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Yes, that angered me. I’ve fixed the invalid xhtml code. Thanks for that.

Milk is going up the whole world over. They reckon that the average NZ farmer will make $250,000 extra this year alone.

Teenagers are self-centered surly little jerks if me and my mates are anything to go by. Don’t stress most grow up and start caring about things other than spacies, girls and beer.

Some NZers spend their whole lives trying to get foreigners to notice our wonderful country and when we find educated, well traveled, curious person we fill their heads with useful facts. Sadly all most people can remember is the LOTR was made in NZ and New Zealand has 20 sheep for every person. This figure is now slightly out of date. The correct ratio is more like 10. But still we try. Wouldn’t you if your sheep were as beautiful as ours?

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Spain is also suffering from a teenage population that would prefer to be with their X-Boxes, iPods, and mobile phones than to do any of this cultural stuff. It might be even more exaggerated in Spain than the US, since the kids born in the 80s are often the first generation to escape the farm. The only teenagers I have any direct contact with are Aunt Marga’s two boys, and they hardly even show up at their own birthday parties that the family organizes.

However, I have to admit that I, too, was surprised by the amount of young people involved. I was more impressed by those who were clearly tending to the family livestock than the dancers, since everyone in Marga’s family went through the rite of passage that involved donning cultural dress and dancing to traditional music on a stage. Sunday was the first time I saw a shepherd’s crook used to hook a sheep by the neck, and that was by a pudgy teenager. Television showing how fun life is in the city is destroying small Spanish villages. Before television, young people didn’t know that there was anything other than farm work in the world, but now they all want to have cell phones, be soccer stars, and go to discotheques. The news this evening told of how the price of milk is going up 0.10 €/L because Spanish dairy farmers can’t produce enough to supply the demand.

I think you might also be forgetting how thousands and thousands of American teenagers spend their Sunday mornings. Many, many Spanish churches will have to be shut down in my lifetime because their entire congregation will die of old age. I recently had the epiphany of realizing what the reason is that the average age of a Spanish church goer is well over 60. It’s not because old people are closer to death and feel a stronger need for religion, as I previously thought. The elderly go to church because they always have, since childhood. This realization spells clear doom for the clergy.