Out With the Old, In With the New

New and old bedrooms respectivly

Well, my first two days with my new temporary host family (just one temporary this time) have gone pretty well. Stefan (my new host brother) and I rented some movies my first night here. Stefan gleefully exploited my ability to take out R rated movies (he’s 14), but I don’t mind and neither does Deborah (my new host mom), so it all works out. I got to see Hannibal Rising, which I’ve wanted to see for a while, and Stefan got to see The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which was big on his “to see” list.The food here is a little sparser than at the Baxters, but there is at least a happy balance between snacks and cooked food, so I really like that. There are two cats, Nina, who is generally anti social, and Jake, who is very friendly, but also smelly. They both like to come and sleep on my bed, which is actually not mine, but Deborah’s. She insists on sleeping on the fold out couch bed, and couldn’t be persuaded otherwise, so I have the master bedroom.Deborah’s sister lives down the street, so both families end up doing a lot together. Yesterday we all went to the park with her sisters four soon to be five year old son Jontee, or John T (I’m not really sure which.) The park was amazing, not only was it huge, but it also had all kinds of playground toys that you don’t see in America, because idiots use them as trebuchets on their six-year-old brother, and then end up suing the park and forcing them to take it down. People aren’t allowed to sue in New Zealand, so there were sea-saws, those self propelled carousel things, a full sized zip line, bouldering walls, a ridiculously high slide, and other things that I don’t know the name of, but I’m sure wouldn’t be allowed on American playgrounds.We also went over later on in the day and had dinner with them and watched sports. I’ve determined that American football, or grid-iron as they call it over here, is a pansy sport compared to rugby. The best I can figure out the rules are this. Get the ball to the end zone. Other than that, there are no rules. It’s continuous play; if someone gets tackled they basically grapple the ball out of the pile and keep on running it. They also wear less protection then soccer players, and have metal spikes on the bottom of their shoes; people get stepped on a lot.So yeah, football is for pansies.