what people want

so i think my favorite thing about blogging is using google analytics to see how people find your site. 

some of my recent favorite phrases people typed into google and then somehow stumbled across my site as a search result are...

- "what's more bajillion or bamillion?"

(bajillion for sure. who doesn't know that?)

- "naked guys fighting"

(and lots of other alliterations of nakedness... "nude foosball," "caught no clothes..." 

i guess that serves me right for mentioning a nudist colony on my site...and just mentioning it again will probably bring a slew of NEW searchers!)

- "carneval nackt"

(huh? i don't even know what this is let alone where i mentioned any such thing in my blog)

- "lovely and amazing"

(my blog must have clearly been the number one hit for this search)

p.s. can you tell i'm a little bit bored of writing about new zealand? i feel like i got pretty far in our story though, right? right? can someone back me up here?... 

visit my new blog!

not to replace this one, but to compliment it!

vegetarianpisces.blogspot.com

a break in new zealand posting

i felt it important to make a very grand announcement.

i have now experienced (and am still experiencing) my first set of stitches.

remember one time when i was opening a can of dog food (of all the silly things) and sliced my finger open? and remember how it was a really good thing meghan was up at my house to take care of me because otherwise i would probably still be standing at the sink with my finger under the faucet waiting for it to stop bleeding?

and remember how i insisted that we didn't need to go to the hospital and meghan told me that if it was still bleeding in an hour that she was dragging me there? and remember how i hid it really well for three hours but it was still bleeding and then the boy (who was in detroit) started insisting that i go to the hospital. so i let meghan drag me there and this was the conversation with the front desk lady:

her: how's it going?
me: good
her: well, good until you sliced your finger open i assume
me: you assume wrong
her: ....

her: on a scale of 1-10, how much does it hurt
me: right now or when it happened?
her: when did it happen?
me: like three or so hours ago
her: (looking down at my blood-stained papertowel cover)... oh...

three stitches (i saved you all from seeing the graphic stitches pics...you're welcome) and a lot of giggling later (maybe i was going delerious from loss of blood? and meghan is just delerious anyway?) i got to leave promosing to keep my finger bandaged and dry for 10 days.

and i have to say, this post took me a really long time to write. you try typing with this thing on your finger!


thanks megs for being the best person in the world! there's nobody else i would have wanted to go through my mini trauma with!

new zealand is for 50 cent horse poo: greymouth - part 4.2

continuing on with our greymouth experience...

greymouth for some reason made the boy crave fish & chips. so, around our normal dinner time of 9pm the first night we were there, we headed out to conquer the craving. the problem was, everything was closed! this was truly the most foreign concept of all of new zealand to us. how could entire cities close down at 8pm? we were so sad because the only place that was open was a kfc and HOW could you eat at a kfc when you're exploring the world??

and then, we found it...


don't be fooled by the mexican hat dancer on the door. it was an indian restaurant. and for some reason, that sounded way more nz authentic to us than kfc, so we were happy albeit void of fish & chips.

the next day, we set out to continue the hunt by driving to the next town where they had quote - good fish & chips - unquote. problem was, they didn't even HAVE f&c - just fish bites. which made for a sad boy (he hides his sadness well).


one good thing about going into the next town, however, is that we got to meet this one-eyed wool loomer AND buy hats from her!


our second night in greymouth, we made the same mistake and headed out to dinner way too late. fool me once, shame on you greymouth... we saw the lights on at this italian place (another good authentic nz restaurant) and i literally jumped out of the campervan while the boy was still driving to stick my hand in the door before they locked it. we were told we could order a pizza but it had to be to go. so we did. and then we ate it on our table in the campervan right outside the restaurant's front door.

greymouth day 3 - we heard about this place


you strap into a little dune buggy type of contraption and drive around for an hour through puddles upon puddles of mud. it was fabulous!




but, what was even more fabulous about this place was it's association with the miniature land!! made perfect sense because normally when i think of off-roading go-karts, i also think of mini gnomes.



we got to walk through miniature land while we waited for our go-kart to be ready. we even got to talk to the builder of the land. i was a little bit confused why there was a bird skeleton and a dragon soaring above one of the mini lands, but then i met him and it all made sense.

what in the??

what in the??

oh... got it

here are some highlights from mini land (and i have to say, it was hard to just pick a couple):

now THIS is what i call a farmlet!


always breaking the rules...

we found another place for f&c. much better than fish bites. see how happy the boy is? now that's what i call a fish & chips! (i'm not quite sure what the singular...and fish only part of that meal would be called...)

