New Zealand

the end

2008-07-03T17:43:00.000-07:00

so i'm home now :-/

the last week was pretty busy, and kind of a blur now, so i'll just do a quick summary. my last 2 finals were language and identity in nz, which was 3 essays and i was dreading taking, but i think i did an ok bs job, and anthro, which had 3 essays plus short answer and multiple choice, which i probably should have studied more for than i did. but it really doesn't matter as long as i pass because no important bio people are going to care how i did in an anthropology course, and the grade doesn't affect my gpa.

the last weekend was a mix of studying (my anthro test wasn't until monday the 30th) and lots of goodbyes. friday night we used the rest of the marshmallows and graham crackers from serita to make s'mores with the ih kids (lucy was the only remaining kiwi from ih) and natasha and colm both came as well. saturday i studied and then went to colm's birthday party at his flat. sunday i studied all day. monday i took my anthro final, and then kendall, sophie, ej, michelle, rachel, and i did a bunch of last minute errands and souvenir shopping to use up our remaining nz cash. i got tim tams and pineapple lumps and some gifts for people.

monday night was an aucc party at the mustang saloon and sophie and ej came with me and it was fun, and i said goodbye to heaps of people and it was really sad. tuesday i packed and said goodbye to sophie and kendall, and colm gave me a ride to the airport where we found a whole bunch of other aucc people giving rides and saying goodbye. espen, who is from norway was taking his kayak home with him, and he had filled it with stuff. however, apparently it was over the weight limit, because when i arrived i found him in front of the baggage check desk with kayaking gear and clothing strewn across the floor. he arrived at the gate just as we were boarding the plane, wearing about 6 shirts and at least 2 pairs of pants and looking rather sweaty ha ha.

there were a bunch of other americans i knew on the flight to la, and my seating arrangement could not have been better. i had a window seat right at the front of the cabin so i had lots of leg room and no one in front of me, and BOTH of the seats next to me were empty. it was pretty awesome. my 10 hour layover in la wasn't too awful, i found a plug and played games on my computer most of the time. after the next flight to chicago my butt was tired from sitting for so long so i lay on my stomach on the floor by the gate for awhile. the last flight to buffalo was only an hour and a half, and when i arrived it turned out one of my bags had not made it on the plane from chicago, but they said they'd deliver it that night or the next morning.

then the family took me to brunch at a diner by the airport, and we went home (via tom wahl's for ice cream) and then after showering serita and i went wakeboarding in canandaigua with uncle boz and ryan. and then i slept for most of wednesday night and thursday during the day. and that is the end of my trip to new zealand.

last aucc trip: an epic adventure

2008-06-22T05:57:00.000-07:00

i so i will start where i left off, waking up at 6:30 am after 4 hours of sleep. twas not fun. luckily i had packed most of my stuff the night before, so i made it to the quad around 7:15 as instructed. molly and i were both riding with oyvind (aka ivan-who is from norway) as well as isaac (who is a 1st year kiwi who looks like he's in hanson) and fiona (who is irish and was teaching me the first time i rolled). i spotted oyvind's brightly painted van (named theodor) parked by the quad, and found him and isaac organizing the 5 kayaks in the back of the van. as the third to arrive, i was offered the choice between sitting in the front of the van (where there are 3 real seats) or the back (where there is a bench seat which is not attached to anything and does not have seatbelts). i said the back was fine, and then had to decide whether i wanted to face backwards of forwards (ie, kayaks in the back of the head, or no view). i went with facing forwards since that was the current position and less work. molly arrived after a bit, slightly late because her alarm didn't go off, and she piled in the back with me.

then we had to go to toni's house, which is on the north shore, to get her boat for molly to borrow. unfortunately molly didn't remember exactly how to get there, but after a few missed turns and a bit of map navigating from me, we found it, and swapped the club boat molly was supposed to have with toni's really nice creeker. this left me as the only person with a club boat, which did not help my mounting fear for the grade 3. creekers are supposed to be easier (larger volume, faster, harder to flip over and relatively easy to roll back up) and the freestyler i got is a play boat, which are smaller and the pros use to do tricks. i was assured that it's the best boat the club owns though, and there wasn't much i could do about it anyway.

after leaving toni's we went back to town, picked up fiona at britomart, and were on the motorway by 8:30. oyvind told us we were going to listen to norwegian folk music all the way there, and we were all excited but it turns out he was kidding and didn't really have any. he also turned to isaac, who was in charge of all his electronics (ipod and phone) and was like 'how's your norwegian coming?' because apparently all the menus and stuff are in norwegian. isaac replied 'ok, music is musik' and oyvind said 'yeah it's a pretty easy language, i learned it when i was like 4' (ie, as his first language. it was funny at the time i don't think i reproduced that well ha ha).

the original plan from colm said everyone should be on the motorway by 8, but we were still far ahead of "aucc time" and when colm called at 8:40 to check on us they were still at james's flat tying boats on the car. (there were just the 2 cars full, with kenny, colm, james, ross, and katrina in the other one). we stopped at a bp to fill up petrol and rearrange boats, and oyvind pulled up with the gas cap on the wrong side, which was not realized until after we had unloaded half the gear and boats from the back, so then he had to pull away and do a big loop, leaving fiona, molly and me standing in the gas station parking lot surrounded by piles of kayaking gear.

eventually we were on our way, the other car having just passed us, and we leap frogged back and forth the rest of the way, stopping once just before matamata for a potty break. molly and i probably should not have been together for that ride, because we just continued to freak ourselves and each other out more and more. i was WAY more scared than i was for skydiving, i got butterflies in my stomach every time i thought about it. we tried to play calming songs, like bob marley, followed by pump our selves up music, like modest mouse and come on eileen.

we reached the top get in just after the other car, where molly and i raced for the outhouse, and everyone got ready for the river. i had my togs, polypro leggings, 2 long sleeved polypro tops, and james's drytop which i had procured from nick on friday at school. ross had a wetsuit he was offering so after some debate i decided i may as well load up on layers and took that too, which turned out to be a GREAT choice.

after everyone was fully dressed, everyone except isaac and molly and i set off down the top of the rangitaiki. we beginners had to shuttle the cars and would then meet everyone at the get in for the mid section (easier part). both cars were standard, but luckily isaac and molly could both handle that, so first we took both cars down to the take out, where we left kenny's car (which used to be his while he was here and he sold to squirrel when he left, but ironically squirrel is at stanford (where kenny is a grad student) while he is here, so they just traded cars). then we all went in theodor back to the mid section get in, down some VERY rough dirt roads. i continued the freaking out by wondering aloud how long it might take an ambulance to arrive out there. the view of the river at the get in was perfectly flat in both directions and isaac (who is a professional raft guide and knows the river) said "oooh you don't know what's around the corner do you?" which further scared me. however it took the instructors so long to make it down to us that my fear had more or less given way to sillyness and boredom by the time they finally arrived (around 2:30).

we put our boats in and with some assistance attached my snazzy new neoprene club deck to the boat. the freestyler i was paddling is the smallest kayak i've been in yet, and had no foot pegs, so my feet were just kinda touching the front end of the boat which was a bit strange, and the thigh braces seemed like they would be hard to get out of, but i was assured it's always easy to get out when you're underwater.

after i was all situated, i first did a practice t-rescue off colm's boat just to get used to the frigid water temp (although the drytop was REALLY nice, it has double layer seals around the wrists, neck, and waist, so for brief wet experiences you stay virtually dry). after that, and with several instructors watching and prepared to t-rescue me, i tried my first river roll-and it worked!! granted, it was in the perfectly still, flat water with no rocks or whitewater, but it still made me 1000x less scared for the day ahead. hypothetically, i would be able to save myself! molly declined any sort of underwater practice, saying that if she tried and couldn't roll it would freak her out even more so it was better not to. i tried a second roll a little ways down still in the flats, and it was fine again. the only problem is every time i roll up, my contacts kinda get lost in my eyes, so when i come up i usually can't see much, which becomes a bit of a problem when you're weaving around rocks and stuff in the rapids.

before we got to the first rapids, james had us eddy out and told us some basic instruction. ie, always listen to the instructors, go in the direction they point, tell someone if we get really cold, because most everyone has snacks in their vests. and he gave us our order, with katrina leading, then kenny, then colm as the first group, then oyvind, molly, me, and ross in the second, and isaac, fiona, and james bringing up the rear. this was kenny's first grade 3 and isaac's second, but they are both far better paddlers than molly and me, so we had oyvind and ross, the two most experienced instructors (besides james) sandwiching us. i told ross if i flipped i would try rolling once and then he should come t-rescue me immediately.

and then we headed into the first rapids! i felt quite alright, but molly flipped and swam, and then requested that ross go in front of her and oyvind behind me, because she likes the way ross instructs better (worded more diplomatically). this was unfortunate for me because, as i had discovered on the wairoa trip, oyvind's boat is extremely slippery and hard to grab onto for t-rescues. but i did not complain.

the rapids were real fun though, the whole nose of the boat would go under and just pop back up. and my steering was better than i had expected, which was good because there were lots of rocks to steer around. i got stuck on top of one but ross came and gave me a push and told me which way to lean and i somehow remained upright. a few rapids later (probably the third one) i capsized next to a rock, and the combination of rock and not being prepared in setup position convinced me i couldn't roll, so i swam. for some reason i felt like it would take the instructors longer to get to me than past trips, so i generally didn't wait very long for t-rescues. james came by, had me grab the back of his boat, and towed me over to where the others had caught my boat and paddle.

after that i was just a little chilly but not too upset. i cannot say the same about 4 swims later. i'm not sure about the order of all of these, but in general every time i flipped i'd be by a rock, meaning most of the time i wouldn't even try to roll and wouldn't wait very long for a t-rescue before swimming, which would then just make me more frustrated with myself. sometime around my third swim fiona was also swimming, and since james couldn't tow us both at once and it was quite shallow, he sent us wading/swimming through the rapids, which i think would have been really fun had it not been SO cold in the water. fiona was really mad at herself for swimming, which lead me to be even more frustrated because it was already my third swim.

i think the second swim oyvind got me and had me lay on my belly across the cockpit as he paddled me over to my boat, which he said actually stabilized him like a ballast, although someone said james wouldn't approve, but he didn't seem to care when he saw. when we arrived at my boat i said "thanks for the ride" and oyvind said "my pleasure" and molly said "that sounded kinda dirty" and we all laughed.

one of the times i had held on for a t-rescue oyvind got to me, and i got my hand on his boat but couldn't reach the loop and it slipped away, i tried again, and it happened again, so then i was out of air and swam. stupid big round creeker boats!

after 2 or 3 swims i tried rolling again in another flat spot to show myself i still could, and i was fine. katrina told me that if you hold on in set-up position underwater and wait a bit sometimes you move away from the rocks and can roll up better. the next time i capsized after that i made myself stay calm and got in set-up position, and then rolled up!! that was the hilight of the entire river, by far, using my roll IN the rapids to save myself after an unexpected flip. that is really the whole purpose of rolling. it was a bit scary because as usual my contacts were not focused, so i had to make my way to the end of the rapids slightly blindly, but luckily everyone was eddyed out just after the rapids (because molly swam again), so i could stop and get settled (and celebrate my roll!). in general molly stayed upright more than me (i think she had 3 or 4 swims total and i had 5) which may have been due in part to having toni's boat (or because she is a better paddler than me, she just freaks out underwater immediately).

during my worst swim, somehow my boat and i ended up in a little eddy right next to a lot of rushing rapids which would be pretty impossible for me to eddy into without flipping. james got to me and got out of his boat and after some pondering of the situation he told me to get in my boat and he would raft me past the rapids to my paddle. however after some more pondering and gesturing at all the people standing on the bank downstream, james told me to get back out, climb over some rocks and a fallen tree, and he'd meet me in the next eddy and tow me down. he then stood up and threw my boat as far out in the river as he could, got in his boat and paddled over to me, and warned me that it was very shallow so my knees might get beat up, but there was no other way. it actually wasn't that bad, i think the wetsuit helped a lot, and we reached the others safely, where they had caught my boat and paddle.

at one point while james was rescuing me and most of the others were further downstream, we saw kenny's boat wedged upside down pretty firmly on some rocks in the middle of the river, and when we reached everyone else we discovered in addition to kenny and me, molly and isaac were also swimming.

another time i was stuck without a paddle and oyvind was there so james had him raft me down, which is where we face our boats opposite directions and line them up next to each other and i hold onto either side of his cockpit ("for dear life" as james told me repeatedly) as he paddles one-sided on the side where i am not. it seemed risky, but oyvind told me as long as i was holding his boat so it was tipping towards me we would not flip, and sure enough, we made it safely. it was actually quite fun, and a nice break from paddling. after we had made it oyvind told me that was the first time he'd every done that!

it was probably a bad sign that my arms started feeling tired before we had even reached the first rapid, and that may have been related to the pump class i had stupidly gone to friday night. you are supposed to aggressively paddle through rapids and i think as i got more tired i was paddling less, which made me less stable, which made me flip more. after my 4th swim i flipped right next to oyvind, got into set-up position to roll, but was just so physically drained i couldn't, but luckily he was right there to t-rescue and somehow i actually grabbed his boat that time and made it up without swimming.

by that time it was getting dark quite quickly, and james said sunset was at 5, dusk at 5:30, and that it was currently 5:15, so we needed to really move so as to not be on the river in the dark. and we had to stay closer together now because it was harder to see. at this point i felt completely exhausted, so i asked oyvind if he would raft me again and he agreed, so i tried to tuck my paddle under my arm like james had said but it got caught and in the process of trying to hold on to it i lost my grip on oyvind, and flipped once again, this time with no paddle from the start. i swam, clinging to my upside down boat, to the side where everyone was congregating, but just as i reached the rock, the current took my boat and it swept past ross who was just downstream, and who proceeded to start yelling and swearing as molly's boat also floated past us upside down.

at that point i would have done anything to be able to stop paddling, and katrina, fiona, and oyvind wanted to get off the river because of the dark, so they, isaac, molly and i dragged the 4 remaining boats with us up the bank, and james, ross, kenny, and colm went on to catch the lost boats, saying to meet them at the getout.

isaac, who works with the commercial rafting companies and knows the area pretty well said there should be a walking path reasonably close running along the river, so we started "bush bashing" our way through the thick trees and bush, working together to move all the boats with us. most of us had some sort of water shoes or sandals, but katrina and molly were barefoot. i don't think i could have made it through that without shoes, they were very tough.

before we were very far into the woods isaac went down the river a bit and somehow found molly's (toni's) boat where the instructors had caught it, and he brought that back, somehow finding his way back to us (i'm not entirely sure how all of that worked out, now that i think about it). anyway, that left us with 5 boats and 6 people, so the last person (we took turns) carried all the paddles, which oyvind lashed together loosely with one of the bajillion carabiners he had with him.

in the forest it was almost completely dark, and none of us had any form of light (oyvind said after this he is going to keep some glow sticks in his boat). we also had no phones or anything, but isaac, oyvind and katrina all had whistles, which they would blow every now and then, hoping for a response from the others. we also counted off or took turns saying our names periodically to make sure no one had gotten lost, since visibility was virtually 0. i was following the person in front of me based on a combination of feeling for their dragging kayak, occasional glimpses of the boats' bright colors, and following voices.

isaac and katrina were leading, and we were sort of aiming for what looked like pine trees in a general uphill direction, because pine forest would have been much easier to walk through than the native bush. as we followed a little stream we saw a bunch of glow worms which was pretty cool, i told everyone all about what we learned at the waitomo caves. it was very slow going and scary because we didn't really know where we were going, but as long as we kept moving we were plenty warm, and i was still kind of having fun being extreme at that point. there was occasional talk about what we would do to keep warm if we had to sleep out, i suggested making a tepee out of all the boats which katrina thought was really funny. eventually we reached a very steep part which isaac thought might be next to a waterfall in the little stream, and we decided to hoist all the kayaks up and keep going that way. as soon as we emerged on the top, we discovered a lovely wide grassy walking path! we were ecstatic and very impressed with isaac's guidance.

however, after a few minutes of triumphantly following trail in the direction of the getout, we encountered a large tree fallen across the path. assuming the trail continued on the other side, we proceeded to work together to hoist all the boats up, over, and through the tree(s), and scrambled over ourselves. however, on the other side we were greeted by more fallen trees. there seemed to be a clearing up ahead, in front of a ridge with a line of pine trees along the top. from atop one of the piles of branches oyvind said it looked like if we could get to the clearing it wouldn't be too hard to get to the top of the ridge, where there was probably some sort of road or path. so we continued on, heaving boats and ourselves over tree after tree.

we were still blowing the whistles intermittently, and somewhere along there we heard voices from somewhere on the hill, yelling what sounded like "colm" and something about "car". we yelled all our names to tell them we were all ok, but then the voices went away. since they sounded like they were approximately in the direction we were going, we kept aiming for the gap in trees at the top of the ridge.

before we had really reached the steep incline part, we heard more voices coming from the vague direction of the river, and saw what we thought might be a light. it turned out to be ross and james, who had successfully paddled to the getout, changed quickly, and driven theodor as far as they could up the walking path, until they encountered the beginning of the tree felling from the other end. they had then been walking/bush bashing in a zigzag upriver direction looking and calling for us. james had his phone, which somehow had excellent service there, and ross had a flashlight. apparently ross and kenny had had my lost boat with them and had stopped somewhere between where we got out and the end of the run, so it must have been them we had heard calling earlier.

james and ross were adamant that we could not make it back the way they had come with the boats, although we tried to tell them we had been doing roughly the same thing for the majority of the time since we had last seen them. according to james's phone it was about 8pm by then. the cleared hillside route still looked pretty direct so ross went up ahead of us and said it was tough, but he reached the top, so we followed on, going struggling more and more the steeper it got. "cleared" is not a good description word. we were climbing over felled trees, rarely touching the ground. several times i fell down with my legs hanging between trees and still couldn't touch the ground. i was near the back, with isaac and james, and james helped carry the boat i was dragging for awhile, and i felt bad because katrina and molly were still making progress with boats and without shoes and i was ready to give up.

partway up james got a text from colm, saying he and kenny had left the 3 boats by the river, been found by a family hunting possums, and the cops were on their way. after awhile we saw heard sirens and saw lights at the top of the hill and we yelled to them all our names again and that we were ok. kenny came partway down with a flashlight and said the cops were anxious to see all of us safely up there in person, but james and oyvind were not about to leave the boats at that point so james told kenny to tell them "not in these words we're all fine and we're on our f-ing way". i think somewhere most of the way up fiona, molly and katrina gave up on their boats because they got to the top (although their boats were at the top when we got there so i'm not sure how they got there) and the cop gave them a ride down to the car at the get out while kenny and colm waited at the top for us and for the cop to come back.

when we were the majority of the way up and i was ready to sit down and give up again ross threw a throwbag to us, which james tied to the two remaining kayaks, and then while isaac held one end and ross had the other around a tree, james and i climbed up using the rope as a hand rail, which made it much easier. then james, ross, and oyvind hauled the rope with the 2 boats up with pure brute strength. i attempted to help but i don't think i was very useful ha ha. ross then directed me to an area where there was actual ground to walk on (instead of climbing from tree to tree) and he and oyvind went up higher and secured the rope again, and we repeated the hauling the boats up move a couple more times.

kenny then found his way down to us and we all grabbed some rope and just walked the rest of the way dragging the boats, and colm met us with a very large bottle of water which we polished off quite quickly. we finally emerged by a big "digger" (some sort of backhoe thing) and the cop came back shortly and somehow we all fit into his truck. oyvind, isaac and i (the only ones who were still in wet/dirty river gear) got put in the lockup cage in the back which was very squashed but at that point it was great to be sitting, and the others who had changed piled into the front (the other girls had gone back in the first trip to the car already). when we arrived at the get out we found them huddled in the car sharing colm's bottle of vodka and some chocolate. the cop and james went to go get theodor. the cop didn't believe that they had actually driven up the very rough muddy walking track at first, but somehow they got in and out without getting stuck. we also discovered that one of theodor's side windows was sitting on the front seat, apparently it was somehow ripped off during the trail driving, but oyvind said he couldn't figure out how to reattach it until the morning.

when they got back we changed out of the disgusting wet gear which we left in the back of the van (oyvind jumped in the river to wash off which we all thought was absolutely nuts, but he is from norway so i guess he's used to cold). colm and james talked to the cop for awhile, i really hope the club/james doesn't get in trouble (especially since he let me and molly come and we may not have been entirely ready). as i was peeing in the bushes along the road, i was alarmed to see the possum hunters coming (they are easy to see because as was explained to me, possum hunting involves driving around the woods shining bright lights around, and when you shine the light on a possum it freezes, and then it's just like target practice). i managed to pull my pants up before i made it into the spotlight though ha ha. apparently when they found colm and kenny they had asked if we were from auckland (remember everyone else in nz hates auckland) and they replied that kenny was from california (well, he goes to school there) and colm was from ireland (he visited there...). they also told them that if we had had to spend the night the best thing to do is dig a hole and everyone take off all wet clothes (including polypro) and get in and then cover ourselves with branches and leaves. good thing it did not come to that!

as things were winding down they tied the boats to the car and we returned to the van which we drove up to where we had left the boats and somehow managed to fit the 6 of them into the back of the van. then we had a very chilly drive (especially for molly and me in the back next to the missing window) to rotorua to get food and figure out what we were doing for the night. james had texted his parents while we were scaling the mountain telling them that we were all safe but might not be coming after all (we were supposed to have spent the night there after getting off the river before 5). poor toni, who had not been crazy about loaning out her beloved boat and had told molly she could use it if she promised not to swim (obviously that goal was lost ages ago), was getting alarming texts from ross about what had just happened, and molly was reassuring her that her boat was safe, if a bit dirty. oyvind had not slept the night before and was quite keen to have some beers, so isaac drove while oyvind and fiona polished off quite a few beers, and molly and i slept.

we pulled into rotorua a little after 11, and saw, to our dismay, that burger fuel had just closed so we ended up at burger king and i was forced to break what was left of my no-american-fast-food pledge. i washed my hands about 5 times (which was quite painful with soap in the cuts and scrapes), but could not remove the dirt from under my nails. i also discovered a minor scrape where i had taken a branch in the nose, but it wasn't nearly as bad as i had been fearing. i got a double cheeseburger, and somehow the lady messed up the order so i ended up with fries and a sprite too (although i would have preferred water). after eating it was decided that rather than driving 2 hours to james's parents' in tauranga, we would spend the night at isaac's cousin's house which was much closer to rotorua, since ross and james had to run the river again the next day to rescue the 3 boats colm and kenny had left. we had also been planning to go to the grocery store to get food for a breakfast feast and a lot of alcohol (i think i owed most of the instructors a case of rescue beers each), but as we discovered around 12:15, the grocery store closed at midnight.

so we piled back into the van for an even less enjoyable ride now that it was raining in the missing window, but the ride wasn't long (and i think i fell asleep). somehow my ipod fell out of my bag and got wet, and kenny rescued it for me. (it's currently drying out. hopefully it still works ok). when we got there we went in quietly and isaac took us up to this whole little apartment area where we discovered most of the lights didn't work and there was no hot water (which was actually probably best because we ALL wanted hot showers and that would have been very competitive), but there was plenty of floor space and extra blankets so we all made ourselves comfortable and went to sleep. there was this cool bay window-type bed overlooking the lake right outside which kenny claimed, and then i suggested colm could share with him and no one would know what was going on behind the curtains, and then colm was telling me about his drunken new years escapades in ireland until molly said "i love you both but shut up" so then we went to sleep.

in the morning it was absolutely pouring rain so we were lazy and just sat around in our sleeping bags for a long time. oyvind got up before the rest of us and went out to reattach the window on theodor (the night before we had had to convince him that sleeping out there in the back of the window-less van in the rain was not a good idea, and when we were going to sleep he said "i feel so bad for theodor right now" ha ha). kenny and colm went back to town to get supplies for breakfast, and when they got back we went into the main part of the house, where isaac's 18 year old cousin is currently living alone i guess? he was pretty quiet, but really nice and let us take over his whole house. i made french toast for everyone, katrina fried saussages, kenny made scrambled eggs, and there were hash browns and roasted tomatoes and baked beans and probably a lot of other things i don't remember, and we had a delicious brunch around noon.

after sitting around relaxing some more ross and james and oyvind had to get going to fetch the abandoned boats, and fiona went with them to drive the shuttle. the rest of us had a lovely day filled with very little movement and lots of good rainy day activities. we tried to collaborate on a crossword puzzle but even with 7 people our general knowledge seemed to be lacking. we played cards (colm suggested scum, isaac suggested 2's high, and i suggested asshole. turns out they are all different names for the same game ha ha). there was this jar with little white round things on the table land i asked what they were. isaac and colm both put one in their mouth and pretended they were mints for a while before isaac announced they were bb gun bullets ha ha. so then katrina came over and they were like 'want one?' and i started laughing uncontrollably and she was like 'what are they?' and they told her they were mints and she said 'oh yum sure!' and took one and then spit it out, despite my hysterical laughter.

i beat molly and katrina at guess who until they did not want to play anymore, and then later i was saying how i always win and no one will play with me, and then colm proceeded to beat me the first 2 games we played, so i said best out of 5, and won the next two, but then lost the last one ha ha. and we made s'mores finally with the supplies serita brought me and what was left of the chocolate from the breakfast grocery mission. katrina agreed that our marshmallows are superior, but no one else seemed as excited as i thought they should be. and we watched babel, which was seemed pretty intense but then the ending was kind of anticlimactic and depressing. by the time it was getting dusky again we grudgingly decided we should get ready to go meet the others at the secret spot.

unfortunately by the time we were loading stuff into and tying boats onto the car it was dark once again, and still pouring rain but eventually we got everything more or less secured, and crammed all 6 of us into the car. molly and i were not too keen on going in the secret spot, partially because my bathing suit was with my wet polypro which were all mia, and since it was cold and wet out, but i had reconciled myself to it since it was my last chance. as we were going past burger fuel and had just decided we need to stop on the way home, we got a text from the others saying the secret spot was cold because of all the rain, so molly and i were happy and they just came to meet us at burger fuel.

i got what were probably my last kumara fries (delicious as always) and a chocolate malt shake (not as exciting as i had heard but still yummy). when the others arrived james was wearing one shoe and ross (whose toenails have been painted pink or purple as long as i have known him) came in with no shoes and a towel around his waist, but their mission had been a success. i'm not sure if he had anything under or not haha. after eating we then had to unload and retie boats in the parking lot (still in the rain), which got us some weird looks, and we decided to just sort out everyone's gear at james's flat back in auckland. the drive back was uneventful, i slept a lot. at james's i used his bathroom and helped sort gear into piles in the grass (club gear, james's gear, other people's stuff). i found my wet gear shoved in one of the boats with all the other wet stuff (except i couldn't find one of my water shoes, which is fine because i'm planning on throwing them out anyway). i was saying how i did not want to say goodbye and katrina came and gave me a hug and it was cute, but molly said she's gonna have a final party next weekend so i decided it was not necessary to say permanent goodbyes to everyone.

colm then took me, fiona, molly, and ross home in his car, which was quite cozy with all our gear since his trunk was already full. there was a box of food leftover from breakfast (including these "bacon and cheese hamburger rolls" which kenny and i thought sounded weird but colm had insisted on buying, and then someone later thought the rolls were hamburger flavoured, not for hamburgers which was really funny), which we were going to donate to isaac because earlier in the semester i guess his parents were gone and he had no money and no food, but apparently his parents have since returned so colm was elected next most needy on the food chain. we were all being silly and giggly on the way home and it was so much fun and i'm really sad to be leaving all the canoe club people. ha ha ross told me i laugh too much and we were making fun of colm because apparently he never updated his license or something so is not technically not supposed to be driving after 10pm. i was also really confused when we stopped at a light next to a bus and i kept feeling like we were rolling backwards but they said it was the bus going forwards but i was not convinced.

when we got to ih it was just colm and ross left, and i was discussing when i would see them again (so as not to have to say goodbye forever), and i suggested one of them give me a ride to the airport when i leave which they did not sound thrilled about, but also did not actually say no. then i got out and went to get my stuff out of the trunk and colm started to pull away ha ha, i wasn't sure if he was just messing with me but apparently he forgot i had to get stuff out after that very long discussion ha ha.

so i came up to my room, took a shower and went to bed. and now it's 4 pm on monday and all i have done is my laundry and this enormous blog. so i guess it's time to start studying.

the beginning of the end

2008-06-22T05:30:00.000-07:00

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.

north island grand tour

2008-06-13T12:51:00.000-07:00

soo riley had been talking about coming up to visit me for quite awhile, and possibly arriving on monday, but when i had not heard from him on sunday i assumed he was not coming. but he and his friend jessie (who i met when we were down there) got last minute tickets and arrived around 10pm on monday night, so i have been gone all week doing as much north island stuff as possible in 4 days.

since we were leaving tuesday morning, sophie had the excellent idea that we should get brian to climb the crane on the construction site next to ih with us (i don't remember if i said this before, but brian and ace and ollie have climbed this crane 4 or 5 times at night now, and i had been wanting to but missed all of their adventures so far). so we found brian but he was watching a movie and said come back in 20 minutes, so sophie and i took riley and jessie on a quick walking tour of downtown. we went down symonds st, showed them the uni campus, down quay st to the viaduct (to see the billboard with the blowing skirt) and then up to the base of the sky tower, up queen st to wakefield, and then back to ih. they were not in love with the city overall, and agreed that all the hills here are ridiculous.

we then went back to brian's room and as our "crane guide" he took us into the construction site and lead us up the crane. i was really not very scared at all, although after climbing 13+ floors worth of ladders my arms were getting a tad tired (which may also have been related to the 2 step/pump classes i went to earlier in the day). the view at the top was absolutely amazing, and we took lots of pictures. it was quite windy up there, and when it started raining we started back down. it was a bit scarier going down all those ladders in the rain, but we all made it safely back, and after booking a hostel for wellington on thursday night (riley and jessie were being cheap and wanted to camp the first and maybe second nights), we went to bed.

tuesday we were supposed to pick up the car at 8 am, but did not leave ih until after 8. riley and jessie insisted on coming with me, and we told sophie we'd pick her and our bags up from ih. as we were driving away from the rental place i noticed the gas was only 2/3 full, so after a u-turn in the considerable traffic of a weekday morning, i went back to the office and the man told me we only needed to return it half full in wellington. so we did another u-turn, got sophie and our bags, and headed for our first destination, the coromandel peninsula, about a 2 hour drive from auckland.

our first visit was to cathedral cove, which is towards the top on the east (pacific) side. it's this big sort of arch formed in the rock, and is apparently in the new narnia movie. the guidebook said it was a 20 minute walk down from the parking lot and a 40 min walk back, so we strolled down, and took a detour to see gemstone bay, which was a really pretty little cove with a lot of big rocks down to the water. we scrambled around on the rocks and gradually moved further along the shore, where we eventually ended up on another beach that we thought should have a path back to the main trail, but we could not find one. luckily, as the tide was coming in (causing the beach to disappear) we saw some people in the woods and discovered that there was in fact a path, which we would have completely missed had the people not been there.

so we found our way back, and continued on to cathedral cove. the path at one point led thru some farmland and there was a bench at a scenic overlook, except the bench was on the other side of an electric fence (well, we didn't test to see if it was actually electric). after going down a lot of stairs in what felt like the jungle, we emerged on a beach and to our left was cathedral cove. we took lots of pictures and played in the sand (it was quite warm in the sun, probably in the high 60s or low 70s, and the christchurch kids did not believe me that it is getting cold here, especially since they had significant snow there right before they left). anyway, after a few hours we headed back (UPhill) to the car, where we had some of the 12 pbjs i had made at ih.

then we drove on to hotwater beach, where you are supposed to be able to dig a hole in the sand and it will form a natural hot tub. however, i guess it only works at low tide, and when riley asked at the visitor center they said low tide was at 6am and 8pm. we were confused because that seems like a very slow tide, so we decided to go around 1 (halfway in the middle). turns out they may have been right because the water was pretty high at that point. we tried digging some random holes which only filled with cold water, and jessie built a sand castle and riley built a very impressive whale.

after that we drove back down the peninsula, and made our way to rotorua, via matamata and tirau, where we saw the obligatory hobbit hole and corrugated metal decorations, although it was getting dark. gas in auckland had been at $2.00/litre since serita and i had last traveled, 3 weeks ago, and i hadn't bothered to fill up there, but by that evening it was either 2.06 or 2.09 most places, so after trying to wait for another 2.00 deal we were nearing empty and ended up paying 2.09. lame as.

the original plan had been to go to the secret spot and then burger fuel in rotorua, but we were all starving as we entered rotoroua, so we went to burger fuel first, and it was delicious, although i was the only one who got kumara fries. we then changed into our bathing suits in the burger fuel bathroom (and some guy walked in on my changing ha ha), and then drove to the secret spot. when we arrived we were the only ones there, and it was dark and muddy and smelled like sulfur and i warned them not to put their heads in the water, and they accused me of taking them swimming in sewage ha ha. it was amazing and warm as always, and while we were there a local couple joined us and left, and a whole bunch of what i think were local high school kids came. they were quite loud and drunk but fairly entertaining, and we talked to them for awhile. one of them told us several times how 'this is just our local swimming pool' and they said in the morning we should go see the boiling mud pools at the other end of the road.

after several hours we were VERY pruney (sophie was scared it was going to be permanent) we dragged ourselves out and changed quickly in the middle of the road. then we drove back towards town and found a pull-off picnic area place that riley and jessie said should be good for camping. i asked if they wanted me to 'back up for easy access' (to the trunk with their camping stuff!) and everyone absolutely died laughing. anyway, they pitched their tent and sophie and i prepared to sleep in the car, at which point i discovered i had forgotten my sleeping bag. i did have my blankie and pillow, as well as every jacket i own here, so i didn't think it would be too cold. i was wrong, it was very cold. there was frost in the morning, as well as some roosters that were awake and crowing LONG before the sun was up. overall, not the most restful night ever, but it was free.

