hop on the Greyhound which would take us to Fargo. It said there would be a 7 o'clock bus and an 8:30. We all but gave up on the 7 o'clock bus, and took our sweet time getting there. Without never-ending string of luck we managed to stop 7 o'clocker just before it took off and got on. From 7:30 am- 1:00 PM today was the bus ride across Minnesota to finally get to downtown Fargo where Garrison gracefully swooped in with his Buick Park Avenue and picked us up. Home Sweet Home.

Back to the real world, still adjusting to being back, it feels quite different. Some sad news struck me tonight, when my folks came home they told me Cooper wasn't limping last month because of a torn ACL, but it turned out Coop had bone cancer. So when we went to go have surgery on his ACL, was when we got the bad news Cooper had cancer, so we had to put Cooper down, I am just happy that he lived such a happy and great life, I'm trying not to let it get me so down, he was just such an amazing dog, so smart it felt like he knew what you were thinking, a true companion. But he was in too much pain to go on, he lived 12 amazing years and we can all be happy for that. RIP Coop Dog.

From Indecision to Perdition

On tuesday the 3rd I remained indecisive whether or not to hop on our flight northward to Auckland, I remember lying awake in the middle of the night trying to decide whether or not to stay in Wellington or wake up and fly back up to NZ's largest metro area- Auckland. After heavy thought I decided Auckland would work and I would board the 1 hour flight...which totally man handles the 12.5 hour bus ride we took down from Auckland to Wellington when we first arrived....it was great to see a great portion of the North Island via bus...but one was sure enough for me. We thought the airport wasn't too far off so we packed up all our gear,hiking packs,tent,hiking shoes and started walking about 10 o'clock for our 11:30 flight. After 50 minutes of walking and the airport not in sight yet we decided to start running, which was about as demanding as anything can be considering we were strapped with about 40 pounds of gear....it got to be about 11:05 and we were running full throttle, very desperate and I had bad thoughts looming in my head about not making the flight (which wouldn't be horrible for me, because I was so indecisive..but Feigum really wanted to.) Out of nowhere, when hope seemed distant...a random lady in a black car swung out and swerved right in front of us. I saw Feigum loading his bags in and it turned out she saw us running with all our gear and assumed it was important. We hopped in, she flew around all traffic, driving like a maniac towards the airport. We thanked her about 15 times while completely dosing her leather seats with sweat. I remember arriving the airport about 11:10....and so we sprinted inside. After sitting in like for maybe 3 minutes, we realize we used Qantas Airlines and not Air NZ, so we ran to Qantas que and it turned out the plan was running 30 minutes late. How lucky can a guy get? A ride to the port and a flight running late allowed us to make the flight. I felt really bad for who was near me on the plane, I haven't persperated that much in quite awhile. After a few small bus rides we made it back to City Centre Auckland, to the hostel we first stayed in when we flew to NZ. Comforting familiarity, we spent 2 nights there planning and talking to WWOOFers, hanging out at the best library in NZ, with free net and a great selection. On Thursday June 5 we arranged to bus 30 minutes north of Auckland in uncharted areas for us. We came in contact with the Harvey family who have a family farm with raw milk, 2 daughters -10 and 7 , cows,horses,sheep,1 goat, dogs,cats...we stay in a guest bedroom in the main house with 2 beds. The arrangement is 4 hours of farmwor each day in exchange for meals and bed. We've now put in 4 days of work here. From painting, steering and herding sheep and cows, bailing out the cow pen filled with poo and hay, picking up horse dung in the horse pen, and milking cows, which was actually really refreshing. Actually hand milked a cup of my own and it was quite delicious. I'm starting to miss home quite a bit, while at the same time still enjoying our work here, we walked up 2 massive hills with the little girls Denvah and Khendra to overlook the west coast. They also showed us their secret hiding spot way up the hills and into the woods. Our last few nights in Wellington went well, I was just walking around Wellington one night with my headphones on and I bumped into 2 folks I met down in Queenstown- Jabbah and Phil, traveling buddies from Switzerland. They were living out of their campervan, so we invited them up to McLean's apartment to hang for 2 nights continuous. That was the closure to our Wellington extravaganza, we lived in McLean's flat without Ben for 2 nights because he traveled northward to travel with his sister for awhile.

We've been here nearly 2 months, surely the longest I've been away from home. Still having great, new experiences, but starting to miss certain comforts of home and its people. People back in the states should feel grateful for summer, it is now getting to be winter here...temperatures usually in the 50s which isn't horrible, but after a full North Dakota winter I a ready for some sun and lake.

kia ora,
kc