Happy Monday :)

Morning all and a happy Monday to you all! Hope you all had a fabulous weekend. Ironically, considering my last post was about "summer" finally being here, the weather was kind of bad for us this weekend, with rain and wind and cold, but it was a good excuse to stay inside and work on NaNoWriMo, for which I have cracked 20,000 words! Although I should be at over 30,000 by now, I still think it's a pretty good effort and I still think I can make it to 50,000 by the end of the month. And now I'm going to be helped along by my awesome inspiration wall which is slowly filling up with ideas from the ever creative man in my life. Also went out to dinner with the best siblings a girl could ask for on Saturday night, and on Sunday took a trip to the Wairarapa to talk to a guy about my Tinui Project, spending most of the drive over begging the weather gods to give me some sunshine, but they didn't listen so instead of driving out to Tinui itself and exploring, I went home on account of the rain and the cold... and was treated to a beautiful homecooked pasta meal - which made up for the weather :)

Have a fabulous week lovelies! xo

Missing that place I never expected to like

"I'd like to rest, my heavy head tonight, on a bed, of Wairarapa stars, I'd like to lay my, weary bones tonight, on a bed, of Wairarapa stars..."

If I close my eyes and listen to this song, I can feel the fresh country air whipping through my hair, I can smell the dirt and the sheep and the cows and the grass, and I can see the long, seemingly endless roads stretched out before me. Although this song really has nothing to do with living in the country, I dscovered it when I was living there, and played it loud in my car whenever I felt like I was truly achieving things and was generally on top of the world.

It has popped up on my playlist on shuffle over the past couple of weeks and every time I hear it I miss the Wairarapa with a passion. You might remember this post where I bragged a little about living in such a beautiful place and this post, where I said goodbye to that beautiful place.

I nearly spent two summers there, so now that summer is almost within arm's reach, I'm longing for some country air. Sure, I'm lucky to live where I do - in the Hutt Valley ("The little city that tries hard" - according to Joshua - haha), just minutes away from the Coolest Little Capital in the World, and we have grand plans of visits to the local beaches, a trip to the south coast, a day long walk to the Pencarrow Lighthouse, this summer, but a slightly traitorous part of me longs to drive aimlessly down a long country road to nowhere, to risk life and limb climbing through a house that could fall down around us at any moment, to walk barefoot along the golden sand of Castlepoint, a place that feels like the end of the earth... maybe we will... it's not that far away... who knows what this summer will bring... but I have a good feeling that it will be a hot one, a great one, a happy one... with lots of ice cream, relaxing tunes, sand between our toes, kisses in the ocean, and fresh air...