wednesday morning we took sophie to town to catch her bus back to auckland (she had tests this week, and had done most of the other stuff we were doing). we got groceries (we were flying thru the pbjs, so we got bread, pb, j, pasta, pancake mix, timtams and some fruit), and i used my $25 kathmandu voucher to get a warm hat since i sent mine home with serita. then we headed towards taupo, stopping at the recommended mud pools, which were pretty cool, but very smelly. we also stopped at puzzle world and played for awhile, although riley got very frustrated because he does not like puzzles.

after that we stopped at huka falls, saw the falls, and did the 2 hour return walking path along the waikato river towards taupo. again, it was quite warm in the sun and a bit sweaty, but it was really pretty. there was a hotwater stream that other people were swimming in but we did not. after returning to the car we continued on into taupo and parked by the lake and had some pbj. we walked around town a little, and riley tried the 'taupo hole in 1 competition' where you try to hit a golf ball from the shore into a hole on a raft floating out in the lake. his first shot was not even close, and the second one, the head of the golf club went flying into the lake ha ha.

after wandering around town for awhile we got more gas and drove on to turangi, the nearest town to tongariro national park, where we would be doing the tongariro crossing hike the next day. i slept most of the ride (while riley drove, don't worry ha ha) and awoke at the isite where we stopped get info about the hike, and figure out where to stay (i had convinced them that a warm, comfortable bed before and after hiking would be worth the 20ish bucks). the lady told us that the shuttles to and from the crossing are $35, and there was only a tiny bit of snow at the top so we didn't need to get crampons, and that we could rent anything else we needed (i needed hiking boots, and we might want waterproof pants) from a shop in town, but when we went there they said to go to the hostel across the street, or else some of the shuttles had gear for hire. we decided to stay at the hostel right there, which turned out to be really nice, probably in my top 3 i've been to here. the kitchen and bathroom were super nice and clean, and they even had their own rock climbing wall!

i'm pretty sure the lady who checked us in was the owner, she was very friendly and kind of reminded me of ms garrahan. after finding our room (8 person dorm) we turned on the heater because it was freezing, and made dinner. we made pasta with this red sauce with "spicy peppers" in it. i'm not sure how we ended up purchasing that because riley generally cannot handle spicy food, but it was yummy and we at the entire 500g package of pasta, and a lot of cookies afterward. we ate and hung out after in the lounge area, which included a fireplace and a tv, which was first playing some chick flickish movie i'd never seen before, and then we watched the panic room after and i attempted to study a little linguistics. after that we played cards for a little bit, and then went to bed in our room, which was quite warm and toasty by then (and sophie had left me her sleeping bag which was good because bedding cost extra).

thursday morning we were up bright and early (and much better rested than the previous night) for the crossing. now i was a bit apprehensive about doing the crossing, since people who had gone several weeks ago had needed crampons, and had warned me how cold it was. in addition, riley and jessie are quite the experienced trampers. they go for hikes that last several days most weekends. riley told me i was acting like we were scaling everest, and to calm down. the fact that the weather was good and snow-less did make me feel better. we packed everything we would need (a bajillion layers, an entire loaf of bread made into pbj, lots of water, and some granola bars) into jessie's big backpack, which riley carried for basically the whole day (i guess hers is more comfortable than his). the lady from the hostel took us in the bus at 7:30 to the mountain, and we were there by 8. she told us her husband would be waiting to pick us up in the car park at the other end at 3:30, and he would wait for us until 4:30, so to be sure we were there by then.

there was a little fog but it was supposed to burn off pretty quickly. it was pretty chilly outside, so to start off i was wearing a tanktop, courtney's under armor-ish t shirt she loaned me, my polypro, and my northface on top, and my polypro leggings and ur sweat pants (as well as 2 pairs of warm socks with my rented hiking boots), and my snowboarding gloves and new hat from kathmandu. the beginning hour or 2 was actually pretty flat, although i had forgotten what it's like walking at riley's speed, and i requested several stops, to stretch my shins and apply bandaids to my heels. the rented hiking boots were actually pretty comfortable though, i was expecting much worse.

after a potty stop at soda springs, we started up the so-called "devil's staircase" which is about 1000 stairs in a row winding up the mountain. we were definitely not cold anymore by the top! we eventually emerged in the south crater, at the base of mt. ngauruhoe, aka mt. doom from the lord of the rings. we had been told by several people that in the winter there isn't enough daylight to have time to do the 2 hour side tracks to the summits of the mountains, but riley said he "needed to summit something" and although he tried to convince me to as well i declined and told them i'd meet them at the hut further on. we fashioned a make-shift pack for me out of my waterproof pants and scarf to hold my warm layers, water, and some granola bars, and they set off to scramble up very steep gravel skree and i took a much more leisurely pace (both because it was more enjoyable that way and so i wouldn't be waiting for them for hours to catch up).

in the process of dawdling i met 2 guys, serge from toronto and gui from brazil, who were also going quite slowly. i ended up walking with them the rest of the way and we stopped to take lots of pictures and somehow i was the fast one in that group ha ha. after crossing the flat south crater, we continued on upward. this was the hardest part, because it was a combination of gravel skree and slippery ice, and we did most of it on all 4s. at the top we were rewarded with an amazing view of both mountains and the red crater, and a lot of wind. we were above the clouds, although the fog seemed to be rising up the side of mt. ngauruhoe, and i could not see riley and jessie which concerned me a little.

after one more much gentler climb we were at the highest point in the walk (except the summits), at 1900 meters. in front of us were the emerald lakes, which SO pretty. my canadian friend wanted to know if it was possible to swim in them in summer, but i'm pretty sure it's sulfuric acid or something else nasty that makes the nice colors ha ha. the way down the other side was fun, sort of sliding down the gravel skree (it's much more fun going down than up, surprise surprise). we stopped partway down for lunch, and my new friends offered me all kinds of food since my sandwiches were with riley. i had half a ham sandwich which was delicious, and some dried apricots. after more pictures we continued on down, past the emerald lakes, over to the blue lake, which was also pretty from a distance, but not too exciting up close. i took a potty stop behind some bushes.

after another small incline we started the final descent which the sign said took 3-4 hours, and since it was after 1 they got a little worried, but even at our slow speed we were making better time than the signs suggested so i wasn't too concerned. the path down was nice and gentle, although i nearly lost my pants-sack over the side of a cliff at one point. the entire walk from the beginning had been above the tree line, so the plants were just kind of scrubby lichen stuff, but they were pretty patchworkey looking colors, and there were random steam vents here and there. eventually we saw the hut that's only 1-2 hours from the end where i was planning to meet riley and jessie, and after winding down the hill some more we arrived! there were a bunch of other people there, including some american guys whose friends had also decided to summit ngauruhoe. luckily riley and jessie were not far behind us, probably less than 15 minutes, and when they arrived we inhaled some pbjs and rested for awhile. they said it was very icy at the top and they had fun but i probably wouldn't have. so it's good i was stubborn and didn't go. the other kids' friends still hadn't shown up so they went on without them, and my slow friends took off, and then we eventually left around 3 (the lady had said to try to leave the hut by 2:30, but we're speedy). after some more walking some trees gradually appeared, until we were walking through the jungle. after what felt like forever we emerged in the car park around 4:15 (after catching up with my slow friends again, who had left the hut like half an hour before us).

the ride back to the hostel was pretty quick, and we happily removed our boots and went to the bathroom, and then took off for the 4.5 hour drive to wellington. i had planned on being exhausted so riley drove and i navigated and was the dj, but i actually didn't sleep the whole time. we didn't stop at all until we got off SH 1 in wellington around 8. after locating our hostel (nomad's capital flashpackers) on the map, it took us 3 loops around to get to it. the streets in wellington are incredibly confusing, nothing is at right angles and there are random pedestrian-only sections.

we checked in, and found out that the free dinner (the reason we had paid $2 more for this hostel) was only from 6-7 and we had missed it. we took one load of stuff up to our room, which contained 3 single and 1 double bed, and had an ensuite bathroom. i was dying to shower (i hadn't since monday evening), but we had to either return the car or find a parking spot for the night. riley said parking couldn't be that expensive and none of us felt like walking all the way back from the rental place, so while i showered he and jessie went to find a parking lot or garage. however they returned with the rest of our belongings and said it was $38 for the night. so we then drove back past the ferry terminal to the car rental depot, which it turns out was VERY far from downtown. after walking a ways in the cold (we were all quite miserable at that point) we found a bus stop and for $1.50 got a ride back to town. finding our hostel turned out to be a bit of a mission again, even on foot, but once we got back i went to work making dinner (pancakes, where all you do is add water to the container and shake!) while the other 2 showered.

the kitchen was not nearly as nice as the previous one, but it worked, and jessie came down and we made the entire batch of pancakes, and then inhaled them, as well as some more cookies riley had gotten to cheer us up. we played cards and talked to some of the other kids at the hostel (who all seemed to know each other?) and played cards and watched part of the lion king, and finally went to bed, having missed out on the free drink from the adjoining bar as well as our free dinner because we were too exhausted to go out.

after discovering our heater did not work, i went down to the desk and the man tried to find us another one, but returned to say all he could offer us was extra blankets. we declined since we all had sleeping bags, and riley took the double bed and the blanket off the extra bed. luckily no one else turned up to stay in our room that night.

saturday morning we got up at 9 and repacked all our stuff into our bags, and checked out. since the hostel wanted to charge us $3 to keep our bags while we walked around all day we decided our first mission was to find another hostel for riley and jessie for that night where we could leave our stuff. i found the cambridge hotel, our other top choice on the map, and we walked over there and i waited outside while they went in (and took my stuff with them) and got their room (which ended up costing only $19 instead of $25 at nomad's). i had forgotten, but wellington is called the windy city for a reason! there was a sign on the door that said "caution, extreme wind conditions" ha ha.

our only activity planned for the day was te papa, the new zealand national museum, which was supposed to be really cool, and free, so we walked over to that. riley wanted mcdonalds for breakfast, but when we got there it was like 10:38 so they didn't have breakfast anymore, so he got 2 cheeseburgers instead. and i saw that they had soft ice cream for 50 cents, which i'm pretty sure is even cheaper than home!

te papa was indeed pretty cool. we started at the natural disaster exhibit, and learned all about volcanoes, earth quakes, flash floods, and all kinds of other things that happen here. there was an earthquake simulator like the volcano one in auckland, which wasn't quite as cool, but there was lots of other hands on stuff to play with. we also looked at a lot of marine life exhibits, and maori and pacific artifacts. by the time we reached the third floor we were getting a bit museum-ed out, and still had 3 floors to go! we did a speed tour of the 4th floor, and played in the children's section with some pacific drums and stuff, and decided we had seen enough and were very hungry (it was after 1). so we went back to the hostel and got some more pbj, which we ate on a bench on courtenay place under a weird robot sculpture. while there we noticed that the cables running along above most of the streets did not have any corresponding tracks in the street for a cable car, and then that a lot of the city buses were actually attached to the cables, while in other respects they looked just like the normal auckland buses. i'm guessing they are electric powered via the cables, but i wonder what happens if the bus driver forgets to turn when the cable turns or something. anyway, after lunch i still had soft ice cream on my mind so we went and got some, although riley thought it tasted weird, i enjoyed it.

the other possible activity i had for us was a free tour of parliament (we had seen the famous beehive building on our way back the night before), but they didn't want to do that, so we just wandered around for awhile. we walked down by the waterfront and there was this little park area with very flat grass, which riley said would be perfect for bocce. so we found some rocks approximately the right size, and played bocce ha ha. we were a little scared when a semi-official looking man walked by, but he was doing something to the lights and didn't seem to care what we were doing. i had one miss-throw where i nearly broke the sundial sculpture ha ha.

after that we saw a fun looking playground with a lighthouse so we climbed that and played on the slides and swings for awhile. and we saw this weird sculpture thing at the edge of the water called the 'water whirler' with a sign that said there would be a 'performance' at 6. it was just after 5, so we walked further down the waterfront and were wasting time until 6. we wandered into the bose store where they had just finished setting up this theatre demo room and they offered to give us the show. it was pretty cool, very good marketing. after wandering back to the water whistler just before 6 we waited for like 20 minutes and nothing happened. there were a few other people looking like they were waiting too, but they gradually left. we were very confused. so we went back to the hostel and i made the rest of the bread into pbj for my overnight bus ride, and we played cards for a little bit, and then i had to say goodbye a little after 7.

i caught a $1 city bus to the train station where my overnight bus left from, and successfully found the (double decker!) intercity bus and told the driver my name and got on (i had booked online). i had my completely stuffed backpack and pillow with various things stuffed in it, so i took up 2 full seats, but there did not seem to be a shortage of seats. it's a 12 hour ride, so i was planning on reading linguistics until i got car sick and then sleeping the rest of the way, but i never got to the reading ha ha. we stopped twice at gas stations to use the bathroom and get food. i took out my contacts and put on comfy pants at the first one, and slept thru the second one. we arrived in auckland just before 7 am (it was still dark), and i walked back to ih as the sun rose.

i went to step class and studied saturday, and then that night was the all blacks rugby game against england. ej, sophie, danielle, courtney, kendall, and kendall's sister kelsey and i all had seats together and we took the bus (public transport to rugby games is free if you show them your ticket) and after walking almost all the way around the stadium we found our seats, which were pretty close to the field. there was some sort of sword fight with fireworks and stuff that was somehow related to england, and then the all blacks did the haka, which was really what i was most excited for and was a little anticlimactic. the game was exciting, england scored first, but we ended up winning like 37 to 20 or something like that. it seems like rugby games go so much faster than football, probably because they're not constantly stopping the clock. there was this really friendly lady behind us who asked us where we were from and had been to every one of our states (ny, connecticut, arizona, and wisconsin). she and her husband have a used book selling business so she goes to conferences in the states all the time for that. she told us how a long time ago she had fallen in love with a mexican guy in arizona and it was cute. there was also this really drunk guy on the other side behind us who was really funny. there was this girl a few rows in front with this brightly colored knitted hat, and at one point he yelled "sit down woman! f-ing tea cozy" (referring to her hat) and we all died laughing. and he liked asked the lady if she was in charge of us and called her mum and she was playing along and he offered us beer and she was like 'can mum have a beer?' and suggested that he buy us all some nice wine instead ha ha. the crowd also did the wave for a long time, i think it went all the way around like 8 times, which i have never seen before. very impressive. i guess the terraces, where we sat at the blues game, is the rowdy section, and the wave would be almost dead and get to there and they would restart it again. by the end everyone was flinging beer bottles and assorted other things up in the air. but it was all in good fun.

after the game we took the bus back, and the ih kids were celebrating ollie's birthday (which is on monday) but i had not studied so i came back and did a little of that and went to bed. today i have been good and other than going to step class and doing this i have studied lots of linguistics for my final tomorrow. then computer science is on wednesday, which i am much more worried for, so i should probably get on that.

last week of classes

2008-06-07T17:46:00.000-07:00

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.

Serita's last blog :(

2008-06-01T13:57:00.000-07:00

hi for my last blog :(

so i left off on thursday night. sometime during thursday night or friday linnell got emails from various aucc people about how 1. we may or may not be able to get a ride back on sunday from the trip 2. we probably weren't going to have kayak transportation, so we would maybe get to raft but not kayak 3. there was another trip that the instructors planned but it was full 4. the trip we were going on, planned by lee, wasn't club approved or anything, which is why there were so many problems 5. The Killer Bees and the Tribesmen, 2 major nz gangs, were having their annual "meeting" in the same area we would be in, and might be camping where we were planning on camping.

linnell had about a 24 hr mental breakdown about whether or not to go, and was very angry at lee and herself because had she talked to someone earlier we could have been in on the trip with the instructors. i told her repeatedly that we should not go, and reassured her that we would have a good weekend anyway, and i looked for some stuff for us to do. eventually she decided that we didn't have a tent or anything yet, and it wasn't really worth it. so we decided not to go, so then i got to plan!

i decided we would go to the sky tower one day because we had been talking about maybe doing that (but it would be a bit costly, so i figured that i wasn't spending the $30 for kayaking plus gas money, so i could spend that on the skytower) and then we would do the coast to coast walk across auckland. i researched the skytower because we had gotten lots of different information regarding costs (because there are like 50 different levels and options you can chose from) and i decided the best deal would be to go to the revolving restaurant, orbit. there was a $30 minimum per person there, but you got to go up to the observation deck for free if you go to orbit, and just going up to the observation deck would have cost $25 so we figured it was worth it. so i made a reservation for lunch on saturday.

all this planning took friday morning (i also patched linnell's jeans finally) and we did some other random chore-ish stuff, i don't really remember. then we went to linnell's two afternoon classes, and then linnell went to step class, then we had ih dinner, and then nelly worked on her project and i read one of my books that i had taken out from the ih library.

so saturday we got up and linnell went to step class againnnnn and then we got fancied up and went to the sky tower. you can't actually go in the bottom of the tower, you have to go into another building in the "sky city" (all the buildings on the same block as the sky tower, owned by one company. there are 2 casinos and 2 hotels and a bunch of restaurants and some other assorted tourist things) and take an escalator down underground to the base of the tower and check in and then get on the elevator which took us up to the observation deck. the elevator has a hole cut in the middle of the floor with a glass panel there so you can watch the inside of the elevator shaft as you go up and up and up (there are also glass windows in the side so you can see outside too), it was super cool. so we got to the observation deck and it was soo cool and linnell took zillions of pictures of course, and we played the trivia fact games for a bit and watched part of a video about how the sky tower was built (the only facts i really remember are that 1. while building the sky tower, workers ate like 245,000 meat pies and that 2. one of the major problems with the proposed tower was how they would get the crane down at the tower's completion, so a renowned kiwi engineer came out of retirement to invent a new crane system that they could use.) also, the sky tower is i think 4 m taller than the eiffel tower, and is the tallest building in the southern hemisphere.

and then we went up another few floors to the restaurant level and went in. the center part of the floor is stationary and is where the kitchen is. then the next ring out away from the kitchen walls is also stationary and is where the hostess' desk is and where the servers have little stations with water pitchers and stuff. and then the next ring from that is the actual seating and that part revolves (it was a little slower than i thought, but probably any faster would make people sick. we did make it around the whole way 1.5 times though in about 2 hours). there are two rows of seating, the inner one is booths, and the outer one is tables, and is where we got seated (i thought i would be kind of pissed if i had to sit at a booth because it's just not the same). and then there's like a foot wide ring outside of the revolving one, which is stationary, and linnell set her purse on that until she realized it was not traveling with us haha.

so we took a very long time deciding what to order and how to make as close to $60 as possible. we ended up sharing bread and olive oil, and linnell got an omelet (which is probably the best omelet i've ever had, i don't usually like them because i don't really love the eggy texture) and i got a fruit salad with yogurt and muesli (granola) and pumpkin soup. and then we also got 3 mini danishes and a croissant with honey to share too. everything was extremely delicious and the honey was sooo cool, it came in the honeycomb and then when you tried to cut through it, the liquidy part spilled out and it was just soo good. while we were eating, we saw people doing the sky walk, which is where you go up another level above orbit, and you get on harnesses and stuff and walk on a ring around the outside. when we were done eating, we had our server take our photo and then we paid ($60.50!) and left. then we went back down to the observation deck for a little while more and we played with this computer thing that had a photo of what you could see out that side of the tower, and then had points of interest on that photo, and you could just touch them and it would tell you all about whatever you had chosen. we also saw people doing the sky jump which is a "free fall" (it really isn't free fall) jump down from the sky walk level which looked pretty cool. i think i would be more nervous doing that then i was sky diving. then we decided we were ready to go, so we left and walked to this souvenir shop linnell wanted to go to and she looked at shirts (she wants one with a map of nz desperately) and i looked at boots. i figured ugg like boots would be cheaper here, and they are a little bit, but i wasn't sure if i could get mom and dad to pay for them, and maybe i'll change my mind by next winter, so i didn't get any. plus i'm not really in excess with packing space haha. the weather report had said rain for saturday which is why we had planned the sky tower for that day, so we wouldn't be walking in the rain, but after some early morning fog, it had been sunny and nice all day (which was good for the sky tower view). however, as we were walking back to ih it started pouring and we were passed by all the ih who had gone to play paintball running down the street. we had dinner at ih, and decided we didn't feel like going to the domain to watch everyone playing possum for ace's birthdays, so we had another exciting night of computer science and movies.

sunday morning we woke up and for some reason took a really long time getting dressed and ready to go, but at 10:30 we left to walk to princes warf, where the coast to coast walk started. we got there around 11, and there was a huggggee cruise ship docked, and linnell and i decided that after the mediterranean, a nice cruise is in our family vacation plans. so then we headed out, and after getting .5 km, linnell had to go potty so we went to britomart and used their bathrooms which smelled SOOO badly like beets. we headed out again and walked for a while until we got to the domain, where we had a little trouble finding where to go but we made it. sometimes there are little yellow arrows marking the coast to coast trail, and sometimes not.

then we went on to mount eden (ha ha not edna), where we went to the summit, which was really pretty, with the whole crater all intact and grassy. we had a little snacky there, and then went back down. there was this little walked on path inside the edge of the crater and linnell was like "yahhh let's do it!!!" so i let her go and i took photos, and as she was going in (past the sign that said "DANGER DO NOT go inside crater") this asian group went past us and this middle aged guy was like making noises trying to get our attention and at first we weren't sure if he was yelling at linnell or joking, but then he made the motion of like rolling down the hill, and we assumed he was joking so we laughed and kept going. linnell didn't die and we went on, getting a little lost again, but it was okay. the exit that we went out through was like in someone's driveway, but that's what the signs and our map said to do, so we did it.

we kept walking, and both of us really had to pee, and my knee was hurting (i apparently injured it last week sometime) and i wanted ice cream, and we were all around just a mess. finnnnallly we got to the bathrooms in cornwall park and took care of some of our problems there. then we went to the ice cream place there that we went before and got ice cream, and kept walking, much happier. we were going to play on the fun playground toy we played on before, but there was a huge line for it, so we kept walking. as we left cornwall park (we decided not to summit one tree hill again), we once again saw the gelato stand that we couldn't go to last time because we had just gotten ice cream in the park, and were once again quite angry. from there we walked down manukau rd for awhile, into onehunga, where we took a very short break at jellicoe park which was really cute, but i wanted to be done as soon as possible by that point so i did not let linnell look for a bathroom there. bad choice. by the time we got to the onehunga lagoon, our destination, we were both DYING for a bathroom, and luckily we found one, although it was extremely dark and scary and someone had written "fear" on the walls in both of our stalls haha.

after taking a quick victory picture by the sign at the end of the walkway, we walked to the nearest bus stop and luckily the first bus that came was going to symonds street even tho it wasn't the one linnell had written down. we got on the bus and i was feeling quite sleepy. we went home and showered and ate dinner in ih, and everyone was going to the mexican cafe by the sky tower for lucy's birthday, but i was super sleepy and linnell didn't really feel like it so we didn't. we came back and linnell did a little weeding out of stuff for me to bring home, and i skipped about 300 pages and read the last chapter of my book. then we watched "the nanny diaries" and then linnell watched some arrested development, and i fell asleep.

this morning we've woken up and are both sitting on our computers. i have to shower and finish packing, and then i'm have to catch a 2 oclock bus to the airport. byyeeee

serita's second week!

2008-05-28T19:32:00.000-07:00

serita again! because i'm the coolest! this may or may not be my last blog, depending on whether or not i have time after this weekend/before i come home. so i will go through this week because linnell has been bugging me to.

so monday linnell went to classes in the morning and i went to the auckland art gallery. there is a main gallery and a new gallery which are not in the same building, but are on two blocks right next to each other. it wasn't a very far walk but when i got to the main gallery, it said it was closed for renovation until 2010! i was a little angry but i went to the new gallery and that was open. there were only two exhibits there so i only spent like an hour and a half there. the first exhibit was a 50 year celebration of one of the first art shows solely for maori artists, and it featured 7 (i think) maori artists and told their history and stuff. one of them was a famous all blacks player, and his biography talked about how he was a symbol of the "everything guy" who was a sports figure and an artist all at once. the second exhibit was about earth and ecology and junk like that. there were some photos of whales on a beach decomposing and stuff and that was real gross. there was also an "arrangement" of junk like old office supplies and i was just like that's not art. but it was still cool to go see.

i came back to ih and waited until someone opened the gate for me because i had forgotten my cell phone to call linnell to let me in. someone did let me in after a few minutes and then linnell and i just hung out in her room until dinner. after dinner, we were going to roll training which i was really really dreading. we walked to the uni quad, and met everyone else there. we rode with hayden, isaac, and molly out to the northcote pool, which is on the north shore, over the harbour bridge. the pool is kind of under a big tent thing, not really inside. we got our bathing suits on and i wore one of the stolen polypro fleeces, and we got our boats and paddles and skirts, and linnell took me to squirrel, the one who taught her most of the times, and she started teaching me how to paddle. it turns out i am extremely uncomfortable being upside down inside my boat under water ha ha. i somewhat had fun though for the most part trying to learn. linnell came and taught me how to t rescue which she said would be more useful, which i suppose it is. it's where you're flipped over upside down and instead of rolling yourself up with your paddle, you hit your boat so people can hear you, and then they come over and you hold onto their boat to flip yourself back up. i can do it, but i don't like having to wait for someone else to realize i'm flipped over and then come over. i kept swimming out instead of waiting ha ha which made everyone laugh/yell at me. (not really yelling don't worry). so i started to dread this weekend more and more because a. it's going be extremely cold camping and b. i'm going to be doing a lot of swimming in the freezing rivers. but i have since come to terms with that. at the end of roll training i was getting a little tired/frustrated so linnell had colm teach me how to paddle right. then we got out and took really quick showers because the drains were clogged so the shower water was pooling disgustingly.

then we went to a bar and linnell had promised hot chocolate, but they didn't have it, because we did not go to sausalito's where they usually go, instead it was called 'slip in' and we went there because mo was there and he was leaving. a maori guy with dreadlocks who i think is named matt was also there and he and molly were discussing maori bc she has a test in that class and he is doing maori immersion at his school, and molly's favorite word is 'tupatupa' which means helicopter which is quite fun indeed. matt said there is a whole movement to re-invent new non-english sounding words for all the modern stuff, and everyone agreed that would be a really cool job, just inventing words. roll training made me super hungry so when we got back we ate quite a bit of snack food, and then went to bed.

tuesday, we went to the museum of transportation and technology (motat). it was about an hour walk away, which was not so fun, but it wasn't that bad, it was entirely flat/downhill once we got to k rd. we got there at 11ish, and there was a "voyager ride" at 11:30, so we walked around the farm implements building, and as we walked by something, a little boy (there were a lot of children on a field trip there) said "is that a jetski??" it was very funny. turns out it was an engine or water pump or something. at 11:30 we went on the voyager ride which was a "4d experience". basically we just went in and sat and watched and listened to a movie of a kind of video game roller coaster ride while we felt like we were riding along in the cart in the movie. it was kind of strange and we weren't really sure where we were supposed to be going, but it was fun. linnell guessed that it was just whatever the designers felt like putting in. there were little children in front of us who had some kind of mental problem, and they were really really excited, it was cute. after we got off we walked around the communications building and an old guy working there showed us four different phone systems nz has used which was pretty cool. there were a bunch of old school dial phones you could dial and call another one, and then watch all the connections happening in the switch board. linnell couldn't figure out why the phone didn't work, until we realized that she was turning the dial the wrong way and we thought she was retarded, but when the man was showing us stuff he told us that the dials are opposite in new zealand. and it's not like the roads where it's a british thing, just new zealand.

then we went to the victorian village for a while and ate our sandwiches for lunch. then we took the tram to the aviation center and saw a flying boat which was sooooooo cool. (on the brochure it said there were flying boat tours on the weekend and we took that to mean a tour IN the flying boat and were sad that we missed it, but after seeing the huge old boat with wings that was very much a museum exhibit we realized it probably meant tours OF the flying boat). the flying boats were part of the TEAL airline (which eventually became air new zealand) up to the 1960s, and they flew flying boats because there weren't runways long enough to accommodate the large planes needed to cross the big water gaps to and from nz, so they would just fly them into and out of the ocean or rivers.

we also found a flight simulator to play with but the tram came soon so we couldn't play on that for long. when we got back to the other motat site, we went in the discovery rooms which were like hands on things which was super fun. among other things we superimposed our faces with a 2-way mirror, built an archway we could stand on, experienced an earthquake, weighed ourselves, played on musical pipes, and played tangrams. we also went to the computers exhibit and linnell had fun looking at that while i played a game about dolphins against a kid in japan on a computer there. we looked quickly at a bicycle exhibit but were pretty bored and running out of time, so after a potty stop we walked back to uni. we went to the computer lab for half an hourish, and i fell asleep there while linnell played on the computer. then we went to computer science, and then went back to ih for dinner, and did homework/watched friends/read/did picture stuff for the rest of the night.

yesterday linnell had class all day, and we needed some more polypro for this weekend and so i walked down to queen street in the morning and looked at kathmandu, a store where linnell had $25 off anything, and they had 3 polypro for $50 which is a good deal, so i scoped things out and then went to another store and bought linnell's greenstone necklace to match the one she got me. then i went to albert park and read for a while and then we met for lunch. i convinced linnell we should go back to ih for lunch, so we did and i ate way too much. then we started walking to her next class, when i remembered we didn't have the kathmandu coupon, so i went back and got that and we met up after her class ended. we walked down to kathmandu and realized her coupon probably wouldn't work on the sale polypro but it was still a good deal so we each picked on out and got one for sophie who we talked to at lunch about it. we were right, our coupon didn't work, but we're thinking we'll get polypro gloves with that tomorrow.

then we walked back to linnell's other class, anthropology, and i read through that one. i came back to ih and linnell went to step class where sophie and ej met her, and when they got back to ih we all had dinner. everyone said they were going a bar called bluestone at 8, so linnell took a shower and we got ready and went out with sophie, ej, courtney, lucy, barret, brian, ace, cameron, and alex. since i'm legal here, linnell and i both got pineapple malibus, which were yummy! we played a game, categories, where you pick a category and you go around in the circle and everyone has to say something in that category and if you repeat or can't think of one, you have to drink and then pick a new category. it was lots of fun, although only the boys were actually doing the drinking part. also, linnell's camera stopped working, and would not turn on and the lens would not fold in. the batteries were charged, so there was no good reason, and after freaking out for awhile she just put it away in the sock. we came home pretty early and went to bed around 11, and either that night or the next morning when she tried her camera it worked again, although it seems like it makes a lot of noise putting the lens in and out now.

today we got up and went to the auckland museum. it was semi boring but semi interesting. the third floor of it is a war memorial/exhibit about the wars nz has been in, and there was a temporary exhibit i saw advertised for that was paintings by an army artist of iraq and i really wanted to see them, but the exhibit was closed today! not cool. we started on the bottom, looking at pacific artifacts, then maori artifacts, then some old childrens toys/school stuff (and a random elephant in that room).

the second floor (1st floor here) was all natural history stuff, most of which we bypassed on the way to the volcano exhibit which linnell had heard great things about. sure enough, the "what would happen if a volcano erupted in auckland harbour" exhibit was going, and we read some of the exhibit stuff while waiting for our turn, and then we went into this little cottage, and it was like someones living room, with a big glass "window" looking out on the harbour towards rangitoto. first the tv came on, and there was a news story about how there was increasing seismic activity and stuff, and like a geology prof was interviewed and stuff, and then we noticed that out the 'window' there was steam rising off the water, and then there was shaking of the whole house and the tv went black, and out the 'window' we saw this huge plume of smoke and ash and stuff and gradually a new volcano erupted between us and rangitoto and this huge cloud of black smoke came towards us until the shaking got very intense and all the lights went off. then the lights came back on and we could see a new island out in the harbour. very cool. after that linnell continued to be fascinated with all the volcano information (they had the actual fossils that show there were maori people on motutapu watching rangitoto erupt there!), and i went upstairs looking for army art, and after i didn't find any and she was finally done we did a brief walk thru of the wwII era nz village set up, and then made our way back down to the exit.

we had lunch (pbj as usual) on a bench by these little ponds with ducks and geese (which i had confused with swans) i picked out as we were walking there thru the domain (the big park the museum is in) then we wanted ice cream and we had seen signs for "tip top ice cream" in the dairies on the way over, but when we went in, it was like wrapped ice cream bar things, and no scoopable ice cream, so we went to a little bakery and linnell got a apple turn over and i got a chocolate fudge bar, so we walked and ate on the way back home.

at five linnell went to class and i went with ej, sophie, courtney, and danielle to get seats at kendall's kapa haka (maori performing arts) performance. we stopped at subway on the way there and it smelled super good but i restrained myself because i had brought a luna bar and there was supposed to be food after the performance. so we went and everyone said to get there early because the seats filled up very quickly but when we got there at 5:30 (half an hour early) almost all the seats were already taken. luckily we got the last row that was open and sat down and saved a seat for linnell. she got there a few minutes after it started and it was soo cool. the stage one (intro level) had probably like 40 people in it and they sang and the girls did poi for a few songs and then the boys came forward and did their haka, which is very fierce. some of them look kind of funny sticking out their tongues and bulging out their eyes, but it was still pretty intimidating. but it was super cool.

then stage three came out and there were like 16 of them, and they did pretty much the same thing, but more advanced. then they came out in two groups and each performed a song that their group choreographed. then afterwards they had food (some weird sandwiches and wraps, pumpkin soup which was veryyyy good, and banana bread with chocolate frosting, which linnell actually ate!) so we stood around and ate and talked about the performance and then we decided we were going to go to the ice bar so we walked back to ih so everyone could get warm stuff on.

after everyone was ready, we walked to the viaduct where the ice bar is. while walking there we saw this billboard of the back of a girl wearing a skirt, and the skirt was like, real material that blew in the wind, and as we watched it blew ALL the way up to reveal a lot of skin. it was pretty funny. linnell and i had coupons, yay! so we got into the bar and one drink for $25, which is a rip off but it was still worth it. so we paid and then we all got suited in our parkas and two sets of gloves, and linnell and danielle got boots because they were wearing flip flops. then we were told the rules (a max of 3 drinks, only 25 minutes spent in the actual ice bar, hold on to your drink with two hands because it's easy to drop) it was kinda funny because they make such a big deal of how the cold is so extreme and you will feel the alcohol more and don't use your camera/electronics because the cold will mess it up, etc, but -5 C is like 25 F, which is warmer than the majority of the winter in rochester, and i have never had any electronic problems, even taking pictures while snowboarding. anyway, then we got to go in! it was a lot smaller than we had imagined, but it was still really cool! everything is made out of ice, including the cups, and there are ice sculptures all over, and ice benches (that are covered with deer skin-which kendall pointed out had spots, meaning it was from babies!) and a bar made out of ice and cups made out of ice. they only serve drinks with smirnoff vodka (in all sorts of flavours tho) since it won't freeze, and they have fun names of drinks like santa's sleigh and frisky penguin (which is what linnell got) i got a pina coolada and then we looked at sculptures/sat down on the benches, got our picture taken by the guy who worked there (the real reason they don't want you to bring your own camera, so they can sell you photos. ej brought hers anyway, but we didn't take any photos in there with it) and were silly. we were all sucking the edges of our glasses, trying to eat them, with minor success. our 25 minutes was soon over, and linnell really wanted to drop her glass before we left just because it's fun, so she "accidently" tipped it off the table it was on, and it didn't even break! haha so then we went out and got our cold weather clothes taken off, and then looked at our photos. one was $25 so we decided to split it 6 ways and get it since we can make copies of it. we ended up getting 5 copies as well as a digital version online for the $25, so linnell and i are just sharing for now and we'll make copies later.

after that we decided to go to another bar, shadows (the auckland uni campus bar), which is where the haka "after party" was. we walked there and then ordered wedges (which always come with sour cream here) because linnell said they were sooo good and it would probably be my last chance. we went and sat down and while we were waiting for them, a whole bunch of police came in. they walked around for a few seconds, and then came over to our table (out of everyone we apparently looked the most sketchy or the least of-age) and asked to see our ids. so we gave them our passports and they shined their flashlights in our faces to see if we matched our photo, and it was a little intimidating but it was fine. the one who looked at mine said "wow you just turned a few months ago" haha. after they looked at our ids, they looked around for a few more minutes and then left. then our wedges came! they were very good, they're basically like potato wedges that mom makes without the crumbly stuff on the outside, and with sour cream and marinara sauce. yum. (normally they have breading/flavour too, these were not the best)

after we finished eating we decided we were pretty ready to go, so we left and walked home. right as we got to the bottom of the hill, we saw ace ollie, brian, lucy and everyone going out to "find a sketchy bar" and they told us that at least one of us had to come with them. while we were at the ice bar they had climbed up the crane at the construction site right next to ih, which is the third time brian and ollie have done it, and linnell really wants to cause the view must be amazing and she likes adventures. we all decided not join the sketchy bar hunt, although kendell and ej said if we had met them at the top of the hill, they probably would have gone but they did not want to climb all the way back up agian. ha ha proving our laziness is not only me and linnell. so then we came back and went to bed.

this morning nelly woke up to get us breakfast and is now working on her computer science/facebooking, and i'm doing this, then i have to fix her pants, for an exciting time. this afternoon we're going to classes, and tomorrow/sunday is kayaking. byeee

Sissy road trip!