we finally decided we'd better leave greymouth before the town closes on us again and sharon and harry sent us off in style. they gave us some lovey-dovey champagne glasses as a congrats, and harry even helped us make a sign for our campervan (notice the pounds of masking tape and marker ink that only a three-year old could use for one piece of paper).




bye, greymouth - we heart you!

new zealand: 10 sheep for every person - part 4.1: greymouth

i'm warning you right now - greymouth (a place we never would have planned on going to) was hilarious. put down your glass of milk right now so it doesn't spray out your nose while you're reading about this leg of our trip. i'm going to break this part up into 2 separate posts because it's just that good.

the best part of our approach to new zealand was this: we hardly planned anything. we knew the first few days and of course had our wedding scheduled, but once we left abel tasman, all we knew was that we were flying out of queenstown 2 weeks later. the south island was our canvas. we had notes of places friends had recommended we see and greymouth was nowhere on any of those notes.

but, we were heading that direction and felt like it'd be a good enough place as any to stop for the night. we called the new river bluegums b&b because we were so intrigued by its description in our book. i mean come on, they lived on a farmlet* with a pet pig and all! the minute we got there, we knew we made a good decision. we were greeted at the door by michael, sharon and harry - the cheeriest kid i think i've ever seen. it's not like you can really understand 3-year olds anywhy, but try throwing a new zealand accent into the mix.

we sat down in the family room to get to know michael and sharon a bit while harry ran around like a maniac. then, we heard something in the back corner. i thought, "is harry watering the plants?" and we turned to find that, nope - harry was not watering the plants. he was watering his training potty which was in the corner of the family room. hilarious.

and then we were introduced to the family dog, coco. coco fell in love with the boy. (i actually couldn't tell if it was love, or if he wanted to rip bill to shreds). he was fine around everybody else, but the second he saw the boy, he'd go beezerk and jump all over the place!



these guys had some rather unique artwork...


and, like i mentioned earlier, a pet pig...


and, of course, a handful of sheep. now, here's the thing about sheep. the second the boy found out that the sheep/human ratio in new zealand is 10/1 he started drooling just thinking about the possibilities - we could get married amidst a herd of sheep! we could shear sheep to our heart's content! so, of course, the boy asks michael - "do any of your sheep need shearing?" unfortunately, all of michael's sheep (all 7 of them - you can't have too many sheep on a farmlet afterall) had already gotten their hair cut. BUT, his friend grubb (yes, that's really his name and he's exactly what you would imagine with a name like that) had some sheep that needed a' shearin' - we could help with that

the boy's eyes lit up as he realized all of his sheep dreams were about to come true (well except for the dream of me getting in my wedding dress and standing in a field of sheep...)

so, the next evening, we loaded up and drove over to grubb's sheep. michael pulled his truck up to the shed, popped the hood, pulled out his spark plugs and USED HIS TRUCK TO POWER THE SHEEP SHEARING MACHINE! he said he'd take the first few so the boy could see how to do it and then he'd give the boy a go.


sheep aren't really that cute up close. and they just kind-of sit there. i would have thought they'd put up a bigger fight, but they just flop around while they're getting sheared. well, that's what every sheep did up until the last sheep (the boy's sheep), which tried running out of the pen and jumping over everybody. of couse that's the sheep the boy gets!! it was kicking and wiggling all over the place. priceless.

turn the volume up for this video. the dialogue is hilarious.

so, there it is, my hubs is now a bonefied sheep shearer. a day or two later, we saw an ad for the national sheep shearing competition, where the returning champ can shear a sheep in 17 seconds - count them s.e.v.e.n.t.e.e.n! gives the boy something to work up to for our next trip to nz.

i think this is my favorite pic from our whole trip. i'm deciding between two titles for it: "the boys chillin' after a hard day's work" or "one of these things is not like the other"


* i don't know this for sure, but i'm pretty sure a farmlet is a miniature-sized farm... like a piglet or a droplet or a moist toillette...

new zealand is for pancakes: part 3 - driving a bit

are you bored of our new zealand trip yet? me neither. thus the two postings at once.

after we left abel tasman, we journeyed down the west coast, stopping to actually CAMP in our campervan (novel idea, huh?) at lake rotoroa, which was beautiful and beautifully dripping in sand flies. we couldn't even look out our window because all we saw were sand fly bums. so, the boy made us our first cooked meal together as hubs and wif (we're trying to come up with more unique titles for each other than husband and wife...we haven't gotten very far other than deleting a few letters from each).


in the morning, when courage is at its peak, we went outside to face the flies. it was totally worth the new 8 billion bites.