We will remember them

One of the reasons autumn is my favourite season is because of those days that make you want to sit on the slightly damp grass under the impossibly blue sky and gulp in as much fresh air as possible. It’s those days that look like summer, minus the scorching heat that is replaced by air with an icy edge. The freshness of it feels like the moment the clock strikes 12am on January 1st each year – it’s the start of something new and exciting.
Yesterday was one of those days. April 25th; a day of both mourning and national pride for New Zealand and Australia as we commemorate Anzac Day. We bow our heads in prayer and thanks to those ordinary men who became extraordinary heroes who are remembered nearly one hundred years on.
The number of people attending Anzac services around the country and around the world steadily increases each year as the number of veterans dwindles, and for that, I personally feel extremely proud of my fellow New Zealanders, and glad that those men and women who fought for our right to live free are remembered.
Usually I get up before dawn to attend the dawn service at the cenotaph in Wellington and last year I reported on the Masterton dawn service. But this year, I decided to do something different.
While working for the Wairarapa Times-Age, I became aware of a tiny rural Wairarapa town called Tinui, which was the first place in the world to hold an Anzac Day service on April 25, 1916. Reverend Basil Ashcroft held a service for the people of Tinui at the Church of the Good Shepherd, before a group of men and boys carried a wooden cross up Mt Maunsell which would serve as a memorial to those who had died in the war. It was replaced by an aluminium cross in 1965, which was given a category one Historic Places Trust Classification last year.
I researched the place, and found I could not get its story out of my head. While numerous news stories had been written about it over the years, I felt the town and its people deserved its story to be told in more than just a few articles, so I approached the chairman of the Tinui Anzac Trust and proposed that I write a book about it.
To my surprise, he took me completely seriously despite my age and the fact I have never written a book before and gave me a tour of the town and told me of its history. At the end of the tour, he thanked me for taking on the project and said he was grateful that the younger generation was still interested in the Anzac story.
And so I took my first step towards making this dream become a reality yesterday, and, with my parents and sister in tow, we drove the one hour, 45 minutes from Stokes Valley to Tinui to stand in the brilliant sunshine outside the War Memorial Hall. As the tui sang behind us, the New Zealand flag flew proudly in front of us as people spoke and prayed and together we sang our national anthem before tears of sadness and gratitude came to our eyes at the sound of the Last Post as three war planes flew over our small gathering.
Following the service, we were treated to some country hospitality in the hall, with a massive morning tea spread, and then we made our way towards Mt Maunsell, where we half walked, half rode quad bikes on the trail walked 97 years ago by the people of Tinui to carry the cross to the top.
A few metres from the top, I wondered aloud why they had chosen that particular spot, and on reaching the cross and looking out over the town of Tinui surrounded by acres and acres of farmland, I had my answer. For there, at the top of the mountain, I felt the spirits of the fallen were very much alive and from that point, they could watch over their town, seeing it change and grow as the people in it live their lives free from war because of their sacrifice. And from the town below, its people can look up and be reminded of the realities of war and the freedom of peace.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old;

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning

We will remember them.

 

