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
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
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