Octo? Sorry, spell that? O-T-T-O

So, these people are way harder to understand than I thought! I have been anxiously awaiting the constant murmur of New Zealand accents, but I had no idea how much longer it would take me to process each word they say. I'm afraid I am starting to come across as slow to the locals! It takes so much concentration to comprehend some meaning behind the sounds coming out of their mouths that I often find myself tuning out when I get tired, especially if they are off on a monologue. This afternoon I was asking my host family's daughter, Alexis (6) what the dog's name was and I could have sworn she said something like "Octo" and she repeated it several times, as did her mom until she finally just spelled it for me: O-t-t-o. I would have never guessed.

After showering when we first got to the Lord family's home, we went with the mom, Sheryl to the day care center she owns (called Tui's Nest, I gotta look up Tui) and helped them set the place back up after it was just painted. While there, Alexis also took Heidi and I across the street to the Garden Center where we got to see lots of pretty flowers and cool plants. Can I just say, they have a much wider variety of plants here, even just what is in their yard/ wild stuff. Here I am with Alexa and a butt load of hydrenga's.
Later we went grocery shopping with Sheryl (at the Dairy, how cute?) and that was a much greater adventure than anticipated! At first glance, it is exactly the same as our grocery stores, but as you look closer, everything is labeled just wrong! The Rice Krispies are like Rice Bubbles or something, cookies are biscuits, popsicles don't exist (side note: when we were at the Garden center, Alexis was pointing out her favorite ice cream bars out of a little freezer thing there and she called them Ice Blocks, and we asked her if she knew what a popsicle was and she said no very sheepishly. So we asked her cousin Tipany who is maybe in high school and he gave us a blank stare.) except for a brand called popsicle, so like one box in the entire freezer section, the eggs come in packages with all different sizes colors (shades?), and they have weird ice cream flavors like hokey or jolly raspberry something, and the most disgusting thing was the dog food: looked like those sausage tube packages but HUGE and its refrigerated and you just cut off slices for your spoiled dog! It was a very exciting trip to say the least and we had a lot of fun with Sheryl, taking pictures with different things like vegimite (we bought some so I'll let you know how it is!). In this picture, notice that there are no orange cheeses. Out of this world, right? Well we were talking about it and wonder if our cheese is just colored, cause how would you get orange from something made of milk? Food for thought. And let me know if you find out whether or not its colored.