See more photos here

Losing control and taking it back

It's two months today since I made my last trip from Masterton to Stokes Valley, this time with a trailer fully laden with all that is material in my life. It was a change that I had hoped for for a long time and finally my chance to live my "real life" instead of what I felt had become my "temporary life".
I should have expected it, having gone away for a long period of time and come back twice in my life, but it still took me by surprise. "It" is hard to explain with simply a word or a sentence, hence why I'm writing a blog post about it. Yes, it's a bit personal, but I hope by writing about it, I can help myself as well as others who have been in a similar situation.
"It" is that horrible, crushing feeling you get when you leave everything you know and love - get out of your "comfort zone" if you will - come back, and after a month or two of euphoria, rediscovery and general happiness about being back, you realise you're back where you started and life is now routine again.
I first experienced this when I came back from Australia, where I was an exchange student for three months. Although, I had an Australian exchange student come to stay with me for three months after that, so it was after she left when it began to kick in. At the tender age of 15, my life was all about friends, being cool, and fitting in, and going on that trip disrupted all of those things. Three months is a long time in a teenager's life - enough time for your group of friends to either replace you or close the gap in the circle, leaving you on the outside - and even though I had made many friends in Australia, I had to accept that I would lose contact with a lot of them. But I missed them a lot.
I wasn't very "cool" and I never quite "fitted in" at my school here, so going to Australia and being the foreigner was great because, all of a sudden my host sister's friends were my friends, and there were a lot of them. But then I came back and my small group of friends had carried on without me, closing the gap, and I never really got back in, choosing instead to form close friendships with a select few people who I valued far above "being cool".
Then there was my three month trip to the USA. This time I was leaving behind a whole different life, as I had made it to that age (19) when you finally start to appreciate how important family is and "fitting in" becomes the ridiculous concept it is. Job wise, I hadn't quite found my way, so I was temping - mainly because I didn't want to commit to anything before going overseas. I was in a new relationship, one that I knew was for keeps, and one that I've now been in for five years. He knew from the very beginning - I think I even mentioned it on the night we met - that I was planning on doing Camp America, as I had been for years, so he knew what he had signed up for.
After two months of teaching art in the sunshine every day in the middle of nowhere, then a month of travelling - sleeping in tents and hostels and seeing things I never thought I would get to see and experiencing things beyond my wildest dreams (you haven't lived until you've laid down inside a massive, red cave-like rock in Monument Valley and heard a Navajo Native American play the wooden flute, its sound bouncing off the cave walls with acoustics as good, if not better than any theatre) - I came back to where I started: temping with no idea what I wanted to do with my life.
Although my New Zealand world had not changed much - my family were trucking along well and my relationship was strong - I had changed. And there's nothing more frustrating than when you've changed but the world around you has not. But you can't leave that life because the people you love are in it. It took a long time for me to put my extensive travel ideas on the back burner and focus on carving myself out a career before travelling again.
And carve out a career I did, which brings me to my next journey. I ended up studying journalism after meeting someone who had been one through my temp work, thinking "I could do that", and starting the course the next Monday. After the course I was offered a job in Hastings on a community paper and after talking it over with family and Josh and, after agreeing it wouldn't be forever and I could always come back if it became too hard, suddenly I was leaving home for the first time, moving into a flat with people I didn't know which was four hours away from home. Six months later I was on the move again, this time to Masterton, which was to be my home for a year.
In February I finally got the break I had been looking for and I was able to come back home to Wellington, and moved back in with my parents until Josh and I can move in together.
I love my wonderful supportive parents and my lovely Stokes Valley home where I grew up, but yet again, I'm back where I started: living with my parents. And I have changed a lot over the past 18 months, and lately, since the excitement and euphoria about being back has worn off I'm afraid of losing the new qualities I have gained by being out in the big wide world all by myself. It's easy to say that you leave home a kid, being bossed around and told to do chores and argued with, then you come back an adult and you should be treated like a flatmate, but that's simply not true. You're always your parents' child no matter how old you are, and both them and you end up getting back into the routine that is parent and child, even if you have been cooking your own dinner, buying your own groceries, getting yourself out of bed and off to work in the morning, for the last 18 months.
I guess I became a little selfish over that time, because I only had myself to look after and when I went home to visit, I was centre of attention. Now that I'm back, the attention has shifted and "that time when Sarah lived miles away" has all but been forgotten, and my life revolves around a lot more people than just me. I'm not saying I don't like the shift in attention and the demands of more people in my life, it's just that it's a lot to get used to. It's also hard to stay strong so that I can keep those qualities I've gained and my general outlook on life - my new, positive outlook on life where anything is possible.
So this week I've slipped. I've given in to the old, negative me and become this stressed out, irritated, frustrated person that I once was. But this time, instead of being content in my self-pity, I'm fighting back, refusing to be pulled down into that familiar, strangely cozy black hole.
There's a lot to be learnt from experiences such as this. Patience is the most important thing to have, a quality that comes from knowing that there will be more adventures to come, some of which will be scary and risky, and will sometimes have you wishing you were back in your snug routine.
Yes, it's a cliche (I know, not exactly shying away from them today - "beyond my wildest dreams"? yeah... couldn't help myself), but the most important thing to remember is what's most important in your life: People. Wherever you are in the world, be it New York City or lowly old Masterton, it's always the people you miss. So instead of obsessing about what the next step is going to be, I'm trying my best to sit back, employ copious amounts of patience, and enjoy having the people that I love close by.

