ok so i'm really bad at updating.  today was great and so was yesterday.  yesterday i got to meet ricks (check out new facebook album) as well as several other very interesting people (including a guy who did a lot of the set design for the LOTR movies) and see beautiful houses and gardens.  i even went kayaking in the stream by ricks' house for a little while (and got soaked because it started raining while i was in the boat).
some quick things:
i now have experience in golf, tennis, and working on an orchard.
i got some great piano books for very cheap at a rummage sale.
lots of indian people work on the orchards here.
people are paid per tree instead of an hourly wage.
i am really bad at golf but not as bad as i thought i would be.
most people in new zealand seem to have dogs and have very close relationships with them.  i haven't met anyone here with a cat.
families seem to be much closer here.  they live closer together (frequently on the same plot of land in different houses) and see each other more often.
we play lots of board games.
in general i feel a lot more comfortable around older adults here than i do in america.  there is less of a generational awkwardness it seems.  people of all ages go to wild parties (for example last night i went to a 21st and 50th birthday party that were being celebrated together... everybody was drinking, mingling, having a good time despite the huge age gap), play sports, etc.  basically, the adults act a lot more youthful and i think it's a good thing.
this evening i went to tracey's dad's house with tracey and colin for dinner.  he and his partner deborah made a delicious dinner of roasted vegetables and pork with homemade lemon cake and whipped cream for dessert.  we played a board game and then i wandered outside to pet their pig and look for eels in the stream.   sure enough i saw a huge one right next to the bridge so i ran and got tracey's dad and we took a spear and went back to hunt it.  unfortunately it had moved away by the time we got back but we threw meat in the water and a little one soon came.  i let tracey's dad spear it because i wanted to wait to get a bigger one for my first eel.  he hit it and flung it out of the water and it wriggled all around horribly... then he chased tracey with it and then chopped it in half with an ax and gave it to the chickens.  it was pretty funny.
a cool thing about tracey's dad's house is that it used to be a school house in the 1800's but tracey's dad is very handy and converted it into a beautiful home.  he added lots of rooms as well as a loft and a deck outside.  everything inside is made of wood and there are lots of pretty carved things.  the windows are all original too so they are made of huge, heavy panes of glass.
well i am going to go to bed now.  v. tired (i get up at 7ish regardless of whether it's the weekend or not) and not going to bother rereading.  in closing i will say i feel so lucky right now for getting these experiences.  i can feel myself changing and obviously i can't describe how but i can say the world seems a lot bigger yet at the same time lots of possibilities feel much more attainable than before.  i am having the first inklings of how iowa city will feel when i see it as a part of my past instead of my present.  ok well that's enough for now, there is a lot going on in my head that won't be sorted out tonight.  will try to write again soon.