Differences between the US and New Zealand (Part 2)

Differences in Culture:

1. America is definitely much more fast-paced than NZ. People are everywhere. Everyone has something going. Here, everyone can spread out. Maybe see someone else besides our family once or twice a week (that might depend on where you live, though), but nothing more. In the States, you see others a lot more. Socialising is a big thing there. It’s definitely more relaxing here.

2. Over all, the average Kiwi eats a lot better than the average American. In America, if you would go to a mall you’d probably see quite a few obese people. Here, you might see some who are slightly overweight, but few very obese.
      If you compare the colour of butter you can buy in the supermarket here with the colour in the States, you’ll see that there’s really no comparison. In the States it’s a pallid white colour, here it’s very yellow. That’s because almost all the cows in the States are fed grain and kept inside all the time, while here they’re outside and even though they are fed some grain it isn’t their whole diet.
      Over all, NZ meat is also a lot richer and better for you than US meat.
      I don’t know if that’s something that would be different from England or not—it would probably depend on the time period you’re writing at!

Notice the cows on the lush grass? This was taken in October 2012.

3. A lot more people have their own little lifestyle blocks here. I know that not everyone does, but a good majority do. In the States, there are some small farms, but not very many as small as here. A lot of people are in the cities there, and there are bigger farms for the most part.

4. You say things differently here than we would. But NZ has closer ties to England than the US to England, so maybe the different sayings would be a lot the same? (For example, you say “wee”, whereas we would say “little”. You say “that’s _____ as!” but we would finish the sentence or else leave out the comparison [“as”] part. Maybe we’d say, “that’s lovely!” or something like that. You say “good as gold”, whereas we would say “that’s great”, or something else to that effect. I know there are others, but that’s what I can think of at the moment.)

5. When you’re shopping, you don’t have as many choices as you would in the States. For example, say you wanted to buy a dish pan. You go into the shop, and you’ve got two choices—big, or small, and if you’re fortunate two or three colours to choose from. In the States, you’d go into the shop and maybe you’d have five or ten choices—big or small, in several different shapes or colours!

Those are just a few differences I can think of. There are more than likely lots more.

~Esther

Also in this series:

• Differences between the US and New Zealand (Part 1)

The Thief (Video)

This video is something we came up with after reading Proverbs 10:28. Sadly, it doesn’t very accurately display the meaning of the verse, though. It was fun to make, anyway! I had forgotten how much I love acting. And it helps when I have brothers who are enthused about acting as well.

I've recently found a neat website called “Free Music Archive”. They’ve got lots of music there, but one of the features I really like is their “Music for Video” page. There, you can search the mood you want (eerie, happy, peaceful, rowdy, etc.), the genre, whether instrumental only or not, duration, license (public domain, attribution only, commercial, non-commercial, etc.), and more. It looks like this will be a good resource to have—whether having music for a video or music for writing a particular scene.

You can pre-hear all the tracks on there before downloading, and you just need to read the license with it to figure out what type of attribution to use. It’s pretty simple. I used music from this website in the above video, and the attribution they say to use with the track I used was very simple.

This is the track I used for this video (I think you can embed most if not all of the music there):

And the attribution to go with this particular one is:

Veloma (Fabrizio Paterlini) / CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

Very simple. To get the attribution, I just clicked on the Creative Commons (CC) picture on the right sidebar.

So there—you’ve got a little introduction to FMA! :) Hopefully you’ll find this useful, like I think it will be to me!

~Esther

The Mailbox Prank (Video)

Last night, Dad was gone for a good part of the evening. So we children took the chance to take some videos! This is the first one we took that worked out well, the other is more serious and not quite finished. Hopefully when that’s done I can share it with you as well.

Hopefully you got a good laugh out of it! :) We enjoyed making it, and the boys can hardly wait until tonight when they can show Dad.