Time to write

So, as most of my lovely loyal followers will know, I'm working on my first novel. But at the moment, I'm finding it quite stressful, as my head is near explosion, so full of ideas as it is; my emails that I write to myself from work when I'm seized by inspiration and have to write something down are piling up; and bits of paper are littering my desk at home, full of bits of chapters, sentences, character ideas, plot ideas, and about five different prologues.
And I have NO TIME to organise it all! All I want to do is write - I want a little Organisation Fairy to come into my study, log into my computer and organise all my mess, and then I want to pack up my laptop and a bag, jump in my car and take off to a cabin in the wilderness so I can just write.
Isn't it crazy how you try and try to live life in the slow lane but somehow your life just is not meant to be that way. I thought making the move away from journalism - which swallowed up my time, my conscience, and my soul - to move back closer to my family and friends would allow me to slow it down a bit, but it seems to have become even more frantic. Sure, I'm not driving over the hill every weekend and living out of an overnight bag, which was very exhausting, but now that I'm back, and in the big city, there is just so much to do, so many opportunities, so much to experience. And there are so many people to see.
Not that I'm complaining. I'm not. I like that my life is busy, but sometimes we all just need time out from everything and everyone and in a perfect world, we would like to do it without upsetting anyone.
For me, all I want is to make a dent in my novel - I want to feel like I've made some progress, and I want to be able to show someone the first few chapters and have them tell me what they think of it.
So I'm thinking, in the spring maybe, of taking a week off to write. Even though that's a few months away, I'm content to wait.
So I Googled "Writers' Retreats NZ" (in an ideal world, I would be Googling "Writers' Retreats Italy", but money doesn't grow on trees people) and was surprised to find that there are a few good retreats around these parts, so I thought I would share some with you in case you are having the same troubles and are dreaming of escape. I also stumbled across a great blog called Shameless Words by fellow New Zealander Seamus Kearney, who is also working on his first novel, so I'm extending some blog love thataways, make sure you have a peek!

Haurata High Country Retreat - Gisborne

New Pacific Studio - Wairarapa

Tauhara - Lake Taupo

The Writers' Retreat - Kerikeri

If all else fails, I might just hire my uncle's beach house up the coast, or hole myself up in the local library for a week... do you think they would let me sleep there? haha. Where would be your ideal place to retreat to? Have you had or are you having the same problem as me? Any advice on how to organise your life and get motivated?

Sarah xo

See ya later Wairarapa, it's been grand

On Saturday I said goodbye to a life in the Wairarapa I never expected to have but now cannot imagine my life without, and although I'm back to the suburban/city life I grew up in and belong in, living in the country is something I never expected to like but will never forget.
So I'm saying goodbye the best way I know how - by writing about it.

These are my Top 10 Wairarapa Moments:

1. The house that has no love

There's something about a big abandoned house that makes any creative dizzy with dreams, and the house on the hill just out of Carterton is enough to make any of them insane with an overload of ideas. It's like a blank canvas, where anything is possible; it's like that old saying, "one man's trash is another man's treasure" and seeing this beauty wasting away is simply heartbreaking.

2. Bright lights, “big city”

I've been pretty lucky to have had a great flatmate for the last year - a flatmate I've cooked with, gone to the movies with, shared my problems/stories with and whose problems/stories I have listened to - and one of my favourite memories is a very early one: a trip around the flash... and not-so-flash (ie. tacky) Christmas lights of Masterton, which ended with disappointing unmixed McFlurry's which did little to dampen the childlike excitement of the night.

3. That day it snowed

We all remember that beautiful, beautiful day when the whole country turned white for the first time in 50 years. I could think of no better - if a little dangerous - job to be doing at the time than journalism. With gumboots on and as many layers of thick clothing I could handle, my day was spent chasing photographic gems: children making snowmen, rows of rural letterboxes covered in an icing of snow, long country roads indented with the swirling marks of slow-moving tyres, sheep foraging under the snow for food, and pukeko trudging through the white stuff with no idea what's going on.

4. Up in the air

I did think twice about adding this to the list, considering the devastating hot air balloon crash that killed 11 people on January 7th in Carterton. But, in March last year, hot air balloons were still magical and it was one of the most important items on my bucket list that I got to tick off for free, so although it is not something I would ever do again following the crash, I'm glad I did do it because I'm never going to forget how it felt to rise up into the air at the same time as the sun early in the morning with 22 other balloons surrounding me and spending two hours breathing in the fresh air and seeing the world like I had never seen it before.