(check out that money shot taken by yours truly!)


then we started driving again and found a sign for a seal colony and, of course, stopped to see. the boy asked "how many seals do you think we'll see?" and i said (and was pretty confident) "probably six," which apparently is a little sparse for a colony...but for the record, i just looked it up and there's no limit to how few units there need to be to make a colony. so there. anyway, i was wrong just the same - there were probably a hundred seals.


which was a theme, because there were also a hundred direction markers on this sign.


next, we were off to the pancake rocks, which was a "must do" from everyone who's seen them (which is pretty much everyone because this was a HUGE tourist attraction, little beknownst to us." there are three cool things about the pancake rocks:

1. they're rocks that look like stacks of pancakes

imagine

mmmm....

i couldn't really come up with a point two or three, so i'll leave that up to your own creativity.

we saw rose and her friend at the pancake rocks, which was a little bit random. especially when rose said "i made a cd of pictures from your wedding from you, but i didn't bring it." how could you, rose? didn't you know you could run into us at any time halfway across your island?

and then i got philisophical and observed, "how wierd to think that if we hadn't gone to rose's for dinner, we wouldn't even know her. she'd still be here with her friend at the same time as us, but she'd be a total stranger right now." i felt a huge thesis coming on...but then the boy started laughing at me and said i was an odd duck. then i told him maybe i am, but i was born that way. HE was the one who had the choice to marry me.

new zealand is for lovers: part 2, abel tasman and wedding.

okay okay okay, so it was a little ambitious of me to imagine i would write every single day... BUT writing this post already puts me way further along than i ever got in my spain posting, so there is that.

after we got our fill of nelson, we journeyed north a bit to try on abel tasman for size. we found two gems along the way:



i really hope this car worked and gets driven around. we followed the signs into some guy's backyard with a note saying "open by appointment only" but you know how sometimes you don't feel like calling someone when you're right in front of their house to tell them you'll be there in 30 seconds? plus, all the sculptures were just sitting in his unfenced backyard. what were we to do? why, get out and look at them of course! so, we pranced around some guy's backyard for a few minutes (with no sign of the guy anywhere), then left because the sculptures were a little bit scary.


the second stop we made was at a gas station/convenience store. lucky for us, they had chocolate covered pineapple chunks (not what you think...in new zealand talk, pineapple chunks apparently means pineapple-flavored (this is a stretch) marshmallow filling). and even luckier for us, this particular gas station doubled as an art gallery. and why not? we found this little statue


we're not quite sure if maybe it's a person hugging E.T., or maybe it's a person in a yoga move where she's hugging her own legs... but, there was a little 3x5 card taped to it with the artist's phone number on it, so we called him and told him we were on our way to get married and he said, "oh this is piece is perfect for you then! it's called 'embrace'!" (then he probably said something under his breath that sounded like "suckers.") and we thought, hmmm i guess it is perfect for us then! and bought it right there at that gas station.

we were so excited to see abel tasman because we had heard so much about how beautiful it was and what incredible scenery, etc. so, we decided to start it off with a hike. what we didn't plan on was a day of downpouring rain.


but, while we couldn't really see much of the scenery and we had the fact that we were scheduled to get married the next morning...outside...looming in the back of our minds, we had a great hike and saw giant bugs.


we stayed that night at the everton b&b, which we had arranged beforehand. i knew this was the place to stay because when i was looking around for places to surround our wedding day, the hostess here, diane, was by far the most excited person i talked to. she was thrilled to have a bride and groom in her home and was eager to help out wherever she could to make the day great for us.... which included calling her son and his girlfriend, inviting all the neighbors to "come out to watch the bride leave her house," etc. it all of a sudden seemed silly to me that i was ever worried about finding two witnesses to be there!

i had been in touch with another lady in the area - rose, who i contacted through servas. she wanted us to stay with her really badly, but since we already made arrangements to stay with diane and martin, we agreed to meet up with rose for dinner. so, rose came over to the b&b, picked us up, and took her back to her house for dinner. where a handful of her friends were anxiously waiting for us. who knew we were meant to be the dinner subject of the night for these random strangers?


it was even better when pretty much all of them showed up on the beach the next morning to take pictures and watch us get married, along with a slew of other random kiwis. it was great!