2008-05-25T01:48:00.001-07:00

so we're back to serita as the blogger today! linnell left off on friday, about how we were gonna be lazy. it turns out, we did not be lazy. ej imed linnell and asked her if we wanted to go bowling with everybody, and linnell wanted to. after a minor temper tantrum on my part, we went with ej, danielle, lucy, sam, nat, ollie, barret, will, and brian. barret kept saying he knew where we were going, and linnell didn't believe him, but we followed him anyways and it turned out he did know where he was going. we eventually got there and linnell paid for me as an incentive to go, which was very nice of her if i may say so. as we were going up (the bowling alley was on the 6th floor), the elevator closed on one of the boy's arms as they tried to make the doors stay open for more people to get in, and then it kind of bounced when we got out, which was quite worrisome. we arrived safely, and we got shoes, and there were some issues (them not having enough of her size for linnell for a while, people who asked for a 6 getting a 4 or a 4.5, and me trading with danielle for super huge ones) but we got our shoes sorted out and then went and bowled.

the first game it was the girls against the guys, except for danielle and sam switched, and everyones names were funnily spelled (by the asian people at the desk, not the boys being funny as we first thought). like linnell was lenne, danielle was daniella, barret was barren, ej was bj, and i was sarita, which is how most people spell it. linnell won our first game and then sam and danielle switched, since she had barely made it into double digits and the boys were doing somewhat better than us, and i won the second game on the girls side. barret was trying to mess people up all game, and he and the other boys were quite violent with lucy, and then after the games, linnell and i were standing near the big video game machines, and ollie and barret were wrestling for some reason he later tried to explain to us, and they were coming toward us and i got worried and tried to run, but linnell was not quick enough to move so i couldn't move and i got run over/into the game, which started to tip over. i was very scared i was going to get two fully grown boys on me as well, but luckily none of those things fell on me and all that got hurt was my ankle temporarily, but it was funny and i was okay, and everyone yelled at them for traumatizing me.

when we walked outside (via the stairs rather than the dodgy elevator) we saw a random shopping cart (or trolley as they call them here) on the ground, and ej gave linnell a very scary ride in that that involved going out in the street, and when they tried to go up the little rampy part back onto the sidewalk it tipped over, sending linnell rolling into the street (laughing). fortunately there were no cars (although a police man had been nearby earlier and had stopped and said something to the boys who were ahead of us. it turns out they had done something else obnoxious and the police man didn't care about the shopping cart). they then abandoned the cart in the street, so danielle got it for them, and we all went to burger king. linnell and i pilfered other people's fries and then lucy, ej, danielle, brian, linnell and i walked home together (everyone else got a ride with sam who has a car), again linnell arguing with brian about how to get home. we ended up going the longest way home, but it was okay. it was 1:30ish i think when we got home and we had to get up at 7 to get the car, so we went to bed asap.

in the morning, i slept through our alarm and linnell kept pushing sleep on it, so we ended up getting the car around 9 which worried me but it was fine. we also had found a coupon for a free gift from the car rental company which i reminded linnell to give them when she got the car, and it ended up being a bottle of wine! (odd combination with a rental car which you will presumably be driving, yes?) we got on the road, and i wanted to stop at the otara market again because i had seen a $2 ring there last week which i wanted to get as my souvenir for myself, but i had wanted to wait and see what else i would want so i didn't get it last week. we stopped at the market and were worried i wouldn't find it, but it was like the 3rd booth we walked by which was fantastic. we walked around quickly looking for good deals on the green stone necklace for me to get linnell, but the prices weren't great, so i decided to wait.

we kept driving, stopping in matamata (aka hobbiton) for a pbj lunch and toilet break. we got to the zorbing place just outside rotorua in the early afternoon. the building looked like a trailer in someone's driveway, but when we went in we signed in on computers and stuff and it was more professional looking. after we signed in, we went and talked to the guy at the desk who asked if we were twins (the 10000th person here to ask that) and then we went and got our bathing suits on, because we couldn't do the suspended one because of wind levels or something, so we were doing the one where you go in together with warm water. we decided to both wear those white v neck tee shirts that we both have as we were apparently twins, although serita refused to do the no pants dance and insisted on wearing her capris as well). and since they recommended socks to prevent any toenail rippage, we wore 2 of the 3 pairs of socks we had for the trip. we went back in and got in the van and a guy drove us to the top of the mountain. when we got there, he had us put our toes in this pool "to test if it was warm enough to have in our zorbing ball" and it was freezing which worried me. he got one of the balls for us and had us go in a hole, head first. i went first and it was really warm water so it was fine. linnell penguined in as well and he told us we could try running if we wanted or just sit and enjoy. the ball really isn't as clear as we were expecting, you could see colors outside but definitely not shapes. we took off down the mountain and tried running, and succeeded for about 5 seconds. then we slipped and slid around the inside of the ball and into each other. i couldn't really control where my legs were going and it was just lots of fun. it seemed so much longer than when you watch other people go! when we got out of the ball at the bottom, there was a guy taking our pictures and we decided to put on dry clothes and then look and see if the pictures were good enough to buy. we changed (with only one towel for both of us which was a bit annoying) and then we went and waited by the photo desk. the guy there also asked if we were twins ha ha. we looked at the photos, and i really liked them, but it was 25 dollars for them, and since i owe linnell more money than i put in her account after this weekend, we decided not to get them.

we left and went down the road to Ngongotaha mountain, where linnell had read you could hike to the top and then luge down for 9 dollars. that seemed worth it, until we got there and discovered that contrary to the brocure, there were no scenic walking paths at all and the only way to the top was the $29 gondola. lame as. instead we went to the rotorua i sight (nz information centers) and looked for things to do, and then went to our microtel. the owners were really nice and they gave us a room with just one set of bunk beds so we were all by ourselves in the room, sharing the showers and toilets with several other tiny rooms in kind of a suite.

we had driven past a park with some thermal springs that are due to the earth's crust being very thin in this area, so the rocks in the ground are super hot from being so close to the earth's core, so they make the water and mud boil, giving off (very smelly) steam. so we walked back to those and investigated that. the whole town smells like sulfur pretty badly, but you get used to it for the most part. we looked at the bubbling/steaming mud pools which was super cool (there was some pretty big bubbling-ness) and took pictures, and then we found a really fun play ground (we've decided play grounds here are more cool than at home because they're more dangerous. they just have cooler toys). it had this really high spider web sort of thing made out of rope which we each took a turn climbing to the top. linnell had a fright when a little kid started jumping on the bottom while she was at the top, causing a lot of shaking. then we went over to a club rugby game that was nearby because we heard people drumming on the way over there and wanted to investigate that as well. it turned out to be a group of asian high schoolers sitting in a circle in a parking lot doing some sort of traditional drumming. it was pretty sweet as. then we went to the game and watched for a while and discussed how wimpy our football players are compared to the rugby players here. they are much more violent and have no padding at all.

after a while we walked back to our hostel and then drove the secret spot, because it was close by and free and i really wanted to go experience it. when we got there our bathing suits were still wet and therefore freezing so we changed extremely quickly in the middle of the road (it was a pretty low traffic road). then we went a tiny bit into the woods and there was the secret spot! (for those of you who don't remember what it is, it's where a cold river and a hot river meet, and so there is every temperature water that you want all in one.) we went in and and there were 3 guys that we approximated to be our age, and 2 old guys, and then another old guy who it turns out was completely naked. despite that, it was still super super cool and we sat in the varying degrees of water until it was pretty dark out. i was very scared of getting the water on my head because linnell told me some disease lives in the warm water (amoebal meningitis, but that's a risk in all natural hot springs). the naked guy kept putting his head under water deliberately, which made me dislike him more. linnell said people bring candles and put them in the holes of the rock walls, and i wished we had that. we ended up talking to the our ageish boys for a little while after everyone including the naked guy left. it turns out they were year 13 in college (high school) so that means they were approximately 17.

we decided to go after a while and we drove back and showered quickly and then walked to burger fuel! i had heard very very good things about their huge burgers and their kumara fries, but i had noooo idea what i was in for. linnell and i shared one of each and the fries were AMAZING especially with the aioli and the burger was delicioussss. on the way over there, we had walked by a gelato shop, and we decided to stop there on the way back. initially we set our price limit at 2 dollars, but somehow convinced ourselves that 3.70 for 2 scoops (the smallest size) was reasonable. that was also delicious, and both was worth every cent. we walked back to our hostel and went in the common room, which was a kitchen with some chairs and tables, and a big tv on the wall but no couch which the owners had warned us about because they had just ordered it and it had not arrived yet. linnell pretended to work on her homework, and we watched the end of "the holiday" and then "chasing liberty" came on!! (it is one of my favorite corny movies) i got very excited so we watched that while our feet pretty much froze off. while we were watching, a sketchy guy came in smelling quite a bit like alcohol, but left soon thankfully and we questioned whether or not he was staying at the hostel ha ha. when the movie was over, we went back to our room and stole some duvets from the empty room next door, so we each had two, and turned up the heat, and went to sleep very soon.

in the morning we woke up to a very hot room which was fantastic, and we hurriedly got ready because we realized we had to be at the waitomo caves 15 minutes earlier than we thought, and we had to drive for two hours to get there. we left and drove for a while, with me navigating the sketchy directions/map/roads for linnell. none of those things lined up with each other, and we turned onto a dirt road. it was EXTREMELY windey, with no people/houses, and we drove on it for a long time before we finally found an old guy on a four wheeler, who was lacking some teeth. as we pulled up, he informed us that he had 'just fell a tree up the road' so we might or might not be able to get thru. when we asked where the road actually lead he listed off some places, none of which were on our list of places on the way to waitomo. he did tell us how to get back to the main road to waitomo, which as it turns out was quite a ways back. when we were finally back on route, it was 10:15 which was when we were supposed to be in waitomo, but when we finally got some phone reception and called they said we could come on the tour at noon instead. we took a potty break in otrohanga, which i think is the town the hot pool boys warned us was rough, but seemed fine, and when we got to waitomo we were like an hour early, so we ate some lunch of pbj/luna bars/fruit flats, and basked in sun until it was time (by basked in the sun serita means sat in the car because she was a wimp and it was too cold out for her).

we went in and our tour group consisted of 3 our age guys from london, 3 our age girls from germany, two adult men, and an oldish american couple, plus our two guides. our guides were a guy named shannon, who at first we thought was like jokingish mean/sarcastic but he may or may not have been joking, and a girl named snappy, who had a carabiner as an earring, and just looked the epitome of hippy/hiker girl, but she was much nicer. we changed into our gear which consisted of our bathing suit, wet suit bootie sock things, a wet suit overalls, a fleece polypro shirt, a wet suit jacket, gum boots, and a helmet. the wet suit overalls were extremely difficult to put on, and we were lagging behind the rest of the group.

when we were finally all outfitted, we drove in a van to a little river place and since we were black water rafting, we each picked a tube (like an intertube) that our bum could fit through when we bent over. i couldn't decide which one to get so i ended up with a quite large one that later got stuck in some of the narrower passages, leading to the guides having to unstick me. shannon took us these docks on the side of the river and told us we were going to practice jumping off them backwards with our tubes on, to simulate how we were going to jump off the waterfalls. there was a higher platform which shannon joked about us jumping off, and because i'm gullible, and the first one to go, i was all ready to jump off that one, until it turned out we were jumping off the one that was like a foot above the water. we all jumped and i got soaked with my (ice cold) splash, and then we just climbed out of the water and rode in the van (which was a very cozy fit with 12 people and 12 tubes) a little farther up the road to the entrance to the caves.

we started out by walking on slippery rocks and shannon kept hurrying us which was not fun. then we got into the water which was absolutely freezing, and we walked and rafted for a while down the caves. the walls were sharp, and since our hands were so cold it felt like every time you touched the wall to push off, you got cut, but our hands aren't cut now so it's okay. a ways in we stopped and looked at the glow worms which was really cool. they are actually a larva, which eat their siblings which then glow in the form of feces in their intestines, and lures other insects toward it, and they then get caught in the sticky stringy stuff they dangle below the roof of the cave. after awhile the worms turn into some sort of fly that only lives a couple days and has no mouth or digestive system, so their whole goal is to lay a bunch of eggs, which hatch into larva and the first few eat the others, and so on.

shannon passed us chocolate fish, which are like easter marshmallow stuff in chocolate, they were delicious. i was first in line as we left that part of the cave, and snappy showed me with her flash light a baby eel. it was so cool. we kept rafting/walking/jumping off water falls. at one point we did this thing where we're in a straight line and hold the person behind us' feet, so we're all connected and don't have to paddle or anything. it's called the eel, and it was both of our favorite points because we just kind of floated along and weren't hurried or having to push off of sharp rocks or anything.

a little before the end, they told us to turn off our head lamps and we "played a game called find your own way out of the caves in the dark". it wasn't too hard, because the glow-worms on the ceiling showed the path of the river, only i was the first person in the line (well the two people before me were super fast and i didn't see where they went) so i was basically leading us, and i'm a very slow paddler it turns out, so i was feeling very rushed. we got out safely and were all incredibly freezing. we drove back and got all our gear off and then i got in the advertised hot showers, which turned out to be freezing cold showers. linnell went out to the car to get comfy pants (and stealthily left her polypro fleece in the car because we need them for kayaking and her polypro got lost at roll training). we got dressed quite quickly, and then went in and had our included soup and bagel which were delicioussssss and warm! we also nabbed another bagel for our ride home, and then headed out (with serita's fleece stashed in our stuff as well. i feel slightly guilty for being a klepto, but i'm planning on giving the fleeces to someone else who is going blackwater rafting so they can return them after we're done with kayaking. it's more borrowing than stealing, and for $95 each i don't feel too terrible).

the car was nice and warm and i was suddenly quite sleepy, so i napped a bit while linnell drove. we stopped and got gas in otara and hoped the digital gas meter would still read full when we got to the car rental place, and as linnell was saying "okay let's try to save gas as much as we can" she got back on the motorway in the wrong direction ha ha. she was quite angry with herself, but we made it with the car still on the full bar, so we were fine. we were a bit angry about how much gas cost (we ended up spending $80 this weekend on gas. we are up to $2/liter so i don't want to hear whining about $4/gallon!) but it's okay. we left the car at the rental place, and we walked up the steep hill to ih, eating our bagel. when we got back, we ate a little dinner (or a lot, whatever) and then took showers and did laundry. then i packed stuff i didn't need this week and some of linnell's stuff to bring home, and organized what we were going to need for camping next weekend. then we went to the ih dvd library and were going to get the movie "one were warriors" which is apparently a classic nz movie, but they didn't have it as linnell had promised me, so we got whale rider and independence day instead and now linnell's watching whale rider because she needs it for a linguistics project, and i'm doing this/listening to that.

(this is actually getting posted on tuesday, after we have been to roll training and motat, but that will be in another post)
tootles

hiking adventures with serita

2008-05-23T00:23:00.000-07:00

serita is lazy so this blog will be brought to you by yours truly

monday she came to my classes with me (pacific linguistics and comp sci) and was not super entertained. that afternoon we don't remember what we did so it probably wasn't very exciting. i think i went to the gym and she unpacked her bags maybe?

tuesday we decided to go to rangitoto, a volcanic island in the hauraki gulf, a 25 min ferry ride from downtown. most everyone else i know has been there at least once already (kendall's been 3 times). the first ferry left at 9:15 am, and we managed to just miss it, so then we wandered around the viaduct area in touristy stores until the next one at 10:30. the last ferry back left at 3:30, which we needed to catch because a) i had class at 5 and b) there is other way off the island and no buildings there (except a few old historic bachs, which are sort of little vacation cottages). it was kind of grey and drizzley while we were walking around, and we seriously considered waiting to go another day, but decided to go for it, which was a good choice because the sun came out while we were on the ferry, and it was beautiful for the rest of the day.

after arriving we started following the main trail to the summit, which is supposed to take about an hour, but we took a detour on the wilson's park path, which sort of went around the back side. i managed to fall once and scraped my knees on the black lava rock (which serita thinks looks like a plowed field from a distance) but other than that there were no disasters. when we emerged from our detour we found a boardwalk with stairs all the way up to the summit. when we got there it was around noon so we had lunch (pbj of course). there were a bunch of girls, probably about middle school age, there on a school field trip, and they were SO excited that we were american it was really cute (i have not gotten that reaction anywhere else here, because most places i go there are tons of other americans). they asked us if we knew anyone famous and if there were cheerleaders and gangs at our school.

after lunch we went back down the boardwalk to go see the lava caves, which everyone says are really cool, although they all recommended a flashlight which we of course forgot. we first went in one with a small crawl-size entrance, with a larger area within. we were using the flash from my camera to light our way, which sort of worked, but serita got scared when she saw red rocks that she decided looked like blood, and there were red roots hanging from the ceiling, so we went back out. a little further on we found a big cave that you could walk thru standing upright. at first we thought it had an opening at the other end bc we saw light, but that turned out to just be a hole in the ceiling. by that time we decided we should start heading back to be sure we caught the ferry. there were some confusing signs showing a possible path around the outside of the island but the map said that way took too long, so we went back up the boardwalk to the summit, took some more pictures.

from the top we could see the auckland sky line, the north shore, and a bunch of the hauraki gulf islands, including waiheke, brown's island (which is a little grassy volcano that serita loved), and motutapu. motutapu is connected via a causeway and has a campground and farm animals, but also no permanent residents as far as i know. there is evidence of maori settlement on most of the islands, and they have found footprints in the ash on motutapu that show there were people standing there watching as rangitoto erupted 600 years ago. pretty crazy. anyway, then we headed down the main summit trail, which i had heard described as steep, with loose volcanic rock, but it was really not bad at all. we were kind of hurrying, but we got there with plenty of time so we took a little detour at the bottom and did the kidney fern walk. the whole island is covered in forest, and we saw all kinds of cool plants. the only animals are birds (and probably some bugs and stuff).

we reached the ferry landing by 3, and as we were sitting waiting the field trip girls came over and took pictures with us and talked to us more, and i'm pretty sure they were sneaking pictures of us on the ferry back. ha ha. on the ride back these 2 people who we had take our picture and we took theirs at the top sat with us. the girl was from west auckland and the guy was from england and they had met in australia and were just doing a day trip while the guy was visiting new zealand. he's traveling for 7 months, spending the first 3 or 4 in australia, then 6 weeks here, and then going to southeast asia (i've met a lot of backpackers who are either going there or have already been, and they all say good things, especially how cheap everything is).

we got back to auckland around 4, and had to go back to IH (half an hour walk), shower, and get back to campus for class at 5 (another 15 min walk). i thought the free city circuit bus would be faster than walking, only we waited for awhile and everyone had to switch buses due to the 2 presumably homeless people sleeping in the back of the first one. we finally made it back, i had a speed shower and was off to computer science, which serita decided she did not need to attend.

wednesday i have classes every other hour from 10-5, and then step class at 5:30. serita went shopping on queen street in the morning, and we met by the library for lunch at 1. it was a little chilly so we went to the sheltered quad area, where we saw signs for a free vegetarian lunch, so we followed the signs up to the 3rd floor and got some cous-cous like indian stuff and some oddly textured peanutbutter fudge which we then had in addition to our packed sandwiches. after lunch serita came to my nz lingusitics and pacific anthropology classes, again not very exciting. she just does her puzzles the whole time tho. she decided not to pay $10 to get into the gym for step class, so she went back to ih and we had dinner when i got back. generally she comes to dinner and i just get a lot of food on my tray and she has some, and also a sandwich usually.

thursday we went to one tree hill, which is a grassy volcanic cone park that's far enough away so we took the bus. we missed the first bus we could have taken bc we were just sitting in the bus stop shelter and you have to stand up and signal the driver if you want them to stop. we caught the second bus successfully, and it was about a 30 min ride. upon entering the park we first used the bathrooms by the planetarium and then started toward the summit. on the way we saw signs for the cornwall park (which is adjacent to one tree hill) information centre, so we kept following them and ended up in cornwall park on the other side of the volcano. cornwall park contains a working farm, not as a tourist attraction of any kind, you just kind of walk by the cows and sheep and stuff. the gates all have grating that you drive/walk over that the animals can't, and the fences have steps you can climb over or gates. it was really pretty, and after getting heaps of brochures from the info centre we found a bench and read them and looked at the map.

we decided to go the rest of the way around to the start of the summit walk again, going thru most of cornwall park on the way. it was quite pretty and the walking was very easy compared with rangitoto. these ladies from a korean church group accosted us and gave us these little booklets about "god's 4 fingered glove" which actually has 5 fingers, and the story had quite a few language errors and was a big hard to follow. we ran away from anyone else who looked lik epart of that group, and when it looked like one was coming for us serita said "just pull your pants down" as a means of scaring her away. instead i politely told her i already had a book.

the climb up one tree hill was steep but not too long, and it was all a road that people can drive their cars all the way to the top. there were signs about not disturbing the archaeological sites on the way, and when we saw some rocks down in the crater organized in some sort of pattern we figured that's what that was. however as we moved a little further around, we realized they were just organised in like, smilie faces and saying 'samoa' and stuff like that. so not so ancient. ha ha.

at the top we took pictures by the obelisk (there used to be a single tree up there, the source of the one tree hill name, but fairly recently (80s or 90s i think) someone cut it down as some a political statement of some sort, so now there is a big statue and stuff. instead of going back down the roadway, we went thru a gate and meandered down the back side of the mountain (there are various little foot paths throughout). we found our way back to the cornwall park cafe/info centre after climbing over a fence, and read/napped in the sun for awhile there. then we got kiddie ice cream for $1.50 (the "single" size was over $3 and i'm not sure how much more ice cream you would get, since we got a real single scoop).

after that we headed back around to the one tree hill side entrance, where serita really wanted to swing on the playground. however we saw this really cool playground thing where you sit on a swing hanging from a wire/zip line thing that is slightly angled so you go flying down to the end and bounce off some tires. it was actually kind of scary, and we did it several times, and then let a little boy and his mom both have a turn. we eventually found our way to a bus stop by 3, and the bus i had written down came at 3:30 so we just sat in the sun there for awhile. the bus was slightly late, although i think we may have been at a different stop than the one i'd written down but it came eventually and we successfully hailed it and paid our fare. when we got back to symonds street and went to get off my backpack got stuck in the seat but luckily serita rescued me (although she has been claiming about her injury from that since).

it was around 4:15 then and i had class again at 5, so again we speed showered and went to class, where they announced we have an extra week for the project, and they also gave us the pseudo code for the first part of it which is very exciting. then we came back and had dinner and i got a lot of work done on my project finally with the new helpful instructions.

today i went to the gym in the morning and worked on my project some more and serita went shopping on k' road, and then met me at the library and came to nz linguistics with me. the prof is super disorganized (like most other linguistics profs i've had) and basically told us for our assignment where we have to listen to someone speaking and decide if they are a new zealander or not, we can use any video or audio recording we can find, which makes it a lot easier if we already know the answer and just have to describe speech characteristics. after that i went to work on that in the language lab and serita went back to IH. i went to anthropology and we had another prof talking about ethnomusicology which was actually interesting for once, and then i went to step class which was quite intense, and then we had dinner which was less than spectacular. we considered going out tonight but sophie, kendall, and courtney are gone on a trip, and i think everyone else is just hanging out in ih tonight which is fine with me.

tomorrow i'm getting our rental car at 8:15 and we are going to rotorua to go zorbing and possibly luging, and then sunday we are going blackwater rafting in the waitomo caves. very exciting!

First Weekend With Serita!!!!

2008-05-18T20:25:00.001-07:00

Hi everybody!! This is Serita, I'm going to be a guest blogger for the next three weekends! (although Linnell has already told me she's going to be editing and adding). So I will start with the beginning of my trip here.

After I was slightly close to missing my first plane out of Buffalo, everything went smoothly until I got to Detroit, except for the turbulence and bumpy landing (which actually doesn't bother me, I just like to complain). So I got to my Detroit gate with plenty of time, and boarded and found my seat and then we just sat for about a half hour. There was a baby behind me crying, and its grandmother was trying to calm it down, but she was speaking a African? language or something that was very harsh sounding, so when she tried to soothe the baby, it got scared and cried harder. So after about a half hour, the captain came on the loudspeaker and said that the plane was missing some phalanges, i mean fasteners, and that they would try to fix them, but that the work order wasn't off until 8 pm, and we couldn't get another plane to take us instead, so basically I was going to miss my flight out of lax. So I called Dad and he told me it probably was better to not fly a broken plane (thank you for the wisdom) and then I spoke with the airline reps when I got off the plane and I was super nice to them because everyone in front of me was yelling at them and I felt bad. So we were nice to each other and I made them laugh which made me happy. So then I went and got ice cream and waited until we finally left at like 7:30 or 8ish. When I got to lax there was practically no one by my gate or any other northwestern gate, so i talked to the only guy at my gate and he was helpful and told me to go to the next gate down which was an air nz flight leaving for auckland in like 10 minutes. so i did and the lady there was extremely mean to me and so i went back to the nw gate and the guy wasn't there and so i had a slight meltdown and called dad. when i was talking to him, the guy came back and helped me while i was on the phone with dad. he booked me on a flight leaving in about an hour for brisbane and told me how to get to the international terminal which he said would be about a 5 min walk. the directions he gave me were not actually correct so i asked some other people for help who told me it would take 20 min to walk, so i finally found a bus that would take me. it was just me and the bus driver and another lady and we all had a lively conversation about what we were doing/where we were going. i got to the terminal and found my gate (again by asking some guy. who was really nice) and was extremely happy to get on my flight and settle in. it was around then that i figured out that brisbane was not actually in spain, as dad had told me, but in australia 1. because the flight attendants had australian accents 2. because quantas is an australian/new zealand airline 3. because it would extremely ridiculous to fly from la to spain to nz, and 4. because brisbane is not a spanish name. i laughed quite a bit to myself about that one. the quantas flight was fabuloso!! i got delicious food and there were personal tvs where i could listen to music, watch tv, watch movies (i watched ps i love you and cried a few times, luckily everyone else was asleep and did not see me weeping at a the movie. i actually didn't really like the movie but that's okay i had wanted to see it for a while). i could also play games on the tv and watch our flight movement. i also had 3 novels to read, game books, a website to work on, food to eat, and sleeping to do, so i was quite content and even a bit overwhelmed with what to do first. we landed in brisbane and i accidentally went to customs because that's where everyone else was going ha ha. after they told me where to go for "transits" i wandered around that airport for a while but no one was really there because it was pretty early in the morning (like 6:30). i worked on the badgers website there for a while and it's looking quite snazzy if i do say so myself, although i do need pictures and quotes and rates and stuff. i also was listening to dane cook and was laughing to myself in the middle of the airport, which may have led to people thinking i'm crazy. oh well. so then i got on my flight to auckland where i also got delicious food, including chocolate ice cream! when i landed in auckland i was super excited and went to get my bags and when they didn't come for a while, i realized missing my original flight meant they probably wouldn't be with this one. so i went to the desk and talked with them for a quite a while about getting my bags back so then i went and followed linnell's very specific details about how to find the bus, and i rode to the stop she told me to get off at. while i was on the bus, i talked to the guy next to me about nz and stuff and he told me he's planning a trip to us next year. when i went to get off the bus, the bus driver didn't see me because it was really full, and started to leave the stop and everyone said "nooo someone else is getting off" so the driver slammed on the brakes and i went flying forward and it was a bit messy. haha i was glad i didn't have two huge other bags to lug around though so i called linnell and she came out and we reunited yay!

linnell's edit: so i was not so successful in getting my work done before serita got here, especially the comp sci project which i still have no idea how to do. but i was quite happy not to get up at 5:30 to meet serita's ungodly early bus friday afternoon, and i left her a text to call me and i'd leave class when she got off the bus. so throughout both of my classes that afternoon i had my phone out waiting for her call, which really turned into me playing sudoku on it and not so much paying attention. and as i was going back to ih at 5 and she still hadn't called, i saw a blue and yellow bus (the airbus is also blue and yellow) stopped at the stop i told her to get off at wayyy up the hill and i considered going up there to see if it was her but decided not to, and it turns out it was a different blue and yellow bus, so a good choice. around the time i was writing another text to make sure she was even in auckland, i got a call from an 027 (nz telecom cell phone) number which i answered and it turned out to be serita so i ran up the hill and across the street (not at an intersection) and found her but without any big suitcases. apparently the number that shows up on our phones when we call each other is not the number we dial, but it's the same every time so we just stored them anyway. back to serita.

we went back to her room and had many stories to tell each other and stuff. i was very gross feeling and smelly after years of traveling, so i took a shower (while linnell ate dinner and made me a sandwich), and then we met everybody else to go to the rugby game (it was the auckland blues vs the wellington hurricanes). apparently you're not allowed to take bottles into the stadium, so ollie and ace had fashioned "wine bellies"/"wine babies" by attaching the bag that boxed wine comes in to themselves under their sweatshirts (jumpers). they and the others (mostly boys) were running around being silly, and then left without us because we were waiting for sophie and ej and alex. finally the 5 of us left, and we walked around for a while trying to find the free bus that would take us to the game. we finally saw it and ran to get it and then rode to the game, where there were zillions of people. alex went and bought his ticket and then we went and found our seats in the "party stands" (which were supposed to have live music or something, which we did not see. possibly because we arrived after kickoff) with everybody who had left before us, and kendall joined us eventually. (another note from linnell that i forgot to add before: while we were walking in i looked up and saw this kid staring at me, and then he waved, and after staring back at him for an eternity i realized he's in my anthro tutorial (and had worked together on group exercises before) so i finally smiled back and he said 'you are in my class aren't you?' and i said 'yeah sorry' and then we continued walking the same speed but i didn't know what else to say and it was extremely awkward but everyone thought it was quite humorous afterward)

the game was really fun, a bit nippy, but lots of fun. there were sooooo many people and lots of very enthused fans. there were little kids sitting behind us with their dad and all the kids knew all the players names and stuff, it was really cute. the blues won by 3 points (19-16) i think and when the game was over, it took us foreverrr to leave the stadium because there were just so many people leaving all at once. i was getting quiiteee sleepy by now, and as we walked with the gillions of people walking away from the stadium i was pretty much sleep walking. we got on a bus pretty quickly and rode back to the civic center, the stop closest to ih, and when we got off linnell had to of course talk to her friends (by talked she means, tried to hurry them up). i stood/slept and eventually we made it back to her room, where i happily crashed onto the box spring that i call my bed because i am too lazy to climb up to the top of linnell's closet where would be an ideal place to put the top mattress.

