relatively uneventful weekend

so my plan for this weekend was to get lots of work done so i am free to play with serita for the next 3 weeks. kendall went to the coromandel peninsula with people, and sophie and ej went to the waitomo caves, so hypothetically i shouldn't have had much to distract me.

i finished my anthropology essay about tongan politics and material culture on thursday so my tutor could edit it, and she said the main thing to fix was spelling (because my spell checker does not do nz spelling, and things like jewelry and fiber are spelled jewellery and fibre). my second comp sci lab was on tuesday and was relatively easy (it turned out we didn't have to know the fancy algorithm they taught us in class, which i spent 2/3 of the time trying to do, and then when i gave up and tried the easy way just to see, it worked). i also got some of my midterm test grades back, the anthro one i got about a 75 on (which i think is a b), which is fine with me, and comp sci i was real scared for, and the 2 kids i sit with who are really smart and way better at comp sci than i am both got 28/50, but then i ended up getting a 41! so that was exciting. and my linguistics essay that i did a while ago with an interview of a bilingual new zealander (i used a girl from the canoeing club i met at fuljames) i would have gotten a 19.5/20 (a+) except i am retarded and thought it was due the friday after it was actually due (it said 1 may 4 pm on the sheet, and i just saw "may 4". i'm glad i realized this before i send the prof a confusued email though) so i ended up with an 18.5. which is also fine with me.

so anyways i have my anthro paper, and a linguistics paper about languages in fiji, and a big comp sci project, and that's everything until finals. so i was gonna get both essays done this weekend. the anthro one is done at least :)

at some point, i think it was thursday, i decided to go to the engineering library to work on my paper for a change of scenery. the engineering library has k'nex to play with and is just generally bright and fun so i like it better than the real library. however i discovered that for some reason my plug converter does not fit in the outlets there right, which is especially annoying because my battery now lasts less than half an hour. however the plugs at the regular library do work so it's not really a big deal. just ironic that the engineers have the bad plugs.

saturday i got up early and went to morning step class, and then did paper writing/talked to serita/wasted time on facebook and playing sudoku etc all day. after dinner i decided to be social and went with courtney, lucy, and ollie (who has what he calls "the sneezles" and we made fun of him all night about that) to the liquor store. after that we all hung out in lucy's room with brian and barret and hannah and some other ih kids who wandered in and out. we played some card games and never have i ever and i got to be the dj for awhile. it wasn't too exciting.

today (sunday) i went kitesurfing again, so i took the train and texted andrew when i got to papakura, and it turned out he and minot were shoe shopping just down the street, so i met them there, and after using the bathroom in the grocery store across the street we went back to their house where they had a quick lunch and i had some pineapple juice. the only other student for the day was an english guy also named andrew who works on the same yacht as howie, who i had met at 2 earlier lessons.

andrew (instructor) said the pastures were too wet to drive down to the beach this time, so after getting wetsuits and booties and everything we strapped the boards to the backpacks the kites go in, and carried everything down. the walk wasn't nearly as far as i thought it was going to be. after pumping our kites up and laying our lines and everything, andrew (instructor) told me to have andrew (student) launch my kite and to tell him what to do as if he were my grandmother (the grandmother jokes continued all day, especially when he went off to pee in the bushes). however it started raining just after my kite was in the air, and with rain comes big gusts of wind, so i was a little freaked out at the beginning, and i had an 8m kite today instead of hte 6 i'd used before, so it was pulling that much harder. but they helped me de-power my kite (there is an adjustable strap to adjust the length of the front lines which tips the kite forward or back more, which gives it less or more power) and i made it safely into the water (it's way more dangerous to be strapped to a kite on land than in the water, because the water is much softer if you take off and smash back down on it).

by the time i was all situated and ready to put my board on, the rain had gone, as had most of the wind. we spent a while fighting just to keep the kites in the air, and andrew was about to cancel the lesson for lack of wind, when it changed direction from sw to directly west, and picked up a bit. winds from the south tend to be gustier here because they are coming up over lots of land, whereas from the west into manukau harbour it's nice and steady from the tasman sea.

anyways, so once the wind changed my kite was behaving better, although it was quite powerful which was a little scary at the beginning but i got used to it. i actually got up and riding pretty well to the right (the way i usually wakeboard) and i experienced what andrew likes to explain as 'you go faster which gives the kite more power which makes you go faster which gives you more power...' and on and on, and at first i would get scared and just sort of sit/fall down to stop, and he told me to slow down you edge up wind, which i did with some success. i have more trouble even getting up to the left, but i did a few times that way pretty well too, although i never got past the sitting down to stop phase that tway.

student andrew and i were both pretty much at the same level, and moving down wind at about the same rate, so instructor andrew just let us keep going further and further downwind while the wind was good and we were in the same area. however, when we finally stopped and had to walk all the way back up the beach, we were more than a kilometer away, and slogging through knee to hip deep water carrying a board and a kite was quite exhausting. when we got close to where we started we had another little try, but the wind was dying down and we were pretty tired so we just packed up and hiked up the hill thru the pasture back to andrew's.

after changing and stuff instructor andrew asked if student andrew was going back to town and could drop me at the train station and he said sure, but then he ended up just bringing me all the way back to ih because it was on his way. it turns out he lived in the empire building next door for awhile when they couldn't stay on the yacht. he said he's been working on boats for 4 years, the past 2 on this one which is privately owned, and is better than charters where you just meet people for 2 weeks and then never see them again. they have been in auckland for 4 or 5 months i think, and are leaving in june to go to fiji and tonga. he said whenever the owner wants he just flies to meet them wherever the boat is, and they just do what they want the rest of the time. howie has bought 2 kites, and andrew just bought a harness from instructor andrew for $100 so now they can go take turns kiting off the boat. he has also been snowboarding at the indoor snow park north of auckland that i've seen, and i guess it's actually really cool and not nearly as expensive as i thought it would be. anyway, he dropped me off at ih and it was only 6:45 so i grabbed some quick dinner, showered, and now i'm going to get working on my fiji essay.

ps happy mothers day!