Holy Mackerel, This World is Dynamic!

My Dearest Friends and Family,

Today I called my Papa Art who was celebrating his birthday. He’s 85 years old, but last he remembers he was 23. I kind of get what he means. Last I remember, I think I was four. This world is certainly dynamic.

Proof-in-point: Last week I listed “farming” as one of my passions. Five years ago, I would have told you that same truth in an Alabaman accent just as seriously as I would tell you I was a Swedish Sepehr-moudehl while brushing my teeth. But now, I couldn’t be more sincere; I love farming. My happiest days in New Zealand have been spent in gumboots, and, when I found that weekends to “greener pastures” down south weren’t enough, I up and moved my city girl be-hind to work on my dentist’s olive farm where I am (lovingly) referred to as the “American girl who lives in the shed”.

Now, I ride my hap-hazardly Americana-themed retro “push bike” (a “Healing Skylark” – doesn’t that sound nice?) on the longer-than-I-like-to-pretend commute to campus along paddocks of varying stench, wondering.  I wonder a lot of things. I wonder what everyone I love back home is doing with their yesterday afternoon. I wonder what the bulls and dairy heifers think of my bicycle (Do they stare because it’s cool?).  I wonder if the hills in Palmy are big enough to count as mountains (if you’re from Michigan).  I wonder how much longer I will be in New Zealand. I wonder how much longer I would be in New Zealand if I bio-terrorized it with light-ten-ning bugs. I wonder what old buildings in Detroit would look like as wedding venues and gastro-pubs and chocolate factories and how fifty-cent packages of carrots and hummus could change the world. I wonder if there’s anything to that theory that not getting enough sun can make people strange (i.e. Trolls, Norwegians) because, quite frankly, I haven’t had a decent summer in nearly two years and, well, these are the sorts of things I’ve been thinking about.

Theory or not, I’m happy to be here resisting-sunburn over the holidays. With seemingly so much going on it is nice to stay in one place for a while, plus, Palmy’s community outdoor pool has a high-dive. I plan to spend informal days in the office thinking about chocolate until my head hurts enough to excuse a weekend of wine and wetsuits. Or, there’s always running. The greatest escape of late, actually, was all three: The Great Barrier grande finale of “Miss Jessica Alexandra”(as the announcer of the Taupo half mistook)’s off-road marathon series had entire-book-reading-ly long mornings, and evening crays with malt vinegar following arvos of sweet chilli cockles and oysters. We swam naked in waterfalls and otherwise were, more often than not, being guided around the island by an underwearmodelesque boy with a boat. Oh yeah, and did the marathon. It was beautiful.

Plus, I just topped up on family time with the Clark’s big little trip Down Under. Half of me feels like we did it all; We swam with dolphins, skiied in irrigation ponds, slept on boats, caved with glow worms, and filled up on local grub. I’m exhausted, and yet the other half of me feels like even a waterfall of baby seals doesn’t crack the surface of amazing things that oddly seem a bit normal when you live in New Zealand. I blinked, and they were gone!

Still, I wish I could be “home for Christmas”, especially for that 23-year-old grandpa of mine.  But, he’s quick to assure that he’s “Holy mackerel, just so darn proud” that I’m doing what I’m doing and so with that, and a heartbreakingly awesome army of uncle-angels lookin’ out, I can confidently carry on with this dynamo degree-turned adventure.  And, just so long as no one scrums up the cash to buy me a mountain full of persimmon trees and a big, mean-looking Angus stud, I’ll be back before we know it.

As always, I hope all is well at home, wherever home may be.

Love,

Alexandra

The Pictures Untaken

This day last year, I bought this “flash” camera (har har) with my birthday cash, aspiring to amply document all of the food, friends, flora and fauna that New Zealand would have to offer. However, in the last few months, mud-covered rugby games and lazy moments by the river, ashy orange sunsets and even my beloved Avocado plant, “Arnie” have gone [pause for emphasis] un-photographed. In a sub-par attempt to record now what neglected then- I bring you a literary compilation of memories entitled [National Geographic voice] “The Pictures Untaken”.

