The Farm.

So, a couple of days ago the international office took the international kids to three farms. Now, in New Zealand agriculture is an important industry; they claim to export 40% of the world's dairy products. So, needless to say, they were quite proud of their farms.

In fact, they did something that I've never heard of: They raise deer. Interstingly, some of the deer had a strange looking device in their sides, and, being the obnoxious American that I am, I asked about it. After a brief pause in which he collected his thoughts, the man giving the presentation supplied an explanation. He said that the device in their sides was used to measure methane emissions from the animal, and in so doing, they could tell the extent to which the animal was contributing to the GreenHouse effect. This was important solely because they fed each animal different combinations of grasses and wheats, so they could tell which food would be the most enviornmentally friendly. Yep. Welcome to Hippie land.

Next they took us to a Dairy Farm, where we saw the cows get loaded into special milking machienes. The guy giving the presentation then shot some milk at the crowd, the girls screamed, and all was right in the world.

I even got a picture of Nick's soul mate:

Lastly, they took us to a sheep farm, where I saw a grown man shear a sheep:

I gotta tell you, that sheep took it like a man.