so saturday we woke up early and showered and packed and linnell went and got the rental car and so then us two, danielle, ej, and sophie started our road trip to taupo. we stopped at the otara market in south auckland on the way there and spent a few hours walking around. south auckland is where all the pacific islanders and maori live, and when we stopped to ask for directions sophie asked about the 'cultural market' and the guy was like 'you mean the flea market?' and we decided maybe telling them we were coming to see their 'culture' was not the best idea. i was good and only bought a present for kevin for graduation, and nothing for myself, and linnell bought a polkadot hoodie which was only $20, as opposed to $120 in auckland, and a pair of paua shell earrings. we kept driving for a while and then stopped in tirau for lunch. it was a really cute town and every store has some sort of decoration made of corrugated metal, which was actually really cool looking. we had our pbj sandwiches and got ice cream and then kept driving.

we got to taupo around 4ish and so we found our hostel, the rainbow lodge, which was nice, and we put our bags in the 6 person room we were sharing with a guy we met later, and danielle stayed to do homework and the rest of us went mini golfing. it was 10 dollars and i wasn't gonna play to save money but then everyone else said they weren't going to if i didn't and i didn't wanna ruin the fun and i figured it was 10 dollars so why not. so we played and it was lots of fun but a bit chilly. ej wanted to all pick golfer names for the score card, and she was tiger woods, but then we didn't know any other golferes. sophie ended up being happy gilmore, linnell was venus williams, and serita was mia hamm. ironically tiger woods won and happy gilmore got second (the real and pretend golfers). serita did not hit any people with the ball so that was an improvement over her last mini golf experience. there was a couple who had to wait for us on every hole because some of us are not so skilled at getting the ball in the hole. sophie got a hole in one on the last hole which meant she won a free round of golf, but she didn't collect cause she said she wouldn't use it.

after that we picked up danielle and went to pak n save and got provisions for dinner. linnell and i got pasta and cheese sauce mix and bulk candy (after sampling a lot of the bulk candy, we saw a sign that said "sampling is considered shoplifting and will be treated as such" so then we made a fast exit from that area) for a total of 3.10 and so we all went back to our hostel and made dinner which was delicious. we were going to get a dvd from the hostel's library but someone was already using the movie room, so linnell and i played cards in the lounge and everyone else read and did homework in the room. linnell and i went to get ready for bed in there somewhere and had quite an adventure with a sink that was pretty much in the wall, which is not conducive to washing your face, especially if you're linnell and suck at containing water in normal sinks. i was falling asleep at like 9 pm so nel and i went back and i went to sleep immediately.

after about 12 hours of sleep for me, we got up at 9 am, showered, and had pbj for breakfast. today was the day of our super secret adventure! (which contrary to popular belief was only a secret from the parentals so they didn't spend a month worrying, not a surprise for serita) and everyone was very excited/nervous. the company we were going with sent a van to pick us up from our hostel, so we got on and there were two guys also going with us from canada (with the strongest canadian accent linnell has ever heard, i usually don't think canadians sound any different, but they definitely said 'aboot' and stuff like that) who had just graduated from college and were on a 4 month trip to australia/nz/southeast asia. i told linnell we should do that too, perhaps to italy? or south america? anyways, we got to the place and got a talk about buying dvds/photos of our adventure and then we went and got suited and harnessed up and met each of our partner/instructor guys. while we were getting harnessed, most people's partners were doing it, but i had some guy that was getting trained, which slightly worried me. ej's partner checked it though as my trainee was doing it, so i felt better about it. then we all headed out toward an airplane, and as we did, my partner, mikey, who had disappeared came back out, and walked with me. as we were walking, he noticed that i was NOT harnessed up correctly at all and re did it all, and kept saying "bloody frenchmen" (apparently the trainee is french). i felt much better about my harnessing about that, and we got on the plane, and everyone else got to sit on long benches, straddling them with the instructor behind the instructee, but we had to sit on the floor. as we took off, all the partners were joking around and it was just lots of fun. linnell's guy was singing the song from the jungle book movie, and showed her how you could see all the way to the east coast (hawke's bay) and the north (bay of plenty), and lake rotorua and of course lake taupo, and huka falls and the waikato river and a racetrack, among other things. all the other girls were semi-nervous but for some reason i wasn't at all. mikey had a watch with the altitude on it and we watched how high we were going. he complained about everyone else getting a bench and us getting the crappy floor AND having to go first (sitting on the floor made it much harder for him to connect our harnesses) but we got connected and he told me to hold up my legs when he stood up so he was basically carrying me on his front, and to lean my head against his shoulder and to hold onto my harness near my shoulders so when he stood up i did and they opened the door of the airplane and...we jumped!!!!! :D

linnell said that watching me drop out the window of the airplane was what scared her the most and made her nervous, so i'm not sure if going first was bad or good. so we flew down really really fast for 6000 ft, during which time my goggles somehow came off so my eyelids were like peeled back haha. also, i couldn't close my mouth, and it was hard to breathe, and my ears popped (all in all, not a great feeling, but so worth it) at 6000 ft above the ground, mikey opened our parachute and suddenly we were just kind of sitting in the air, which was amazing! (all of my past symptoms were gone except the popped ears which i still have one popped ear, which i like to complain about to linnell which annoys her quite a bit :) ) so we just looked around at the amazing view and mikey showed me where a guy hit the ground last year with no parachute but managed to survive, and he let me fly the parachute which was soo cool (linnell did not get to fly hers, but when she asked, her instructor, andy, made them fly in loops and twirl and stuff, and they watched the others jump and open their parachutes above which was really cool to watch, and we saw a sheep that someone had painted its butt red), and then we landed. as we were landing near the tower, mikey said "oops lost control for a minute there" haha and i hoped he was kidding. we landed by me picking my feet up and him doing the work, and basically sitting/sliding to a stop. he was trying to hit the camera guy as we landed, and we were pretty close. when we landed, he noticed my goggles were gone and said "hm, i've never seen that happen before!" we watched everyone else land which was really cool and then the camera guy took a video of us celebrating (which was going to be played in reverse, so he had us throw our hats up and fall on the ground, so in the final version we jump up and our hats fly on) and we went back inside. as we were unsuiting and stuff, we saw another group about to go with our same partners. i asked mikey how many times a day he goes, and he said 7-10, which is insane. that has to be a pretty freakin' sweet job.

we looked at our "exit photos" which are taken 3 seconds before we jump, and mine is absolutely hilarious, so i bought it, and linnell got her's too, even tho they were kind of a rip off ($20), much better than the $149 or $179 videos. then we watched the video and sophie and ej got it (they had paid $179 extra to have a personal camera guy jump with them in addition to the instructor and record the whole thing) and then we paid, and they drove us back to our hostel. we ate lunch there before we left (pbj again) and then drove home, which was fun/nothing too exciting.

we got back at 4ish and linnell went to the gym and i showered and then she came back and went to dinner and made me pbj for dinner again (at this point i was pretty ready for my bags to come with something to eat besides pbj, although linnell does make a mean sandwich) we did laundry and sat around and were silly last night and i fell asleep pretty early again.

today we got up and went to linguistics (very boring old hard to follow professor) and comp sci (pretty attractive young prof) and linnell did class things (although she is completely lost in comp sci at this piont) and i did my puzzle book. neither prof said anything about me being there, so good to go. we walked around campus in between classes and then came back and ate pbj for lunch.

also when we got back, my bags were in the office of ih!!! yay!! so now i have shower stuff and clothes and my converter so my own computer and camera dock and all kinds of fun stuff. so i organized and linnell wasted time on facebook all afternoon. while i was organizing, i found/linnell remembered to give me the second part of my birthday present. it's this necklace (that i actually asked linnell about at the otara market) and it's this symbol that's a twisty thing, that represents two friends intertwined or something, and it's made out of green stone, which you're supposed to buy for other people and not yourself, but you wear it before you give it, so part of your soul goes into it (it's a horcrux basically :) ) so now nelly's at the gym and i'm watching the office finale/doing this. later we're eating dinner and then going to roll training, which will be interesting.

yay for my first weekend in new zealand!!

relatively uneventful weekend

2008-05-11T01:20:00.000-07:00

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!

news flash!

2008-05-05T02:32:00.000-07:00

i rolled!!!

i was even considering not going to roll training but i'm so glad i did. fiona (from ireland) worked with me one on one and she started by holding the paddle how it should be at the end of the sweep stroke, and just had me do hip flicks up, which was really helpful i think, because all the other times i'm so concentrated on the arms part i'm already overwhelmed by the time i get to that part.

after that (and a break to get the water out of my nose cause i'm dumb and forgot my nose plug) she did a little guiding of my paddle, and sort of helped me get it so i wasn't diving the paddle, which is my usual problem. after that, i just sort of could do it! it's a little jerky, but once i started i could do it most of the times i tried. fiona tried shoving my boat around as if i were in the river, and i even did it with no goggles several times! she told me to go do it when nobody was watching me and just bang loud if i needed a t-rescue, but i never even needed one! yay!

now i can't wait for another trip so i can try it in the river!

wairoa

2008-05-04T02:22:00.001-07:00

so at roll training last monday, molly and i were asking colm about the possible trip he had suggested the week before, but we had heard nothing about, and he said someone has to organize it or it wouldn't happen, so molly agreed to.

and speaking of roll training, it's getting a little depressing because several beginners can now roll, and i have been to almost all the practices and still cannot. well, each time the instructors tell me i have rolled on my own when i think they are helping guide my paddle, but i'm not so sure. and sometimes i can flip myself back over by bracing the paddle against the bottom of the pool, which is sort of satisfying but it's a really bad habit because there is no pool floor in the river when you actually need to be able to roll.

anyways, so the original weekend trip plan was go leave friday night or saturday morning, and do the kaituna river (which has a 7m water fall) and all us beginners would raft that, and then kayak the wairoa on sunday. the wairoa is dam controlled and i guess they release it sundays during the summer and occasionally in spring and fall, and this sunday was the last release until next spring. however first molly could not find a raft guide who could do the kaituna on saturday, and then it turns out the self-bailing raft is broken anyway making that impossible. and there was a big graduation party on friday night, so the plan turned into, leave saturday afternoon, sleep at james's house in tauranga that night, and then just do wairoa on sunday.

molly's biggest job was to make the car list, where everyone emails her when they can leave, whether they have a car (with or without roof racks to carry boats) and whether they have boats, etc, and she makes a list of who is riding with who and with which gear. friday night she imed me and said after 5 hours and 2 mental breakdowns and a lot of help from the execs, she had produced a car list (but it didn't get sent out till saturday morning). i was very impressed with her nonetheless.

i was in the car with "speedy" aka ben, who kendall rode with to the last trip. he's called speedy because apparently he takes forever getting ready (not because of his kayaking speed or lack thereof). also with us was alex, who is keri (the president)'s little brother who is also a beginner, and courtney from ih was supposed to, but she ended up making other plans when she didn't hear from molly for so long.

speedy and alex picked me up outside ih at 5, and then we went to the gear shed where all the club kayaks and gear are kept, in the suburbs, and after having some difficulties with the combination lock on the door, i got my pick of gear: boat, spray deck, life jacket, helmet, and paddle. i got the same boat i had the second day at aniwhenua, which was easier to stay upright in but harder to paddle. and after a bit of searching i found one of the good spray decks (made out of wetsuit material, rather than canvasy sort of material that most of the club decks are, so it keeps the water out better and fits tighter) which was exciting. alex didn't have to get any gear because keri wasn't going so he got to use all her good stuff. i closed the door to the shed while the guys were tying the boats to the roof racks, only i couldn't find the lock so assumed one of them had it, but it turns out it was hanging on in the wall. luckily speedy remembered as we were driving away and we went back and locked up.

james (the club vp)'s parents live in tauranga, which is a little over 2 hours east (and a little south) of auckland, and since he has a flat in the city now his parents are always thrilled to have the club come stay there. speedy couldn't remember where to turn off the main road so we stopped at a gas station and he went in to ask if they knew where james rae's house was (which i thought was hilarious, but it turns out james used to work there so it's slightly more likely that they would actually know). they didn't, but speedy found the address in the phone book (it's called snodgrass road ha ha) and we arrived around the same time as several other cars. we went in and just hung out in the living room for awhile, and james's mom made some sort of fruit crumble with whipped cream which was amazing.

after awhile they were like ok lets go get settled outside, and molly was like 'what, outside?! i thought we were sleeping at james's house!' (all night it was an ongoing joke whenever molly did not know something that was going on because she planned the trip and all) and i was a bit concerned as well, but it turns out they have this whole little separate cottage in the garden, with a whole bunch of mattresses which we put on the floor.

i told everyone that my sleeping bag was actually intended for children, and was told that that would be a problem if i got cold and wanted the hood part up, so then i proceeded to demonstrate (standing up) that i could in fact still get the hood on (with a lot of struggling). that somehow turned into colm and me having hopping races over all the mattresses all bundled up like cocoons in our sleeping bags. that turned into sleeping bag darts and sleeping bag ping pong, which turned into regular ping pong which was a little cut throat so i retired. the last van of people arrived at some point and james brought out a guitar from his house which was passed around between the various musical people in the group. and i was looking at people's pictures from graduation and the party the night before and their graduation robes have like, fur trimmed hoods, which colm explained is because traditionally they sit in a hall with a big fireplace at the front, and the more important you are the closer to the front you sit (like professors and stuff), so the lowly undergrads are so from the fire that they need the fur for warmth. also no one seemed to have a good reason why they graduate in may after finishing school in december of the previous year. they also told me about "tall poppy syndrome" which i guess is a real issue in nz (i had actually heard something about it before) where if you're good at something people are really mean to you and "cut you down" except i guess it's ok to be really good at rugby and possibly other sports. it sounds like a more extreme version of high school!)

gradually people were getting sleepy (i thought it was relatively early, like midnight maybe, but i was told today it was probably around 2 we went to bed) and we went to the little bathroom area of the cottage (the "door" to the toilet part is actually just the door to the outside pulled open, with a nice window in it ha ha) and i turned on the laundry sink to wash my face which proceeded to spray all over me and i was laughed at by speedy who happened to be the only one there. everyone settled down and went to sleep pretty quickly.

the next morning someone's alarm went off and we all gradually woke up sometime between 8 and 9. we slowly got ready and there were some english muffins in the house (but no big home cooked breakfast has speedy had hinted we might get). we started moving out around 9:30 and there were jokes made about making it to the river by 10 to see it fill up (apparently that never happens with aucc). sure enough, we stopped at a bakery on the way and took quite awhile sorting out who was leaving whose car where and which boats and which people they were carrying. that was all especially confusing because there were 3 groups of people, the pros (aka instructors) doing the grade 4, the seconders (second years, that is) doing the grade 3, and us beginners doing the graded 2, all of which had different get in and get out spots.

we all congregated at the top of the grade 4 section first, where there was bridge over a large rocky waterfall with a sign that said 'people die jumping off this bridge. don't do it'. we watched one kayaker go thru the rocky waterfall successfully (not an aucc person, there were lots of other people there too. and some rafters as well). we all got dressed for the river there, and i managed to mooch some polypro leggings, a second top, and a paddling jacket from other people. a lot of people had wet suits, or full-on dry tops (which are sort of windbreaker material but completely waterproof, and have like really tight rubber gaskety parts around the wrists neck and waist, so you actually stay dry. the jacket i got was similar but with just velcro to tighten instead of gaskets). kayaking is a lot easier when it's warm out and you just sun dry when you get wet in the river.

then the grade 2 and 3 people left and i was crowded in the back of toni's van with probably about 8 kayaks and kelly and ivan (as well as 4 people in the front seat). luckily the different get in/out spots were just up and down the road from each other (which is always deceiving because it seems much longer on the river). kelly, who is a seconder, was telling me how for the grade 2, you actually have to walk (carrying your kayak) all the way from the get out up to the get in.

sure enough, it was kind of a long walk, with lots of scrabbling over rocks and thru brush, although it would not have been bad at all without a heavy boat cutting into your shoulder the whole time. it was just me, alex, gina, who is a friend of toni's (instructor) who plays canoe polo but had never been on a river before, and this guy named jeff who said this was the second time he's paddled in 3 years, although i think he must have done more in the past, after watching him, and then 2 instructors, isaac (who looks like he is from hanson) and ivan (who is norwegian and whose real name is oyvind but he just says ivan because no one can say it right). they showed us the infamous bog rock, which i have heard from several people how this girl last year got trapped in the hole after the rock and spend 90 seconds underwater. they stressed to go to the right of it. after all the horror stories it was actually pretty unimpressive looking, the rock itself isn't even above water.

eventually we made it to the get in, where we did just that. my fancy deck was really hard to get onto my boat, it took 3 of us to stretch it far enough, but it was like, perfectly water tight after that. we paddled upriver a little ways, to the "play wave" which is basically a wave at the end of some rapids, which all the pros like to paddle up to over and over and do tricks in. we hung out just below that waiting for the grade 3 and 4-ers to get to us. we practiced eddying in and out back and forth across the river, beginning in the slowly moving flat water and gradually moving up into faster moving and rougher water closer to the wave. they tried to teach us to 'fairy glide' which is where you go across facing upstream the whole time, which i was not very good at. i flipped i think 3 times, but was t-rescued without any trauma each time. i'm not gonna lie, the difficulty of putting my deck on was a big factor in my reluctance to bail and swim (and also i guess i've gotten way better at holding my breath under water. i never get water up my nose anymore, and can wait quite awhile for someone to get to me now). the only difficulty was ivan's boat was new and really slippery, so a couple times he would go to t-rescue me and would have to guide my hand to the handle so i could grab on to flip up. it all worked out though, and although the water was cold as long as i kept paddling i stayed warm.

after what felt like forever the instructors began to arrive and we watched them play in the wave for awhile, during which time i got cold just sitting there. i was really excited because the dry-jacket had a zipper pouch to put a museli bar in like the instructors always do, so i ate that. molly was with ross in the duo again, like last trip. i really need to get in on that. she gets to go thru all the scary/fun stuff and he knows how to roll so you're totally safe. however, apparently every time they flip (including going thru the wave) molly freaks out and bails, even as ross is rolling back up. he was actually upright before she hit the water the time i saw. ha ha.

so after awhile we moved on down the river, with plenty of instructors for us beginners. at the first rapid i was following speedy, and told him to be ready to t-rescue me, and sure enough i flipped, and it took awhile for me to float downriver (upside down) to him so he could t-rescue me, but i made it. as it turns out i had gone by bog rock (on the right side) upside down, which i was actually really relieved to find out because i was dreading it after the 90 seconds under water story. after that, i made it thru the rest of the rapids successfully, until the grade 2 get out (there was more grade 3 after).

alex and fiona, who is from ireland and i guess had a bad swim at the beginning got out there, and just after that spot was another rapids with a significant drop, but there were 4 instructors with me and they said the rapid was only a 2 and just to follow the lead and they would be right there. after a bit of indecision i decided i'd rather paddle more and carry my boat less, so i went ahead, and made it thru the steep part fine (which was actually really fun), until i found myself stuck in a bush on the side of the river (still right side up though!). it would not have been a big deal at all except for the fact that i still on the side of the rapids, so in order to get out of the bush i had to eddy out into rapids bigger than the ones i wasn't very good at at the beginning. i stayed in my little protected bush area for a bit and speedy was just on the downstream side of me and was cheering me on so after determining there was no alternative i went for it, flipped as expected, and t-rescued off speedy. we paddled a little further on flat water, and isaac and i got out under the road bridge. then we climbed up the side of the bank (with our boats on our shoulders again), crossed under the bridge bent over dragging our boats, climbed over a barbed wire fence, and walked a ways down the road to the parking lot/get out where everyone else would be arriving. i am SO glad i had water shoes, one of my best $8 purchases ever.

now it had been on and off raining all day, which obviously didn't matter in the river, but while standing around waiting for the others (who had their car keys which we needed to get all our dry clothes) to get off the river we got pretty cold. we watched them go over a 'rock garden' which is rapids with a ton of rocks everywhere, it's actually looks kinda similar to skiing moguls. it looked pretty cool (/very hard) and everyone made it safely. i guess nick swam over the big waterfall before, and was a little beat up, and gina, who toni had taken thru the grade 3 at the end, had a bleeding hand, but i guess toni somehow got "worked" worse than gina did (which is weird because toni is REALLY good). they also said on the top part they had seen one (commercial) raft flip and they had had to rescue a bunch of the rafters, and then later they found a raft floating upside down with no sign of people, so they had hauled it out and left it on the bank for them. it was funny because kelly's sister laura was visiting (and stayed with us the night before) and was on one of those rafts, but when we got out she was safe and dry and waiting for us.

after getting dry clothes on and having some food (my pjb!) everyone gradually headed out. unfortunately speedy had had the music on in his car, which drained the battery enough so it wouldn't start, but toni came and gave us a jump with her van. i got to sit in front and be dj on the way home, and speedy had some mix cds of all nz artists, one of which had a bunch of bic runga songs including the 'good morning baby' song from my p2p trip that i have been on a mission to find, so i was real excited about that. right after we left alex's parents called and said traffic on the main road back was going about 10 km/h (same as the last sunday when we were coming back from rotorua), so we took a different route and ended up ahead of kelly, who left 30-40 min before us but took the main road. we dropped alex at home on the north shore, and keri came out and said hi (she had hurt her back and had a lot of homework to do so she couldn't come) and then speedy brought me back (he said he'd take my boat back to the gear shed some day when it wasn't raining, which i was very grateful for). although it was only 7:15 when we got back, it felt like 10. now it actually is 11:30 so i am going to bed!

taupo and rotorua

2008-04-26T23:32:00.000-07:00

so this past weekend we had no school on friday (for anzac day - australia and new zealand army corps - basically like their version of memorial day) so we decided to go do something adventurous that we had been talking about doing which will remain a mystery until it actually happens.

as with all weekend trips, there was a party the night before. this one was an ih party down in the game room, and the theme was "blast from the past: 50's-90's." we pulled together costumes about an hour beforehand, i ended up being a hippie with my tunic shirt i got in rarotonga and my cord capris, and braids and a hairband emily had tied around my head. most people thought i was a native american though. which was really funny because kendall actually is. sophie had a skirt of kendall's she was pretending was a poodle skirt, and kendall was from the 90's with a jean skirt and green converse with tall pink socks. emily was also a hippie, she just had her pareau around her neck like a scarf and a necklace with a peace sign. ej was the best, she was her mom pregnant with her in the 80's, so she just had a nice dress on that we stuffed 3 of our pareaus under.

the party cost $5 to get in, and everyone got 3 drinks and pizza. i only had one of my drinks, and gave the other 2 to ace. they had ddr and sing star, and kendall and i were excited about ddr, but we couldn't hear the song over the party music which made it really hard. some of the kids in ih have a band and they played some cover songs and were pretty good. all the music was like classic songs that everyone loves so it was a lot of fun dancing around to them. some of the costumes were really good, others were not. 4 of the guys were teenage mutant ninja turtles, but they said they had just used poster paint on their bodies adn it hurt so they washed that off and came back without costumes. barret was a rubick's cube which was amazing, and some girls were steve urkle and madonna (she had birthday hats on her boobs like madonna's pointey bra outfit). we kept saying we were going to bed, but then another great song would come on and we'd stay a little longer. eventually we left, before 1.

our trip was originally going to be me sophie ej and kenedall, but we ended up with 10 people: us 4, plus danielle, lee, rachel, and michelle who are all in ies, and laura who lives in ih and knows lee, and jeff, another american some of them knew from tramping club. we obviously needed 2 cars (3 would really probably have been better. it was VERY squished). so it was danielle, me, sophie, ej, and kendall in one (we were the mystery-activity group) and the others in the other car (they were going to do the tongariro crossing, a 7-9 hour hike instead of our activity on saturday).

we left around 10 am, and danielle drove and i navigated, which was great because the back seat was quite a cozy location in our tiny 2 door car. i was actually pretty squashed in the shotty spot as well. we had 3 cds, mine and sophies from our easter roadtrip, and a random oc soundtrack we found in the cd player of the car. by the end of the trip we were pretty sick of all 3. it took us about 5 hours to drive from auckland to taupo. we stopped in matamata, aka hobbiton and took some pictures in the pretend hobbit hole at the tourism center, but the guided set tours were super expensive so we just kept going. navigating was pretty easy because i've been to the area twice on kayaking trips so i more or less had a good idea of where we were going. and there really aren't that many roads to choose from. at one point ej said "linnell what are those animals?" and i looked around for some exotic animal, and finally said "you mean the cows?" and she said "i didn't know they came in brown" and it was really funny. she is from new york city so i guess it's slightly excusable.

we were looking for a place called craters of the moon on the way to taupo, but we did not see it so we just went to the hostel and checked in, which was a little chaotic because 3 of us had booked parts of our group, and the second car was not there yet. ej and i were in one room with 6 other people, and sophie, kendall, and danielle were in another big dorm room. after a little bit rachel called us and said they found craters of the moon and it was right across from the huka falls lookout, so we drove back and hiked down to huka falls and eventually found them. i had already been to the falls (both during p2p and on the way home form a kayaking trip) but it was still cool to see again. we stayed there for awhile and some people climbed out on rocks in the river but i stayed far from the edge. 160 cubic meters of water per second goes over the falls, so that part is super frothy and moving fast, but then both upstream and downstream the river is wider and it's perfectly flat and calm. and the falls are this really cool teal blue color, sort of like franz josef glacier was.

anyway after that we hiked back up to the cars, and drove across the street to craters of the moon, which is this place that was someone's farmland, but when they put in the hydrothermal power plant or dam or something in the 50's, all these steam holes and stuff appeared, and now it's a tourist attraction where you just kind of walk through (and pay $5 to do it). it was almost 5 by then and they said the gates closed at 5:30, so our car decided to do it on saturday while the others were still doing tongariro, but they stayed and walked through. so we went back into town and parked by the lake and walked around. taupo is the biggest lake in the southern hemisphere and there's a lot of fishing and water sports i think, but it was sunset by then so all we saw was a parasailer. we wanted to play mini golf but the place closed at 5 as well.

we ended up just walking back to the hostel, where the others met us and they checked in, and then they gave us a ride to get our car. after that we walked down the street to this place one of the hostel people had told us to go for cheap food, and we walked in and this guy with a heavy irish accent started talking to us and it took us several minutes for anyone to realize he was selling us hostel beds instead of dinner. when we finally sorted out what we were actually there for he was confused because it turns out its a hostel/bar and not a restaurant, but the hostel does have a bbq so he said for $9 each we could stay, so most of us did. a couple others went down the street and got pizza and brought it back. the bbq was quite good, and the hostel was both nicer and cheaper than ours (which cost $7-9 more than advertised online) so if i go back with riley and/or serita we will definitely stay there.

after that we walked to the grocery store and bought hokey pokey ice cream (a very kiwi thing, hokey pokey is basically sponge candy and they love it) and people got assorted other stuff, and then we went back and ate the ice cream at our hostel and the hikers made their plans for the next morning (they were getting up at 5:30 am).

when ej and i went to our room to pick out beds and stuff, the lights were off. after making sure no one was there and already sleeping, we looked for a lightswitch, but couldn't find one. there was some sort of button behind the door, which ej hit (harder than intended) and an alarm immediately started going off and people were coming outside from the whole building (our room was in a different building from the main hostel building), and a lady came running over from the office looking alarmed. we just took our stuff with us and went back to find the others in the tv room and pretended we had no idea what happened. ha ha. we found everyone in the tv room and watched this dumb show with a guy answering questions with a lie detector while his wife/boss/etc were there hearing his answers. we met these 2 guys, one from the chech republic who is just here on holiday backpacking everywhere, and the other from pennsylvania who's doing study abroad in wellington. apparently they just met at a hostel earlier in the week and decided to rent a car together with some others. very brave!

we went to bed around midnight and there was this guy who was snoring ridiculously loudly in our dorm, but i was tired so it didn't bother me. in the morning we got up at 9, and checked out and everything, but when we called our activity for the day to confirm, they said it was cancelled due to the weather. we called the other companies in the area, but they said if one was cancelled they all would be.

sophie and kendall decided they would bungy jump instead, so we went and watched them do that and took lots of pictures and videos. they both wanted to touch the water but neither did. they said it was fun but really fast, and the scariest part was the waiting to jump off. i didn't think it was worth $99.

then we got lunch at a cafe/bakery in town, and walked around to the tourist stores a bit, and by then it was sort of misty/raining. after that we went to craters of the moon, and walked through. it said it was an hour walk, but it took us MAYBE half an hour, and we stopped to take a lot of pictures and stuff. there was some sort of bike race/scavenger hunt going on there, and all these women in bright pink jerseys kept running past. it was pretty cool how there was just steam rushing out of the ground everywhere, although i think it would have been a cooler hike had there not been a set footpath for everyone to walk on and stuff (and if we hadn't had to pay to get in!).

after that we were kind of damp, so we drove on up the road towards rotorua, and stopped at puzzle world, which was free! they had a big maze to walk thru, and lots of simulated things liek golf and skeet shooting, which all cost money, but there were lots of games to play in the cafe area for free, and we stayed for a couple hours. they had a giant 'rush hour' puzzle and a giant 'connect 4' which kendall and i played and i won 2 out of 3. they also had ice cream so of course i got some.

then the other group called and said they were on their way around 5, when puzzle world was closing, so we said we'd meet them at the secret spot, which lee, kendall and i had been to on the last kayaking trip. we successfully found it, and the others were already there, so kendall and i joined them, but the others didn't have their togs so they stayed in the car and watched a tv show on danielle's laptop. we finally got out around 6:30, after it had gotten dark, and drove the rest of the way to rotorua to our hostels.

