Spot the Kiwi girl

It is an interesting experience to be the one with an accent.  I empathise with you more Deirdre as I am having to repeat myself alot so people can understand me.  It is still novel at the moment and is proving to be quite a conversation starter, I am not sure I would have the patience to live in another english speaking country if I had to do it long term!  Words especially the e and i sounds  are the worst.  The best so far has been when I asked for a bendy spatular.  A bindy spatular?  and Wedges/widges?  People had no idea what I was talking about.

Tonight Sky and I went done to the pub to have dinner with Janet, our friend from the Tauranga Rudolf Steiner School who is now the Principal of the School in Byron Bay which is only 45 minutes drive from the farm.  While out we saw Colete, a friendly local who is  doing the Permaculture course that Robyn Francis runs she informed me that there were a few parties in the neighbourhood.  I was planning an early night to really make the most of my sleep in tomorrow.  Cleaning up after dinner, Lachy, Sink and myself decided that we should go out.  We rang Colete and made plans to pick her up later.  Most of the people on the farm were going off site for the night and the day off tomorrow to watch the rugby.  I'm allergic to rugby but got some good mileage out of the fact that the All Blacks won!

So bottle of wine in hand we set off to party all beit in our tired state.  We didn't know exactly where we were going but knew the general vacinity.  We found the party easily enough as they had some beautiful fire sculptures leading the way.  

Being a long term pyromanic myself, I was fascinated by them.  We walked down the driveway and before we had even met anyone, stopped off to examine the sculptures and how they had been made.  Lachy and I deduced that they were old dry posts that had chainsaw cuts down towards the base.  they were burning from the inside out and the effect was stunning.  I wanted to see if they were dug into the ground so gave it a quick tap with my foot.  They weren't and sculpture toppled over.  The look on Lachy's face was hilarious and mine must have been similar.  I quickly looked around waiting to be evicted from the party for willful damage.  No one was coming.  I tried to leverage the sculture back upright from the base but it was too heavy.  Luckily my ceramics training has given my hands good resistance to heat and with a couple of sticks I was able to lift it back up, no harm done.  By this time someone had come along to see what we were up to.  I threw the glowing sticks into the air towards a giant bonfire pile.  "Don't do that, we didn't get permission to light it" too late, the glowing sticks are flying through the air.  Luckily it didn't set the bonfire alight and I made a grand impressionable entrance.  All before the bottle of said wine was even opened!

I met lots and lots of PDC grads and had a great night.