PICTURE NUMBER ONE

Title: “Lake Tekapo Sunrise”

Misty sunrise over Lake Tekapo, labrador, kiwi bloke in underpants

The decision was made for me at the fried food finale of our Easter camping trip at Lake Tekapo that the experience was worthy of its own paragraph in my next letter home- so here goes.

We voyaged the rough waters in a ski boat so “chocka” with “necessities” that Monty (the Labrador) would have had a seat on my lap even if he wasn’t afraid of the bumps! It was worth the ride for a lush long weekend of lakefront nothingness complements of good man planning: Not every campfire has a sea wall, every toilet a view, every morning bacon with chocolate eggs. We conquered an island, debated the cultural nuances of the ‘mallow, confirmed the vitality of the seaweed population with my keen fishing skills, took advantage of glacial waters for winter water skiing incentive and even managed to take care of some beers that needed drinking.

PICTURE NUMBER TWO

Title: “Running like the Wind”

Three happy bush-mangled girls in runners, arms out, wind blowing, run so fast they nearly fly, scaring the sheep, down the grassy side of the hill they ran & climbed up earlier that day.

PICTURE NUMBER THREE

Title: “Your First Duck! Your First Duck!”

A giggling Alexandra, face painted and shotgun in hand is swept off her gumboots in excitement just moments after shooting her first duck.

Seeing as that my birthday inconveniently (or, perhaps, oh-so-conveniently) coincided with “duck weekend”, my “kiwi-brother”-gone-kiwi-boyfriend (yikes!) decided that my shotgun performance and “birthday girl” status warranted a welcome to the (once men only) Maimai. As per usual, I had no clue what was going on but was pretty darn excited…more unusually, I was not nearly as excited as the men around me! Andy said he knew when I had shot a duck because he would hear one shot, a duck fall and then an enormous fit of giggles from across the irrigation pond. What he didn’t know was that I was most likely laughing at Thomas, who, when I had shot a duck, would smother me in a big farmy hug before I could get off a second and express his excitement in the same voice he uses to talk to his pups. Andy, James, Tom and I came home with 40 birds to breast and the happiest Labrador you’ve ever seen. We perfectly wasted the rest of the day on the farm and, as if I really was the luckiest girl in the world, I found my first five (yup, 5) leaf clover.

PICTURE NUMBER FOUR

Title: “Cake Stand”

Alexandra Clark, hands on the ground and feet held by her friends, enjoying the pleasantly difficult task of swallowing cheek-fulls of delicious yet notably viscous chocolate ganache, up-side down.

May was a constant celebration of international & domestic mail (thank you!), battered & crumbed fish n chips, red & white wine, long runs, short walks and the awkwardly amazing smothering of my naked body in Manuka honey. So I was naturally confused and “culinarally” gutted to hear that my friends had spent my weekend away struggling to recover from a “cake party.” “You don’t have those in the States?” Guan said, confused. “It’s where everyone gets together and you get a cake and you all hang out and do cake stands and stuff.” “CAKE STANDS?” This moment, the one when I realized that they were saying “KEG,” was the very same that they realized I was saying “cake.” So, after Americanadian Cinco de Mayo in New Zealand (how’s that for fusion cuisine?) I was not entirely un-surprised to find myself upside down over a massive (wheatless!) keg-shaped cake to chants of “cake stand, cake stand, cake stand.”

PICTURE NUMBER FIVE

Title: “Child Labor and the Global Cocoa Industry’s Adoption of Certification: A Comparative Institutional Analysis of Stakeholder Responses to Advocacy Attacks”
Alexandra Clark from the Centre for Agribusiness Policy and Strategy at Massey University presents her research at to a room of institutional economists at Stanford University

I have finished fall classes, am working on my thesis and write this “letter to the olds” from 63C en route to the “isnie” conference at Stanford University to present my research. Despite the success, I have decided to embark upon an agri-food tour of the world in lieu of my PhD- I’m simply not happy with this position anymore and so it is time to move on. That said, I have only six months left “down under” and a very small proportion of the pictures I had originally intended to take! With time rolling on and a massive list of things to do, places to go and people to play with I am armed with full battery and empty memory stick in hopes of doing this amazing experience justice. Hold me to it!

I hope all is well at home, wherever home may be!

Alexandra

xoxo

Lucky Me

Hello, Hello!

