Our last stop in New Zealand, Raglan

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Well I have officially lost count of the days. Since we’ve last blogged, we have spent our final day in Wellington, traveled to Raglan to stay with my good friend Natalie’s old pastor and his family, and flown to Samoa where we have spent the last 3 nights in open Fales on the beach, doing absolutely nothing but meeting interesting travelers from all over the world. We leave from Apia tomorrow, and our long adventure will be over. This blog will be of Raglan, and Lutz will later type one up for Samoa.

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On day 16(ish) we got up early to leave Wellington for Raglan. Pastor Roger and his wife Cheryll Peart were our hosts in their beautiful Ranch home in a place right outside of Raglan called Te Uku. We arrived around 4:40p to a warm welcome by our hosts. We drank tea and had dinner together with a full table, including 3 of their children + a boyfriend. It felt so good to be in a full house! The Peart family was very open and easy to talk with! Well it was also easy since we had a lovable common interest: my dear friend Natalie. We talked about her a lot ;) We ate a meaty lasagna, roasted pumpkin and potatoes, peas, and garlic bread for dinner. Apparently the classic NZ food is similar to American, meat and spuds.

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Since the family lives in a rolling-hills-farm type area, they found a wandering little lamb earlier that day. I went out with Esther, the second eldest daughter, and fed it with a bottle. Cheryll said that a sheep probably had 3 lambs and the mother only counted two, so this one was literaly unaccounted for and thus lost. They said it was only about a few days old. I asked Cheryll if one could just take it out and put it with another mother with young lambs so it could care for it. But unfortunately sheep don’t care for young that is not theirs. When the lambs are born the mother licks them constantly, bonding with them and getting to know them as her lamb. If this process doesn’t happen she does not care for it. Thus, a lost little lamb is indeed very lost. It is an immediate orphan and its chances for survival are very slim.

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We came on a Wednesday and the Pearts just began leading a 10-week church course on those nights. They said we were welcome to join them and the rest of the family to the group after dinner. I was thrilled! I will say that the one thing I have missed the most on this trip have been interactions with people and friends. Coming from a family of 4 girls (including my mom) and then always having several female roommates all throughout college, I have never missed FEMALE companionship so much!! Don’t get me wrong, Lutz is a very easy guy to get along with and the best traveling partner ever, but gosh I missed my girlfriendS!! (I made him watch the movie women with me and it made me miss gal pals all the more!)

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So we went to the little meeting room down the road and participated in the church’s small groups. This may have been one of my favorite parts of the trip. The whole group (about 30 people) watched a video together, then broke off into 4 groups: older and younger women and older and younger men. In my small group of 7 girls I felt at home fast. The girls were similar to myself and thus we appreciated each other’s openness and became friends very quickly. After a much-needed female bonding time, we rejoined the rest of the group in the main meeting room for tea and chocolates. After some good heart to heart talking, the girls gathered around the tea pot and began gabbing about anything, well the topic of boys did come up quickly, and my host Cheryll pointed out to me who she had wanted to set my friend up with. I laughed and told Cheryll she reminded me of Natalie’s mom! It was so much fun. Lutz of course also clicked with the guys, they were over in their own little circle as well laughing away and making big gestures. I felt like I was in high school again (in a good way). It felt good to be in a community. I was aware of this need of mine going into the trip, but it was solidified during this month of travel. I realized that I can be happy anywhere, as long as I have a community around Lutz and I. People are the most important thing in our lives.

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After church we came back and had some more tea and this awesome stuff called Hokey Pokey Ice cream with home-made lemon bread pudding. We chatted till 11pm that night, the latest Lutz and I had stayed up the whole trip. However, Lutz managed to (innocently) bring up politics in the conversation, and I just about wanted to die. If he had looked at me I would have been mouthing “BAIL BAIL!” Turns out Roger is an avid Bush-advocate and not so much of an Obama fan. After I realized there was no going back on this trail, I tried to remove myself psychologically and enter into conversation with Cheryll and one of the daughters. Every once in a while we’d hear words like “Hitler” and “Iraq” coming from the other end of the table and could feel the heat, so we tried to stay out of it!! Let’s just say Roger ended the night by saying, “I guess I’ll still let you guys sleep here!”. Imagine the awkwardness. Right now, imagine it. Yikes. In Lutz’s defense, he was innocently asking where on the political spectrum was the church in NZ, as he has seen it take different stances in different countries. Looks like it’s right in NZ. Way right ;) He spent the rest of the time trying to change the subject!

Luckily for Lutz, his big smile and outgoingness was able to trample any lingering awkwardness the next morning. He went right up to Roger first thing in the morning and the two shared tea talking about more agreeable subjects. However the little lamb had no such luck, as the little thing didn’t make it through the night. Cheryll said that had it been with its mother it would have stayed warm enough and had protection to survive. However this little guy did not. But there was another one there in its place, basking in the sun in another part of the yard. It was a sad fact of life, however to a farming family it was nothing to weep over. (I had to hold back my sadness! Lutz said I could never be a farmer ;)

We had breakfast with the fam and then headed 10 min over to Raglan, the place where my friends Natalie and Summer spent 8 months of their lives. If you didn’t know, it was originally Natalie and Summer who inspired our NZ trip. Well actually, the inspiration had been in Lutz for a while but Natalie and Summer were the excuse that pushed us over the edge and got us to buy the tickets. Unfortunately, life events changed and so neither of the girls where in Raglan by the time we made it out in August. To be honest, when I heard they weren’t going to be there, I did not want to go to Raglan. I missed my friend Natalie so much that I couldn’t bear the thought of going where she spent nearly a year and then JUST missing her. I imagined it too difficult to be where she worked, see who she met, and feel so close to her and yet so far. When I talked to her though, I don’t know if she explicitly said this or not but somehow I got from our conversation that it would mean a lot if we went to Raglan. This was the place that change and growth had happened for her, and these were the people who it happened with. I knew being there would make Natalie feel like someone shared in that part of her life, if only for a day. Thus we wrote it into our itinerary and it became for me a must-see. Instead of feeling far away from my friend in Raglan, I decided it would make me feel very close to her.

Although the two places are very different, the way I treated Raglan was similar to how Lutz treated the Milford Sound. I came into it very contemplative, imagining my friend walking down the streets, working at the Blacksand café, and watching the same waves and surfers that I was seeing. We spent several hours there, watching the waves at the beach and then eating Banana and Bacon pancakes (Natalie recommended) where she used to work. To be honest we did not expect much from the town, because we thought it would be like every other small town that we passed through. But it was somethin. It was like a mini Santa Cruz and the pace was slow, the goin’ easy. It was a special way to end our NZ trip, in a nostalgic town I had never been in that seemed already so close to my heart.

We came back and the eldest daughter had stopped by with her two daughters. We ate sandwiches with the fam and then Cheryll and Roger insisted that we see “the real New Zealand” and take a tour of their farm. After all it was “lambing season”. We were given big mud boots and windbreakers and we boarded the little atv and drove through paddock after paddock of sheep with their lambs and cows. It was such a different experience!! Lutz and I loved it. However, being the city folk we are, I stupidly asked after seeing acres and acres of perfectly kept grass, “so who does all the lawn mowing around here?” Roger laughs and says, “the sheep!” I had never felt so ignorant in all my life. Well, I have said a lot of stupid things… but that one was pretty bad. Anywho, Roger thought it was funny and came home and told Cheryll, who also found it amusing. We loaded our bags in our rental car and headed out. Spending our last day with locals felt like the perfect send off from New Zealand.