~Esther

P.S. I’m doing  a two-part series over on JOJ right now titled “When God Lifted Us Up”. It’s a story about a time when I was six when God intervened in a marvellous way to get us safely home one stormy snowy night. Part 1 was published yesterday, and part 2 will be posted next Sunday. I hope you’ll be encouraged by it if you read it! :)

Differences between the US and New Zealand (Part 1)

About a month ago, I saw a question come up on a writer’s group I’m a part of.

Rebekah W asked,

      For a book I’m planning right now, it involves some English people (from England) coming to New Zealand.
      I assure [you] New Zealanders aren’t as weird as we seem :p But, I was wondering if you think anything is strange about New Zealand? Like are we unusual in some way?
      I can’t really pick anything, having lived here all my life, but I guess to visitors it must seem a little weird, different culture and all.

So I rose to the occasion and ended up replying with about 1 ¼ pages worth of differences we’ve noticed between here and the States. So I thought I’d share them with you. Maybe you’ll enjoy reading about them.

~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~

I replied: I moved here from the States in 2009, so I think I might be able to help a little. :) We went back about six months ago for a visit, and I think I got more culture shock going that way than I did coming this way! Anyway, here are a few differences I’ve noticed.

In Nature:

1. How many rivers there are—and that they’re braided. We had rivers in the States, but they were never braided. Here, you can see the gravel bed, whereas in the States I’m pretty sure you couldn’t most of the time.

2. The sounds of the different kinds of birds. I had never heard a magpie before coming here, so it was a bit of a shock to hear! Now that I know what it is, I love the sound.

3. All the native bush. In Michigan where I lived, I don’t think I ever saw bush quite like the stuff here. Here it’s wild, rugged, dark, slightly spooky…compared to the States, it’s a lot more fascinating (okay, maybe that has something to do with the fact that I didn’t grow up around it?). In the States, the only thing I can remember was trees with some—not a lot—of underbrush. So taking a walk through the bush here is quite the amazing experience for me!

4. The black sand on the beaches! In Michigan, there is pure yellow sand, no matter where you go. But here it’s black and slightly more “grainy”. Michigan sand is yellow and finer. I don’t know if this would be a difference from England or not.

5. When we came here, Mum had a lot of problems with getting directions wrong because of the position of the sun. (In the Northern Hemisphere, it’s in the south part of the sky, and here it’s in the north part of the sky.) So she would often confuse north with south, and vice-versa.

6. The weather is so changeable! Like one person said, you can have all four seasons in one day here! England might be similar, because they’re an island country too. I don’t know. But in the States, you’ve either got summer, autumn, winter, or spring. It usually doesn’t come all in the same day. :)

…and I shall come next week with the differences in culture that I’ve noticed.

So, have you ever experienced culture shock?
~Esther

The Work Continues

A follow-up of this post.

I shall present you with a bunch more pictures of what we’ve been doing. But first, I’ve got a question to ask: Do you prefer full-size pictures (like what I’ve been putting up), or smaller pictures? I know I prefer full size, but that may be different for some of you. I can easily change the size if most of you want them to be smaller.

And now…what we’ve been doing at the new place.

On Friday, we went over to work and took several boxes to store in the shipping container. Baby brother explored the bunk beds we just bought.

 

The view of our place after several trees have been taken out—what a difference! You can see what it looked like before here.

 

One of the boys went to dig up an area for planting catnip in. (You can also see where one of the tree stumps used to be here.)

 

Our front yard, after about five trees were taken out. You can see what it looked like before here. MUCH different and more open—and we can get to the house without bending double to get under the branches of the tree!

 

West of the house. Dad and the boys cut the tops off some of these trees, to get the main bulk out of the way. Sure makes that area look less bushy!

 

Back in the house. This is the ’53 calendar we found the first look through the place.

 

And us ladies’ work begins! The two youngest help sweep in the kitchen, and Mum explores cupboards as she works her way around the kitchen.

 

“Before” view of the laundry room (toilet is beyond). There was a rat’s nest in the cupboard under the sink. It was filthy!

