last week of classes

so, i'm officially done with classes here! now 4 tests in the next month and i'm done. crazyness.

monday was the queen's birthday so we had no school, and serita left and it was very sad. my big computer science project was due wednesday, so that's pretty much all i did monday and tuesday. the project was to make a program that calculates the likelihood of a phylogenetic tree given a tree structure and sequence alignment of DNA, and then optimize the branch lengths of the tree to give the maximum likelihood. we were given a java package with a whole bunch of useful pre-written classes, only we didn't get any documentation for it so that was slightly frustrating to try to figure out. there is an online class forum where i got a lot of help from the various comp sci kids in the class, and i ended up going to see alexei (the prof) on tuesday for help and he was really nice and helpful. i think the entire project works, although it is extremely slow. it took over an hour on my computer to run the 'efficient' algorithm, and i left the slow brute force version running all night and it was still not done after 8 hours. there was a 10% bonus for efficient programs, i think it's safe to say i did not get that ha ha. but hypothetically it gives the right answer, so yay for that.

after that was done i was allowed to do fun things again, so sophie, kendall, ej, hayden and i went to see indiana jones at the cinema on queen street on wednesday night. kendall was super excited cause she's an anthro major and there's lots of archeology in it. i had never seen any indiana jones movies before, but it's not the sort of thing you need background for. it was pretty intense, i can't decide if the alien thing was too weird, or cool ha ha. there was this thing about how some native group in south america bind their infants' heads so they grow in this elongated shape to worship their gods (which according to the movie were really aliens with heads shaped like that) which is apparently a real thing. crazyness.

after the movie we went to bluestone because the other ih kids were supposed to be there, but they had gone to a new sketchy wednesday night bar up symonds st in mt. eden, so we just hung out there and sophie and kendall got drinks, and then we came back and went to sleep.

thursday and friday i had my last 3 classes, and got back my second linguistics paper analyzing the actress in whale rider's speech to decide if she was a new zealander, and i got a lower numerical grade than my first paper, but it was an a and the first one was a b+ so i'm not sure how that works. maybe everyone just did worse on the second paper cause the prof didn't talk about the material we needed for it until the day it was due. there are also going to be substantial essays on all of my finals except comp sci which i am not looking forward to. i don't think i've had essay tests since the 11th grade regents exam. blah.

friday was the aucc club dinner which i initially didn't know if i wanted to go because it cost $25, but the menu sounded really yummy (turkish/mediterranean food) and canoe club events are always fun. the invite thing said it was "a classy affair" and someone responded with:

in my 9 years of canoe club i have seen many many things from the mundane to unbelievable. So it is always surprising to see something that is truely original. With a couple of dinners a year plus extras for special event i have probably been to over 20 club dinners none of which could be called classy. Can we do this?
To do this we should "try" to avoid some of the things that have inhibited previous dinners from being classy such as:
-No stealing pot plants
-No half time shot rounds
-No animal eye ball eating
-No curry sculling competitions
-No bring your little brother who passes out face down in his main
-No lazy susan drinking games
-No pizza food fights
-No trowing up at the table
-No stealing glassware
-No throwing up in your handbag
-No sing happy birthday 8 times to the bemusement of everybody in the restaurant if it is nobodies birthday.
-No random speeches
-No sex in the champagne room
if we could keep to all this we might have a chance...however it might be boring.

and

"Among many memorable past events, perhaps "No presidential spews in the doorway at or before 8pm" could have been added to your list Craig?"

apparently there has only been one past club dinner where they have not been kicked out of the restaurant. so you see the entertainment potential was quite high. and natasha said she could give me a ride so i got my ticket on thursday. she picked me at 6:45 and we drove over to ponsonby, a central suburb where there are lots of little bars and restaurants and shops and also nice houses. i wore serita's kimono dress with leggings under, and my white cardigan, and i was scared i was going to be over dressed, especially when natasha was wearing jeans, but there were people wearing like, prom dresses so i was a happy medium.

once we got there everyone gradually arrived and there was lots of socialization. natasha and i were sitting on a kind of bench against the wall on one side of a big table, so we sort of stayed where we were and different people circulated around and talked to us. jessica, who is american and i knew from fulljames and victoria, who is a first year kiwi like natasha sat with us and they are both quite talkative and funny, and kristen who is an older member of the club and is also very outgoing and funny joined us and it was fun. before i left i had been talking to molly and she said she and peter were riding bikes there from her flat, which is pretty far, and i was not sure how the whole classy outfit was going to work with a long bike ride, but i guess toni ended up giving them a ride.