anyway, enough about the wedding. you can check out pictures and stories of all that at theflaggfamily.com

after our wedding celebration (and a little nappy nap for the boy), we decided to head back down to the beach where we got married to swim. and that was our first encounter with - duh duh duh - sand flies!! in our newly wedding bliss, we completely forgot about the warning that EVERYBODY gave us that "sandflies are the one thing that keeps new zealand from being translated to heaven with the title of 'paradise on earth'." before i even knew it, i had at least 8 billion bites all over me. and you know how you aren't supposed to scratch bites even though they itch the bejeebers out of you? yeah, multiple that itch by 8 billion and tell me you wouldn't scratch.


so, we ran away from the beach and it all of a sudden occured to me, "sand fly bites make me crave pizza..." and that's why we treated diane and martin to pizza. where the owner of the place serenaded us just like in lady and tramp, except we weren't eating spaghetti and he wasn't Italian and we weren't dogs. and since we aren't dogs, we could get up and dance, which probabaly made the whole restaurant think, "oh great, there they go again - those americans are ALWAYS trying to steal the spotlight."


the next day, we shoved (very delicately, mom) my dress back into the campervan and headed back to the sand flies to try our hand at kayaking. turns out our hands were pretty good at kayaking...for the first 3 hours. and then i (and these are the boy's words) started looking like gumby flopping my paddle all around the place. and remember how we didn't even tip over once...while at sea? i somehow managed to tip the whole thing over while it was ON SHORE. so, i'm still sorry about that bill that we had to paddle back with wet bums. although i think the gumby arms were a direct result of the wet bum, just for the record...

also, i just remembered that we got stuck in a cave that took us awhile to get out of...

new zealand: the love child of colorado and hawaii. part 1: nelson

so remember one time when i started blogging about our trip to spain and my intent was to break it up into little chunks of the trip so the posts were manageable... and then i only actually wrote one chunk of the trip...

that's why i've decided to post about our trip/wedding/honeymoon (spoiler alert: we got married!) to new zealand in one fowl swoop (foul swoop?...i never knew which way was correct to spell that..) so there it is, i'm commiting myself, in front of the entire internet, to post about a leg of our trip every day until i'm done... makes me a bit nervous

that being said, let's jump right in, shall we?

the airport
we knew the trip was off to an eventful start when the boy lollygagged his way around the house until well past time to get to the airport, resulting in my poor mom getting pulled over for speeding while rushing us to the airport (we still feel REALLY bad about that, mom!) it was amazing we made it on the flight. and lucky for us, because on that very flight, some old guy drooled all over the boy's suitcase (yes, we did have every single article we were taking on a 2.5 week trip on the airplane with us because of the boy's baggage check phobia... and yes, this did include 2 insanely full roller suitcases, two insanely full backpacks, a wedding dress, a ukulele and two pillows. take THAT tsa restrictions!) and some little kid puked all over the seat in front of us. we will hereby forever call that trip "the flight of the body fluids."

nelson
we flew into nelson where we picked up our camper van (soon to be dubbed the "napper van")

and headed over (very timidly given they drive on the left hand side of the road with the steering wheel on the right hand side of the car) to the nelson courthouse to pick up our wedding license and then to wander around downtown nelson, which was very charming.


we found a $2 store (not quite as appealing as a $1 store, but we still went in) where we bought all sorts of good decorations to dress up our camper van.


then, the celebrant for our wedding called us - he lived in nelson and we did, afterall, want to meet each other before he led us into the marriage charge. lucky for us, he was at work in downtown nelson and could take a break to meet with us right then! so, we gathered our $2 goodies and walked in the direction he told us to.... where we ran into this:


remember how we had our marriage interview in the backroom of a sporting goods store? also, remember how our marriage interview consisted of questions like: "what are your full names? what do you think the weather will be like on saturday?" ah, i love the simplicity of new zealand.

after our "interview," we headed to our first bed & breakfast. now the b&b's in new zealand are great because they're actually homestays! meaning, we were literally sleeping in people's old kids' rooms and hanging out with them in their family rooms! it was an amazing way to get to know the culture and really see what the locals are like and what they recommend doing.

anyway, we stayed at A Culinary Experience with kay and joe. it was most excellent. they were actually americans who journeyed over to nz several years ago. she was an awesome chef who cooked ridiculously good breakfasts and a dinner for us and he was a massage therapist. not a bad place to land after 20+ hours in airports!



another couple from london were staying there too (tony and di). they were fabulous! ...the boy kept laughing at me because apparently, when i'm around british people, my word of choice is "fabulous." i can't help it. it's in my blood.


the next day, we strolled around the wine country side of nelson, which was fine, but neither of us are huge wine conisuers, so we got bored before too long..then pulled out our chairs and read by/in the beach (it's really hard to estimate where to sit on the beaches in nz because the water changes by the second and before you know it, you're up to your knees in it!)