Some of you may (even fondly, perhaps) remember a chapter of my life when I oh-so confidently referred to myself as “The Luckiest Girl in the World” (I, personally, liked that chapter). You may also recall the nice, hefty whack to the face that knocked that “rad babe” right off of that pedestal she so foolishly danced upon.  Happily, I can now honestly report that (with the exception of a few minor shortfalls) my life has returned to its “ordinary” tendency of going extraordinarily well.

I have superstitious inklings that it has something to do with the Pilot Whale’s tooth I found in Ngawi at my “Until We Meet Again, New Zealand” mini-celebratory weekend of “Kiwiana”. I spent my time in that lobster-filled village of tractors decapitating and devouring Paua (Abalone) avec beurre, good wine and great girls.  There, a big chunk of tooth was just sunbathing in the sand we were strolling on before “tea”, and (as if life gets much better than this paragraph) that evening over a bowl of marshmallows I learned that this “find” was quite special- whale’s teeth are powerful talismans of ancient Polynesian culture! I believe that I am living verification of this; having “lost” so many teeth it simply MUST be good luck to have finally “found” one! Unfortunately my little amulet came a week to late to have “properly assessed” that theory at the sunny, drink-filled Christchurch Cup races!

Or, maybe sometime between my daily Pina Coladas, Thanksgiving-a-la-beach and jumping out of a plane from 14,000 feet above Ben’s new Hawaiian home, I picked up a little bit of his notoriously good “JuJu”. On second thought, while I was there I suffered a less-than-graceful blood-drenched freak boogie boarding accident that resulted in a broken nose. So, maybe I just needed another good smack across the face to turn things around.  

Then again, there’s always magic to soak up in a cup of Ghirardelli’s on the Chicago Christmas window display “audit” and shopping extravaganza my mom and I celebrate annually and, mornings that begin with a whiff of the blue-berry and blue-grassy wood-burnt smokey smell of Saturday that wafts up the stairs of my home-sweet-Detroit are eternally divine. There was even something undeniably “special” about the bubbly-inspired (yet whole-heated) rendition of “Party in the USA” with which my family of friends rang in 2011. Heck, living on the other side of the planet makes sleeping (terribly) in the same rugged-a-bump ski bunks with my sister seem “Heavenly”!

In the aftermath of the earthquakes, I certainly feel fortunate to have my health and happy-little-life here in New Zealand (and that of my friends and family here) and I am milking that one for all it’s worth! My good friend Caeley (the Canadian I met on the plane) and I ran and river-crossed (okay, avec a few “wee” berry-picking sojourns) the Mototapu Off-Road Marathon last month and I am officially registered for Ironaman New Zealand in March! I’ve shivered a swim in the glacial waters of Lake Tekapo (of which my “funny” American accent cannot accurately pronounce despite it’s status as my favourite lake in New Zealand!) snorkeled bare off the wetsuit-worthy beaches of Coromandel Peninsula and even learned to water ski in an irrigation pond! These sorts of mini-adventures have me convinced that words like “plenteous” and “copiousness” were created by the poor, poor people who were somehow damned with the daunting task of describing New Zealand. I certainly never under-appreciate a drinkably-clean stream on a good “tramp”, home-grown roast or my flatmates’ weekly farmers market habit that keeps our cozy retro home full of Fijoas, pumpkin cakes and borsch.

But, really, let’s face it, I live in New Zealand to study chocolate and that certainly doesn’t suck. So, I think I’ll stick around here for a while and add one more “tick” to the tally of Dr. Clark’s that my fam seems to be accumulating. It’s a big job but I found this book next to the office copier called, “How to write your doctoral dissertation in 15 minutes a day”, and doing as instructed (okay, a little bit more) is workin’ pretty good! In fact, my research has been accepted to conferences from Frankfurt to Stanford and even found five dollars when I presented at the Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Symposium in February!

            So, yes, it may be a bit foolish and exclusive to go around calling oneself “The luckiest girl in the world” and, don’t you worry, God got that one through to me l-o-u-d & c-l-e-a-r. But (in accordance to Blerta’s Theory of Life Balance) I certainly do appreciate just how good these good times are and intend to celebrate just how lucky I actually am.

Hope all is well at home wherever home may be.

Love,

Alexandra