Howdy

It rained just a little in the night - not enough to break the drought but more is expected starting Sunday. Sure hope so. It is really dry here and plants are starting to show the effects. We had a good trip to a Quaker family camp over Easter. It was in Wanganui - about 4 hours south of here. Mornings were workshop and meeting for worship time - afternoons play with one day at a lake where the kids could kayak - Emily dropped her paddle into the water numerous times and finally tipped over and fell in (thank goodness she was wearing her life vest) when reaching for it. I don't seem to be quite coordinated enough to steer a kayak but will try again when the next opportunity arises. Our economy seems to be struggling with many of the same issues as the US - rising gas prices, falling value of the dollar relative to the New Zealand dollar - house values going down, etc. but we soldier along. I thought you might be interested in some of the place names of towns we went through or near on our way to Wanganui and back since we returned a different way: Taupiri, Hopuhopu, Te Kowhai, Ngaruawahia, Horotiu, Te Rapa, Rotokauri, Mystery Creek, Ohaupo, Te Rahu, Ngaroto, Te Awamutu, Kihikihi, Tokanui, Te Kawa, Kiokio, Otorohanga, Te Kumi, Te Kuiti (where they annually have the running of the sheep, like a mini running of the bulls in Pamplona), Tangitu, Tapuiwahine, Mangatupoto, Piriaka, National Park (Near a fantastic volcano mountain, Mount Ruapehu), Oreore, Kakatahi, Kai Iwi, Maxwell, Waverly, Patea, Normandy, Te Rati, New Plymouth (where we stayed the night on the way home), and so on. In Wanganui when we went to the nearby beach it was most covered in dead tree trunks and limbs - reportedly these are washed down rivers to the ocean which then casts them out onto the beach - I have never seen the like before - seemed to go on for milels. Emily did some body surfacing in the gently sloping bottom when waves came in and seemed to have a great time - Joseph stayed back at the Quaker Settlement where we were staying and dad waded in the water up to his knees and mom looked on and stayed dry. On the way back we passed near Mount Taranaki, a dormant volcano that apparently has a 52% chance of erupting within the next 50 years. It was featured in Tom Cruise's movie The Last Samuri. Thanks for reading this and I hope all is well for each of you. Manford

Happy Birthday, Vince!

I can't believe it's March 18, and Vince (my stepfather) is 86 today, or really tomorrow, because it's only March 18 here, not in California...but it will be, soon. And it was my mother's birthday Friday, which was Saturday here, and I am not as confused as it may seem. We are hoping they will be coming here to visit very soon. The weather is lovely here, 25 in the daytime (that's 77), cool at night, no rain in sight. That isn't good, for the drought, but it is lovely, anyway. Emily had the grand finale of school swimming lessons yesterday with a "water day" in which they all squirted each other with water bottles. They do have a small swimming pool and have been having swimming lessons every day over the last month and a half--I'm not sure whether she's learned much in the way of swimming, as all I hear about is how long it took her in the dressing room, and how she has to hurry up...but she seems to be having fun. Except for the lice. We don't have lice (knock on wood), but they are going around at school, and now she is alert to their presence, and worried about blood-sucking things in general...and she's supposed to have her hair put up in pigtails, or some variation of that, so I have to get her hair done before I leave in the morning, as that is not Manford's forte. It's not mine, either, but I'm getting better at it.

Charlie's hair is getting longer, too, and we tried to get her an appointment for a grooming, and found we needed to schedule it six weeks in advance...so she will be a really shaggy dog, and I'll try to get a picture and put it up--she looks quite different from when we first got her, and I can't imagine how people do it who show these dogs and let the hair grow out for two years. I think you'd have to spend at least an hour a day brushing the dog's hair. All the people in our house don't spend that much time on grooming all put together...

Yesterday was St. Patrick's day, and I searched around and found something green to wear, and then found that I was alone in this preoccupation. It apparently is not the thing here. I was wondering if this had to do with the British Dominion thing, and whether Ireland is a political issue, but it is really just kind of a blank...they don't even pinch each other in school if they're not wearing green. I'm afraid Emily may have started something, though. We'll see if it spreads.

They do have Easter, though, and I have so far resisted buying an easter egg the size of a rugby ball (larger than a football); I did buy some chocolate chickens, in homage to my childhood Easter traditions, but then Emily came in and I hurredly shoved them in the closet, and forgot about it, and Charlie came along later and all that was left were some suspiciously coloured bits of foil. Luckily, they were not big enough to cause serious illness, or any obvious discomfort at all. Charlie has been sniffing hopefully around the closet every chance she gets, though.

We are going to Wanganui for Easter; there is a Quaker family camp there. We have five days off, and apparently that is generous even for New Zealand--most people only get Friday and Monday, but the university, and the schools, take Tuesday as well, so we are doing a little exploring. Wanganui is about five hours south of here, where a river meets the west coast. It is supposed to be some very beautiful and rugged country. Emily is a bit worried the Easter Bunny won't be able to find it, but we think it will be ok. Although we hear that some of the families have Concerns (in a Quakerly sort of way) about chocolate (we assume it is the volume of chocolate, not the mere existence of it) and so there is no organized observance, and we'll be on our own.

That reminds me, I'd better be off to run to the store and get something to replace the poor chickens...

Carrie

Autumn, and Charlie

It is now Autumn here, and the mornings are much cooler, but by afternoon it warms up enough for me to pretty easily break into a sweat. We had our first fog of the year today and on the way to and from Emily's school we saw numerous small spider webs - some in trees, some decorating street signs, some on iron railings. They were generally less than a foot in diameter (I still don't think in metric). Beads of moisture hung at the tips of leaves and pine needles, sometimes cascading down like rain. Fall can be a melancholy time so it will be interesting to watch how that season of the year evolves at the Barber household here. Emily is now riding her bicycle without training wheels but at bike day at her school this past Friday we learned that she has a ways to go to reach the skill level of many of her peers, but she is very proud of her newfound riding ability. Yesterday we went to the nearby park to practice and saw a group of New Zealanders who had rigged a "flying fox" a cable suspended between two trees down which they would glide after hooking a carabiner to it - to get to it they were ramped up on a rope attached to a pully system so those on the ground could yo-ho-heave-ho them up by successive pulls on a rope attached through the pullys to a gizmo they strapped around their thighs and waist - maybe 30-35 feet up. Awsome. Well Charlie seems to be a bit neurotic, eager to make acquaintances with other dogs and really pulling on her leash sometimes but frightened of what we do not know but scared almost paralyzed at times. So obedience training now consists of Carrie or my obeying the instructions of the teacher to let her just watch while all the non-neurotic dogs sit, lie down, and stay so prettily. Oh, well, we hope it will eventually improve. Lastly, Easter is a big holiday here, with a school holiday for Carrie and the kids beginning on a Friday morning and ending on the following Tuesday evening. We may take a small trip to a Quaker camp located on the west coast of our North islaand (someday we will see some of the more scenic South island)during that break. If any reader would like to recommend books or movies they have recently enjoyed I would welcome suggestions - I know it is hard to reply to this blog (it tells me this is our 77th one), so feel free to e-mail me at manford_barber@hotmail.com. And we send warmest greetings to all, too.