helensville...

hello! so yesterday i arrived at my first farm. the arriving part was not as easy as it sounds, since i took a bus and missed my stop (i rock). so i ended up on the bottom of a large hill. i needed to be at the bottom of the large hill... on the other side. imagine me, with all my worldly posessions on my back, hiking up main st. helensville. two girls were like, "you're not from around here, are you?" i said "how can you tell?" thinking maybe it was the mountainous bag on my back with a large canadian flag that may have given it away. " you look too flash to be from here", they answered. flash? what is that exactly? this is only the beginning...
as a clambered down the road, crying that GOd would spare me from a broken back, one of my host ladies, lorraine, drove up. she offered to take my pack, well all the while a middle aged man beside her yelled "helloo! hello!" about every 5 seconds. interesting. so i finished the walk ( lorraine went to town first) and met up with a long haired man with no teeth to speak of named antonio. we went to the house and met yet another guy who seemed a bit like a jumpy kiwi wangsta. i later found out that lorraine works with intellectually handicapped people, and this seemed to be a connection. irene, a pleasant lady with wildly curly grey hair, finally arrived home and showed me the farm. we saw the sheep (which, by the way, really do stink and are dumb as hammers), they were cute though. we said hello to the goat and ducks, and went to feed the cat....steak. sketchy, because we people had canned tuna for dinner. lol. after this we proceeded to feed the lambs and run away from the crazy ram! did i mention that every single animal there (there's a few) has a name? needless to say, i was a little taken aback by the whole thing, but everyone was friendly and we finished the evening with coffee and pool. so my time in helensville has begun, it should be interesting if nothing else...!