5. The best New Year's Eve ever

You know you have an amazing group of friends when they leave the bright lights of the capital city to drive over the Rimutaka Hill and spend New Year's Eve with you in lil' ol' M-Tron. Up until the very last minute, I think the whole of New Zealand was hoping the weather gods would change their minds and give us a sunny New Year, but that didn't happen and I'm glad it didn't because if we had better weather, we would have found something to do in Wellington and never would have ended up getting drunk at my flat, attempting to "shuffle" and dancing to old Beatles records to bring in what is set to be the best year yet, 2012!

6. Family time

I don't ask for a lot. I don't ask for people to go out of their way for me. But they so often do and it warms my heart each and every time. When I moved to the Wairarapa, I didn't expect people to go out of their way to visit me because I had made the decision to move away, so I should visit them. But two of my favourite  recent family memories are my whole family coming to visit me - once for mum's birthday when we went out for dinner in Masterton, and once earlier this year when we had one of our favourite family dinners: fish and chips in the park. After packing ourselves full of beautiful deep-fried fish and good kiwi chip butties, we wasted no time and comandeered the flying fox, all of us taking at least two turns - some of us stupid ones going backwards or attempting to stand up - and then tackling the swing bridge, swings and jungle gym. Mature I know.

7. Celebrate good times

Thsi year isn't just a new beginning for me; it's also the start of a new career for my flatmate who started her first teaching job this year. To celebrate both our new jobs and to say goodbye, we went to Martinborough, home of the famous Martinborough Fair, beautiful wineries and gorgeous country restaurants - by far my favourite Wairarapa town. During such an unpredictable summer where it can be raining and freezing one day and too hot to function the next, we were incredibly lucky to have the perfect weather for the perfect night. The sky was blue and there was not a breath of wind or a drop of rain, and we enjoyed a beautiful meal at Cool Change, a new restaurant which is totally awesome and I think you should go there, followed by the most delicious gelato I've ever tasted (except for Kaffee Eis in Wellington) at It's Quite Cool.

8. An introduction to farm life

Of all the people the Wairarapa Times-Age could have chosen to be Rural Reporter, they chose the girl who grew up in the suburbs and had spent some years working in the city. Needless to say, I had no idea what I was doing, but I was willing to try. One of my favourite rural reporting memories was one of my first, when I went to a farm to talk to a farmer about a bridge over the Ruamahunga River that would stop cattle polluting the river. But to get there, I had to sit on the back of a quad bike in my dress and flimsy ballet flats, get trampled on and licked by dirty working dogs, and hang on for dear life while the farmer drove for miles across his land to get to the bridge. But despite the culture shock, I felt exhilirated at the end of it; ruined shoes, dirty dress and messed up hair notwithstanding.

9. Hello Mr Chicken
In my first few weeks as a Masterton resident, my partner and I went for a walk to the supermarket along a seemingly suburban road, and, to our surprise, were joined by a chicken. Sure, to people who had lived in Masterton for awhile that would have been nothing out of the ordinary, but to us it was hilarious. But, after living here for a year, I've discovered sharing the road with animals is a regular occurrence, from sheep, to cattle, to dogs on motorbikes. Which brings me to my next memory...

10. Man's best friend
Country roads are anything but long and boring. If the fresh air and feeling of complete and utter freedom is not enough, you should have been on Te Ore Ore Road on the one day I did not have my camera with me. So I'm driving along, and suddenly I look to my right and there on a farm motorbike is a man - most probably a farmer - slowly driving along the side of the road with a big brown dog, about as big as a retriever, sitting infront of him, tongue hanging loose, both man and dog sporting that classic country "what road rules" attitude.


To sum it up, I would not change a thing about the last 18 months. It hasn't all been smooth sailing, but everything that has happened has been a learning experience and I feel like I'm going back to Wellington a new person; a whole person with her eyes wide open to the world.