4 of us had to stay at a different one because the cheapest didn't have room for all of us, but i had booked all the rooms so we first all went to the microtel, where most people were staying, and got them settled, and then danielle, sophie, laura, and i drove a couple of blocks (and a few one way streets) over to the crash palace backpackers where we were staying. after showering everyone but laura decided we didn't feel like going back to hang out with the others, so laura walked and the rest of us just read our books/watched tv/hung out for awhile, and went to bed by like 10. it was nice because it was just the 4 of us in an 8 person dorm room.

in the morning we checked out a little before 10, then went back over to the microtel to get the others. once all checked out and packed up, we stopped for gas/food, and then a bunch of people went zorbing, which is where you are in a clear rubber plastic ball and get rolled down a hill. it looks like so much fun but i promised riley i'd go with him when he comes to visit, so i did not go. also, the kind where you are suspended in the ball was closed due to the wind, so the only option was where they put you in loose with some warm water, which i didn't want to do anyway. so we watched everyone go, some of them went in groups which looked like fun sloshing around together and jeff tried to stay upright, like running in a hamster ball (unsuccessfully).

after that the other car and kendall wanted to go to the gondola/luge place (where i also went with p2p) but the rest of our car wanted to get back to auckland to study/do our homework, so kendall squished in with them. ej had left her shirt at the hostel so we went back to get that, and stopped at burger fuel for lunch. i got kumara fries with aioli which was just as amazing as the first time i was there with the canoeing club.

then i drove basically all the way back to auckland, which is supposed to take about 3.5 hours. however after 2.5 hours we came to virtually stopped traffic, where at times i actually put the car in park. while waiting 2 ambulances, a police car, and a fire truck went past us, so we assumed there was an accident, and eventually we went past it, although i'm not sure how bad it was. there were several severely damaged cars though. after that the traffic got better for a little while, but we reached stopped traffic again, and travelled at speeds under 10kph for about an hour, until we reached the auckland motorway and it thinned out again with 2 lanes. i let danielle drive when we got to the motorway, and we made it back before 6, in time for the always delicious ih dinner. (it is nice to not pay for food though, i must admit).

now i am going to study for my computer science test on tuesday. ciao

kitesurfing lesson 3

2008-04-19T20:39:00.001-07:00

this is gonna be short, but yesterday morning (saturday) i texted andrew (kitesurfing instructor) and asked if i could come for a lesson, and he said to go to pt. chevalier at noon. he said he could pick me up for an extra 20 dollars, and i asked if there was a bus and he said probably, but i could also walk. online it said it would take an hour and 45 min, but i had nothing else to do so i decided to walk (and take the bus if i got tired). it was pretty far and took nearly that long, but i wasn't too tired (although my feet did hurt from wearing my flip flops, i also walked for about 3 hours in them the previous day). there was this really funny ad on a lot of bus stops i went by that had a picture of pineapple lumps (nz candy), then said "makes up for god giving" and then a picture of ugg boots. i really wish i had my camera.

the beach is in a park on the side of one of the little corners of the auckland harbour, so there were no waves which was nice. there were 4 french people in the lesson, and then a guy who had bought his own stuff but was a complete beginner, and howie, the guy from the yacht that came with the italian girls to my first lesson. andrew and his wife/girlfriend minot (also french) were both teaching, as well as another guy named cyrus. when he asked what size kite i wanted i decided 6m again, which is what i had the last time when the wind was lighter, but it had felt a little under-powered then, and he said good choice. the french people had all been to 2 lessons before as well, although some of them had gotten the board then and some had not. we all inflated our kites and launched, and then carried our boards to the water. cyrus helped me get to the water and gave me some pointers, but before long i was a ways down wind of him, so i was basically on my own figuring things out (which was actually kind of nice). andrew was up and kiting around checking on everyone and helping catch lost boards and stuff, and basically we would just keep trying until we got to a yellow buoy and some windsurfers, and then we'd have to walk back upwind which was tiring and time-consuming. i think that's where an instructor with a boat or jetski would be really nice, until you learn to ride upwind.

after a bit i was up and riding to the right (the way i normally wakeboard) but getting up to the left was harder. i had done it a couple times by the end. i also lost my board twice but i body dragged upwind and got it (after a lot of back and forth). andrew was very impressed that i had gotten my board back myself though, i think he was doing a lot of fetching for the others. he said when he went by after i'd gotten up the first time that he could tell by the huge smile on my face.

by around 5 i was pretty tired and we took our kites down and walked up the beach a last time. minot had been teaching the beginner guy, and she said he taken off too hard while body dragging and injured himself, and that the guys are always reckless. while we were taking our kites down and waiting for everyone she and the french people were conversing in french, and i caught an occasional word i understood, but really, nothing at all. they were really nice though, and included me in english several times. andrew gave us a safety lesson on what to do if you are out away from shore and can't fly your kite anymore (unhook and use it as a sail to get back to shore if you can, and if not, roll it up and use your board to float and start swimming).

then i was preparing to go catch the bus back, but andrew asked the french people where they were going and if they could give me a ride and they said sure which was really nice. they have been here 5 months and work for air nz (i told them i wouldn't hold it against them about my lost bags). after that i had dinner, showered, and did my photos and blog and went to bed.

now it's 4pm on sunday and i REALLY need to study for my anthro test on wednesday and look at my comp sci project (which is due may 28 but the others in the class seemed to think that wasn't enough time).

rarotonga 2: monday-friday

2008-04-19T18:40:00.000-07:00

continuing on...

monday it was pouring rain so we couldn't do the lagoon cruise as planned. so they swapped with the plans for wednesday.

in the morning we went to the university of the south pacific campus for a lecture on the environment. as far as i can tell it's just one building, and they mainly have classes via satellite. this lecture was actually really interesting. the guy was about grad student age i think, i'm not entirely sure, but he said he studies marine ecology. the majority of the talk was about ciguatera. certain algae in the reef produce this toxin, which accumulates in fish up the food chain, and causes both gastrointestinal and neurological sickness in people who eat fish, especially larger ones. it seems to happen in cycles, and he's studying what causes it, possibly the el nino/la nina environmental fluctuations. the locals have stopped eating fish because of this, which then causes other changes in the reef when the number of fish is not kept down by fishing.

in the afternoon we did the cross-island hike. our guide was a 68 year old man named pa, who did it in bare feet and described himself as "the most famous guide in the pacific" and "son of polynesia". he said that day was his 3102 time doing the hike. at the trailhead he asked if we wanted him to say an english, maori, or buddhist blessing. everyone said buddhist, although he did all 3. we hiked up to "the needle" this tall pointy rock formation, and the rain was really nice until we emerged at the top where the wind made it very cold. pa said only 15 people (himself being one of them) has scaled the rock all the way to the top. it looked pretty intense. he also said it was a sacred rock for the natives when they worshiped idols, before the arrival of christianity. someone asked "what kind of idols? like sun and water?" and he said "no, of war! it's very good that the missionaries came and brought christianity. you would not be here if they hadn't, because when you got off the airplane we would have eaten you!" while we were stopped pa gave us papaya, which normally i'm not crazy about, but up at the top of that mountain it was the most delicious thing ever. he showed us this rare flower that only grows on rarotonga and is supposed to have some special properties.

the way down was longer and more difficult than going up, especially with the rain making everything slippery. it was kind of fun because by that point we were just going directly through mud puddles. at one point someone from the back yelled for pa (as he had told us to do in any medical emergency) and we waited for a while as he went back to see what happened. we didn't find out until later that night but i guess gael had slipped and fallen on her back. she finished the hike though and seemed ok. we crossed 4 or 5 rivers which were rushing and very muddy from the rainfall, but that was really cool. at the end there was a waterfall that people went swimming under but i was cold and wet so i didn't stay long.

back at the hotel everyone obviously wanted to shower so we just wore our suits and 2 or 3 people went at once. we left all our wet muddy shoes by the door which was a terrible idea, as for the rest of the week the room smelled absolutely awful from them.

that night we had dinner at the nu bar across the street. gael said we could all get an appetizer, a main dish, and desert off the menu. i got potato wedges and spring rolls, which was way more food than i needed to eat. then i had a very difficult decision between chocolate cake with ice cream or an ice cream sundae. i went with the cake and shared with kendall who is lactose intolerant so couldn't have ice cream. again, most of us went home completely stuffed, and my tummy hurt a lot so i just read my book in my bed and went to sleep, although some people went out.

tuesday it was pouring rain again. in the morning we went to the avarua school. we first watched 2 schools practicing for the big dance competition on wednesday. apparently it's very competitive, although it's supposed to be more of a showcase than a competition. the kids were amazing! after that we went to another school building and had morning tea (lunch for us) and a lady talked to us about the education system there. it's basically like nz, they have to go to school from age 6-16, with optional preschool before and high school up to age 18. they use both cook islands maori and english, and kids come to school speaking either or both of those. in general it seemed like most everyone is fully fluent in both languages which is really cool. hopefully english won't take over like it has in nz.

after that we had our volunteer activity. originally we were going to be helping the esther honey foundation doing some sort of survey of stray dogs on the island (there are dogs everywhere, although they all have collars. someone told us the government puts collars on all of the strays). however there was some sort of miscommunication with ies and they thought we were coming just to volunteer for the whole week. so then it was decided that some of us would go play with and walk the dogs anyway, and others would be working at the rarotonga library. however due to the rain all day on tuesday, we all ended up at the library, which is about the size of the allens hill library. they said they had asked for 7 people, and when 30 of us showed up it was a little chaotic.

gael said there was a dress rehearsal for the dance competition at the mangaian hostel (where we had had our dinner saturday) so some of us decided to go watch that, and one of the bus drivers took us so we didn't have to walk in the rain. however when we went in the said it had just ended, and by that time the bus had left. so we just hung out there for a little while, and when the rain lightened up slightly we walked back to the library, where i joined everyone who were stamping and putting new sign out cards in books, which was actually kind of fun. we were constantly running out of supplies and the librarian said "we've never had this many volunteers before!"

after that they took us to the cook islands trading center (citc), the main shopping area in town, where we just wandered around. ej and i went to the bank to get their famous $3 notes (they use nz money, although they have their own 1, 2, and 5 dollar coins and $3 notes which are apparently worth something to money collectors. the coins are really cool too. the $2 is a triangle). they were nice at the bank and we didn't have to pay any extra to exchange. there are actually 2 different $3 notes, one pink and one green, so i got both of them. i also bought a post card and stamp (postage is cheaper there than in nz! - so it will probably take ages to make it home). we also went in some fancy jewelry stores and looked at black pearls, but that was way out of our price range.

after that we had 2 back to back lectures at some other hotel's conference center. the first was a guy talking about economics of small island nations which was pretty boring. unfortunately i was in the front row, so hopefully my occasional nodding off was not too obvious. basically, it's very expensive to import things, and fuel is ridiculously expensive. their main industry is tourism, although they do export black pearls from the outer islands as well as fruit and fish.

after that we had a bathroom break and then came back to hear bout traditional pacific voyaging from te aturangi, the vice president of the voyaging society. it was actually really interesting, my favorite lecture. he told us how he and a group of others including one of our bus drivers built a traditional canoe in nz and sailed it up to rarotonga, a trip that should have taken 14 days but took them 24. they also sailed over to tahiti and up to hawaii and then back down to rarotonga.

the voyaging society has built rarotonga's own canoe too, called "te au o tonga" which means "the mist of the south." traditionally to move the giant canoes from the forest where they were carved to the water, they would kill a bunch of slaves and use their bodies to roll the canoes on. to move the modern one they just had everyone in the community help carry it. anyway, the day they were moving the giant hulls to the water it was extremely misty, as it never has before or since, which was seen as a sign that the canoe was favored and blessed by the ancestors. on their voyages they use traditional navigation and steering techniques (although they do have gps and a motor on board for emergencies as required by law). it takes 6 people at a time to sail the boat, so they need at least 12 on board. they do 6 hour shifts where half are sleeping and half are sailing, then have a meal together, and swap.

te aturangi was also part of a group that sailed te au o tonga to french polynesia and performed a haka in protest french nuclear weapon testing in 1995. he also organized the sailing of a whole bunch of canoes to gisborne, nz (the easternmost point) for the dawn of the new millenium, which made for a very famous photo in newspapers worldwide. the rarotonga canoe, te au o tonga, was damaged by a cyclone and is currently being repaired so that they can resume teaching the old sailing techniques to the new generation.

after that talk we went to another bbq at teh aro'a beachside inn which was a lot of fun. the owner was this guy from hawaii who was quite a character. when he wasn't at the grill he was mingling with all of us and telling stories and making jokes. they were selling tshirts saying "rarotonga: wear the fox hat" (say it out loud a few times and use your imagination). he told us a story to go with the shirt as follows:

a few years ago prince charles came to visit rarotonga, and the whole time he was there he was wearing a davey crocket hat. as he was leaving someone asked him why he was wearing that hat when it was so hot out, and he said that when he had told the queen he was coming here, her response was "rarotonga, wear the fox hat". tee hee

wednesday the weather was back to being beautiful, which gael said was good because she had no more rainy day activities for us. we we did captain tama's lagoon cruise. instead of our usual mini-van buses this fun colored wooden bus came and picked us up and took us to muri beach. we took 2 glass bottom boats that did not look like they could hold 20 people, but somehow we fit about 25 of us on one and a few people went with all the other tourists on the other. our captains were 2 native guys a little older than us, and they brought a ukulele and a guitar which they played and sang to most of the time which was really cool. they also let the musical people in the group play and sing if they wanted. first we went out to the reef and snorkeled/sat in the sun.

then we went over to the island we had explored when we were paddling the vaka ama on saturday, which they said is called "no touching island" and a lot of people get married there. each newlywed couple plants a coconut tree, and they said thats how they keep track of the marriage: if the tree is sick someone's cheating, and if it dies they got a divorce. they said "one guy's planted 13 and they've all died". there was a lot of that sort of humor, clearly rehearsed and corny but still entertaining. we laid on the beach for quite awhile and got tan, and cooled off in the water, which was amazingly turquoise and very warm (and also quite salty). it turns out all the random huts and decorations there were from this group, although there is also a little pavilion place where they have weddings, and they were decorating it for one that afternoon while we were there. as we were leaving we saw the bride coming out on a boat all decorated in flowers and palm fronds.

anyway they made us lunch (and said "no women in the kitchen here we do all the cooking. that's why no one lives on this island. over there where we live (on rarotonga) the women cook"), of which the main courses were fish and fried banana. probably my two least favorite foods in the world. i am really not a picky eater, but everyone from this trip thinks i am because on a tropical island there is a lot of fish and a lot of bananas, the two things i hate. it was ok though because they had coconut too which i ate tons of.

after lunch they had a "show." first they showed us coconut husking, which was a little anticlimactic since we had already seen that on saturday. in addition to husking and opening the coconut they showed us how to get coconut milk (not to be confused with the coconut water in it when you open the nut). you grate off some of the white coconut meat into some mesh (like cheesecloth) and then squeeze it and the liquid that comes out is the coconut milk. he went around and squirted it on all the girls arms, as it is great moisturizer and smells fabulous.

then they did a pareau tying show (there are 375 ways to tie them). they had laura and shaymali be models, and gave each of them 3 different outfits (with plenty of mildly crude humor). then they made tj and tom demonstrate some guy's pareau outfits which were silly and taught them a pretend haka that ended in them chanting "i am stupid." after a little more beach time we sailed back to shore, and went to the hotel to shower.

then we had dinner at portafino, an italian restaurant. we had chosen our orders the night before (soup or salad and fish or fettucine alfredo) so that it would be faster because the dancing competition was at 7 that night. before dinner we had one last lecture, from an old man from nz who was basically the cook islands' only trader for most of his life. unfortunately he spoke very softly and very slowly, so although i have a feeling his stories were pretty interesting, it was very hard to follow, and many people fell asleep. gael said after that he had a stroke last year, so that explains part of the difficulty. after the talk the scary american lady who i think was the owner of the restaurant kind of flipped out at people for moving chairs and tables around, it was a little bizarre. we eventually got our dinners which were delicious, although not the enormous portion sizes we were getting used to there.

we then walked over to the auditorium, which was completely packed, and sat on the steps up the bleachers to watch the end of the dancing competition. the costumes were very intricate (taina said some of the parents had been working on them for 6 weeks) and the dancing was again, amazing.

after that ended, we made our way to the banana court, the bar where we had heard from multiple people that's the place to go on wednesday nights. when we got there it was only a little after 10 and kinda empty except for all the ies kids, but it filled up and there was lots of very sweaty dancing. i sat and people watched for a good majority of the time.

ej had met this guy, john, another night out somewhere, and we were talking to him and his friend for awhile. he's in a traditional dancing group and spent 8 months in china performing. they had a show in rarotonga on friday, but we would be gone. i told him i'd tell riley to go though, since the ies christchurch group was arriving the day we left. the bars all close at midnight except on friday night, so we all were leaving. john and his friend (ken) offered to give me and ej rides home on their motorbikes (most of the other ies kids got a ride in the back of a pickup truck) and we were super excited. then they were like, do you want to go the long way (around the island) and we said sure. they took us to muri beach, and to see the giant canoe (te au o tonga, the one the voyaging guy had talked about) which was really cool. we climbed up on it and took pictures and stuff. when we got back to the hotel sophie and some others were sitting outside playing with a stray dog that they had named rufus (and several other names i think) and we hung out with them for a bit and then went to bed.

thursday morning was our free time for the week, and we were going to go to the beach but a lot of us were rather burnt from the day before, so we decided to just walk into town and do some souvenir shopping. however, that walked turned out to be extremely hot and pretty long. i bought a beach towel that says cook islands, and other people got jewelry and shirts. then we had to power walk back, and we were trying to hitch a ride in the back of a pickup, but apparently people only do that at night because we were unsuccessful. some of the other kids had rented motorbikes which looked like a much better means of transport.

sean had wanted to buy a ukulele all week, and people had told him to go to the prison for a cheap one (when we went by the prison on our first day tour taina had said that it's probably the only prison where they let the prisoners out during the day and they come back at night). one of the bus drivers took him and a few others to his house and they made drums out of logs with chainsaws and they sold sean his ukulele. i'm not sure how they got chosen to go but that sounded really cool.

anyway, we loaded our bags into the vans and then walked across the street to the airport. the "gate" area was this grassy courtyard that was really pretty, although we were all sweaty from our walk. the flight back was uneventful, i slept a lot and read my book (but i did not finish it). when we arrived in auckland most of us had to go thru the biosecurity check at customs because of our muddy shoes. some of the security people washed peoples shoes off for them, but mine did not.

rachel had lost her purse on wednesday night, including her passport, and at first they thought she was going to have to stay on with the christchurch group for a while, but she and gael wen to the government on thursday and they said she could leave, but she was not through auckland airport immigration by the time we left, so gael stayed with her. i assume she made it eventually. our bus driver back from the airport was making all these dry jokes, with no change in tone from serious things, and he said the weather changed while we were gone and got cold and rained a lot and 6 people drowned, and we thought he was kidding but he was like no i'm serious. and i looked online when we got back and i guess a school group was canyoning somewhere and there was a flash flood and they died. crazyness.

anyway, auckland does feel really cold now, it's only in the low 60's (i hear it's a lot warmer at home now) which feels especially cold after a week in the tropics.

rarotonga 1: friday-sunday

2008-04-18T13:05:00.000-07:00

i did so much this past week the entry for it is going to be absurdly long, so i think i'm going to break it up into sections. so here's the beginning.

some of the ies girls had a party at their flat friday night before we were leaving (at 6 am on saturday), so a lot of us from ih went, but security came and said we had to leave after a little while so i was back by midnight. getting up at 5 was still not fun, and all 5 of us ih girls had to wait for the bus which was half an hour late because all the other ies people were late (and many of them still drunk from the night before). one of the girls forgot her passport, and was actually mad when gael said the whole bus was not going to wait for her and she'd have to take a cab to the airport, and another one threw up both before the bus got to us and while at the airport.

we arrived with plenty of time to spare anyway, and stood in lots of lines. our flight left at 9 something, and on the flight we got breakfast which was ok, i just got cereal because the hot breakfast looked iffy. people said it was really good though. i slept most of the 4 hour flight, and when we landed it was friday afternoon in rarotonga (we crossed the international date line). the jetway was literally a set of stairs on wheels that some guys pushed up to the plane, and when we walked into the airport it was all open and very tropical feeling. there was a man playing the guitar and singing in cook islands maori and people who were doing tourist packages got leis (they are actually called eis there) and stuff. it was also quite warm (but all the temps are in celsius so i'm not entirely sure how warm. i would guess in the 80's).

we got our bags and met our guide, taina, and we put all our luggage in the 3 vans and then walked to our hotel, the aquarius, which is literally across the street from the airport, on the beach on the north side of the island. the hotel was quite nice, with a big dining area/bar/lounge with a big deck and pool, and hammocks and lounge chairs on the beach. the coral reef is really painful to walk on though so no one goes swimming from the beach there.

we found out that all the girls (24 of us) were all sharing the dorm-style room with bunk beds, and the 5 boys had 2 hotel rooms between them. the dorm room wasn't as bad as we were imagining there were sort of dividers around the beds, and we each got a locker/cubby type place to put our stuff in. however, my big suitcase didn't fit in the cubby, so i heaved it up on top of the stack of 3 lockers, so i could reach it from my bed (i had a top bunk). now there were walls extending from behind the stack of 3 lockers, making it look as if there was a solid surface extending from the top as well where i could have put my suitcase. in fact, it was just open behind the lockers, so had i pushed my suitcase a little further it would have fallen in and been impossible to get out. actually, the girl on the other side of the little wall space dropped her toiletry bag in there, but someone from the hotel climbed in and somehow scaled the walls to get back out.

after leaving our stuff at the hotel we had a drive around the island (it's 32 km all the way around on the main road. there's a "back road" a bit further inland most of the way as well. and that's basically all the roads.) i was in the van with Taina, our tour guide. she is a cook islander but lived in auckland for at least part of her life. she looked about 30 but one of her daughters who hung around with us sometimes was definitely high school age so i'm not really sure how old taina is. adults there all look a lot younger than they are. it seems like rarotonga would be an awesome place to grow up. in school the kids learn lots of practical stuff as well as academics, like climbing coconut trees and traditional dancing and crafts, and taina said they can pretty much do whatever they want as long as they're home by dark, and "it's not unusual to leave your 5 year old babysitting your two year old" which she said took some getting used to when she moved there from auckland.

anyway, we drove around and she told us lots of stuff. avarua is the main town on rarotonga, but there are i think 8 other little towns around the island. all the chiefs of rarotonga got together and decided to give land to all the other cook islands (there are 15 total, i think 12 or 13 are inhabited) where they have hostels to stay at, because everyone has to come to rarotonga for national business, or to fly anywhere internationally. also, you cannot buy land in the cook islands. people of cook islands descent must find out their ancestry, and then go to their relatives and they will give them some land. non-islanders can lease land, and we saw a little house that was leased for $10 million (i think they said the longest possible lease is for 60 years).

most of the resorts are on the south side of the island where the lagoon between the coral reef and the island is big and there's some islands, and the water is the most amazing turquoise color. we stopped and took lots of pictures. it's really weird watching all the huge waves breaking on the reef because it's so far off shore and you can't see anything sticking up that the waves should be breaking on. when we went by where the airport is only separated from the water by the road and a cement wall, taina said it's a fun game to play chicken and stand on the wall as a plane is coming in and try to stay there as long as possible. i kept suggesting we go play that game all week.

when we got back to the hotel we had a bbq out on the deck which was really good and we were starving by that point so we ate a lot. after that we went to the national auditorium to see a junior dancing competition. they were absolutely amazing! their dance here is really cool. the girls do this circular movement with their hips (not exactly like hawaiian hula - they describe it as "the washing machine"), and the guys bat their knees in and out really fast. and everything is to live drumming. when that was over we just went back and went to bed.

saturday (the second one) we were supposed to be at breakfast at 8, so most of us got up at 7 and took showers in the 3 bathrooms attached to our dorm room. i actually got up at 6:45 so i wouldn't have to wait. i was using my phone as an alarm, and even though i had no service there and i turned it off during the days the battery was almost dead by the end of the week. i think while it was on it was constantly searching for a tower which drained it really fast.

all week we had breakfast in the hotel which consisted of a buffet with little individual boxes of cereal and milk, bread for toast with jam and peanutbutter, yogurt, and fruit salad. after the first few days i started making pb sandwiches for lunch, since that was the meal we were supposed to pay for on our own with the $100 gael gave us at the beginning.

after breakfast we walked down the street to the punanga nui public market which is only on saturday mornings. there were lots of stands with local fruits, jewelry (especially black pearls, which are one of the main cook islands exports, but are too pricey for me), sarongs (called pareaus there), and some food venders. i bought a blousey shirt, a necklace with a purple sea urchin spine (for only $3!), and a starfruit to try, which turned out to be my new favorite fruit. lee got a ton of arrow root which he was giving away to everyone. it kind of looks like the texture of banana but tastes like potato. back at the hotel i tried it with ketchup (well, tomato sauce, ketchup does not exist here) and it was pretty yummy.

after that we went to the national auditorium to do traditional crafts. first we tie dyed pareaus and laid them out in the sun to dry. we put leaves and flowers on top which were supposed to make faded patterns but only a couple people got that to work. a lot of people's pareaus turned out really well. i am not a big fan of mine, it's yellow and purple and not very exciting.

while those were drying we made eis (aka leis in hawaii). the girls made head eis, which you basically make by braiding strips of these big leaves, and to add a flower you just braid it in. some people were having a lot of trouble and ej just made hers big enough to go around her pony tail. my ei was kind of simple and plain but it stayed together in one piece so that was good. the boys made neck eis which were just bunches of leaves shredded most of the way up like fringe that they wore over their shoulders. we also wove plates out of palm fronds for our dinner that night, which was pretty crazy. most of us had some substantial holes, and there was a lot of variation in size.

next some of the men ("warriors") demonstrated how to husk a coconut. i think there were 5 stages of the coconut: flower, green, ready to drink (called "nu"), ripe (when they are brown and fall from the trees), and old and sprouted. they are husked when they are brown and ripe. they stuck sharp sticks in the ground (i think they are called "ko") and showed how you impale the "face" (end where it was attached to the tree) half of the nut on the stick, because that's the soft side. then they just kind of twist and pry off pieces of husk and continue until it's all off. then to open the nut from the inside they use a sharp rock and hit it in the middle of the lines running from the "face" (3 circles, which are 2 eyes and a mouth) to the back all the way around until you can open it in half. then you can drink the water inside and eat the meat. they said the record for husking a coconut is something like 3 seconds. it took most of the people who tried several minutes. then they were like, but real warriors just use their teeth, and proceeded to show us. it was pretty intense.

after that we learned to dance. the boys started before us and we were dying laughing at them trying to bend their knees in and out. then these 2 girls who had been helping us weave and were 14 and 15 lead all the girls in this dance. the feet part was just two steps to the right, and then two to the left and so on. that's about all i mastered. we were pretty awful with the hip movements, i was lucky if i happened to be swaying to the correct side at the right time, and the arms was just sort of random waving since it was hard to see and i was just trying to move in the right direction.

after that we went back to the hotel to change, and then went to muri beach to do vaka ama (outrigger canoe) paddling in the lagoon. by the time we got there we were only going to have like 45 min to paddle, and there were 2 canoes that took 5 people at a time, so we had to take turns. eventually the guides decided to cancel the lecture we were supposed to go to after, so then we just hung out on the beach for awhile. the outrigger really does make the canoe much more stable, although it looks funny, like it's a second mini canoe attached to the side. we paddled out to one of the islands across the lagoon that had all these random windsurfing sails and huts on it and then came back. we found some ripe coconuts on the ground and marc proceeded to husk them with his teeth for sophie and ej and me. however once you eat all the meat from around the edge of the coconut halves, it's a lot of work to get to the rest of it. we were trying to smash them on rocks semi-successfully, although sophie and i both made ourselves bleed (not from the rocks, but from the sharp coconut shells).

we then went back to the hotel to change for our dinner at the mangaian hostel with all the group that had been teaching us all day. they told us to bring our woven plates and wear our pareaus and eis, and most of the girls ended up wearing either black or white tank tops to go with our colorful pareaus. it looked like we were going to a dance recital. we were ready early so they took us to trader jack's, a bar and restaurant on the harbour that has been destroyed by cyclones 5 times and rebuilt. we looked silly wearing our outfits but there were 30 of us so we kind of took over anyway.

then we went to the mangaian hostel and after a welcome speech and prayer (most of our dinners involved a prayer) we put our plates to work. there was a lot of traditional food with no labels, and a lot of exotic fruits and veggies, including kumara (sweet potato), arrow root, taro, paw paw (papaya), coconut, and watermelon. some were really good, some were not so much. for desert there was this weird starchy gelatinous stuff and i'm still not sure what it was. my plate leaked a little, but overall it worked pretty well.

after dinner they performed a bunch of dances for us, and then at the end were like "ok your turn." first the guys did their dance which was hilarious, and then they made all the girls stand up and we were terrified that the 2 girls who lead us in the afternoon weren't going to, in which case all we would know how to do is stand there and sway side to side. luckily they did come out to give us some idea of where to wave our arms. after the group dance they made us get up in small groups and "free style" dance which turned out to be a competition and they kept having smaller and smaller groups go until finally stacy and marc finally won. they got cds of the traditional music, as did the winners of the coconut husking races.

after gael made a little thank you speech we went back to the hotel and most people went out. a group of us went to the nu bar, which is directly across the street from our hotel, and when spoken quickly sounds a lot like "nude bar". we just sat at a picnic table talking and being silly for a while, and then went back to the hotel where molly and i played cards by the pool for awhile (we couldn't get anyone else to play so we played spit and rummy). it was fun because i never play cards here and i miss it from the school with the sfu, and molly was venting about boy drama which reminded me of karen.

sunday we had to get up early again for church. the girls had to wear skirts below the knee (no pants or short skirts) and we all looked pretty spiffy. we had breakfast at the banana court on the way, since our hotel restaurant (and most other things) was not open on sunday. then we walked the rest of the way to the cook islands christian church where we sat on the balcony upstairs. it was actually more traditional than i expected. most of the speaking was in cook islands maori, although there was some english as well. i think that was a special sunday because all the boy scouts and girl guides (like girl scouts) were wearing their uniforms and tehy sat in front and they did the majority of the speaking and readings instead of the minister. everyone stood up for all the songs, and there were no hymn books or anything, everyone just seemed to know the songs (which were in the maori language). everyone was dressed up nicely, and there was actually a sign saying women and girls should be wearing skirts and no flower eis were allowed.

after that we had morning tea in the sunday school building next door, which consisted of lots of fruits and baked deserts, and basically served as our lunch. i had pineapple meringue and chocolate cake which were both amazing, and lots of watermelon and coconut. a lady spoke to us about the history of the church, which was the first, and is still the main one in the cook islands.

we then walked back to the church, and changed into our swimsuits to go to the beach. we just walked down the road from the hotel until we saw the beach and cut through some trees, possibly on someone's property. we just stayed there and laid in the sun/played in the water all afternoon. we had a lecture at the hotel at 4, which was not the most exciting thing ever. the man was half c.i. maori and half european, and he talked to us about their chief (ariki) system and how the tribes conduct politics and stuff. he went through a LOT of powerpoints with family trees and genealogy and stuff which put a lot of us to sleep.

after that we went to the paw paw patch for dinner. taina said we were guinea pigs because it's one of the only places open on sunday. it was a nice restaurant/bar which i think was attached to a hotel, so pretty similar to where we were staying. we all sat at 2 long tables, and there were some other touristy people there as well. a lot of people got drinks at the bar, and i got "iced chocolate" which was chocolate milk and ice cream, and very delicious. after waiting for ages, there was a big bbq buffet, and the food was AMAZING. seriously, my favorite meal of the trip. there was this rice stuff, and this creamed spinach with coconut dish called rukau, and potato salad (they have that everywhere there). all amazing. after eating a TON we found out there was desert too, with all kinds of good stuff: chocolate cake, starfruit cheesecake (SO good), watermelon, ice cream etc. i ate to the point of feeling pretty sick but it was all SO good.

that night since nothing was open some of the guys decided to build a bonfire on the beach and basically all of us ended up going, although i left pretty early because i was tired and feeling anti social so i read my book for awhile and went to sleep.

aniwhenua/rangitaiki trip

2008-04-06T18:43:00.000-07:00

so this weekend was another kayaking trip, and it was lots of fun.

natasha (my kiwi friend from all the other kayaking events) had said i could share her tent, and she was driving so we requested i be in her car. so it was us and another girl, michelle, who's from michigan and lives in empire (next door to ih). so natasha got here around 6:30 and we were on the road by 7. she has lots of good cds including the juno soundtrack and lots of me first and the gimme gimmes so we listened to that the whole way there. it was like a 3.5 hour drive to rotorua, and then another good hour south and east to murapura. our campground was right next to lake aniwhenua (pronounced something like on-i-fen-ua), which is a lake created by a dam in the rangitaiki river.

we got there around midnight so it was obviously dark. we used natasha's headlights to put up her tent (it was her uncles fancy alpine one so it was really nice, and very easy to set up). michelle had one that she had gotten off trademe (nz's version of ebay) and had some difficulties but got it up finally. kendall had gotten there before us, she rode with an instructor named ben (called speedy because he is never ready on time i guess) and travis, who is from california and lives in empire, and looks like the guy from the notebook so i always want to call him noah. courtney and adrienne (who both also live in ih, adrienne is from california and went to fuljames, and courtney is from arizona and has never done any kayaking before) were sharing tents with the others, but they were riding with a lot of the aucc people who were making a big caravan, so they were still in auckland at 8pm, so they got there later than the rest of us. we went to bed pretty soon after we arrived. there was a really nice (nice in terms of campgrounds) bathroom with running water and toilet paper which was cool since it was free. however there were no lights, and i'm dumb and forgot my flashlight again so we had to take turns going. when discussing my not bringing my flashlight again i said "i'm needy and retarded" and everyone thought it was really funny and kept repeating that all weekend. they also thought it was hilarious when i described wearing socks with flip flops as "toe wedgies"

the next morning we woke up and i had one of my pbj's that i had brought from ih (i made 5 between thursday and friday, and wrapped them in saran wrap and brought them, along with 3 things of ramen (which they call noodles, not ramen here) and some granola bars). so anyways i had a sandwich for breakfast and after a bit they called everyone over and said we were going to do 2 runs of the grade 2 river because there were so many beginners. they also took one raft to the grade 3/4 to see how long it took, since the river was super low, which changes conditions pretty drastically.

so i got in the first kayak group, as did everyone else (kendall, natasha, courtney, adrienne, travis, michelle, lee, etc) and everyone drove over the dam and down the river to where the hydropower station is. after getting all our gear, we dragged our boats over to the edge of the platform area we were on, and they hooked a rope on and lowered each boat down this huge cement wall, while we walked/climbed down the slightly less steep cliff next to it. it was pretty cool.

from there there was another cement platform right over the water, and some rocks leading down the the water on the side. the people who had the good spray decks (made of wetsuit material) got to launch off the cement platform right into the water, which looked scary but really fun. most of us beginners had the crappy decks though which cannot withstand the force of the water when you do that, so we just took them down the rocks and got in in the water.

we all gathered around, and watched some of the pros going over the waterfall just upstream of us. i ended up in a group with 2 instructors, named jess and izzy, and just me and courtney as beginners, which was quite nice because they were always right there to save us, although their boats were the little short kind called "play boats" that a lot of the instructors have, and apparently they are a lot slower going down the river than our long classic kayaks, so they would have to paddle just to keep up with us when we were just floating along.

they said they had gone to otago uni (in dunedin on the south island) and were in basically the same club there, and they just moved to auckland and had no friends so they joined aucc. they were really nice to us (some of the guy instructors tend to yell, not meanly just loudly, but it makes it more stressful), and they gave us snacks halfway down and stuff. and there was this cave about halfway down and colm went by and told us to pick some foliage and take it in and leave it in the cave as an offering to the river gods. at first i thought he was just messing with us bc our instructors were new, but everyone else was doing it so we did too. courtney got a huge stalk of plant so i just took some of hers and we successfully deposited it.

however a few rapids later i was aiming away from the rocks and got sideways and flipped over, and freaked out a little and ended up swimming. jess said she thought i stayed under waiting for t rescue for awhile but i really didn't think about that for very long. anyway, she towed me on the back of her boat downriver a little way to some flat-ish rocks and james got my boat and paddle and we dumped out the water and got me settled again without too much trauma.

a bit later i was following jess and we ended up getting very close to some trees on the side of the bank, to the point where i had to duck to not get them in the face, which sort of rolled me over in slow motion. however i knew jess was right in front of me so i hung on for ages waiting for her to come roll me, and i finally felt her trying to barrel roll me back as i was reaching to pull off my deck to swim, so that encouraged me to hang on just a big longer, and eventually she and izzy righted me together. then however, we discovered that my paddle was suck in the tree, and izzy had to go back upstream to get it, and actually had to get out of her boat. i felt really bad, but i guess they were happy i didn't swim.

after that there was no more upside-down time, and we met everyone else around the same time at the get-out which was nice because it was where the river turns so we just had to keep going straight ahead, rather than veering off at the right time like at fuljames. after we got out we had to wait for the person whose car natasha's keys were in to get off the river. then we went back to the campsite, where we saw emily who had arrived earlier and others waiting to go on the second run. we got all warm and dry and i was going to take a nap but everyone was playing this game lee was raving about called mafia, so i was eventually convinced to join them.

in the game everyone sits in the circle, and lee was the 'announcer' so he went and gave everyone a card, and if it was a black queen or jack you were a member of the mafia, and a red jack was the detective, and all the other red cards (we weren't playing with the whole deck, there were probably 15 of us) were just ordinary people. then everyone talks about who they think the mafia is, and comes to a consensus on who to kill. then everyone closes their eyes except the mafia, who point and agree who to kill, and then they close their eyes and the detective opens theirs, and gets to guess one person who they think is mafia, and the announcer nods or shakes his head, and then everyone 'wakes up' and finds out who died. the goal of the game is to not die (and for the citizens to kill off the mafia, and vice versa). it was the most fun when i was a mafia member, and campbell was like horrified about my lying and "cold-blooded-killing" in the game. i did not win though :(

the rafters got back quite late, so there was no second run of that for the day, and the second group of kayakers were just getting off the river when the sun went down so i bet that was pretty chilly. the weather report said it was supposed to rain all weekend, but it was kind of grey and chilly on saturday.

we used travis and natasha's little camp flame things to boil water for ramen (which courtney had never had before!) and had dinner. since everyone was going into the pub in "town" for evening activities, we made s'mores right after dinner. natasha was the only kiwi in our group so she was really excited, and they were pretty tasty.