mai arrived and had heaps of wine which some people had quite a lot of ha ha. somehow peter ended up next to me during the actual dinner and at first he was entertaining but after he had told me about 12 times how he hadn't been drunk in 8 weeks and how drunk he was it got a bit old. that and the eating of his food with his hands instead of silverware. anyway dinner was delicious i had some vegetarian filo pastry thing. and there was a belly dancer, who chose several of the guys to come dance with her which was pretty funny. after more socialization desert came, which was turkish delight, which i had never had before but i guess is quite popular here, it's kind of like big soft squares of gum drop material, covered in powdered sugar. they were ok, but from all the hype i was kind of expecting better.

the closest we came to rowdyness was our table and molly's table throwing things at each other, starting with pieces of wax from the candles on the tables (which peter had been putting in his mouth fully lit earlier in the evening), pieces of the flowers, wine corks, and napkins. everyone lost interest before that got too rowdy though, and after a while more it was announced that we were moving on to a bar called grand central just down the street and people gradually filtered out (marking the second voluntary leaving of a club dinner, as far as i know). i'm not sure where it came from but victoria had this hand symbol for "extreme" followed by anything, including "drunken walking" and "whitewater kayaking" which was really funny. we also had hand symbols where she was a duck, natasha was an elephant, and i was a moose. we would just randomly make the signs at each other throughout the night.

at grand central there was a live band doing like old soul music (lots of aretha franklin), which i initially thought was cool, but it was quite loud which made talking to people rather difficult. there was a room in the back with couches and a fireplace so most of us sat in there and it was warm and dark and i was getting quite sleepy, so natasha and i left sometime in the 12'oclock hour since she had to drive home too which is kinda far i guess.

also, i had called andrew about kite surfing on thursday and he said he had a lot of people coming but he could squeeze me in, but he wouldn't be able to pick me up from the train station. after he sent out the text with the times and stuff on friday night he called to give me the numbers of the other people going and he said one of them could probably give me a ride. however we were driving to dinner when he called, and i had nothing to write with, so he sent me a text message with 4 phone numbers. so once we got to dinner i proceeded to send a text to them all saying "hi i'm going kitesurfing with andrew tomorrow and i was wondering if you were going via downtown/if i could bum a ride" and natasha and i had a very complicated time of me reading the numbers from the text to her so she could put them in her phone to read back to me as i dialed. but 2 of the 4 responded (and there is a good chance some of the numbers got mixed up somewhere along the way) and the first one said they could get me on the corner of k rd and symonds st at 8:45 am.

that meant i got about 6 hours of sleep, but i was there awkwardly waiting on time, and the guy saw me and it wasn't nearly as weird/awkward as it could have been. i don't remember his name but he was a british guy who had been hoping to do a working holiday here but he hasn't been able to find work so he's probably going back to the uk soon. when we got to andrew's it turned out he had messed up the tide timing so we had to wait a little while for there to be some water along the beach, but it wasn't a big deal. besides me there was the guy who gave me the ride, who had had one lesson, another british guy who was a complete beginner, a girl from auckland named catherine who was also a complete beginner who was really friendly and was sad i'm going home cause we could have been kitesurfing buddies if we had both stuck with it, 2 german guys (1 of them was pretty pro), and a younger guy who had had 3 lessons and just bought his own kite and stuff. then we all piled into andrews jeep (and another instructor and the last kid's mom took another car down) and drive down thru the pasture, where the cows chased us ha ha. andrew said he had a bunch of japanese people and they were walking thru the pasture and the cows started coming over and he jokingly told them not to stand still and started running, and everyone ran for their lives and vaulted over a fence and rolled in a ditch and he had to sit down from laughing so hard ha ha.

when we got down to the beach we chose our kites, and andrew suggested i take the 8m but he said the wind was supposed to pick up as the day went on, so i was a chicken and took a 6 instead. however the wind was pretty light and on the occasion that i got up, i would forget to keep doing power strokes and run out of power. and instead of picking up the wind more or less died off to the point where none of us could even keep our kites in the air. after standing in the water trying to launch my kite for what felt like ages i was freezing and some of the others had already taken their kites in so i wound up my lines and walked in and stood around for awhile. then the other instructor who was standing with us said it was picking up again and convinced me to go back out, so he helped me relaunch my kite and i went back out, where the wind promptly died again. after a few futile attempts andrew came over and we all deflated our kites and went back in. overall not the best lesson ever, but i did do well on the previous lesson so i'm not completely frustrated. and i think i got better at keeping the kite in the air and not crashing it every time i fell/didn't get up. andrew said 'now linnell what did we learn today?' the answer to which was, go with the right kite for the current wind, because the meterologists don't really know what theyre talking about and you can always switch kites later if you need to. after we drove back up i got changed in the bathroom and everyone paid and said goodbye and andrew hugged me (cause it was my last lesson, very sad) ha ha it was cute. the same guy drove me back to town and dropped me on the corner, and i was back to ih by 5ish.