 

Two brothers discuss the method for digging out thistles. (There are literally hundreds on this place!)

 

One of them pulls a tree off one of the many water tanks on the place.

 

 

 

 

 

Meanwhile, Mum explores the woodstove—she’s very excited about it!

 

The view from the kitchen window—finally, you can actually see something other than tree branches through it!

 

The calendar that is still open in the kitchen.

 

 

A peek into the living room, from the kitchen.

 

Mum cleaning the bathroom. You can see just a little corner of my bedroom here, also.

 

Saturday, we went back there. Dad worked on raising the roof of the place where we will keep the fridge and install a counter (with several shelves underneath).

 

My second-youngest brother and I opened the front door—for the first time in sixteen years! There were LOTS of dead flies in front of it.

 

We also opened the curtains on the first set of windows in the living room—again, for the first time in sixteen years! And you can actually see through the window—there were no branches to block the view!

 

The windowsill was covered in dead flies and bees.

 

I think there were at least three different kinds of insects there.

 

Oh, did I ever mention that there are LOTS of old spider webs in the house?

 

Meanwhile, Mum works on reclaiming the path from the weeds. It will be fun to walk along it once all the knee-high (and higher) grass is out of the way!

 

And Dad works on taking off the outer panel of the wall.

 

Poor baby, he’s very bored. By this time, he was just starting to demand to go “Vroom, vroom, bye bye!”. He does not like this new place at all—no one pays attention to him while we’re there!

 

He decided to try entertaining himself on the rocker….

 

…but it won’t rock very well for him.

 

So he goes to beg Mum if they can go home.

 

And laughs at his sister who is taking picture after picture of him.

 

This is a sixteen-year-old peg. Yes. Everything around here is at least sixteen years old!

 

Dad cuts another portion of the wall.

 

One wall of the kitchen is made up of cupboards. Mum doesn’t like the colour (green), but I think it’s nice—maybe not the best it could be, but at least it isn’t like dark green!

 

The table, full of Dad’s tools, and the stove.

 

Another view of the stove.

 

The top needs some work. Hopefully some bicarbonate of soda and water will do the trick!

 

Several boys went swimming, and were just coming up to change while Mum finished what she was working on for the day.

 

The back of the house—not long before, you could hardly see the house because of all the trees in the way from this point! But now it’s wonderfully open and light in there!

 

Dad starts the generator, to finish what he was doing for the day.

And there. Now you’re caught up on everything that we’ve been doing lately at the new place! So far, work in the kitchen has progressed very well in my opinion. In one afternoon, Dad was able to take a wall and open it up to work on. Now he’s ready to raise the top (which is really the bottom of a cupboard on the other side). Hopefully next Saturday we’ll be able to get even more done!

~Esther

20 Reasons for Why I’m a Writer

What do you do when a friend of yours sends you a quote like this?:

“I can’t understand why a person will take a year to write a novel when he can easily buy one for a few dollars.”
― Fred Allen

(and no, my friend was not Fred Allen)

I do not understand this kind of theology. At all. So I wrote up a list of the reasons why I’ve decided to be a writer—to do it the “hard way” as Fred Allen implies it to be.

1. It’s fun.
2. It stimulates my brain.
3. It’s fun to come up with what will happen next.
4. I can develop better my daydreaming abilities.
5. I can create new worlds.
6. I can live in new worlds.
7. I can meet new people.
8. I can jump into other people’s brains.
9. I can make horrible things happen to people, and no one complains. (Wow…that sounds bad!! :))
10. What I’m writing has never been written before.
11. The first draft has so many possibilities—it’s fresh, original, inspiring, wonderful, and just a bit messy.
12. You could possibly earn money from it if you ever get published.
13. As soon as I set fingers to a keyboard, I know that what I write is all mine. Every little letter of it.
14. I can live in a world of dreams.
15. I can visit a place I’ve never been before, and enjoy myself immensely while I’m there.
16. I can use the most colossal, enormous, extensive, gigantic, humongous, immense, magnificent, mammoth, massive, monstrous, monumental, towering, tremendous, vast, behemothic, bulky, cyclopean, elephantine, immeasurable, jumbo, leviathan, mighty, monster, mountainous, oversized, planetary, prodigious, stupendous, titanic, walloping, whopping words when I write, or I could use the simplest. It’s all my decision.
17. I can use the license of being a writer and an author.
18. I love words.
19. I love being creative.
20. I love being an artist.

