Christian Perez's Travel Journal

My First Farmstay, Tue May 16, 2006

I spent the last week very far from civilization on an elderly couple's retirement bloc of 20 acres. I set up fences, chopped firewood, pulled weeds, cleaned tack (horse-riding equipment) and anything else that needed done. I learned a fair amount about life in NZ, and also about my host Georgie.

She and her husband emigrated from the UK over 40 years ago and are naturalized citizens of NZ. Her father was a career soldier and her family travelled all over the world to live with him at his different posts. She told me about living in Ghana, recalling some of her favorite memories of visiting local chieftans. Her father was the last British military officer in charge of the country's defences while the country's shift to independence was established.

I ride horses now, but not very well (at least according to the high standards I set for myself.) English riding is very, very complicated. Good riders can make a horse do almost anything, including jumping huge fences, ditches, and puddles, then doing a pirouette, walking backwards, and then trotting sideways. But I'm really into it. I rode a good-looking chestnut TB gelding named Toby every day the sun was shining and read about four different books on technique. I can do the 3 basic paces--walk, rising trot, canter--and I can of course turn and stop. Stanford has a stables and I'm surely riding as much as possible when I get there.

Current hobbies to date: sailing, rock climbing, horseback riding, aikido, tramping, snowboarding (though I'm hardly any good at any of them)

Still need to try kiteboarding :) Now in Christchurch again, hopefully getting my car inspected early tomorrow. Then I'm off for some rejuvinating hot spring baths up in the mountains, and then swimming with dolphins before coming back to Christchurch for Super 14 rugby semi-final game on Saturday.

Since I stayed with some old people, I watched the news and read the newspaper a lot. Its what old folks do. So I'm gaining a better sense of what NZ is all about. There's some crazy stuff going on here, i.e. I'm sure none of you know that prostitution is legal here. I didn't either, until I walked past a transvestite prostitute coming back from a club... And there was a car pulled up talking to him/her. Eww.

The highest marginal tax bracket in NZ is 39% and starts at $60,000 NZD. That's crazy--that's just under $40,000 a year. The 25% tax bracket in the US runs from $30k to $75k, and you don't hit the highest of 35% until you make $336,000!! And they will have a capital gains tax of 85% on overseas investments in the US. So any idea I had of emigrating here to live evaporated like the half of my paycheck the Government would have taken.