United States of America pt. 2

Off to Oregon tomorrow, so I thought I'd write another blog post regarding to my time in Northern California. After we return from Oregon, we'll be in Garberville for one more day. After that we're off to San Francisco for a couple of days, and after that, Las Vegas. It's been a fairly relaxed past couple of weeks, and with how busy we're likely to be over the next couple, it's probably a good thing.

First off, as promised, one more photo of the apple trees:

Probably the most interesting day so far was last Saturday. Laura's friend Arturo picked us up in town, and took us to a redwood forest, and then on to a near by (kind of) city, Eureka.

I'm definitely not much of an outdoors person, but the redwood forest was nothing short of amazing. It felt very different to the bush I'm used to in West Auckland. While it was not very dense at all, the trees themselves were ridiculously tall. Some of the tallest in the world. Somehow the lack of density made the height of each individual tree more impressive.

After that, we went to pretty much the complete opposite of a redwood forest. Target. It's kinda like the Warehouse, but bigger. And cheaper. Soooooo much cheaper.

I did get some new clothes though, and clothes I actually needed as opposed to more black tshirts. Laura grabbed plenty of makeup that would cost a ridiculous amount in NZ, and I stocked up on snacks. We also went to Walmart, because it was apparently something I had to experience. It was depressing. Let's not talk about Walmart.

When at home rather than out and about, I've been helping more around the house a bit, and reading. A lot. Just about finished A Clash of Kings, and am thinking about moving on to Farenheit 45.

Will give an update about being in Oregon when I get the chance. :)

United States of America

And I'm back to blogging. Haven't posted at all in a few months, my second semester of university was really quite busy, and there was a slew of other things going on at the same time that lead to me just not having time for much writing that wasn't uni related. Anyway, I'm back to it.

On the 11th of November, Laura and I boarded a plane to go to the U.S. It's the first time I've ever been here, and has been pretty cool so far, even though we've mostly just been at Laura's house. The trip there was, for the most part, uneventful, although we managed to almost miss one of our flights. Lack of a boarding call can lead to issues it would seem. We ate Mexican food the night we got here and it was amazing. People weren't kidding when they told me about how huge the portions are here.

The past couple of days we've been working on making apple and pear juice. This included picking the apples, and grinding them up into a pulp before extracting the actual juice.

I'll see if I can get some more photos later on.

Today we also went to the nearby town, Garberville. It was very much a small town, with (as expected) rather a lot of hippies. Also got to try my very first burger in America, and I gotta say, it was pretty delicious. Surprisingly enough, I've actually LOST weight since I got here. I suspect that has something to do with the fact that I'm moving around a lot more as opposed to diet however.

What I've found to be the strangest here has honestly been the driving. I've only ever been in countries in which they drive on the left, and even though I've just been a passenger, driving on the right side of the road feels really, really weird.

I've also found the television to be fairly odd, most specifically the adverts. The main two that have stood out are adverts for prescription drugs, and an advert for a class-action lawsuit. Just not things you'd see in little old New Zealand.

The next few days I think will be more of the same. Hopefully going up to Eureka and Arcata with a friend of Laura's on Saturday, which should be fun. Going to tour a brewery and eat good food.