Abuzz

On Friday, December 30, the hills were alive with the flowering of manuka and Times-Age chief reporter Don Farmer came into work and asked me to do a story on the manuka crops and the benefits it would have for beekeepers.

"Call Joe Sweeney," he said, and two and a half hours later I had on a full beekeepers suit complete with thick gloves that made it nearly impossible to work my camera, and my flatmate's blue floral gumboots.

In my 19 months as a reporter, I have donned big white gumboots and a hair net for a tour of the Premier Bacon factory with former Governor General Anand Satyanand, a wetsuit and lifejacket for a tour of the Ruamahunga River with Green Party co-leader Russell Norman, and a massive pair of gloves to hold up the 2011 Melbourne Cup when it visited Greytown to celebrate the town's 1954 winning racehorse Rising Fast - all of which have photographic proof hidden in Times-Age photographer Lynda Feringa's "Blackmail Folder". So this was nothing unusual.

It was raining when I went to see Joe's hive, the worst type of day to open up a hive, as bees are not fans of the rain and don't do alot when it's wet or cold. But, to Joe's surprise, the muggy heat meant the bees were particularly well behaved and had built up a substantial amount of honey, more than expected.

Before putting on the suit, he showed me the hive without opening it and said "if you're game, we can suit up and I'll open the hive for you", so in the spirit of trying new things, I didn't hesitate and ended up feeling quite at home in the big white suit.

You would think it would be kind of scary standing in amongst a swarm of bees when your mum is allergic and you've never been stung so you don't know if you're the same, but from the get go, I told myself "you're in a beekeeping suit, they can't sting you" and stood still, respecting their territory and their work.

I've never been much of a honey eater, not because I don't like it, but because as kids my brother and sister and I were offered vegemite, jam or peanut butter for our sandwiches and the honey was for the adults.

When Joe scooped up a little blob of honey for me to try, the risk of opening up a couple of buttons on my bee-tight suit was totally worth it to taste the smooth, sweet golden goodness of manuka honey. I'm now a honey eater.

Joe has invited me back on a sunnier day to teach me to ropes of beekeeping and, in the spirit of the new year, a time when you promise yourself you are going to "be more adventurous" and "try new things", I agreed, so stay tuned for the next installment of my beekeeping lessons.

Summer loving

Okay, I know it's not officially summer yet, but it's November 1st, and while I'm writing this it's 20 degrees (celcius) outside, so I think it's time to really start looking forward to sunny weather, especially since summer seems so long ago with the terribly cold winter we've had. So, this summer, I'm looking forward to:

 ♥ eating gelato ♥ exploring new places in the Wairarapa like Herbertville Beach and Gladstone ♥ christmas ♥ celebrating new years at Castlepoint Beach ♥ camping ♥ roadtrips ♥ writing poems ♥ getting my camera back up and running ♥ experimenting with my new vintage Agfa camera ♥ concerts ♥ planting a herb garden ♥ reading books in the sunshine ♥ swimming in the ocean ♥ jumping off the Eastbourne wharf into the ocean ♥ woodfire pizza on the beach ♥ bike rides ♥ summer dresses ♥ barbeques with friends and family ♥ roasting marshmallows ♥ salads ♥ parties ♥ singing to summer tunes up loud in the car with the boyfriend, not caring who's listening ♥ walking around in bare feet ♥ inventing fruit smoothie flavours ♥ chillin' at the Waitarere Beach bach with the family

What are you looking forward to this summer?