That is just a handful of the many reasons why I’m a writer. Why I take years to write a book. I understand that not all people have the time to write. Or have the ability or patience to write. Or mental strength. (I’m not saying I have all of those yet—but over all, I think those are some basic things you need to have to write.)

I write because I love to. Not because I’m necessarily good at it (I’m not), but because, like Jeremiah, I have a “fire in my bones”. A burning desire to get the story in my head out on paper (er, computer screen), where I can twist it and churn it and make it into something good. Something inspirational.

I think the ones that write quotes like that might be a bit lazy. Lazy in the fact that they’d rather someone else do all the hard work for them. But that would mean I’m lazy, too. Or impatient. I love writing, coming up with new characters, building new worlds in my mind, coming up with terrible problems for my characters to get through. I love it. But I, too, also like taking time off to just sit down and read a good book.

Being an author is hard. It’s also fun. And scary. And, yes, at some times we feel complete defeat. We feel like the story is going nowhere, as if it’s a broken down car way out in the boonies somewhere. It feels like we can never get out of that hole. Sometimes, it’s good to just take it easy. Take a break for a day, or an hour, or a minute or two. But after that break, we’ve got to push ahead. We can’t forever wait.

If you don’t know how to get from point A to point B then try to write down every possible solution there is to the problem. Then choose the craziest or the best fitting, and go on in the story. Grab a strong hold on the story world, and immerse yourself in it as best as possible. That’s a big plus of NaNoWriMo, especially if you’re doing around 30 – 50,000 words. You’re working so hard to get to the word goal that you just about have to be in the story world at all times. And that’s really good, because you can describe things 1,000x better.

But sometimes the story feels so bad that you’re sure you’ll never be able to make it good. I don’t really have any advice for there, really. When I faced that problem I just scrapped the entire plot (which really was so weak that was easy) and came up with a much stronger one. And I focused on the characters a lot more than the history.

I’d just like to encourage you, if any encouragement can be gained from that rather unkind quote—don’t give up. Keep writing. Maybe some people will end up buying and reading your book! You are an author. Don’t let anything tell you otherwise. And if it’s as hard to write as Allen implies (and I know it is), then you have even more reason to claim the title. Because you’re doing the hard work. It’s the kind of work that will pay off in the end.

Why do you write?
~Esther

What I’ve been reading lately….

How to Write 50,000 Words in 24 Hours
      I know. It sounds crazy. But this man did it. Just read the post. He’s got some good tips there.

5 Tools for Building Conflict in Your Novel
      Some very good tips here! The Novel Journal intrigues me. I’ve heard about it/similar things a lot. I really should try it.

Inkygirl Wordcount Challenge
      I like the idea of getting badges. And those links at the bottom look great. That’s part of the reason I’m saving this. Another reason is because it looks really helpful—especially if you’re behind on your goal, or it’s not NaNo-time and you still want to write a novel.

On Word Counts and Novel Length
      Okay, folks. I tell ya, this is a post that I’ll definitely be coming back to! It was written by a former editor or agent (can’t remember at the moment), and it gives the average word counts for a lot of different genres. She didn’t include Historical Fiction, though, so I asked her about that. But I was glad to see that for Young Adult Fiction, the book I just finished has the perfect wordcount. (That is, if my wordcount machine counts right!)