natasha and i went for a stroll to visit everyone else since we were all kind of cliquey and only hanging out with our little group, but we ended up just kind of awkwardly standing in circles by everyone else. then keri announced that it was time to go to the pub, and most people piled into people's vans, but natasha said she didn't mind driving so we just went in her car. when we got there there were maybe 10 locals (we had been warned they can be quite 'dodgy') and then like 60 of us, so we definitely took over. most of our little group was pretty exhausted so we just kinda stood and sat around people watching and not being at all social. the song that everyone goes nuts for here whenever it comes on (i've heard it a lot of places), called why does love do this to me, came on and everyone went nuts, and natasha explained that it's kind of a 'kiwi anthem'.

we couldn't decide if we wanted to kayak again on sunday, or raft the hard grade 3/4 river, and i had the brilliant idea of asking campbell if he would take me in the duo kayak on the hard stuff, but he said that would be super dangerous on account of the low water level. so we decided to just figure that out in the morning. there was a chorus of people singing the 12 days of christmas only with alcohol for all the days, i'm not sure where that started from. and i looked for izzy and jess to buy them beers (it's the tradition to buy them for people who rescue you, or for instructors who get you all the way safely) but i could not find them anywhere. that night was daylight savings, and i guess at 3 am on sunday we went back to 2 am, and according to aucc tradition, nothing that happens between those hours counts. however we were falling asleep at the bar before midnight, so we decided to just go back and go to sleep.

sunday morning we woke up later, and packed the tents and everything and had breakfast. during breakfast (as well as all our previous meals) there were a bunch of wasps hanging around and most everyone was freaking out and i kept telling them to calm down and sitting still is better than flailing. so then we're standing around after breakfast and i look down, and oh hey there's a wasp stinging me. it was quite ironic. however after the initial stinging and swelling i forgot about it and by the afternoon it was basically gone (i wish i could say the same for all the bugbites on my wrists and ankles).

anyway, after a while there was a big group meeting and keri said there would be one grade 2 kayaking run, and there were 8 spots open on the rafts. so they first took the names of everyone who wanted to raft, and drew 8 out of a hat. i put my name in because i was still undecided, but didn't get in (michelle from our car was the only one i knew who did). then they took everyones names for kayaking, but it turned out there was enough gear for everyone who wanted to go, so that was good. adrienne was tired so she and some others just hung out at the campsite all day.

the rest of us drove back up to the hydropower place again, and this time i got one of the fancier looking boats. i also happened to color coordinate my paddle, my spray deck and my water shoes, completely unintentionally. ross was the only instructor to be found for quite awhile, and he said he would take someone in the duo. i considered, but before i had made up my mind molly, who is also in ies, said she wanted to. we also were all trying to get the few nice spray decks so we could get launched in, but i sadly did not. then ross lowered all the boats over the cliff, and eventually some more instructors showed up (a lot of them were kayaking the hard river though). when i went to get in the water i discovered that my spray deck didn't fit my boat after all, so then i had to drag my boat back up from the rocks and someone eventually found me an extra deck that fit.

once in the water i discovered that the fancier boats are a lot harder to steer, although you can lean on the 'rails' (sort of the corner of the side, it helps with turning) a lot more before flipping over. courtney, kendall, natasha and i ended up in a group with alana and guido as our instructors. they were really nice but as soon as we started paddling around i discovered just how sore/tired i was from saturday. they asked us if we could t rescue and we all said yes (although natasha can't, but she only swam once the day before, and she said she will learn at pool training). i volunteered to practice because honestly i was kind of hot in my polypro since the sun was out and it was a beautiful day. i am really much less scared about holding my breath underwater now.

the river was lots of fun again though, and my only flipping experience was leaving the cave (where we left more offerings). apparently the river gods really don't like me. anyway i shrieked as i went over and guido was right next to me when it happened, so i was fine waiting for a t rescue because i knew he was close. i even saved my paddle! so they were proud of me for that. that was the only tip of our whole group for the entire river, pretty impressive. it's really fun going over the rapids when you hit them straight on, it's just scary when you're sideways and feel like you're going to roll over. my steering was so bad in that boat though, every rapid i went through i would spin around and end up facing upstream by the end. i always stayed on top of the water tho, so that's the important part.

we were the first group to finish, so we played around by the get out and practiced t rescues again (natasha did not ha ha) and eventually some others arrived too and we got out. ross and molly played in the wave (that's where the pros play around and do tricks) and they had gone off the edge when getting in and molly had basically gone underwater bc she was in front, but that sounds like so much fun, you get to do the hard stuff because the person in the back knows what he's doing and can roll if need be. i kind of wish i had spoken up sooner, but campbell said he will take me in that some other trip, and it was probably good for me to practice my own paddling more. after we were all out we helped load the boats all on the trailer and just hung around for awhile.

as we were leaving everyone was waving at us and we couldn't figure out why, but then the road was so twisty it took awhile to find a safe place to turn around. when we finally came back to everyone they were surprised to see us, and mo, one of the instructors said he just needed a ride back to his car, so he crammed in with us and we went back to the campsite to pee since most of us were bursting, and then took him to his car. then we were off to meet up with everyone at the "secret spot" which is the coolest thing ever. there is a geothermally heated river meeting a regular cold river, so there's like a gradient hot pool, so you can sit in any temperature you want.

we got directions from 2 people and still missed the turn the first time, but when we finally found it we met the people who hadn't done anything all day there. there was one sign that said due to increased popularity they were going to build a boardwalk down to the pools, so i was glad we got to see it in its original form. there was a second sign that said not to get your head wet, on account of the risk of getting amoebal meningitis. natasha said that's a rule of thumb for all hot pools. i guess it makes sense that stuff that can live in you is growing in the body-temp water, but i was very grossed out. i had to explain to everyone that the vaccine we get is for bacterial meningitis and would not help with this. gradually all the other kayakers showed up, and we basically took over the whole area (there were a few other people there who were not with us who i felt a little bad for, as with at the campsite). there was talk of the raft getting suck and some concern that the rafters hadn't arrived yet, but then after awhile they showed up safely. everyone made a 'massage train' which was pretty cool, although people kept breaking it to adjust their temperature.

as it was getting dark (around 6) natasha said we should get going bc she didn't want to get back super late, so we left before the crowd, and decided to stop in rotorua for dinner. someone in the car mentioned burger fuel, which is also in auckland and i have heard lots about their amazing burgers. we didn't know where the one in rotorua was, but natasha had a sudden memory from a soccer trip there so we got there and when we went in we saw another car of kayakers was already there. it's kind of pricey, because the burgers are enormous, but i wasn't super hungry so i just got kumara (sweet potato) fries which were AMAZING, and they came with this garlic mayonaise stuff to dip in (i think it's called aioli?) as we were eating basically everyone else arrived from the secret spot, and one of the older guys, michael, apparently is a shareholder in the company, so everyone arriving after him got a discount. we decided it was ok though since we didn't have to wait in the huge line so we would get home sooner.

we drove the rest of the way with no stops, and i stayed awake to keep natasha company and we listened to juno and the gimme gimmes again, and the ramones and the lion king soundtrack and talked and were silly most of the way. we dropped another girl who got a ride with us at her house in south auckland, and then we got back to ih around 11, so that wasn't too late. i hung up my wet clothes and went to sleep immediately.

today (monday) i went to roll training again and a lot of people are getting it but i thus far am not. there were way less beginners than before which was nice, and squirrel was my instructor again. my goggles were nice for the whole watching the paddle blade part, and molly had a nose plug she borrowed from someone, so we were trading them back and forth during our turns, but the nose plug didn't stay on my nose so i gave up on that, and then she got taken away by another instructor so she had to deal with no goggles. i kept hitting the bottom of the pool with my paddle, which is bad because you're supposed to sweep across the surface. however squirrel showed me how i could use the bottom to push myself back up in an emergency, which was a bad idea because i kept doing that every time then instead of trying to go across the surface. she would them hold my paddle in the right spot, as i rolled, and gradually was helping less and less until she said she was only using one finger and it was really all me, but as soon as she stepped away i would go back to hitting the bottom. by the end i was completely exhausted, and now my right calf, side, arm, and shoulder all feel like i won't be able to move them in the morning. now i am going to sleep. good night!

update

2008-03-29T20:31:00.000-07:00

this week was pretty busy.

wednesday nights there is karaoke at shadows (the campus bar) and the kayaking club goes after their canoe polo practice, so i got ej and sophie to go and some guys sophie knows came too, and we watched other people sing only they were pretty good so we couldn't make fun. a couple people i knew from aucc were there but i was not brave and didn't go say hi or anything.

i e-mailed one of the microbiology profs (his name is silas villas-boas) a little while ago about volunteering in his lab, and then i went to see him last week and he said i'm welcome to come help if i want, although what he does is mostly biochem and not genetics, which scared me a little, but i figured hey why not. so thursday was my first day. i got there at 9:30 (and their lab building is SO much more secure than hutch is - at home you can just walk into any lab you want, everything is open during the week. here you have to have a swipe card to get past the reception area, and every time i go i have to call silas in his office and he has to physically come down and let me in.)

but anyways he came and took me upstairs and gave me a brief tour of the lab and the surrounding micro labs where we can borrow stuff from. they have a communal kitchen area, where you send all your dirty glassware and get clean, which is nice in that they don't need a dishwasher in each lab, but it's kind of a pain to have to walk down the hall every time you need a flask or something. he gave me a text book (which i later saw he wrote) to read a little background, and a protocol from online, which i copied into step-by-step instructions for what i would be doing, and a paper to read later about what i'm going to be doing.

then he showed me where the samples (ground up plant leaves) i would be extracting were, and left me to it. i was basically adding different chemicals (including chloroform) and vortexing and centrifuging stuff and it was not the most exciting thing ever. the people were nice enough, but i miss the sia lab SO much. and i'm not gonna lie lidza's anal organizing and labelling of everything would have been nice, because i had to keep asking where stuff was every time i needed something and i'm sure that got pretty annoying. i was doing that all day until i had to leave at 4:30 (still not done), and i said i'd be back friday morning to finish, since i don't have class till 2.

then i went to my first computer science lab, which initially had to be completed in the allotted 2 hour time slot which would not have been good for me since i am bad with time limits and not as good at programming as most of the class. then he changed it so we could hand it in within 48 hours for 80% credit, and then at the end of the 2 hours he said there would be no penalty for finishing within 48 hours so that was good. we had 3 problems to do, using dynamic programming (which is basically recursion only you store the answers to each thing you solve so you don't do the same calculations multiple times). to submit we had to use this program they use for cs programming competitions and as more and more people submitted it got slower and slower responding which was kind of annoying. anyway i wasn't done by 7 so i left.

on my way out of the cs building this lost looking asian man (who was probably 30) came up to me and was asking random questions about the cs labs and my major and stuff, and eventually i was like, um i have to go i'm going to miss dinner (i had already missed dinner, but sophie made me a pbj) and left, and i was going to take a shortcut and cut thru the science building to symonds st, and there was a security guy holding the door and when i went in he was like 'you have a swipe card right?' and i said yea because i thought he meant id card, and he was like 'ok just dont get locked in' so i went across the lobby and tried to open the other side, and they were all locked, apparently after 7 you need a special card to get in and out, so then i had to go find the security guard to let me out again.

so as i'm going around the outside of the building (probably only about 30 seconds extra walking), i see the lost asian man again! and i smile and keep walking and he's like 'do you play tennis' (to be fair we were outside the gym) and i said 'no, sorry' and kept walking and he said 'wait, do you want to keep in touch' and like, went to get his phone out, and i was like ummm i am really running late sorry and ran away. it was the strangest thing ever.

so friday i went back to the lab, although i was dreading it a little, but it was much better. it was someones birthday, so everyone went down to the lounge and had chocolate cake (although the girl whos birthday it was was sick and went home instead). and i met the other prof who shares the lab and i think his work is more what i want to do than silas's, but oh well. i guess silas has only been here like 6 months, and he has 2 or 3 grad students, a girl (undergrad) who worked with him over the summer and came for the cake, but i don't know how much she'll be around. then the other prof has a lab tec, and at least 4 phd students. they seemed surprised i do research at home as an undergrad. they only take 3 years for their phd here, but they have to get their masters first (i think thats 2 years), whereas we go longer for phd and just get a masters in the process.

after the lab i went back to the cs lab to work on that, went to class, worked more on the cs lab, went to another class, and then went to see the prof (not alexei, the cool one, right now we have this large american man, but he's nice) and he basically told me how to solve the third problem which turned out to be really easy and i'm retarded for spending so long on it (he did not tell me i'm retarded). there was another girl there with the same problem and we discussed how we couldn't think about anything else in class till we figured this out, and she also has not had as much comp sci as most of the guys in the class. so then i stopped freaking out about the lab after that and went to step class, then back to ih for dinner, and then back to campus to submit my lab. only it still didn't work. so i emailed the prof and left, only to discover he had responded while i was walking back, so i should have just stayed at the lab a little longer. oh well.

friday night this girl sophie knows (i think from tramping club) named sandra, who we went to a fitness class and stuff, was having an 80's party at her flat, which is down the street from ih (before the giant hill!), and kendall and i wanted to get dressed up all silly for it. sophie and her friend who was visiting from australia wanted to go to the bars after so they wouldn't get dressed funny, but we got ej to, although i ended up looking the most ridiculous since i was not planning on going anywhere after. we went to the party for awhile and it was fun, and we were standing in this doorway and some guy (wearing eyeliner - meaning he was either emo or gay) came up behind ej, and like, needed to get thru, and he like went to put his hand on her side to move her over and then somehow his hand was on her boob instead and we were like whattt just happened...so then later when we were leaving to go back to ih he was sitting outside as we left and went up to ej and was like 'hey baby' really creepy...and then as we were walking kendall was explaining to alex (a guy from france who lives in ih) that even if the guy was gay it's like a girl doing it, and it's still not ok, and proceeded to grab ej's boob herself, to demonstrate and we were like kendall what are you doing?! and she was like 'i'm just proving my point' and alex was like 'can i prove my point?' and it was really funny.

so then the rest of them went out to the bars and i found the usual ih guys (barret, brian, who we went north with, and cameron, ace and ollie, who are all 1st year kiwis) and they were going to watch 'once were warriors' which i had heard a lot about, it's about a modern inner city maori family in south auckland and so i got my pjs on and then we all watched that in cameron's room and it was extremely depressing, but really good, and it made me cry.

saturday was my second kitesurfing lesson, and i had to take the train because the wind and tides were right to go to andrew's place south of auckland on manukau harbour. the lesson was at 1, so i took the train that arrived at 12:30, which left at 11:40 from britomart in auckland. i went early and stopped at campus to submit my lab (it finally worked!). the train station is really pretty, it's in this old post office building and looks all old and fancy on the outside, and the inside is really light and modern looking. i got the student 10-ride pass which has a 40% discount, so it costs the same as 6 rides, which is 3 round trips, which i will probably use going to kitesurfing lessons. my contacts had been being weird that morning, and i stupidly took one out after putting lotion on, which really messed them up, so i bought a bottle of contact soln before getting on the train which was a rip off, but it made them a little better.

i called andrew a little before arriving at papakura, and he said he'd come get me and to look for a brown and grey 4wd vehicle. when i got off the train, there were parking lots on both sides of the tracks and a big bridge over the top, so i just wandered around, but then a security guard asked me if i was ok and i said i was waiting for my ride, and after a little bit andrew pulled in and honked.

his house/farm/beach was like a 15 min ride, and when we got there most of the other people for the lessons had arrived. there was a lady about 30 who had had 2 lessons, and a girl who had had 1, a guy who had had a lot, and 2 guys who were complete beginners. Everyone was significantly older than me except the girl, who i thought looked about my age, but then i was talking to her and she said she had moved here 7 years ago from england with an ex-boyfriend and ended up just staying, so she must have been a bit older than i thought.

we all got wetsuits and harnesses and lifejackets and booties, and andrew packed all the equipment into his jeep thing, and then 4 of us rode and the 2 guys hung on thru the windows on the outside, and we drove thru the pastures down to the beach (andrew said he usually makes people walk but he had something wrong with his foot so he didn't want to. it would have been a long walk so that was lucky.) as it was we still had to walk a ways over some squishy sand/mud to get to the edge of the water. each kite is in a backpack sort of bag, and then you strap a board on the back so you can carry it all.

andrew left the 4 of us who had been before to set up kites on our own (and had us pick what size we thought we should use. the other girls had 8m ones but there were only 2 so i took a 6m). after getting everything set up he sat us down and talked for a really long time about how to do stuff that i was fairly sure i would not get to the point of needing, and then told us to go body drag for a bit and then we would come back and get boards. i had a lot of trouble keeping my kite in the air, i think it was less windy than orewa so i should have had a larger kite. it was nice not having huge waves everywhere though, and no pro kite surfers to worry about running into. after a bit andrew came and showed me how to relaunch my kite more easily, and gave me some tips and i played for a long time. the guy who had been a bunch of times just started on a board, but the 3 of us girls ended up not getting to try on the board all day, i'm not sure why.

as it started getting dusky andrew told us to bring in the kites, and i think the tide had gone out because it was LONG walk back to the bags and stuff. i somehow injured my foot the first day i had gone, like pulled something or something, and by the end of that walk it was not feeling great. then we rode back up and everyone else left and andrew said i could come in the house for a minute before he took me back to the train, and i met his wife who is french and was really sweet, and she looked up the train timetable for me on her computer because i hadn't planned on staying that late (it was like 7:40 by that time).

after a little bit andrew took me back to the train station and he told me about how the farm he grew up on (closer to manukau city, which was once a separate city but is now basically an auckland suburb due to urban sprawl, and is part of the dodgy south auckland area where there are tons of samoans and maori and lots of crime) anyway he said there were wild dogs that would attack their sheep so his dad would send him out with a gun in the dark to shoot the dogs and it sounded very dangerous. and he said some school had a hunting competition fundraiser where the kids would bring in various dead animals. sounds kinda like honeoye :P

apparently it only takes 25 min to drive to the city from there, but the train back was almost an hour, so i had obviously missed dinner and was starving, so i stopped at subway on the way back (and broke my not eating at american chains rule) and got a sandwich, and eventually got back to ih and just went to bed.

today i went to step class which i do not think helped my foot any, it is now a little swollen, and then worked on my linguistics paper all day. see, i do do homework! (i just don't write about every chapter i read, bc it's not super exciting). actually one fun linguistics story, so i may have mentioned this before, but here 'wh' is pronounced 'f' because of the original maori sounds, and in class on friday we talked about this billboard that was somehow making a pun on that, listing a bunch of place names beginning with 'whaka' which sounds something like 'fucker', but they took it down when people complained it was offensive. clever. ok back to work.

roadtrip to the far north

2008-03-25T01:45:00.000-07:00

so thursday night was brian's 21st birthday (he's a guy from idaho in IH), and ace (one of the kiwi kids, who is from way out in the country) had told everyone about this game called possum (they spell it without the o here), where everyone takes a case of beer up in a tree, and the last one to fall out of their tree wins. now this has been a joke around ih since orientation, but they decided brian's birthday was a good day to actually try it out. so a bunch of the guys, along with sophie went to the domain (huge park in auckland, about 15 min from ih). kendall, alex (from france), and i went a bit later and after walking thru a pitch back trail with only our phones for light, we discovered a large group of very drunk boys puking everywhere (having each had 15+ beers in a fairly short time). sophie claims it was really funny and we just arrived at a bad time when the vomiting began, but i was pretty grossed out. i just climbed up in sophie's tree to stay clean until they were done, and after awhile we all went back to ih. while walking back through the dark trail ollie (kiwi kid) somehow managed to accidentally fall off a bridge into a stream, which was hilarious. he also somehow lost his jumper (sweater), but i took a picture of where he fell with my camera and we found it in the picture, so then he jumped back in to get that. the injury tally from the night included 4 limps as results of tree falls, and "a bit of skin" missing from ollie's hand. they were all so drunk they didn't care though. anyway, we eventually made it back to ih and some of them went to burger king but i went to bed.

then friday morning we were supposed to get the car at 9, so i got up at 8 (and went and banged on barret and brian's doors to wake them up). i was not ready when sophie and ej wanted to leave at 8:30, so i just left my packing for when we got back with the car. we walked down to beach road, by the railway campus where most of the rental car places are, but after walking the length of it, we couldn't find ace, so we asked someone at another car place and it turns out it was on the other side of where we had turned. we found it eventually, and the lady said we could take it till monday at 4 pm, and then if we wanted to keep it until tuesday we could just call ahead.

ej had volunteered to do the auckland city driving (bc she lives in ny so is used to traffic), but since i was the one renting the car i drove it back from the office to ih (without incident). the car was automatic, as requested, and the whole dash was digital. speedometer, gas gauge, everything was in this big window in the center of the dash. it was a little strange but we got used to it quickly. back at ih we took turns going in to get our stuff and the boys, and i quickly finished packing. then we headed up route 1, which is a motorway until orewa, a suburb on the outskirts of auckland with this really long pretty beach i always admire while driving by. there route 1 turns into just a regular 2 lane road, and slightly past there, we encountered tons of traffic going north, so we were going about 20-30 km/hr (the speed limit is 100) for quite a long time. sophie ej and i had each burned mix cds to listen to (i actually made 2 bc i couldn't cut my music choices down to just one cds worth), and we were just driving with the windows open and it was fun. however after the first stop, the cd player (and radio) stopped working, and all we could get was a weird crackling from the speakers.

when i had last called the kitesurfing place about going thursday, the guy had said they were "going up to ruakaka for the kitesurfing championships" so i did a little google research and found out that it was the new zealand nationals, and that rurakaka was on our route (up the east coast, and down the west), so we found our way there. we first ended up at what looked like an oil refinery right on the coast (we later found out it is in fact nz's only oil refinery), and when we pulled up to the gate and asked the man where to find the kitesurfing competition, he pointed behind us and said "that looks like them right over there" so we turned and found the beach, where a few people were launching kites. we watched for a bit, but according to the mc (who was announcing from the back of a dumptruck), the wind was not strong enough, so we left to go find lunch, where everyone else got fish and chips, and i ate my pbj i had made at ih before leaving.

when we got back to the beach an hour later there was more activity, including a competition for the first person to ride 100m without stopping, the winner of which got a new kite bag. a few guys tried, and made some progress. the organizer of the competition's dog was chasing anyone who was up and riding, and messed up a few. the beach was really pretty, and there were people kiting on land boards (like skateboard with foot straps and big wheels) and kite trikes, and wakeboarding behind the rescue boat, but by 4 the mc announced that there wouldn't be any competitions for the day, and they would try again tomorrow.

we headed out, and continued up route 1 along the east coast. we stopped in whangarei

(pronounced FANG-uh-rye, because in maori they had a sound that we don't have in english that is sort of between "f" and "wh", so when the missionaries came they transcribed it as wh, but now the official governmental approved maori pronunciation says to say it "f", and the old sound has been more or less lost)

anyway, whangarei is the largest city north of auckland, and we stopped there at the 'i-site' (tourist info center) and got lots of brochures. sophie had booked a hostel for 3 of us for friday night, and one for all 5 of us sunday, but neither of them had taken a credit card number so we were considering just camping out/sleeping in the car for at least some of the nights to save money. however, since we had no tent or camping gear beyond sleeping bags, we decided not to try that, at least the first night. we tried a lot of hostels in whangarei, but they had no room, so we eventually decided to drive all the way up to the one sophie booked, which i think may have been the northern-most hostel in nz.

while driving, ej had just told me that she could use a bathroom, when we saw a sign for the famous hundertwasser toilets in kawakawa. i had read about some high tech musical toilets in her guide book, and we were really excited, but it turns out those are different famous toilets on the other side of the northland, and these particular ones were designed by a famous architect, and now the whole decor of the town centers around their public toilets. so we all used them, and the guys got drinks at the grocery store, and we continued on.

we stopped again in paihia, which is the main tourist town in the bay of islands, which a lot of people had told us was nice. we got water at the grocery store there, and the boys looked for food but decided everything was too expensive. we also ran into a group of american girls, 2 of who i had met on the kayaking trip last weekend, which was cool.

by then it was around 8, so we called the hostel (north wind lodge backpackers in henderson bay) to tell them we were still coming, and the lady said she had to stay until we got there so we tried to hurry. it was still 9:30 or 9:45 when we finally arrived (after an unpaved road for the last 10 min of the drive). the boys stayed in the car (since the reservation was for 3 of us, we weren't sure what the policy about extra people sleeping in the car in the parking lot was). us girls went in, and a really friendly older lady met us and asked us to take our shoes off, because the wood flooring had just been redone. she said she's just the mother-in-law there, and we felt bad for keeping her up late to check us in. she took us up to our room, which was huge and all ours, with one double bed and one single. the bathroom was attached to the room, and shared with another room similar to ours. there was also a full kitchen and lounge area and stuff. it was really nice and homey and it's too bad we didn't really have time to enjoy it.

we left my phone with the boys so we could text them, and got all our stuff, and started our nightly brochure reading. we decided to do a bus tour of the 90 mile beach and cape reinga (the absolute northern tip of nz), because the rental company specifically said not to drive on the beach with the car, and the lady at the hostel had told us the road to cape reinga is not paved and is quite dangerous. we found 2 tours that included both of those things as well as some kauri forest touring, sand tobogganing, and lunch. they were both booked for saturday, but the more expensive one ($65 vs $45) had room sunday for all 5 of us so we booked that. we also booked a hostel room for all 5 of us for saturday night in kaitaia, where the sunday tour left from. by the time the lady was gone for the night the boys didn't want to come in and use the bathroom or anything, so we just went to bed.

saturday morning we woke up and while i was out waking up the boys, a lady with a little girl came over to talk to us. she's the owner, and it turns out she's from about 3 minutes from where barret lives in calgery, alberta, canada. the weird thing was i didn't notice that she didn't have a kiwi accent while she was talking to us until she said she was from canada. her husband is from here, and he just became a canadian citizen, but they are hoping to move down here full time in the near future. i was quite nervous the whole time she was talking to us, because the boys weren't technically supposed to be there. the lady also took one look at brian and said 'you should put some sunscreen on you're going to burn like crazy as pale as you are' which was pretty funny.

i left the boys by the car, and went up and told the girls they had to sneak out, and i took their shoes to the bottom of the stairs for them so they could sneak out the back porch. i then went to ask the lady where we could go for breakfast because the boys were starving, having never really gotten dinner the night before (although brian had 6 slices of ej's loaf of bread with peanutbutter). when i went back to get my stuff the girls' shoes were gone, and when i got back to the car they said they said some lady (a guest, not the owner) talked to them and asked what they were doing jumping off the back of the porch and they were like 'oh just taking a walk'. so we got out of there before anyone asked any more questions about exactly how many of us there were.

we headed back south toward the bakery the owner told me would be open, even on easter saturday (the vast majority of businesses were closed for good friday, and then all of easter weekend), and in addition we were way up in the middle of nowhere. as we were turning off the dirt road we passed the mother in law, and were glad we had left before the two ladies discussed the three american girls versus the girl and 2 boys one of whom was from canada. we found the bakery, which had pies as promised (they have these little single serving pies with meat and cheese everywhere here). it was after 11 by then so we were all starving. i got a sausage roll, followed by a chocolate eclair, both of which were delicious.

then we decided to drive back toward the east, and just stop at a nice beach when we came to one. we also needed gas, but the first station we saw was 181c/liter, and near auckland it's only like 174, so we decided to wait till the next town. however the gas gauge was blinking by the next gas station, and it turned out the price there was 184, but we filled up anyway. we tried one beach by the gas station, but it was not very sandy, so we went on a little further.

we stopped at cable bay beach, which was pretty and cute, and fairly uncrowded. the sand was a cool pinkish seashell color, which it turns out is unique to that beach. we laid in the sun for awhile, and the boys boogie boarded with boards they had bought at the gas station. we explored the volcanic rocks that went out into the water, and played in the waves for awhile.

by mid afternoon we had had enough sun and after changing, we headed for kaitaia, back to the west again. the boys had fiddled with the fuse box, and the music was working again, which made the drive much more enjoyable. kaitaia turned out to be a fairly large town, with a ton of little shops on the main street, beginning with a huge kfc, which the boys were very excited about, and us girls were not at all. after finding our hostel (at the kaitaia hotel/pirates backpackers/nero bar), we strolled back down the main street so the boys could get their kfc. the town seemed kind of run down and i was not a big fan, although part of that might be because everything was closed for easter.

after kfc we went back and checked in, and our room had 2 sets of bunk beds, one with a double on the bottom. somehow sophie and i ended up sharing all the double beds this trip (because ej was sick with a cold so we didn't want to share with her, and the boys just straight up refused). we had our own bathroom "ensuite", which was actually kind of annoying because we all wanted to shower, and there was only 1, whereas if the bathroom had been down the hall there probably would have been many.

after we were all clean we decided since we had lots of time for the evening we would cook ourselves dinner in the hostel kitchen. so we went back down the street to the grocery store and got stuff to make tacos, and then came back and made them (delicious). after that we went back and hung out for awhile, and i hid the cadbury eggs we had gotten at the grocery store, and everyone found them. then we went to the bar attached to our hotel, which was empty, and the others got drinks but i didn't and we sat outside at a table on the sidewalk for awhile. the bartender told us there was live music at a bar down the street so eventually we wandered down there. the band was kind of pop-punky, and they did all cover songs, starting with justin timberlakes 'bringing sexy back' followed by some bob marley, and finishing up with 'what's my age again' by blink182. they weren't fabulous, but they were entertaining.

after they stopped playing ej was taking a picture of all of us, and this old, very drunk maori guy started talking to us, only we all had a lot of trouble understanding him due to the following reasons: a) his accent b) he was very drunk c) his false teeth, which somehow he accidentally spit out on the table while talking to us. after putting them back in he explained something about crayfish, brian (who for some reason could understand him better than the rest of us) said that's how he lost his teeth, fishing or something? he also hugged me and ej, and said to sophie 'you're so tiny, it's like you're from another planet'

so we were dying from not laughing at this crazy guy, and were trying to leave and he was like following us out, offering to let us stay at his flat and stuff (another lady there was laughing at him and shaking her head at us), and the guys like shook his hand and stuff, and barret was the last to leave and the guy like wouldn't let him go and someone else at the bar was like 'he wants you to touch noses with him' which is the maori greeting thing that you do while shaking hands, but barret did not know that and was really weirded out and it was hilarious.

as we were laughing hysterically about all of this and walking up the street to our hotel, we see this very jacked old guy wearing a green tank top carrying this giant cauldron down the street. we must have all been staring, because as he passed us he said "i've got a baby in here...i'm taking it home to eat for dinner" which caused us a whole new bout of laughter. we made it back and went to sleep after watching part of a movie on the one channel that came in on our tv in our room.

sunday morning we got up early so we could get to our tour by 9, and were all planning on having peanutbutter sandwiches with the end of ej's bread. i made myself a sandwich, and enjoyed it, but while making their own, the others discovered a lot of mold on the bread. i was very grossed out, but it was too late to do anything about it. we walked up the street to our tour, and our bus driver/tour guide was an older maori guy named dennis. our first stop was the ancient kauri kingdom place, which is basically a big gift shop with stuff made from 45,000 year old kauri trees, and a cafe and car wash. dennis told us we'd be coming back at the end of the day as well, so we didn't stay long.

our next stop was the gumdiggers park and buried kauri forest. the owner took us on a tour in the forest, which is mainly tea trees now. there are 2 kinds, i forgot one, and the other is manuka. the tea made from boiling the manuka leaves has all kinds of antibiotic properties, as does the honey made by bees who pollenate them. i've seen the manuka honey in gift shops and stuff, so that's pretty cool.

buried below the current forest are 2 entire kauri forests, which died due to large natural disasters, and were then covered by sand, which preserves the wood. the second forest is thought to have been killed by a giant tsunami from the tasman sea, caused by some sort of meteor or asteroid.

the kauri trees excrete this sap stuff, which hardens and forms kauri gum, which was once worth more than its weight in gold. we had heard this from various sources, but did not know WHY it was valuable or what it was used for. it turns out kauri gum is another name for amber, and was used in all kinds of varnishes and adhesives and stuff, until man-made products took over. a lot of yugoslavians/croatians (called dalmations?) came to dig for kauri gum in the buried forests and the term 'gumboots' was coined.

after that we had a long bus ride during which most of us fell asleep. we stopped once to see over this bay to the northernmost settlement in nz, only ej and i couldn't see anything ha ha. we kept driving north, and stopped for lunch at this cute little bay with a beach and campground. we got sandwiches and muffins, which were pretty good, probably because we were hungry. after that we drove a little further to the cape reinga parking lot, and then walked down the trail to the lighthouse at the very northern tip of nz. it was really pretty there, even though they're in the process of paving the road so there's a lot of construction. we ran into the same girls from the kayaking club again and took lots of pictures.

after cape reinga we drove back south, and into this sandy creekbed that the busses use as a roadway. we stopped to go sand tobogganing, which was less exciting than when i did it in australia, because we had these box shaped sleds that didn't go super fast, and also because i dragged my hands so i didn't go fast/flip over. after that we drove out onto the 90 mile beach, which is actually closer to 90 km (60 something miles). tons of tour buses drive on it (and lots of people in their cars), and dennis said it's actually considered a highway. we stopped and took lots of pictures and stuff, and then drove the length of the beach (more naptime). we stopped at the ancient kauri kingdom again on the way back so dennis could wash the bus off (the sand is very corrosive if left on cars).

after the tour we stopped and got chinese takeaway for our easter dinner, and ate it on some benches in kaitaia. then we drove down the west coast, and all the way around the hokianga bay rather than paying $14 for the ferry across it. this seemed like a good idea until we discovered we had to drive for probably 45 min on a windey gravel road. we made it though, and found our way to the openoni lodge backpackers which is on an organic farm (we had booked earlier in the day for all 5 of us). as we were arriving another hostel that we had booked (and had only had room for 3 of us) but not given a credit card number called me and i apologized for not calling but we had no reception in the mountains while driving so it really was impossible, and the lady yelled at me for quite awhile, wasting my expensive phone minutes. finally she hung up and i felt really bad, but if that's a problem they should just take a credit card number as a deposit.

