Homestay

Tonight is the last night in our home stays. We have been here for almost two days now. My family is so great. It was never awkward for us and they made us feel right at home. They have a 3 year old daughter, Ava, and a 10 year old son, Luke. They live on a farm but not to sell the animals but just to provide food for their own family. It's pretty cool.the father is paralyzed from the waist down but he has these braces on his legs that let him stand up and he can walk with these crutches type things. He used to fly helicopters and his crashed and that is why he is paralyzed now  It's actually pretty remarkable. I haven't seen him use a wheelchair once. This was an amazing experience. We got to learn what life is for an Australian and not just the tourist aspect of it.  We finally got breakfast, lunch, and dinner provided for us for two days. This is the first time that we have had every meal for the entire day provided. Thank goodness. It was nice to actually have a home cooked meal for us. All the ,eat was great. Obviously, it was so fresh, coming straight from their backyard. We did activities that I would never have dreamed of doing. We had to herd the goats into the pens first. We had to feed each goat their medicine with a syringe and then tag their ears. They definitely didn't like us much after that. Then we had to herd the sheep into the pens. We had to do their medicine as well. Next, was the baby lamb. This next part is not for the nauseous type. In all my excitement I Said I would cut off the lambs tail. Who knew that the lambs tails just weren't that short to begin with. I'm thinking that I get to use a big butcher  knife or something and can just whack the thing off. Oh no. David, the dad, gives me his pocket knife. I look at him and tell him that this better be the sharpest pocket knife I've ever seen or else this won't be working out so well. so David and Becky, his wife, pick up the lamb and hold him still for me. I have to pull his tail really hard to make the joint that I have to cut through as thin as possible. Next, I think that I supposed to saw this tail off but really I just sliced right through the thing. The knife got stuck like half way through because of the joint and I freaked out thinking that I was going to have to stop but I managed it... I got squirted everywhere with blood and definitely ruined my rain jacket. After that we had to saws off some of the horns on the cow. We had to here the cows into the pens without a horse so here we all go running through the fields like a bunch of chickens with out heads cut off trying to herd about 39 cows into the pens. It took us a good 45 minutes to get every cow in. David is just laughing at us the entire time telling us he could do it faster being paralyzed.  finally, we get all the cows in. Then once in the pen, we have to separate the ones with horns so that we can lock their heads in the holding thing and saw them off. David saws the first cows horns. He cuts too low. It's like a dogs toe nails, if you cut too short then they will start to bleed. Will this poor cow. Blood is squirting everywhere. I don't mean just oozing out, I mean freaking squirting, like it does in the movies, a steady squirting of blood. I have pictures to prove it. Becky is running to get the spray to stop the squirting so I had to use my finger to plug the hole so that it wouldn't keep on going. I have decided at this point that farm life might not be for me. Ava has a little Shetland pony that she rides to do horse shows. The ground here is too soft so that it doesn't need horse shoes but they have to go and clean the hooves and cut and file the hooves. So got Panda, the pony, and have to clean those. It was pretty easy and nothing exciting happened. Which i would consider exciting because I was over the blood and stuff. That's about it for my  farm work. Definitely glad to say I experienced that and hat I will never be doing it again.  Tomorrow they take us to the bus at 9 am and then we bus to Tyrconnell and camp in the outback for two nights. It's frickin freezing here though so we went to the big W (their version of Walmart) and had to buy sweatpants and jackets for camping.  All I want is ice in my soda and to chew on. Nobody here has any ice. It's infinitely not okay.  I also discovered what cordial is over the two days. It's like a flavor that you put in your water. They have like, berry, cola, lemonade, sport flavored, and a Thousand more. Most Australians like it better than soda because they thing soda is too sweet. David and Becky has coke for dinner and they out water in it to make it not as sweet.  They also have barely any fast food here. They have been to America and are appalled at how many fast food restaurants we have and our all you can eat buffets. Cheerio mates. Hope I don't get eaten by a dingo!