The ladies in the nursery. My roommate is the last one on the right. I'm the third from the left.

To the surprise of many, especially my mother, I am not dead. I'm doing very well, actually. I started work on Monday here in Taupo. We're working to clean out greenhouses after the last pepper (capsicum to everyone but Americans, apparently) crop. It's not a bad job at all, once I got used to it. For a while, they had us filling buckets with pumice, which was miserable. I ended up hauling buckets onto pallets for 9 hours straight, and it was too much for me. After that, though, I got to work in the nursery sowing new seeds. They have a machine to do it, but it often misses spots, or will put two seeds in one hole, so they have to have people go double check every single hole. After we finished that, we hauled old buckets out of the greenhouse and swept up. It's hard, dusty work, but I don't mind it. I'm glad I have something to do, and I'm glad to be making money.

I work with a lot of people from the Philippines. All the middle-aged Filipina ladies love me, for some reason. Older women always seem to like me--I think it's because I come across as sweet, innocent, and unassuming to people who don't know me. They watch out for me--I'm pretty sure that's how I ended up working in the nursery when everyone else was still outside shovelling pumice. There are 14 other backpackers working there. We're all staying in the same place. My roommate, Shan, is from Taiwan. I really like her. She's really nice. There are two girls from Uruguay and one from Chile, as well as a couple of guys from England, Scotland, and Ireland, two Finnish guys, a German, a Canadian, and one other American. I think we've got a pretty good group, and I like the folks who own and work at the hostel. So things are going pretty well for me!

I haven't had much time to sight see around Taupo. We leave for work at 6:40 AM so we can start at 7:30. I've heard it only takes about half an hour to get from Taupo to our workplace, but our bus is really slow. It can only do about 80 km/hr, when the speed limit is 100 km/hr. We finish up at 5, get back at almost 6, then I eat and watch TV for the rest of the night. Kiwi TV is really bad. It's absolutely awful. It basically takes the worst of American and British TV and combines them. I'm kind of embarrassed for them. But there's not really anything else to do when you get home at 6 and go to bed by 10, at the latest. Right across the lake, though, is Tongariro National Park, which had the volcano they used for Mt. Doom in the Lord of the Rings. It's been pretty cloudy, but I finally got to see it yesterday. It was pretty cool. We could also see people skydiving.

I won't be online for much more than once a week, if that, while I'm in Taupo. I only have one day off a week, and wireless access is $12 for 24 hours, which you have to take all at once. So if I'm not around too much, don't worry about me!