brian was hungry yet again, but we had missed dinner at the hostel (which costs $20 anyway) so he bought some eggs and bread from the owners and made himself some dinner. ej and i finished off the chinese leftovers, and i ended up with a stomach ache, which may also have been from the moldy bread that morning. we just hung out in our room and gossiped about all the ih kids (we had a 5 person room again, with sophie and me in the double bed yet again) and eventually we fell asleep.

monday we just got up when we woke up, and started to make our way back to auckland. we stopped along the way to see tane mahuta, "lord of the forest," the tallest kauri tree in nz, estimated to be 2000 years old. the boys really wanted mcdonalds for breakfast, but we did not find any, even in the larger towns we dove through. we then decided we would probably make it back for ih lunch, so we wouldn't stop, but then we encountered lots of slow traffic as soon as we got anywhere near auckland, so we gave up and stopped to eat at a little mediterranean cafe. as we were leaving that town, we saw a mcdonalds :)

we dropped all our stuff at ih, then all drove down to the rental car place and walked back. i just sort of veged by my computer doing a little work and lots of nothing for the rest of the day.

kitesurfing

2008-03-25T01:16:00.000-07:00

so monday when we got back i called the kitesurfing place and left a message that i would be free all day tuesday, but when he hadn't responded by this morning i assumed there weren't lessons today, and went to foodtown to get more granola bars, laundry detergent, and stuff for the s'mores party which we will hopefully be having tomorrow night (they don't have s'mores, or even graham crackers here, so we're improvising with digestive cookies). while there i ran into praveen, one of the ras here at ih.

after foodtown i was going to meet sophie in albert park to catch up on all the reading we haven't done for classes, but just as i was walking into the park, my phone rang and it was andrew from oceanxtreme, and he said he could pick me up at 1:20 (it was like 12:30 then) so i said sure, and hurried back to ih to change. i grabbed a pbj on the way out, and then waited on the corner for awhile. eventually the blue and white oceanxtreme van pulled up, and i got in.

andrew, the instructor/owner was really cool, and said although usually he has lessons at his place, on the south side of manukau harbour (by the airport, south of auckland cbd), there was a group today at orewa (the beach i have admired every time i've driven north of the city). andrew said he has a smallish farm with beef cattle (no dairy) and some sheep, as well as the kite surfing business. he also said he the championships were 4 days long and they hadn't had any substantial wind until the 4th day, so the rest of the time everyone was just sort of hanging out waiting. that reminded me a lot of waiting for the hay to dry in summer. he also said he made it to the semi-finalists, but they didn't bother to have the run-off heats, so he's somewhere between the 5th and 8th best kitesurfer in nz. he asked me some stuff about what i'd learned/remembered from texas, and it turns out, not a lot. ha ha.

when we got to orewa we met the others, these 2 italian girls and their little brother, and a guy from the crew of the yacht their family is staying on (i'm not sure if it's theirs or they are just guests, but andrew had impression they had a lot of money). their english was pretty much perfect, it took me awhile to even realize they had an accent. howie, the yacht crew guy had taken lessons in the past with andrew, and was from new jersey. he took the little brother (about 10) regular surfing, and andrew first got us 3 girls flying trainer foil kites like we borrowed in south padre. after a little bit he set up one big kite (6 m), and then left us to set up the other two after watching him. we also got wetsuits, lifejackets, and harnesses.

first we all went out and traded off with one of the kites, and one at a time went in with andrew to get the others. we took turns holding onto the back of the harness of the person flying the kite, and doing body drags. the basic move andrew taught us is vertical figure 8's, toward the side of the wind window. he said the figure 8's give more steady power than the dipping from 11 to 2 the way we learned. the wind was blowing in towards the beach, so we were sort of constantly trying to walk back out further into the surf (and by surf i mean large waves - andrew said at his place in the harbour it's flat water, but it's kind of good to practice in the waves, especially when we were just body dragging and didn't have to worry about a board).

there were tons of other kitesurfers, andrew said orewa is a really popular spot when the wind is right. and at first i thought it would be hard to avoid tangling lines but i guess they all had enough control to not get too close to us. eventually the other girls took their kites in, and andrew came and got me to take mine in also. they were tired and cold and had to get back to the boat for dinner, but andrew said if i didn't mind staying he wanted to get in and play for a bit, which was fine with me.

so he set up all his gear, and then launched my kite for me, and i went and did more body dragging. he also showed us earlier how to body drag upwind, which is the only way to get back to your board if you lose it, so it's important to know how to do. basically you fly the kite in a steady spot to one side, near the side of the wind window around 2ish oclock, and you have to fly it with only your top hand. then you point your bottom arm in front of you at about 15 degrees, and point your feet behind you on the same angle, and it steers you upwind, kind of like a rudder. i'm not sure i completely had the hang of it, but i was getting better by the end.

andrew also told us that there were shellfish in the water that we could pick up, squeeze, and something would pop out that we could eat (raw). he found one and told me to try it, and i had a tiny nibble but i got mostly salt water, and while focusing on that lost control of my kite so we did not try that again.

when it was getting dusky out he had me walk my kite up to the beach (as he was doing the same) and he caught mine while his was still flying, and then i caught his. we folded everything up and i changed, and then we drove back and he dropped me at ih. i only had $60 with me in cash because i figured he would take credit card, but he didn't and said that if i wanted the discounted 3 or 5 lesson package i had to pay upfront, so i ran inside and got all the cash i had, as well as borrowed everything ej and sophie had, and ended up with $490. he said i could pay the rest for the 5 lesson package ($600 total) the next time, which will be saturday, provided the wind is blowing.

now i have tons of reading to catch up on, so i'm gonna get on that!

fulljames!

2008-03-16T18:03:00.000-07:00

this trip was so much fun (so this is probably going to be long)

so thursday night ross (the guy in charge of the trip) emailed us all a list with all the car assignments and phone numbers, and i was riding with someone called campbell and at least one other person. i arrived at the meeting place with my backpack and bag of food around 6, and saw large groups of people, so i went up to one of the aucc members i semi-know and asked where to find campbell's car and he was like oh this is campbell, who took me over to his van where there was a kiwi guy named paul, an asian girl named yawen, and a girl from canada named rachel who i had randomly met at the international student orientation. the "party buses" were leaving around the same time and they were all decked out in the pirate theme of the weekend.

we first stopped at yawen's house in the suburbs to get her stuff, because she had randomly decided to come at the last minute. there, her mom gave us a bunch of little mandarin oranges and then we stopped so everyone else could get groceries, which were a lot cheaper at the grocery store out in the suburbs than downtown. campbell bought eggs and stuff and said he would make omelets for us on his camp stove. he also told us girls we could sleep in his tent and he would sleep in the van, because none of us had one.

the drive was 3.5 or 4 hours, and we were blasting paul simon as we left auckland which was a lot of fun. the cd player skipped every time we went over a bump, which became progressively more often the further we got from the city, but i continued to giggle every time. campbell told us how he worked for 10 years as a stunt man in movies, until he broke his femur really bad. now he's going back to school to be a director. he was in a bunch of famous movies including all 3 lord of the rings movies, where he was an orc, and a soldier, and a horseman and stuff. he said in one scene he's the orc firing a cannon, and through cgi, is also 2 of the soldiers being shot at.

we stopped at a pub where the party busses were but didn't stay long because we wanted to arrive before it got super late. after that all us girls in the back fell asleep, and i guess campbell basically got to hear paul's life story for 2+ hours. i think campbell kept trying to turn the music up so he would stop talking, only i kept waking up to hear paul yelling over the music ha ha. when we stopped campbell told us girls that someone else was going to have to sit in the front on the way home.

when we finally got to the campground it was 11 or later, so it was dark, but keri (the president of the club) and some others met us at the gate waving a pirate flag directed us in. we parked between where the portapotties and where the marquee (party tent and bar) was going to be. fabulous location right?

so when we get out of the car, we discovered paul was stumbling drunk, or as they say here, "pissed". we hadn't really been paying attention, but i guess he had been drinking the whole time in the car (that's allowed here, as long as the driver is sober). he also had lost his phone during one of the many times he had to get out to pee, but campbell said he thought it was close to the campsite and he would look in the morning. paul was looking for his friend nick, who is actually in the club but rode on the party bus (paul just came long for the trip, as did a lot of people. i would say less than half the people there were auckland uni students).

so campbell helped us set up his tent, and then paul was laying on the ground giggling so we set his up for him too. we also found adrienne, a girl who lives in IH and knows rachel too, and natasha, the friend i made last week, and some of them made ramen with adrienne's little camp stove (i had had dinner at IH before leaving so i was ok). adrienne decided to join us in our tent since she didn't have one either, which was a pretty tight fit, but it was freezing there so we figured the more bodies the better.

we just kinda hung out for awhile, and a guy came up to us and asked where campbell was and we weren't sure and he said he was looking for a guy named paul and we were like ooooh you're nick and we directed him into paul's tent and the two of them proceeded to stumble around drunk together while we laughed at them. we also welcomed the party busses when they arrived with 'arrrg' pirate cheers (and a large group mooning, which i did not participate in). speaking of the moon, there are SO many more stars visible here, it's amazing. campbell showed us the southern cross, and we found orion's belt, but no one here seems to know any other constellations besides that.

we went to bed pretty early, probably a little after midnight, and i was wearing my sweat pants, thermal top, sweatshirt, northface, and my sleeping bag which is fairly warm, and i was still pretty cold all night. the no pillow issue did not help the sleeping situation either.

however when we woke up in the morning, the sun was beating down on the tent and it was back to the usual high 70's daytime temps. we gradually got dressed in our togs (bathing suits) and campbell made us omlettes which were delicious. the people in charge had a microphone, and they called a group meeting at 10ish and everyone just kinda gathered. they told us there would be 2 runs of the river (which is called waikato, i just looked it up) for the day, and since there were so many beginners we'd have to split and whoever didn't get to kayak could go rafting. we all crammed on the buses and rode a ways down the dirt road to further upriver where we launched. our campsite was right by the last and largest rapid of the run (fulljames), and we were warned when we arrived not to go past the yellow caution tape they had put up because there was a cliff someone had fallen off and died from in the past.

anyway, when we had all assembled i did not end up with a kayak, so i was happy rafting first, which the kayakers describe as boring, so i figured it would be less scary for the first time anyway. first they said to go on the water everyone had to have a life jacket and a helmet, but there weren't enough helmets so they said the rafters didn't need one after all. i went in the largest raft, which was supposed to have 8 people but we ended up with like 17. our raft guide was a guy named isaac, who ironically looked like he should belong to hanson. he said he was certified for grade 2 (this river) and he definitely knew what he was doing. there weren't enough paddles for everyone so i just sat in the middle. our raft was "self-bailing" meaning it had holes on the bottom to let excess water out (in our case, it let a lot in as well). isaac would yell things like 'paddle forward' 'left side paddle' 'paddle backward' and 'attack the kayakers' (only the instructors, we were nice to the beginners). there was lots of splashing both with the kayakers and the other rafts, and all the rafts were trying to steal peopel from each other and other pirate-type fun. the water wasn't too cold, and most of us had polypro thermal tops, which is nice bc it doesn't suck the heat out while wet like cotton does, and it dries really fast.

we stopped at this rusty old bridge along the river and all jumped off it, which was fun, and there were all these hot pools, where the rocks are hot from geothermal activity, and make the water at the edges of the river like a hot tub. some of them were actually boiling, which we avoided. the rapids were really not very intense at all, probably less exciting than the grizzly run ride at darien lake, until the last one, which was a bit rougher and really fun. there were more hot rocks where we landed, and we had to carry the raft all the way back up the hill to the campsite (everyone lifts it up and we carry it on our heads, which is how we got it down to the water at the beginning too. that was painful because we were barefoot and there were blackberry bushes which made most of our feet bleed. on the way back up all the rocks were sharp, and some of them were really hot, so our feet were pretty abused by the time we got back to camp.

after lunch everyone loaded all the gear back on the trailer and we all got in the van to go back up river. this time i got a kayak (although some people still didn't, including yawen and natasha, who just rafted again). the spray skirt i got did not have good elastic in the waist, so i just tied a knot in the cord, because it fit my boat right which is the important part. i also got a bright pink helmet, and for the rest of the day the instructors called me pink because they couldn't remember my name (i told them that was fine as long as they rescued me quickly when i tipped over).

we dragged the kayaks down to the water (more feet pain) and i was informed by the experts that the boat i had is really heavy and hard to steer, but if i could paddle it i could paddle anything. i was just glad to have one at all. once in the water we just split into little groups with 2 instructors and a few beginners each. i was going to go with colm, the guy who was teaching me at roll training in the pool, but then another group was leaving first and they wanted me with them, so i enquired who would be the fastest to get to me when i flipped over, and was told that toni, one of the instructors of the second group was the second fastest kayaker under 21 in the country. ha ha so i told colm i was sorry but he could teach me at the pool again but i was going with toni and nick.

there were 4 of us with the 2 instructors, but 2 of the guys sort of knew what they were doing (one of them was isaac from the raft, who can roll and everything. he nearly gave nick a heart attack because he was practicing rolling and nick didn't know he could so he like flew over to help him and then didn't need to). so that left 2 of us real beginners, me and a guy named brenden who was even worse than me. we first practiced eddying in and out, which means getting out of the current to the still water on the sides. to do that you have to lift your upstream knee, and aim upriver of where you want to go. while practicing that i flipped once, but toni lived up to her rep and got to me really fast and just flipped me back, i didn't even have to t-rescue.

it took us quite awhile to make it down the river, at least 3 hours probably more. the rapids were a little scary, but i made it through all of them unscathed. we stopped at more hot pools right before some fairly big (for me) rapids and relaxed, and then colm who was also there with his group was like ok everyone, we are going to jump in the rapids, swim across, climb that giant rock, jump off it back into the rapids, swim back to this side, then get in the kayaks and get going. i thought he was kidding. he was not. ha ha and when i did not want to go he made me (we were wearing life jackets and helmets so it was not really dangerous). it was actually really fun and made me less worried about the rapids, because even if i flipped and had to swim it was obviously fine.

by the time we made it to fulljames i was pretty tired, but i followed nick and made it safely through, and landed on the hot-rock beach area again (when i say beach i do not mean nice sand. i mean hard pointy rocks, some of them boiling hot). i got a guy to temp up with me to carry our boats up, because it's easier if there are 2 people standing between 2 boats, one holding the front and one the back.

when i finally got to the top i was ready to sleep, but my clothes and shoes were in one of the buses, which i discovered was locked. in addition i could not untie all the knots in the spray skirt, and thus was stuck in it. this guy i had talked to earlier was watching me try to get into the van so i went over and was like how do i get this off and he got his jack knife, i thought to cut it, but it had this big pokey attachment which he used to undo the knots for probably close to an hour (there had been a lot of knots in the cord before, i just somehow made a huge one all scrambled up with the rest of them, making it impossible to get off). eventually it got dark so he couldn't see anymore, so he gave up and just cut it. by that time the buses were open so i got my clothes and changed, and went back to our tent, where everyone had saved me some sausages and capsicum (bell peppers)) that campbell had made for everyone. they were delicious.

during the day people had put up the impressive tiki bar (made from old pallets) and the marquee, which was a big tent with a speaker system and lights powered by a generator. so by the time i was warm and dry and fed the party had more or less begun, and our little group (me, natasha, rachel, yawen, adrienne, and another kiwi girl named kate) hung around and chatted, and we discovered that they don't have s'mores here (or graham crackers), but natasha had marshmallows, so we roasted them over adrienne's little gas stove. they were kind of a different texture, and some were strawberry flavoured, which i guess is the typical package of marshmallows here. we were trying to describe graham crackers, and struggling, until a guy came over who said he and his american girlfriend had spent a long time trying to make s'mores here and the closest thing is digestive cookies (like the hob nobs from london, only without chocolate on them). so we decided we would have a s'mores party in auckland sometime.

the dance party in the tent consisted of a few people awkwardly dancing for awhile so we avoided that. someone had a flaming baton/torch thing they were twirling, and then campbell was doing flame blowing (by spitting kerosine out of his mouth) which was pretty cool. there was a presidental/vp strip tease in the dance tent, which i guess is a yearly tradition, and that brought loads of people in there, but it was crowded and turned into a 'everyone take off your shirt' party so we left and found a campfire, which we sat by for several hours. that was fun, we talked to a bunch of the exec/instructor/hard-core kayaking members and it was nice and warm. eventually we drifted off to bed, which was cold and not very comfortable again, but we were exhausted so it didn't matter too much.

sunday we woke up sweltering again, and we made pasta for breakfast because rachel and adrienne had brought it and we hadn't eaten it yet. i just had a sausage. there was another meeting, and they said we were doing one more run, and to pack up our stuff and clean up ALL the garbage, including bottle caps, so we did that and were ready pretty quickly so we pick up tons of beer bottles and stuff. then we all took the busses back to the launch one more time, and everyone who hadn't kayaked got first dibs, so adrienne and i just rafted again. i was excited to get a paddle in the scramble for equipment, and i forgot to get a lifejacket which was stupid because you're not allowed to do anything without a lifejacket. i was very sad and asked 3 different people where to find one and things weren't looking good until craig came back saying 'where's the sad looking girl who needs a lifejacket' and i was then very happy.

i was in the big red raft again, and there were tons of people so it was pretty full of water, but remained floating. we had even more intense splashing/people stealing wars with the other rafts, and sort of left the kayakers behind. i managed to stay in the raft the whole time. there are these jet boats that do tours up and down the river, and twice they went by and sprayed us and got us completely soaking wet, but it was warm and sunny for the most part. campbell said the jet boats have like jetski engines, so they have to keep moving or they sink, and once they sunk one at the fulljames rapid and had to get a crane to fish it out.

at one point we kidnapped keri from her boat, and she told us the reason we were so full of water was because the bottom part of the raft was not inflated. she also wanted some of the girls to come back with her because i guess her boat was all guys and really boring. then we threw her overboard and made her swim back, and she looked really sad so we tried to rescue her again but her boat got to her first. there was this weird indian guy who taught us this really funny sailor sing-along song which i do not remember now, but that was fun. we were looking for hot pools, but the river was a lot higher than on saturday (there was talk that the dam had been released) so all the ones we went to before were now underwater. we eventually found some, and stayed there awhile, but the kayakers still did not catch up to us. i was kinda glad i went on the easier kayaking day, but it would have been fun to go again and not be as nervous since i knew i could make it through safely. as we were going over the giant last rapid they told us to avoid the big rock from yesterday which was now underwater, and as we went over one of the girls in the raft somehow fell out and landed right on the rock, but she was fine, other than losing her shoes.

after we got back i went back to take pictures of the kayakers coming over fulljames and just sat in the sun for awhile. natasha made it safely, and yawen went through floating, without her boat, but she had fun. campbell had taken rachel in a double kayak which would have been really fun because he knows what he's doing so if they flipped he just rolled them back. eventually when everyone was back they had a prize awarding with fun gifts for funny stories from the trip. many of them should not be repeated, but the prizes were good stuff, like polypro and umbrellas and camping supplies. ross got a whole tent for organizing the trip, and one girl got a cookbook and spatula because she cooked for a lot of people, and colm got thermal because he had given all his clothes to a beginner who was cold and wet in the river.

our van was one of the first to leave, and we took nick and adrienne back with us so it was a little crowded, but i sat in front so i was comfy. rachel really wanted to see lake taupo, which was really close, so we first stopped at the huka falls, which i think i saw when i was here with p2p, but it was really pretty. the water is moving crazy fast, and campbell said it's illegal to kayak over the falls bc it's so dangerous, but that people still do, including many members of the aucc. it was all the more impressive after being so terrified of our tiny little rapids on saturday.

then we went to lake taupo, which i think is one of the largest lakes in the southern hemisphere and is really nice resort town. we got takeaway (i got a cheese burger) and ate by the lake. we left by 7:30, and made it back to auckland by 11. we dropped everyone at home so it was midnight by the time we got to IH, where i didn't even bother to shower (keep in mind there had been no running water at the campground for the past 3 days) before falling asleep.

today in computer science they told us we have a programming lab to do next week that we have to finish within 2 hours, so i need to do the practice assignments for that, and we have to get our plans sorted out for easter break, which begins this friday. ej and sophie made tentative plans to go to the bay of islands, up north, and we're going to rent a car, which i have to do because i'm the only one who's 21. however when i called the one place they said they have none left, so it's looking like this is going to be just like planning for the south island. we'll figure it out though.

tonight there is roll training for kayaking club, which i'd liek to do, followed by a st. patty's day pub crawl, and most of my friends are going to the pub crawl (even the ones not in the club) but i feel like i should be doing some work at some point, especially if i go kite surfing tomorrow like i'm supposed to. we shall see.

uneventful week

2008-03-12T23:27:00.000-07:00

this week has not been too eventful.

monday night kendall and i went to roll practice for kayaking, which was at the northcote college (aka high school) pool, a suburb on the north shore. originally 2 other girls from IH had wanted to come, so when i emailed the guy i had said 4, but we figured it didn't matter, based on the lack of organization for any aucc events.

so we showed up at the quad at 6:30 like we had been told, and saw lee and a bunch of other american kids sitting at a table, and sure enough they were going as well. some of the instructors (exec members) showed up and told us to find a car, so kendall and i went with another ies girl molly, and another american jen, with a guy named nick.

when we got there, ross (my guide from the first day) was complaining about how many of us there were, and we were eventually split up into 2 groups. kendall and i waited, with a couple other girls, and watched everyone else. since there were so many beginners they were teaching us paddling and t-rescuing, rather than even trying to teach us to roll independently. 2 of the girls who had been in the club for awhile (kelly and sophie) already were working on rolling by where we were sitting though, and they made it look pretty effortless. then kelly got out and was like who want's a kayak, so i went over and took off my warm layer (it's an outdoor pool, and by the time it was dark it was pretty chilly). she gave me her spray skirt (we weren't using life jackets or helmets), and i got in and she was like "ok you roll over and tap 3 times (that's the signal for help) and i'll roll you back" so i did, only when she tried to roll me back she couldn't! so after a few tries i just went out the bottom and she was like 'i'm so sorry!' but it was fine.

so i got back in at the edge, and she took me over to a "real" instructor, colm. he had me do some basic paddling, and then had me hold on to the side of the pool and practice flipping my hips (with the boat) over and back. the most important part is to just flip your hips, without pushing with your arms, and keep your ear in the water until the very end. this is because a) it's easier that way (your head is heavy and adds to the amount of weight you have to shift) and b)

because in a real t-rescue you're pushing off another kayak, not the side of the pool, and you don't want to sink them.

then he had me flip all the way over, and use his arm to push back. i kept freaking out and just pushing really hard to get my head above the water but once i slowed down and thought through the steps it was better. we also 'borrowed' the front of someone else's kayak to try for real, and it's a lot easier with that than with his arm. then i was like 'wouldn't it take longer for someone to get to me in the river in real life though' and he said yeah, but the average person (resting) can hold their breath for a minute and a half, and even with the flailing around underwater i should be ok for 30 seconds at least. so he gradually started waiting longer and longer before giving me his hand, which was pretty traumatizing and did not go too well. the first time i was freaking out by 8 seconds, and when he made me go for 10 that was about my limit. i think the problem is either i blow out so i don't get water up my nose, which then uses up a lot of my air, or else i get water up my nose, which is just really painful. then at the end he told me to go under as long as possible, and then do a wet exit (detaching the skirt and just going out the bottom). i did not wait more than 5 seconds, before giving up, but oh well there will be more practice.

after everyone was out of the pool and dry, everyone decided on a pub to go to (what they do every week after roll training), and everyone eventually ended up at this little cafe/bar place that was cute. a lot of us just had free water, and some people got beer and potato wedges and kendall and i split a piece of chocolate cake. everyone was just kinda hanging out, and planning for the big trip this coming weekend to fulljames. also while we were there james, one of the ones in charge collected money from everyone for pool rent, and molly and i finally paid our $20 membership to really join the club. eventually we left (the place was basically closing), and nick dropped us back at school. we were again exhausted, and showered and went to bed.

the rest of this week i've just been going to classes and going to bed early for the most part. last night the girls (ej sophie and kendall) went to margaritas like we did last wed, but i was exhausted so i stayed in and watched a movie with some other kids. halfway thru it stopped working, but that was fine and we just went to bed.

tuesday i officially signed up with ross to go to fulljames, and i bought some bread and peanutbutter and granola bars for the trip. walking back from the grocer store was probably the sweatiest i have ever been in my life while not working out.

today i went to buy a polypro thermal shirt (recommended for kayaking this weekend-side note, i'm mad i didn't bring my thermal leggings bc those would have been nice too. oh well) and also some long board shorts to wear over my bathing suit. i went to r&r sport, a place far down k' road that people had recommended for camping gear, and got a shirt for $32, and then on queen street i went by kathmandu, where we had gotten our sleeping bags really cheap. against my better judgement i went in, and sure enough their polypro shirts were on sale, under $20. i didn't think i could return stuff at r&r though, so i just kept going. billabong and quicksilver and all those brands have stores on queen street, but they didn't have many girl's long board shorts. i eventually ended up at the mall/shopping center where the warehouse is, and there's a store called amazon with all those surf-brands in one place. they also did not have many girl board shorts, so i gave in and tried on some boys, and eventually decided on a pair that aren't TOO manly.

i took the free city circuit shuttle back to campus, which was nice, and on my way back sophie called me and told me she was at kathmandu and that they had cheap thermal and i explained that i had been there and was mad already. then i went back to my room, had lunch (surprisingly good spring rolls) and then went to the 'power hour' aerobics class at the gym. i was much better at the step-coordination than last week so that was good. after showering i called r&r and explained my situation, and dumbly told them teh reason i wanted to return was bc i had found it cheaper elsewhere, and the guy was like 'welllll we don't usually do that' and i was like ok it's fine.

but after thinking about it i decided to walk back over there and try in person, and when i got there i was sent to the manager, who remembered my phone call, but when i looked very sad he was like it's really not the store policy but since you came all the way over here i will. and i said thank you a million times and told him i would be back with more business and he was like 'that's kinda the idea' so then i quickly went back to kathmandu, got the cheaper shirt, and then went to computer science tutorial at 5 (my only class of the day).

we had to work in pairs, so i was just with the guy next to me, who's name i never got, and the problems were kinda hard but we eventually got some done. we're learning about sequence alignment in class, and were told to come up with our own algorithm to solve the problem, which was kinda overwhelming. we eventually came up with one that would work, but would take exponentially bad time, and the tutor said that it would work but it wasn't really what he was looking for. we eventually figured out more or less what he wanted us to say.

out of 7 problems i think most of the class finished 1 or 2. it doesn't seem like i'm at a huge cs disadvantage, although we haven't done any actual coding yet. but i understand most of what's going on, and all the cs majors seem extraordinarily concerned with not knowing any bio. so i have told them (the 2 who i have talked to/worked with) that i will help them with the bio if they help me with the cs. a good deal i think, since the bio knowledge required is pretty minimal. i was worried bc normally i have class during the tutorial time, and that seems like where we actually practice working stuff out, but the tutor said he's putting everything online, and we didn't really get that much done in the alloted time anyway.

after that i had dinner with alex (from france) and hannah and lucy (from nz) and now i'm doing this. also this morning i emailed a microbiology professor about volunteering in his lab, with a slightly modified cover letter and resume from dr. quivey. there are 2 that really sound interesting. this one is doing a bunch of stuff, the most fun of which is looking for bacteria that produce natural food colorants. the other lab i will email if this one says no is doing stuff that is remarkably similar to dr. sia (ie, mitochondrial dna mutagenesis and repair). i figured i'd go out on a limb first.

i also did my laundry again today, so that's now hanging all over my room. i need to pack for fulljames now, except nothing's dry yet. maybe i will cough up another $2 for the dryer. ick.

classes and kayaking and stuffs

2008-03-08T21:13:00.000-08:00

sooo it's been almost a week since i updated. bad news. well maybe good news, that will probably make me be more concise. karen said this looks like someone preparing to have their memory erased. anyways, here goes.

so classes haven't been too hard thus far, although it's only been a week. i dropped bio and am taking linguistics of the pacific with sophie and emily and a bunch of other americans instead. the prof of that is canadian, and both of the ones in my anthro of the pacific that have spoken so far are american. my language & identity in nz class has a kiwi prof, but she does not know how to use powerpoint. the day i was 10 min late from skyping she was still trying to figure it out when i got there, and ended up just going through each slide in the edit mode because she didn't know how to make it a slideshow. both the linguistics classes sound more artsy and less science-y than the linguistics classes i've taken at home. but oh well. i just need to pass, so it's ok if my essays are not fabulous.

wednesday, thursday, and friday i went to fitness classes at the gym. the first one was just step aerobics, which was fun, even tho i did not remember the choreography very well. the second one was step for the first half, and then stuff with free weights, also pretty fun. the one on friday that kendall and i went to however, was called BEGINNER tae power fit, and the instructor was this really jacked guy from like, switzerland or something, who started by making us run suicides back and forth across the room, and then running laps. then he just started telling us to do like jabs and uppercuts and stuff so we just sort of randomly punched, and it was really intense and i can't imagine what the non-beginner version is like. i may not go back to that one.

friday was the "s party" at ih. they really like their theme parties here. everyone was supposed to dress as something beginning with s. sophie was originally going to be herself, but then decided to be sudoku, and drew a puzzle on a piece of cardboard that she hung around her neck. i decided to be a sailor with my striped shirt and made a hat out of newspaper (which i went out and bought for $1.60 just for that). ej and kendall didn't know what to be, and we spent quite a while thinking. we considered being the spice girls, but we couldn't find enough girls (we also suggested we dress the boys up as the spice girls but that did not go over well). kendall decided to be sporty spice and i loaned her my black comfy capris and a tank top, and ej was "six" and just wore her pjs and pigtails. the party was in the big common room in the basement, and they had drinks (alcoholic for sale, non for free) and snacks and pizza, and a strobe light and music. some people had really good costumes. 3 of the girls were sheep, and they glued hundreds of cotton balls to their shirts. cameron was a soldier, including a cap gun which the boys were entertained by all night. brian and ollie were surfers, with just their togs and towels, and ace was a soccer player, but by the end of night he lost his shirt and became a surfer too. there was a sandwich (a group costume), a sketchy 70's gym teacher, a stoplight, snow white, a spartan, a stewardess, and a lot of other fun stuff. i stayed till midnight and then went to bed, and i think everyone else did soon after.

also on friday kendall told me she joined the canoeing club (aucc), and they were having day-trip orientation things this weekend. sophie joined the tramping club, which had a 2-night camping trip this weekend. we had been told joining clubs was a good way to meet kiwis and get involved on campus, and i decided i would rather do kayaking since i a) don't have much hiking equipment and b) can do that anywhere, on my own. so i went to the aucc booth at the student union quad area (quad as in rectangular courtyard between buildings, not grassy like at home), but i didn't have money with me to pay the $20 membership fee, so they said i could just do it online. i also stopped at the ski and snowboard booth, but they said the season doesn't start till mid june, so it's not worth joining for less than a month. i'm a little sad i brought my snowpants and warm coat now. but oh well.

so when i went back and signed up for aucc online, there was no place to like, put in a credit card number or anything, but kendall said i could probably just show up on saturday morning. so i did, and it was fine, everything was very relaxed. all the people with cars just took as many people as they could, and kendall and i found a group at the very last minute which was lucky, because there were a LOT of us on saturday. we went with this french guy, quentin who is a mechanical engineering grad student and in the club, and a german exchange student, and then kendall, me, and lee who is also doing ies and is from ur. quentin had the trailer with all the kayaks behind his car, and we drove for about an hour north of auckland, to the puhoi river, which is really flat and small and nice. the town of puhoi was really cute, there was a pub, a general store, and a library which is about 1/3 the size of the allen's hill one.

there were so many of us beginners that they split us into 2 groups, so 1 group paddled halfway, then everyone drove down and met us and we switched. kendall and i got in the first group. they taught us some basics before we got in, like you put your spray skirt on first, then your life jacket (which are really cool and have like, skeletons on them), and how to get in and basic paddling. my kayak seat was not attached, and the spray skirt did not fit the boat, but they said i would be fine without it. we broke up into 3 groups of 8 students with 2 instructors each, kendall and i were with a guy named ross and a girl named katrina teaching us, and some german and kiwi kids learning too. i asked why it was called the canoeing club when they go kayaking and ross said because it was originally canoes in the 60's when it started.

there were these 2 kiwi kids in the group in front of us who i was sort of talking to before we left, a girl and a guy. the guy, i think his name was like rommy or something was SO bad it was hilarous. he could not go in a straight line, and ran into a bush, and eventually the instructor, kerri, ended up towing him. at the dock where we were switching everyone was waiting and they all threw mud at us and tipped us out, but the water was nice and the mud more or less came off. deborah, a girl from IH who is from saratoga springs dibsed my boat, and then pulled the end down to flip me, only the boat just sort of filled with water and started sinking ha ha. i made it out (covered in mud), and after a lot of jumping off the dock and mud throwing the others left and we all drove back to the pub where we started.

they set up a "barbie" with "saucies" and everyone just laid out in the sun on the grass and hung out for a long time. it was lots of fun. the 2 kiwi kids from before and another girl, natasha, who was in our group sat with us and some other american kids and it was lots of fun. natasha has red hair and really pale skin, and is a first year and is living at home. the other 2 are third years, and the girl is studying law, which here means you are already in law school, and just go for 6 years straight. she is samoan and apologized for sitting with her toes pointing at us because i guess that's really rude in the samoan culture. most of us got ice cream at the general store, and a lot of people got beer from the pub and it was just really picturesque and cute.

they taught us about their politics, and i learned about how our primaries work too from some of the other americans. they have the labor party and the nationalist party, which are roughly equivalent to the democrats and republicans respectively, although more left-wing in general. helen clark is from the labor party, but there's an election this year and nationalist is probably going to take over. they also have some thing where they like, vote twice, once for a delegate and once for a party or something? it sounded much simpler than all our electoral college crap.

