11/27/2003 We all got up, had breakfast, & drove into Fielding, a little town Ian & Angela live near. Stopped at a "chemistry" (pharmacy). The prices seemed a little bit high & half the shop was perfumes. Not quite like Walgreen’s, much smaller. The town was small & main street was like our old main streets in the 1950's & 60's where individual shops had homemade signs in the windows & mannequins have drab, out dated, conservative clothing. We went to a sporting goods store, a bank, & a horse equipment & supplies store (for Tansy & Louisa who love horses). There are "round-abouts" at most intersections here instead of lights. These are 4-way intersections with a round island in the middle, & depending on what direction you're coming from depends on right-of-way. At first I thought it was a waste of time going around an island instead of stopping & driving straight through, but now feel it is much more efficient & smooth.
I kept hearing what sounded like a policeman's whistle. Found out it's the street crossing sound for the visually impaired.
We were talking about going to a movie - "Calendar Girls" but the last showing was 6pm & it was already 6:30. Days are long at this time of year. It's still light out at 9:30pm. That's because we're pretty close to the South Pole.
Ian prepared another amazing meal, roast pork, vegetables, homemade applesauce, & blackberries on ice cream.
The girls (Tansy & Louisa) & I played cards, swapped NZ, Australian, & American coins, & played some made up games using an atlas. Louisa asked if there were cowboys where I lived.
***Gini,
Well, you've got to realize that I was traveling with Green Party members & staying at Green Party friend's & hiking buddies' houses so discussions were slanted to conservation. Everyone's home we stayed at had 2 or 3 places to put garbage depending on paper, plastic, or organic. Except for Ed & Jack's. Some even had compost toilets & were proud of it, and solar electricity & rain water supply. So, with that in mind, they think Americans are wasteful, arrogant, self centered, destructive, rude, & rich people. Also capitol pigs that don't care about the underprivileged part of its population. They think Bush is an ignorant & lying bastard & that American's believe everything they hear in the papers. They believe our newspapers tell lies because they're forced to by either corporate or government pressure. They think our going into Iraq was criminal & that we're totally ignoring the UN. They blame us for global warming. I even heard Nina say that Bush or someone high up stated that we were going to take over the world!
I heard a lot of stuff come out of Nina's mouth that was so anti American & some stuff just true about New Yorkers and not the rest of the nation. I wanted to scream "not true!" or "I disagree...", but I couldn't. One reason I didn't is that I don't have facts to back it up because I'm not into politics & my memory on facts is lousy. Two, I knew I would be traveling & dependant on her for most of the trip. And three, it wasn't just her I'd be debating against but also Frank, Tansy, Alison & whoever we may be visiting. I felt so battered down that when I got to Jack's & met an American that loved to argue back, with political facts, it was like meeting a ray of sunshine & my belief in our country & it's capitalism recharged.
There were times when I felt a little uneasy about people knowing that I was American. In tour groups, it was usually asked where people were from & there was always another American besides myself.
think Americans are buying up property & the people are afraid of what they'll do to it & that a piece of their economy is going to foreigners. Just like we felt about Japan buying up our big businesses & hurting our economy with imported cars.
The American I spoke to at Jack's evidently is famous. He teaches philosophy at the Canterbury University in Christchurch. He has a website that 10,000 people read a day (I think he said). I'm going to check it out. I think it's www.hearts&letters.com but I'm not sure. He has lived in NZ for 20 years. Alison says he lives there because he's comfortable & gets paid good $. She had him for a professor years back.
Everyone that I spoke to were polite & friendly even when they heard my accent. It was just the inner conversations that Nina or Alison brought up when we visited friends. I got a bit of the anti American feeling from their newspapers but even our newspapers have that too.
If you want to sound like a New Zealander, put your lips out abit like the French do, and lengthen the syllables a little. Also, I noticed people say Hello instead of Hi. And "good day" (gudday) like Crocodile Dundee would say. I heard Alison say "cheers" instead of goodbye quite often but that might just be her.
The main tourists were German, American, & Japanese, I think in that order. I figure because we are the richest of the world, & will spend it on sightseeing.
I hope this doesn't scare your friend. The country is so beautiful as long as politics are not brought up.
Tami
