the beginning of the end

so this past week i had my first 2 tests, linguistics of the pacific which was pretty easy, identical to the past years' exams, and computer science, which was rather difficult but i'm glad it's over. i thought that midterm was really had too and then i did way better than i expected, so hopefully that happens again.

tuesday night was the ies sendoff dinner. kendall was on the south island and ej was in tokyo, so sophie went and found gael's new office where she gave us a powerpoint and we talked about how we've changed here and how to cope with going home and a lot of boring bs stuff. sophie and i were rather antisocial because most of the other ies kids hang out all the time, and our little ih group doesn't really see anyone else. then we went to dinner at this really nice restaurant off of queen st, and gael said we could all get 2 courses, ie 1 main and either an entree or a desert. i ended up getting an entree (bread and some sort of spreadey cheese dip), and instead of a main the soup of the day (tomato with bacon) and a meatball salad. the salad was delicious and quite large enough for the whole dinner, and the soup was mediocre, but of course i ate it all and felt very full.

wednesday night jessica, one of the americans in the canoeing club had a farewell party at a bar near campus and sophie and i went and hung out for awhile and it was lots of fun. the bartender was this really nice asian man who brought around plates of free fries to us, and was giving a lot of people free drinks. when we got there there were lots of people, but many of them left pretty quickly, and jess, sophie, travis (from california), craig (instructor), and james (aucc vp) and i stayed til midnight when the bartender told us they were closing. jessica didn't want anyone to leave and it was the first really sad goodbye.

i had been spending most of my time studying comp sci until wednesday, but unfortunately that's about when sophie started studying for her exams at the end of the week, and the others were still away travelling, so i was quite antisocial thursday and friday.

however sometime earlier in the week colm sent out an email organizing a paddling trip for this weekend in honor of kenny, who studied here last year and is back visiting. since the trip was only grade 3 and up, i hadn't been planning on going, but one of the emails said it was "suitable for beginners breaking into grade 3" and "yes james says molly can go", and i am approximately at the same level as molly, and since i had absolutely nothing to do and no one to do it with i figured why not go all out for a last kayaking experience here, so i emailed colm and asked if i could come and he checked with james who said i could. eek!

also while discussing the plans for the weekend colm invited me to come hang out with "kenny and company" friday night which i thought might be slightly awkward because i'm not super close with most of the older club members, but since there wasn't much else going on he eventually convinced me. i took the bus to ponsonby and texted colm to see if they were still at his flat or out at the bars, and he said come to his flat which i luckily more or less remembered how to get to. when i got there it was just colm, ross, and kenny, and they included me nicely and it was lots of fun. a recurring topic of conversation was whether or not i was going to die the following day, ha ha. they decided it would be cheaper to walk up the street to the liquor store and just hang out at colm's than it would be to go to the bars, a decision i was a big fan of. so we went to the liquor store, which colm was claiming he had never been to or something and as we walked in the guy working there was like "hey colm!!" ha ha. supposedly they went to high school together. a likely story.

after they purchased some beer, vodka, and mixers we went back, and (kiwi)sophie and katrina came over and we just hung out and twas lots of fun. colm had this powerade powder which they tried dissolving in vodka instead of water, with poor results, but when grapefruit juice was added to the concoction it turned out surprisingly well. we ended up watching this aussie movie called "castle" or something, about a family whose house is supposed to be demolished in order to expand the nearby airport and their refusal to leave (the family members seemed to be somewhere on the border of stupid and actually retarded). it was pretty funny.

after some more hanging out it turned out to be almost 2 am, which was bad news because a) the link bus stops running at 11:30 and b) all of us except sophie had to leave in the 7 am hour the next morning. luckily katrina was going past uni on her way home so she and ross gave me a ride, and i was in bed by 2:30, with an alarm set for 6:30.

the trip needs its on blog entry, so that will be next.