The Go Teen Writers Ebook is On Sale!
      I think this is the best one so far. Because really, how often does a book like this, from a blog like this, go on sale for $0.99? I bought it just about as soon as I knew. :) And I’ve already started reading it. So far, it’s great.
      The funny thing is—just yesterday we were at a writing group, and some homeschool boys we know did a presentation on writing. This was one  book they mentioned. Both Tiffany and I  looked at each other and smiled, because we both read the blog and have both have really enjoyed it!
      I’ve always wanted to get the book, but never got around to looking at the price (usually around $15 or $20, I believe). Now with the sale, though, I’ve gotten it for a much cheaper price! Thank you, Lord!

Okey-dokey, that’s all for today. It’s all writerly stuff, but hey…I’m a writer! :)
~Esther

Oh, and P.S. I won the 100-4-100 challenge! Finally! After trying…3 times, I believe.

Work Begins at our New House

The last day of November. I’m thankful that:

1. The sun was shining today.
2. The wind blew, and dried laundry quickly.
3. We have a food dehydrator.
4. I have brothers who love to explore new places.
5. My brothers like naming places—like “Rabbit Hill” and “Pine Tree Hill”.
6. We got to go look over our new place more thoroughly today.
7. Dad did not have to work today.

Since the sale finally went through yesterday, we went over to the new place to look things over again with Craig and Debbie. There’s some remodelling to do in the house, and major outside work to do. It was good to just look it over and talk about it. We did some when we first looked the place over, but now that they own it it’s a lot easier to plan.

Up till now whenever we’ve gone into the place we’ve had to go through a hedge (pushing the branches aside), and then duck under a lot of branches from an ancient apple tree to get to the house itself. But this evening, from the reports, Dad has managed to open up the hedge (cut out the branches from the openings) so that we can walk straight through to the gate. He also cut away all the branches along the walk to the house. So that will be a lot nicer walking there!

Craig was going to put some sheep in there to clean up the yards, but they promptly escaped. So we will have quite a bit of weed whacking and mowing to do. Maybe that’s something I can help outside with once we get the house cleaned up and windows washed.

There’s a lot to do there, but I’m sure that if we work away at it, little by little, we’ll get it all done. At the moment, Craig is focusing on getting the trees out so the power line can get to the house without grounding out. That will also make it a lot lighter in the house, too.

These next few weeks we’ll probably end up working on getting the house clean (vacuuming, washing windows, etc.). Dad needs to fix up a shed so that we can put hay in it for winter. We also need to fix up another shed for the boy’s tool shed and work shop. Dad also wants to cut up all the trees that will be pulled out into firewood. He’s started cutting off the higher parts of some of the trees, leaving enough leverage that Craig can pull them out of the ground.

The boys have really enjoyed exploring. They climbed several hills, rolled down at least one, and several have almost fallen in the creek. Joe fell in completely and actually went under (says he never touched the bottom), but praise the Lord Simon was right there and pulled him out just in time. That was close!

And here are the promised pictures from yesterday.

I made doughnuts yesterday for Hanukkah. I had to take at least one picture of it. They were delicious, even if they didn’t turn out as well as I had hoped. (Oh, yes—and I kindly ate this one for you. It was yummy.)

 

Welcome to our new place! The driveway is right under those two trees in the middle. You might have a little squeeze to get through….

 

A closer view of the driveway. That bushy tree stump is the plum tree in the cattle stop. And yes, it is every bit as big as my brothers said it was!

 

The new shipping container is almost here!

 

Unloading.

 

The cows watched the proceedings with much curiosity.

 

Our house! It’s pretty old. :) All those trees will be coming out.

 

Our front yard. It’s slightly overgrown. Joe is on the walk leading to the house, and you can see how we have to duck under the branches of the apple tree. You can’t see all the other trees in the yard. It’s…a mess.

 

The boys found some 1997 newspapers and New World coupon book in this mailbox.

 

Inside the house, today, in my room. Simon enjoyed scooping up all the cluster flies.

So there you have it—a brief glimpse into what’s been happening lately. I really should take more pictures!

~Esther