A perfect summer day is when the sun is shining, the breeze is blowing, the birds are singing, and the lawn mower is broken. ~James Dent

From the burbs to the wops......pt2

On Friday night my mum, sister and I donned high heels, dresses and our best jewellery, and headed into Wellington City to see the Broadway classic, 42nd Street. We parked and stepped out of Courtenay Central into the busy street and I instantly felt at home amongst the people and the cars and the buskers and the slightly polluted air.
The country is, as they say, a breath of fresh air, and I have come to love it. But, there's nothing quite like the salty breeze that whips you as you walk along the Wellington harbour; the sound of cars and buses and high heels speeding around the busy city (oh how I miss the sound of high heels that aren’t my own); the courageous fashion, odd couples, hole-in-the-wall cafe's that make the most amazing burgers (yes, Offbeat, I'm talking about you), and the vintage fashion as opposed to second hand "fashion".
Driving around the Wairarapa is also a different experience – for those people with no sense of direction, the Wairarapa is the place to be. Long, straight roads that you get to know in no time at all. Only problem is, if you go too far out into the country – like to, say, Alfredton, it’s the scariest feeling if you have got the wrong road because you can be driving for half an hour and not see another street to turn off into that lets you know where you are.
So, Wellingtonians, when you take a drive to work or to the town centre, what do you see? Houses, office buildings, shops, parks, sports fields, bus stops, schools, people.
What do I see? Sheep, sheep, sheep, ooh lambie cute! Cows, cows, cows, sheep, sheep, oh look, a person!... well, it’s a farmer… sheep, sheep, sheep, cows.
Okay, maybe I exaggerate a teeny bit. There are plenty of houses and schools and parks and stuff, but seriously, there are a lot of sheep. And cows. And farmers.
BUT, the thing I love about this place is just how natural it is. You drive past those farms and see the meat you buy for dinner. In summer time, stalls and shops full of fruit and vegetables straight from Wairarapa vines, trees and soil are everywhere. Schools grow their own vegetables, keep chickens, and have worm farms and greenhouses.
It’s also full of surprises. I know I may have led you astray with my “sheep, cows and farmers” comments, but rest assured, the Wairarapa is not all country and western. Little gems are hidden in nooks and crannies all over the place.
In Martinborough a new bar called Cool Change has just opened up, and if you’ve just got the Little River Band song in your head, that’s exactly what the owners Karina and Jimmy want. It’s all about good music, good beer, local wine, and kiwi food, all encased in the beautiful old post office building.
On the road to Mount Holdsworth you will find a little cabin with a wood fire oven, which churns out amazing pizzas on Friday nights, or so I’m told – I haven’t been there yet.
On the way to Stonehenge Aotearoa, just out of Carterton, a beautiful abandoned house sits atop a hill slowly falling to pieces.
On the way to Riversdale/Castlepoint, there is a small town called Tinui, which houses about 25 families and was the first place in the world to hold an Anzac Day service.
Way at the back of the Cobblestones Museum in Greytown sits a man named Tony King, who has a great passion for printing, and runs a working print shop equipped with vintage printing presses as a live exhibit at the museum, where buildings of Greytown’s past have been preserved.
Oh, and you must visit Schoc Chocolate in Greytown, which sits right next to the museum, and try a piece of kiwifruit and vodka chocolate.
So, the people of the Wairarapa may not wear high heels to work or to bars – or anywhere really, and Masterton’s town centre may be bereft of good clothing and music stores. The internet may suck, and there may be a lot of sheep and cows and farmers, but during my time here, I have met a lot of people who have escaped the “hustle and bustle” of the city and come over here to have a lifestyle, rather than a job.
It took me a long time to get used to the quiet of the country, but now I feel at home. Although, I still feel that hustle and bustle calling me back.

IT'S SNNNOOOWWWING!!!

Although I live in a country notorious for its snowy mountains, I can count on my fingers how many times I've acutally seen snow. Where I grew up, near the city and the sea in a little valley, we got a sprinkling of snow maybe once every five years. But last night, very few towns in New Zealand escaped the snow, as we experienced our worst snowfall in 15 years. So us Wellingtonians get very excited about the prospect of snow, especially me!
Where I live now, in a rural area over the hill from where I grew up, there is a mountain range and endless country roads.

This was my morning - driving around the Wairarapa with a massive grin on my face, squealing with delight at the magic of snow!