the ih formal dinner was that night at 6:30, and i wasn't sure i'd be back in time (when the days were longer it would be 8 or 9 by the time i got back), but i had plenty of time so i took a shower and a power nap, and then got ready and wore the exact same outfit as the night before.

since kendall, ej, courtney, and barret all left for australia that morning, sophie and i were buddies and when we went down we were some of the first ones there, so we picked a table, and ollie, hannah, lucy, alex and cameron joined us, and ace and brian were late so they had to sit with some random people. there were nice table clothes and wine glasses and stuff and little menus which listed vegetarian samosas as a dinner option, and chocolate mud cake for desert which we were all excited about. after waiting forever and eyeing the rolls we all had on our plates (ollie gave up and ate his) clive (the ih head guy) welcomed us and a maori guy who lives here gave a speech in maori (which was the fastest i have ever heard anyone speak maori, i guess that's cause usually it's more chanting/singing that i hear rather than regular speech), and we were allowed to have the entree (appetizer), which was smoked salmon and some potatoe cake thing, which several of us donated to ollie ha ha.

after more waiting the vice-chancellor gave a speech that wasn't too long, and quite humorous. the main jokes were that clive had called him by the wrong name introducing him, and insulting otago university. both were used several times. then it was finally food time, but clive announced the order of tables that got to go up to the buffet, and we were second to last. ollie, being a big jerk, promptly left us to go sit with brian and ace who were at an earlier table. we gave him death stares for the rest of the night. the food was basically normal ih food. the vegetarian option was the hilight of the meal, although it did not resemble samosas whatsoever, it was like pita bread with feta cheese and sundried tomatoes.

when the eating was winding down this large man came over from the head table and sat in ollie's former seat and was like 'i was bored at that table so thought i'd come meet some new people' and he proceeded to show us how to make a chicken out of a cloth napkin (which they had at the head table while we had paper ones) ha ha and he offered to smuggle us over a bottle of wine from the head table cause they had a lot but we said it was alright, but if he could put in a word for us to be the first table to get dessert it would be much appreciated. he was really funny, and we decided he was a big improvement over ollie ha ha. after more waiting i looked around and discovered that dessert was just out and there was already a long line and it wasn't by table. there was pavlova, fruit salad, and BANANA cake. apparently only the head table got the chocolate mud cake, which made me very upset. i ate the chocolate off the top of the banana cake and tried to give the rest to alex. during desert one of the waiter people came over with a bottle of wine and offered it to us and said it was from the head table and we thought it was just like, they had extras and were sharing with everyone, but then we realized it was only our table and it was from our new friend ha ha.

sophie and i made a fairly early exit because there was a space-themed party at colm's flat in ponsonby, and molly and jessica were going so we were going to meet them there, but first we had to work out some sort of costume. we ended up going to the mini mart just outside and paying $3.20 for 80m of aluminum foil, which we made antenna head bands and bracelets out of. then we made our way to the link bus and paid $1.60 and proceeded to wear our antennas and giggle about everything on the way there. we started explaining why every joke either of us said was funny, which just made it more funny.

we found our way there from the bus stop pretty easily, and since we had taken the bus the others weren't there yet so we awkwardly stood outside on the street (still in our antennas) because we didn't really know most of the people and we also did not see many people in costumes so we wanted to make our entrance with the others (who along with craig had also constructed some sort of alien costume). eventually we saw them coming down the street, all 3 of them wearing kayak helmets with lightbulbs attached and various glittery star decorations. we went in, and discovered there weren't very many canoe club people so sophie and i were glad we had waited to go in. we socialized with some random people, including a russian guy who made us guess where he was from based on his accent, and we failed, and i proceeded to have a rather long discussion about linguistics with him which apparently bored everyone else standing with us ha ha. peter and jamie were there again, and this time peter was high rather than drunk and much less obnoxious. he was wearing a hoodie with a skeleton on it, and purple velvet pants which he says he wears to uni and stuff ha ha. sophie and i also found a book called like "more fish in the sea: how to catch a girl in the cbd" which was full of fishing-related puns about picking up chicks in auckland and was quite entertaining. at one point sophie and i were waving our antennas at each other and beeping pretending we were communicating ha ha. we just sat around being giggly and got sleepy and peter was giving molly and jess a ride back but i did not want to ride with him cause he was high so sophie and i walked back and it was kinda drizzly raining but it wasn't too bad, and only took like half an hour.

then i got up at 9:45 this morning to go to step class, again on like 6 hours, so i may take a nap now. or study. ha.