A New Host

    We have been with our new host (Debra and Andrew) for a little more than a week now. They are wonderful people who are really into the spirit of Helpx which is all about learning about each other’s cultures. They frequently want to know what we call things, how we do things, and especially what we eat. They love to talk about our differences in food. We even cooked for them the other night. Becca and I made some burgers with a bit of an Australian swing to them.

       We threw together burgers that had curry powder and Worcester sauce in the meat, some cheddar in the middle, and then sautéed mushrooms and onions on top. They turned out to be pretty good, I could have added more curry though. I never knew how much Americans loved our peanut butter, but we seem to like putting it on everything, whereas here it is just another spread.

       We have been really fortunate with the wildlife here so far, we have seen tons of koalas, a couple of echidnas, and they have so many colorful birds I can’t keep track of them all. They have one of the birds as a pet, her name is Aus (pronounced oz), I say hello to her every morning when I go to feed the chickens and she often puts her claw on my outsretched finger and bobs her head, I think she likes me.

    When we first got here I was immediately struck by the photographs on the walls. They are diverse, some birds, other landscapes, many of people, and they are all taken by Debra and Andrew. The ones of people are often of nude models. I come to find out a lot of these nude models are actually helpxers like us. They each wanted to have a photoshoot and almost all of them opted to be naked. Now there is a cultural difference for you, us Americans can’t even imagine stripping down in front of someone to go swimming in the daylight let alone smile at a camera. Of course the pictures are not compulsory to stay here but if we are interested we can have one done, we don’t even have to take our clothes off, that’s optional as well.

     
  We are planning the next leg of our trip and have been emailing hosts from New Zealand left and right. We even got an email back from one of the hosts that has a seal colony just down the beach. If we go there I don’t know how I will get a seal on a plane but I will figure out a way.

If any of you are interested in where I am here is a link to the address