DAY 19 - Finding Funky Fungi

In German tradition we celebrate ‘Nikolaustag’ on the 6^th of December, for which kids clean their shoes and put them outside their door to find them filled with chocolate and nuts in the morning (brought to them by the ‘Nikolaus’). This is how it currently looks in front of our door, but like hell was there chocolate in any of these shoes. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so unchristmassy on the 6^th of December ever before.

Extra point if you can find the one shoe whose pair lies halfway down the stairs and is therefore not included.

We had to cut more grass for the cow first thing today, thankfully only a few houses down. While busy with the grass, suddenly something caught my eye on the ground which turned out to be this incredible colourful mushroom rather reminiscent of an alien and/or diseased phallus.

Turns out 'Phallus' is actually part of its name. Sarah christened our particular specimen 'Albert'.

We set off back towards home soon with Albert perched on top of the huge pile of grass in our wheelbarrow, and got going on more work. I’d been asked to paint any design of my choosing on the bathroom wall where the paint job was patchy, so I was happily occupied for a few hours standing on a ladder in the bath tub and drawing spirals on the wall. After that we’d been summoned to cut MORE grass for the cow, this time taking the car to load it into. This marks the official first time I ever drove a car without my driving instructor or one of my parents sitting right next to me going ‘NO NO NO THE OTHER WAY!!’ when I’d try to reverse without having any idea what I was doing. So I was rather nervous, but after a small incident in which I could not locate the gear stick ANYWHERE (it ended up being tucked in strangely next to the steering wheel) we were on the road and it was all fine. After we’d come back and I was just about to go and get ready to go out to Uncle Roberts again, Jai Dev appeared in our kitchen clutching his iPad and asked us to listen to some of his creations, and, after we’d agreed, let rip with some crazy but actually pretty skillful spiritual-themed rapping. After assuring him that it was very good, I then went to take a shower and get ready, but by the time I got back and we finished dinner it was quite late already so we both agreed to leave Uncle Roberts be for tonight, especially since we’re planning to go on an outing to Waipio Valley very early in the morning tomorrow.