I'm still alive!

I don't have much time, only a few minutes till internet curfew, but I've been getting lots of "are you still alive?" type messages and emails lately so I'll try to drop you a little tidbit.

Just finished up the week on relationships. Not just boy/girl stuff (though we did discuss it) but just relationships in general. Took some personality tests and whatnot. Discovered that I'm a.... (surprise surprise...) phlegmatic. The real surprise was that I was a very close second as a choleric... weird indeed. I don't know how much stock I put in that stuff but it's intended more as a tool to help you learn about yourself than anything. Our speaker was a freaking firecracker, by far the most entertaining we've had yet. It was a fun week. Yesterday we had a party for the leader of the base, who's stepping down at the end of the year. It seemed kind of like a who's-who of YWAM NZ. It was quite a partay.

Last weekend we hosted a dance party in Maungutoroto. Matt, one of the leaders here is really into t-t-techno. He D-jayed. It was something else. I can handle some techno for about 3 hours and then I about blew up. But it was pretty fun.

Today right after dinner I went for a little exploratory stroll. Walked down the road for a ways, then took off into the fields. I thought I got lost for a little bit. I was imagining myself having to spend the night in the NZ bush fending off possums. But I made it back ok.

Speaking of possums.... the ones here are brown and have bushy tails. They're an import from Australia and are considered a pest, and the government encourages killing them. The other night my roommates and I got to go to dinner at the Blythen's (the folks who we helped with docking there sheep, if you recall) and afterwards Grant took us out possum hunting. After 4x4-ing through his farmland in a '78 land cruiser for a while, we hopped on the heel-toe express with a marlin 22 rifle and started picking off possums. I know the technical word is Opossum, but everyone here says possum. I took down three, no misses. Really fun... but it brings me to a story:

So it's gonna be hard for me to tell good stories on this blog because a good story is about good characters and it's so much easier to tell a story about characters you're readers already know. The fact is none of you know the characters in my current story at all, so this is going to be a little bit more of an undertaking. So let me paint you a picture: Manuel. Manuel is from Germany. He's also one of my current roommates. A bit smaller than me, brown hair, dark eyes. Plays the violin real well and the piano pretty good also. I really like him but he suffers from.... clulessness. I mean when it comes to things like chopping wood, climbing things, jumping off things, and..... shooting things. I mean this boy has never held a gun before. To add to this picture, you should know that these "possums" we speak off are notoriously hardy creatures. So we're tromping through the fields and the mud and the forest and the herds of sheep. Grant is spotlighting the possums in the trees and the idiots just sit there staring at you. The man turns hunting possums into something like a video game.

So we track down a good possum for Manuel to shoot. It's in the top of a medium-size tree, spotlighted by our intrepid guide, Grant. Manuel is about 3 meters from the tree in question. All in all, we're talking about a pretty close-range shot. Good for Manuel right now.

He lines the possum up in the scope, as the tension mounts. Grant gently talks him through the shot, explaining how the scope works, to relax, and all that good stuff. The rest of us are silent, content to let Manuel have his moment. His finger squeezes the trigger, and the shot rings out.







Direct hit. To the possums's torso. However this little guy isn't going down without a fight. He almost gets knocked of his branch by the impact but manages to hang on. At Grant's instruction Manuel lines up another shot. Crack. At this impact the possum falls but manages to catch another branch a bit lower down, and remains in the tree.


Then it happens. The screeches ring out. I don't even know how to describe to you the sound that a possum makes. Hoarse, screeching, rasping...... in short, absolutely hideous and unnerving. The screeching makes all of us hope for Manuel to kill this possum off quickly. He lines up another shot. The possum again falls a few feet, catches again, and continues it's hideous objections to the abuse it's recieving.

Three...... four...... five........ six shots in all is what it takes to knock the possum to the ground. As it writhes and screeches on the ground, something unexpected happens...



Grant picks the possum up by the tail, and as another screech rings out, he swings and the possum's head arcs with a crunch into the trunk of the tree. He drops it, fully expecting it to be dead.... but the writhing and screeches continue...... then the knife comes out from the holster at Grants back. The point drives through the possum's throat then comes out with the slash.


Don't ask me how a possum can still screech and twitch after that, but it finally did die after a point blank shot to the back of the skull. Manuel was a bit truamatized by the whole affair. I thought it was pretty entertaining.

Anyways. So I gotta go. I know the story was a bit gory but I hope you enjoyed it. There's more to tell but I don't have time right now, I'll try to get back on here sooner rather than later.