eventually the second group got back and ate, and then we all drove back to auckland. we were supposed to be following another car with kerri, the president, and her brother in it, so we could leave the trailer with the kayaks at their house, but quentin did not see them get off, so then we drove around the suburbs (the north shore i think) for awhile, and they met us and we followed the rest of the way to their house, where alex's (the brother) car died right when we got there so he was kind of concerned with that. kerri invited us in for cool drinks. their house is really cute, there are palm trees all around, and within sight of a beach. kerri said their parents had been going sailing in their yacht for 3 weeks but would be home soon. she said there used to be a ferry that took 15 min to get to uni, but it went bankrupt so now it's a 40 min bus ride. that seems to be pretty normal for all the kids who live at home. they also told us to come to the aucc toga party that night, but it was at someone's house and no one seemed to know how to get there.

so when we finally got back we had missed ih dinner, so we showered and lee came back and met us here and we went down k' road to find some food. we went to this little vegetarian indian restaurant and i got a $6 'snack' which was the perfect amount of rice and curry bean stuff. then we went back and found ej who also did not feel like going out, and decided to watch good will hunting which she had borrowed from the ih library. however, the dvds here are region 4, and our computers only play region 1 (although you can reset macs a total of 4 times to play different regions). so we first looked in all 4 common rooms in ih for an available tv, but they were all being used, so we re-set my computer and watched it here. i fell asleep quite a few times, and it was over by 11:30, so we all went to bed exhausted.

then today i was supposed to go kitesurfing (i called the company that has the rec center lesson, and they said i could do the 5 lesson package, and that i would get a text saturday night about where to go depending on the weather conditions). however i never got a text, so when i woke up around 9 i called, and the guy said there was no wind so we weren't going, and he must have put my number in wrong or something. so i will reschedule when i know what my weekend plans are. since i wasn't doing that today, i decided to go to the second aucc kayaking practice at a nearby lake. kendall did not want to go today, so i went down to the quad bravely alone. natasha was there so i sat with her. there were significantly fewer people, most of whom were now and hadn't gone saturday. again, the leaders just went around and asked who had cars and assigned 4 people to each one. i went with natasha, another kiwi girl who's name i never heard, a sweedish girl named ulrika (i think), and a girl from florida named keatin.

the leaders just told us what motorway exit to get off for lake pupuke, and to just drive around the lake until we saw everyone, so we did, only there turned out to be about 4 parks on the lake, and no one we recognized at any of them. we drove around one and a half times before finding everyone at the first place we stopped originally (they were just late). it wasn't a big deal tho, and we had fun driving.

they split us up into 2 groups again, letting the people who hadn't gone saturday go first. there were only like 8 of us in the second group, so we just laid out in the sun (with lots of sunscreen - i wore spf 15 on my face and 30 on my body saturday, and my face got burnt). natasha and i sat with alex (kerri's brother), who is a first year at aut, and travis, a kid from california. all the leaders were complaining about someone named colm (craig, who is pretty crazy said to travis, who was watching the phones 'if it rings and it sounds like colin but not quite answer and tell him he's late). so right before we went colm arrived and was like 'yeah i had no idea i was supposed to be bringing all the instructor's boats and my phone was off' so then he was picked upon for the rest of the day. (the 'instructors' are pretty hardcore, most of them have their own gear and stuff, although i think a lot of them started in aucc as beginners too).

so we got the wet lifejackets and skirts from the first group (very cold), and got all situated, and they pushed us off the shore into the lake which was fun. we practiced paddling forward and backward and turning (i actually can't go straight very well but they said that doesn't matter too much when you're in rapids anyway). at the end they told us we were going to practice t-rescue, which is when if you flip over, you can right yourself by holding onto someone else's kayak (the basic exit is to just peel off your spray skirt and fall out the bottom, but then you have to swim to shore and start over). most people did it, but when it was my turn i flipped all the way over before i was supposed to, and then freaked out a little, and just fell out the bottom. it wasn't a big deal though because they made everyone do that anyway to get out at the end. there is rolling practice, where you learn to right yourself without help tomorrow night in a high school pool so i may go to that.

after we got out we loaded all the boats back on the trailer, and then natasha took us back. it turns out keatin and travis both live in the empire apartment building, which is literally right outside our door. keatin and i were going to go grocery shopping, but then i decided to go to the gym instead. then i came back and showered and had dinner, and now i'm considering doing some reading for class.

beginning of classes

2008-03-03T17:10:00.001-08:00

classes started yesterday, on monday, and i had molecular cell bio at 9 am (and every other day except wed at 9) so i got up at 7:30, showered, and got breakfast and a bag lunch (cookie, apple, and make your own sandwich) downstairs, and left half an hour to get to class. it actually only took about 15 min, which will be nice when i am running late like i usually am.

there are a bunch of lecture halls in the basement of the library, and i was wandering lost when sophie saw me and showed me where to go. i sat down in a row next to some random asian girls, and was soon surrounded by asian people not speaking english. the class is big, about 350 people. the professor seems nice, but the class is primarily focused on mammalian and human cells, which don't interest me as much as bacteria, and the students are assumed to have taken a developmental bio class last year, which i have not. there is also a 2 hour lab, in addition to 4 hours of class every week.

after that i went to the international office to switch out of the 2 maori language classes i was signed up for (gael said they would probably be hard even tho they are intro level, since all kiwi kids know some basic maori) and sign up for computational biology and anthropology of pacific peoples instead. after waiting in a huge line for almost an hour, i found out i actually had to do that in a different office. so i went there, and told the 4 other ies girls in line behind me they were in the wrong place. there, they put me in the anthro class, and gave me a form to have the cs department fill out saying i had enough prerequisites to take the class.

so then i went to the science building office, and was sent to a lady in the cs department, who sent me to another guy in the cs department, who looked at my transcript and asked me whether i had learned some cs stuff from last year, most of which i remembered the names of but i think i'm going to have to review a lot. he said i should be fine, and showed me the website with the lectures from the prereq class so if there was anything i had not learned i could find it there. then i went to return that paperwork to the office but there was a line and by that time i had to go to class again so i just left.

i found my way to the correct room for computational biology after a lot of lost wandering, and it was a lot smaller than mol. bio, about 45 students. the prof, who i emailed last semester is really young, maybe 30, and he said he's not going to be around for awhile after this week because his first son was just born. he went here in the 90's, then did a post doc at oxford, and is now teaching here again, as well as running a bioinformatics software company he started. pretty cool guy. basically everyone in that class is a cs major, and he had a show of hands of who had not done any bio since high school, which was most of the class. so i'm probably going to be way ahead on bio and a little behind on comp sci there, but that should be fine since that's my only hard class. i stayed after class and asked him what he thought and he said i'd probably be fine, and this other girl who was behind me was like freaking out that it would be too hard, and when he said there's about a 70% pass rate she really freaked out, but he said that's normal, and i don't know what the pass rate at home is to compare. it sounds like a lot of fun so i'm not too worried.

after that i went back and turned in my paperwork, and i saw cameron and barret (kids from IH) while walking. then i came back to my room and was really sweaty from all the hills here and my room was sweltering so i just did computer stuff for awhile. i went to dinner at 6:30 with sophie ej and kendall, and emily, the other ies girl sat with us and we talked about our trips and classes and stuff. sophie and kendall are in the linguistics of pacific languages class that i kind of wanted to do, and when i told them about bio they said to drop it and take that instead. so after dinner i emailed dr. marquis (my advisor) to make sure computational biology would count toward my major, and decided if he said yeah i would drop bio, because why waste the time and effort if i don't need to?

there was an ih 'quiz night' in the cafeteria at 7:30 and we decided to go for lack of anything else to do. we sat down with cameron, alex (who's from france), barret, and brian, but we had to be in teams of 5 so it was alex, cameron, ej, sophie, and me. there were all kinds of random questions, from naming the cd and artist from album art, to greek mythology questions (which cameron knew everything about), to word puzzles (which i was pretty awesome at) to geography. cameron lived in france for a year, so he and alex kept conversing in french, and i was pretty impressed with how much i understood. we were very competitive, but despite our best efforts we did not win, but barret and brian's team did so they gave us some of the chocolate they won after. we then decided to teach them the snowball game from chrristchurch, so we all hung out in sophie's room and played 2 rounds of that, and then i went to bed.

(also, this is old but on sunday night we hung out in cameron's room and they were playing all these youtube videos that the urtv kids like, so then i showed them a bunch of urtv videos, some of which they actually thought were funny.)

today i decided to go to one more bio lecture before making my final decision (dr. marquis said computational bio is fine), so i went, only it's in a different room on tuesday, but i was early enough so it didn't matter. it was slightly more interesting, but not enough to make me want to get up that early every day. so i'm dropping that this afternoon, meaning on tuesday and thursday i don't have class till 5. i don't know what to do with all this free time! i may email some bio profs and see if i can volunteer in a lab or something.

i then went to the gym after bio, and came back here and had lunch with the usual 3 girls as well as courtney, who is also from the us and made friends with kendall while we were gone, and praveen, one of the ra's who i always say hi to (he's actually the only ra i know, and is not mine).

now i'm going to go switch my classes and do some other errands, hopefully it won't start raining again, since it was pouring earlier. ha ha fun fact, karen just imed me and said it's 63 there, which is exactly what my widget says it is here. pretty impressive for early march!

christchurch

2008-03-02T21:08:00.001-08:00

so we got to christchurch around 8, and i had called riley on wednesday, and got a girl's voicemail, but then he texted me that talking is too expensive, and he had told us to text him when we got there, so we followed his directions, and got there, and he came outside and we told him about ejs ticket and various other things and he was like ok let's just go inside, so we just parked on the street, and took all our stuff into his flat, which is sort of like anderson but way nicer, they have 2 showers and 2 toilets and a huge common room with a full kitchen. i guess most of the dorms in that area are traditional dorms and he just got really lucky. he lives with all kiwis, 4 boys and 1 girl. there was a big 80's party that night, so everyone was running around wearing ridiculous fluorescent colored outfits.

we all showered, since we had kayaked and hiked a glacier since our last showers. then riley's friend shane asked if we could drive him home from the liquor store, so we went to the atm and got him, and came back to riley's flat, and riley was just explaining that they would have to drink in his room because they are not allowed to drink in the common room and not allowed to have glass bottles (but cans, and drinking alone in your room is fine) when his ra came in and made them pour their un-drunk beers down the sink. so then we went to shanes, in ilam (pronounced eye-lam, not ee-lam) village, where most of the ies kids live. i had a black tanktop and nothing to wear over it so riley went to some girl's room he knows and borrowed a cute purple sweater for me.

the ilam apartments are nice too, about the same setup as riley's at university hall. we sat around there for a bit, and their friend jessie came over, and then we went to get the free bus to go downtown (the university of canterbury is in the suburbs, it's very much like UR). a bunch of the other ies kids from rochester were going to meet us there, but went to a different bus stop, and then we saw the bus with them on it go flying by and for some reason it didn't stop at our stop. so after some more waiting this bus pulled up with all these flashing colored lights and loud dance music. it was hilarious, and after some deliberation we got on with all the drunk kiwi kids. that bus took us to some bar, that was not downtown where we wanted to go, so we got off and walked (and by walked i mean at riley speed, so basically jogging for everyone else) to the regular bus stop near there, and on the way found a shopping cart which riley pushed me in.

while waiting for the bus another one just went by with a 'not in service' sign, only there were people on there, including some of the other ies kids, who pointed and laughed which was really funny. finally a bus came and we paid our $2.50, and eventually got to the downtown bar area, which is really cute, it's all cobblestones and no cars, and there is this giant fireplace and big couches and stuff.

first we went to this jazz club one of riley's flatmates was raving about, i think it's called fat eddie's, and since it was thursday, it wasn't very full at all (i guess it's super popular other nights). we went to the bathroom and then ej and i wanted to get what she had gotten at the pub during ies orientation, pineapple malibu, which tastes really yummy, not at all like alcohol. so she asked the bartender and he made it for her for $8, and i got one also. the boys and jessie and sophie got beer, gross. so we went upstairs and sat on these big comfy couches and just hung out for awhile, and some other ies kids showed up, and eventually we left to go to another place, i think called mickey finn's, where there was live music. they had free water there, which i had about 4 glasses of, and we played pool, first it was ej and me against riley and jessie, and i got a total of 1 ball in all game. although we were losing pitifully, they accidentally hit the 8 ball in at the end, so we won! then others played another game, and more rochester kids who i vaguely know arrived and we hung out for awhile, and then we were really exhausted so we went looking for a cab, there were 8 of us i think, and micah, one of the kids from rochester was looking for this big 12 person cab but we never found it so eventually we split up, and sophie, ej, riley and i went back to his flat, where the three of us slept on his floor in our new sleeping bags.

we set our alarms for 7 on friday, so we could return the rental car as soon as possible, because the lady in queenstown said the earlier we returned it the cheaper it would be (because the price she gave us was more than $100 more than the man in auckland had quoted), so riley and i went and let the girls sleep, and it turned out to be like $370, still way more than the man had said, but there's not much we can do about it now. then we took the bus back and slept till noon. riley was playing golf at 1, so he got ready and left, and we gradually got ready and took the bus to the cathederal square, the main touristey area. we walked around and shopped all afternoon, i bought 2 tank tops and a sweater, and presents for serita and jennifer, and decided i needed to stop spending money. riley met us for dinner at the main bus terminal, which is fun, it's kinda like an airport, and after wandering around forever and not finding any cheap food, we took the bus partway back to UC, and got off and found this cute little indian restaurant called taste of bengal, where the man cooked each of our things individually. the food was amazing (and i don't think it was just because we were starving).

after that we went back to riley's and then went over to shane's again, only it had been raining all day so the walk was a bit less enjoyable. we played oh hell for awhile in shane's room, and then went out to the dining area and played this game called snowball with 2 of the other kids who live there. it's kind of a combination of telephone pictionary, and it's really funny. we went back around midnight, because we had to get up fairly early for our tour the next morning. we weren't too thrilled about it, because we didn't want to spend another $100 and we could've just hung out with the ies kids, but we couldn't get a refund for cancelling within 2 days.

the tour was called the christchurch big 5, and included the international antarctic center, willowbanks nature reserve (both of which i visited with p2p), a wildlife cruise, a ride on the christchurch gondola, and a tram ride. unfortunately the city busy we were taking to the meeting point was late, but we called and they said to get on another bus leaving at 10, so we did, and while waiting the tram people looked at our vouchers and gave us tram tickets. then we found our bus, which took us to the antarctic center (and i'm pretty sure we were the only ones under the age of 60 on the bus). at the center (i mean centre), the lady at the desk included a hagglund ride in our ticket, even tho i don't think we were supposed to. we walked around fairly quickly, and watched the little blue penguins being fed. then we went on the ride, which is the amphibious vehicle they use in antarctica. it was fun, we went up really steep hills, around curves, over a big crevice, and through a lake.

after that we got on another bus to willowbanks, which was not that exciting, we walked around and saw a lot of birds and some other animals, and went in a dark building to see kiwis, but it was so dark we couldn't really see them. then we were planning on eating lunch there, but when we came back to the entrance a bus driver was like 'hurry we have to meet another bus at 1', even tho they had told us to meet at 1 there, not 12:40. so we got on the bus, and met another bus at the square, which took us past the gondola, to lyttelton, the port of christchurch which is over a mountain, which you have to take a tunnel to go through. the town is really cute, but it was raining (all day) and we were starving by that point. luckily the boat had a snack bar and we each got chips for $2, and they gave us free hot chocolate. we saw some dolphins (the main focus) and some birds and a sunken ship, and then sophie was feeling seasick so we sat with her inside (it was raining anyway so i was happy to be inside) and all 3 of us fell asleep ha ha.

after that, the bus driver told us that we wouldn't see anything from the gondola (we could not see the top of it through the fog) and that we could probably get a refund, or if we wanted to he would drop us there. we said it was ok, and stayed on the bus back to the square, where we texted riley and got on the tram, where we each got another ticket. riley was playing basketball but said he'd meet us as soon as he could, so we rode the tram all the way around twice. we got off at this building with all these art shops (which used to be part of the university of canterbury until it moved out to the suburb of ilam) but they were closing on 10 minutes and things were expensive so we just wandered and got free fudge samples at the chocolate shop.

we also saw a chinese lantern festival in a park that we went by which looked identical to the on in auckland we went to the previous weekend. we then went to wait for riley at the bus terminal and he got there right after we did. we told him about the lantern festival, and how there was really good really cheap food at ours, and then i gave him my second trolly ticket, and we did another loop. riley really wanted to see if the prime minister was at their lantern festival like she was at ours, but we did not see her. we did find all the food though, and i got some noodles and a pancake thing, and we stood under a tree and ate. then we took the tram the rest of the way around, and stopped at kfc for $1 milkshakes on the way back to the bus.

when we got back to riley's we were tired and wet and decided to just watch a movie. for awhile we were just hanging out in riley's room and his flat-mates addi, casey, and ben were in and out, and they are hilarous. casey, who is in the room next door told us some story of like, how to leave a bar by bashing the mug over your head so the handle breaks off, and then holding the handle up to your head like a phone? and then he showed us this explosive white powder he makes from like isopropyl alcohol and hydrogen peroxide, and i am now slightly concerned for riley's safety living next door to that. casey also had a light up candy cane in his room, which he said he can plug in his subwoofer so it lights up with the music, and a collection of hats, including a real police hat which he stole while being interrogated about "drunk walking".

when we asked why there are so many kfcs here, casey told us "because that's all the maoris eat...that's why the maori women have beards, because the chickens are so pumped full of hormones" and we died laughing. they call the maori people "black" here, and they sort of fill the role of black people in the us.

eventually we watched juno out in the common room, which was really good, although i fell asleep through part of it. then we got all packed, and went to bed. in the morning our cab, super shuttle, came right on time, and we had plenty of extra time at the airport. we had a minor freak-out when we tried to check in at the domestic terminal and our flight was not listed, but the lady at the desk told us it was at the international terminal, because it was coming from japan and just stopping in christchurch on the way to auckland. that was a little annoying because you can take liquids on domestic flights but not international, so we all had to put all our toiletries in ej's checked suitcase, but other than that everything went fine. the flight was really nice because it was international, so we all had personal tvs, and i had all 3 seats to myself again. we took the airbus back to school and arrived around 11 am. the end.

queenstown, te anau, milford sound, and franz josef

2008-03-02T18:42:00.000-08:00

soo i've been procrastinating writing this because it's gonna be super long. but now i've done everything else i have to do so here goes.

so tuesday morning we got up super early, and were picked up by a cab at 5:30, for our 7am flight. we flew to queenstown via christchurch, and on the second half i had all 3 seats to myself. the view was amazing. upon landing in queenstown we picked up about 1000 brochures. there is a lot of bungy jumping, paragliding, jetboating, and various other extreme activities there, but we decided we were too poor and just to do a hike instead.

so we went to the budget rental car desk, where we found out we were supposed to pick up our car at 3:30 pm in the city, rather than at 10 am at the airport. so we went outside and perused the shuttle bus and cab options, and after deciding on the $5 bus, we stood in the sun admiring the beautiful view. while we were waiting, a man who was dropping off come corporate business man at the airport said he was going back through town if we wanted a ride. we decided it wasn't too sketchy and said sure. he told us he was from australia, but was now living in queenstown, working for the seagate company, which makes hard drive parts that are in every computer in the world, and they send their employees to queenstown for vacations and retreats and stuff. he said the first woman astronaut was scheduled to come give a talk next week. he dropped us right by the rental car place, and we thanked him. then we went in to ask if we could leave our bags there while hiking, and the lady said sure, but to be sure to be back before she closed at 4.

we then decided to hike to the top of the queenstown gondola, about an hour hike each way, so as not to get back too late. the first half of the hike was in the woods, with a lot of beautiful view overlooking queenstown and lake wakatipu, which is the prettiest color i have ever seen in a lake. the colors of everything there are just amazing. the sky and the lake are really blue, the trees and the grass are really green, and the people are really nice. about halfway up, the trail merged with a gravel road, which was less interesting to walk up, but we continued all the way to the top, where we took pictures from this nice cement overlook area, which we discovered was actually a helicopter pad, when one landed a few minutes after we had moved away. we rested for awhile, used the bathroom, and bought some post cards, and then trekked back down, which seemed much shorter than the way up. we saw ferns that look just like the all-blacks (rugby team) logo, and bright red mushrooms that look like they are from mario. there was this crazy steep and windey mountain bike path, but we did not see any bikers risking it. we did see other people, and everyone smiled and said hi. sophie says being around such friendly people all the time is making us more friendly, and she is totally right because at home i would never be the first one to say hi to a random person, and i said hi to everyone we passed.

anyway, when we got back down, we had lunch at a little cafe, and used the cool hi-tech public bathrooms in town, in which you just push a lighted button to lock and unlock the doors, and then got our car keys. i got the car in my name because i'm 21 and ej and sophie are only 20 (although i'm not sure if that makes any difference). there was an extra $25 fee per day because we are not 25, and i signed a form that said i would be the only driver (which was completely not true, but it made it cheaper). then we decided to walk around town some more before leaving for our hostel in te anau. we stopped in some random tourist shops, and a bookstore, where ej was flipping through a book about maori tattoo art, and found 2 pictures of tia, one of our guides from the marae! small world! then we found the beach, and just sat there taking in the scenery for a long time. i cannot put into words how beautiful it was.

eventually we left and found the car, a new silver corolla, and i took my first go at driving on the left. the first hurdle was learning that the driver side is the right side of the car, and for awhile we kept going to the wrong side to get in. the hardest part of driving was really remembering that the blinker and windshield wiper controls are switched, and throughout the trip we kept turning on the wipers when we wanted to turn. beyond that there were really no problems, and i drove the whole 2 hours to te anau in one go. we passed lots of mountains and sheep, some cows, and a couple deer farms.

we found our hostel, the steamers beach backpackers, checked in, and got dinner at a pizza and pasta place in te anau. by then it was 8:30 or so, and we were exhausted, so we went back and planned our milford sound trip for the next day, and went to bed.

wednesday, we got up at the crack of dawn again (actually before down to be exact), and left by 6 to drive the 2 additional hours to milford sound, where we wanted to do a kayak tour with one of two companies. it was raining and dark, and i drove again while sophie and ej slept. the road to milford sound involves a lot of winding back and forth down the sides of mountains, but once the sun came up the view was amazing, little waterfalls coming down the mountain faces all around. there are all these 1 lane bridges in the mountains, and we came up to one where a car was just sitting on front of it, for like 5 minutes, not doing anything (there was no traffic going the other way). we eventually pulled up next to them and they said they were debating crossing it. i offered to go first, and they followed us safely across. i wonder how long they would have stayed there waiting if we hadn't come. there are basically NO people around after te anau, and there is a one-lane tunnel through a mountain that did not have an operating signal light at that hour. fortunately we did not encounter anyone else on our way through. we finally arrived at the milford lodge, the only hint of civilization for many miles, around 8, and the tour we wanted to take left at 8:30 from there, so we asked at the desk and were told they would come into the main lounge area when they got there. so we waited, and the other company (which cost $5 more) came first, but we decided to wait for the other one. when they were still not there at 8:30 i went to ask the desk, and the girl there called and said they were all booked. at this point we were freaking out a little because we couldn't wait for the evening tour, since we had to drive 6+ hours to franz josef that night. the girl at the desk called the first tour, which had just left, and said we could pay at the lodge, and then drive down to meet everyone else, and that they were calling an extra guide, blake, and he was going to kill her later for getting him woken up.

so drove down the road a little further and arrived at deepwater basin, where there were some fishing boats, lots of kayaks, and a big tent. they gave us thermal pants and shirts, fleece jackets, rain jackets, and kayak skirts, and told us not to wear cotton because it just sucks the heat from your body when wet. there were sandflies everywhere, which the girls from california who had gone earlier had warned us about, but ej had some bug-spray wipes that smelled really nice, which we put all over our faces and hands and i put in my hair. once we got out in the water the bugs weren't a problem.

we all got double kayaks, i went with sophie, and ej was with another american who had 2 other friends in a third kayak. we were put in a group with blake as our guide, and he had a german guy in his kayak as well. blake was probably the most interesting person i have met on this trip so far. he told us all these stories and interesting facts, and we saw seals and penguins and other birds, and the "twirly whirly tree" which is growing in a circle, and which blake calls his 8th wonder of the world. he told us how the maori pick out children who are going to be great, and they bend the tree into a knot so that it grows in the shape of a perfect walking stick, which will be ready to use when the child is an adult. it shows that although great and powerful, the person was once small and weak. the most recent person blake knew of to be chosen was sir edmund hillary (the first guy to climb mt everest, who just died recently), so it's a pretty big honor. it's really cool how they can forsee something like that.

milford sound is indescribable. it's so green, and all misty (it rains there about 200 days a year, so we weren't too phased by the rain), and there are little water falls all over the mountains whenever it rains. there are actually only 2 permanent water falls, one of which is twice the size of niagara falls. i did not take my camera because i didn't want to risk getting it wet, but ej had a waterproof disposable one so she will give us her pictures. the most amazing thing for me was how distances and proportions seem so out of whack in milford sound. the mountains are just SO enormous, everything looks closer and smaller than it really is. we thought we were going to see a waterfall, until we found out it was 9km away! it looked so much closer. and none of us believed that the closer water fall was twice the height of niagara, until we were right next to it.

we stopped in the middle for hot drinks (something orange, i really don't know what it was but it was wonderful at that point) and blake told us stories for a really long time. last year he lived in tonga with the natives and kayaked and swam with the whales. apparently there is a lot of controversy about japan hunting whales. their "scientific" purpose is for the earplugs and ovaries, and the rest is sold as meat. apparently the "cultural right" argument for continuing to eat whale meat is unfounded, as they only began using the meat in addition to the blubber after WWII. there is this guy who use to work at greenpeace, who has been going around ramming his boat into whaling ships, and has just been officially declared a pirate, but the general population doesn't seem to object much to what he's doing.

other random things we learned:

maori bird names are usually replicating the bird's call. there is this one bird, i think it's the alpine parrot but i might be wrong, that is really smart, and very destructive. they love the sound of breaking glass, and will destroy your car. if you see them and throw rocks at them, they will move so they are in front of your car, which you obviously don't want to throw rocks at.

milford sound is actually a fjord, not a sound, because sounds are created by river valleys, and are V shaped, while fjords are glacially created, and U shaped. there are 14 fjords in nz, 13 of which are called sounds and one of which is called in inlet. instead of renaming them all correctly, the whole area is just called fiordland national park.

it takes a "very special kind of person" to stay the winter at milford sound, according to blake, who stayed part of the last winter there. he says there might be 7 or 8 people at the bar each night. i think anyone who lives there for any amount of time anytime fits that description, being that the nearest town is 1.5 hours drive (and te anau is NOT much of a city).

on nice days the milford sound airport is the second busiest in the country (i think), since it's only 50 km from queenstown but you have to drive about 4 hours to go around the mountains, flying is a very popular means of transport.

we got back a while after all the other groups, due to our long chat in the middle of the sound, and were completely soaked through and pretty exhausted. once we were dried and changed we drove to the very end of the road, where there is a bar and cafe, and campground for people hiking the milford track (a 4 day hike that's really famous). we had lunch at the cafe, and then sophie drove while i slept. we had to go all the way back through te anau and queenstown to get to franz josef glacier, so this was the longest drive of the trip.

we stopped for gas in queenstown and ej took a turn driving. a few hours later, in wanaka, we had just entered town, and passed a police officer when ej was like, 'am i being pulled over' and sure enough, we were. the speed limit in cities is 50km/h and 100 on highways, and apparently we had just passed the entrance to the city. the cop was really friendly, and suggested we stop for gas and food before leaving town. despite his friendliness he gave ej a $120 ticket (which he reduced from the $180 he said she should have gotten). that put a damper on things, especially because we were worried the rental car company would find out i was not driving, but i think as long as she pays the ticket within 28 days it will be fine. we had dinner at a takeaway restaurant, and got gas, and then continued driving. the cop said it would be at least 3 hours to franz josef, which is more than google maps had said. he also said to be careful of possums (they spell it without the o here) in the road, and that it's better to hit one than end up in the lake. we called our hostel, the glow worm cottages to say we'd be late, and they said they would leave the key for us. we arrived a little after midnight, and found our little 4-person room, with full bathroom and mini kitchen. it was SUPER nice for $26. there is also a pool and hot tub there, and free soup for dinner, but unfortunately we missed all of that. we didn't even shower before going to sleep.

thursday morning we got up at 7 i think (sleeping in by our standards), and checked out of the hostel, canceling our second night (we decided to just drive to christchurch thursday and sleep at rileys, rather than pay for another night). after i had paid, the guy at the desk came and found us and said he had charged me for 4 instead of 3 and refunded the credit card. i'm glad he noticed because i wouldn't have!

we drove around the block to the main st, got some granola bars and apples at the grocery store, and went to the glacier guides office. there were all these warnings that the hike is kind of intense and not to do it if you're not in good physical condition. we were a little scared, but of course we were doing it! they suited us up with wool socks, hiking boots, waterproof jackets, and mittens, and gave us a bag with crampons. we left everything in the car except sophie's backpack with our cameras, food, and water, which we took turns carrying. they took us to the glacier by bus, and then we hiked for about 45 minutes to get to the base of it. the hike wasn't too intense, less steep than the queenstown gondola. there was this british family with 2 kids who must have been under 10, and some older people, so we figured we would be fine.

when we got to the base of the glacier, where you are not allowed to go any further without a guide, we put on our crampons, and split into 3 groups. we ended up in the least intense one, with the little kids and old people, but we were fine with that. climbing up the glacier was pretty cool. they have steps carved in the ice, and chains or ropes to hold on to a lot of the way, so that was not too difficult at all. the crampons really make walking on the ice easy, more secure than regular hiking boots on a muddy trail.

the glacier is all white and blue, it doesn't even look real. there are rocks all throughout that have been eroded from the surrounding river valley. our guide told us the glacier has been advancing for several years, although in the past few months it has been more stationary. it exists in such a warm climate because there is a giant basin up in the mountains, which is filling with snow and ice faster than it can melt.

we had a short lunch break at our high point (far from the actual top of the glacier), and started back down before we got too cold (it was pretty chilly up there). during the hike back on the ground though it was really hot. again, as with everything else we've done here, going back seemed much shorter than the way there. when we got back to town, we headed for christchurch. we took route 6 further up the west coast (within view of the tasman sea for part of it), and turned onto 73 in hokitika. we drove through arthur's pass, which is supposed to have some awesome hiking, and stopped in springfield for dinner at a cafe. there was a truck loaded with big square bales in the parking lot and some small square bales on the ground! (they were pretty mulchy looking though).

at the cafe we met our first unfriendly kiwi (although she could have been british or australian, i can't really tell the difference in accents yet). ej and i ordered lasagna, and sophie got a veggy tart, but when she brought our food she also brought a panini, and accused us of ordering it. we said we had each only ordered one thing, and she stood there for awhile glaring at us, dropped the fork, and walked away. it was a little scary, and we ate quickly in silence.

then we drove the rest of the way to christchurch, which i will write about later because this is super long!

travel planning

2008-02-25T01:54:00.000-08:00

today wasn't too exciting, although it was a bit of a roller coaster ha ha. so i got up at 8, showered, and was getting ready when the girl who lives 2 doors down from me, semi, came and knocked on my door and introduced herself, so then i got ready quickly while she waited and we went down to breakfast, where i found sophie, kendall, and emily. i had toast and an apple.

then at 9:10 the ra's lead all the international kids to the orientation meeting on campus, so we straggled at the end of the line, waiting for ej, who came out as we were going. we walked down to the business school, and as we went in we got these messenger bags full of pamphlets, which was exciting. the auditorium was mostly full when we went in, but most of us found seats together, and one of the international ladies we met at ispace on thursday spoke, and went over lots of info, none of which was too exciting. i think it was more important for the regular international students, who hadn't already had ies orientation. then we had a 'tea' break, with little sandwiches and muffins outside. we met 2 girls from canada, one from mcgill (rachel) and the other from vancouver, who are living in grafton house. they seemed really nice.

then we went back in and they talked a little more and then a local primary school group of maori students came and performed. all the schools wear uniforms here, and it seemed sort of incongruous to see them doing the traditional dances and stuff all dressed up like that, rather than in the traditional maori clothing. they were super loud, filling the big auditorium with no mics, and a little scary. the girls in the front row kept like, twitching their hands the whole time. at first we thought they were nervous, but they were all doing it.

so that was cool, and after that we left, even though there was a study abroad-specific talk. instead we went to the international office to find out how to change our classes, and then went to gael's office, which is really close to ih. we told her about our plans for the weekend, and she told us about classes and copied my passport and visa and we gave her our phone numbers.

then we went back to ih and sophie and ej and i needed to reserve a rental car and book our hostels for our trip (kendall decided not to come). the hostel's were fairly simple, we picked the ones in ej's 'nz on a budget' guidebook with 0800 numbers (so we could call from the hall phone and not waste our mobile minutes). we will be staying at the steamers beach lodge in te anau tuesday night, and the glowworm cottages in franz josef wednesday and thursday.

the car rental was not so simple. everything we tried online or on the phone a)was too short notice b)had no cars for pick up in queenstown or c) did not rent to people under 25. we then started looking up busses between cities, but there were absolutely none going between te anau and franz josef so that wouldn't work. we seriously considered hitchhiking for awhile, but although nz is supposed to be the safest place in the world to do that, it's still a little sketchy, especially since we were planning on doing major traveling at night. cameron, one of the kiwi kids we hung out with last night came by for awhile, and a kid named barret from canada (who is 23, the only student i've met older than me so far).

eventually we decided to go check out the rental car companies on beach st that gael had told us about, so we walked down, and the first place we went in, budget, had no difficulties, although there is an extra charge since we're under 25, so we decided to return it the first day we get to christchurch, and just rely on public transportation/walking there (when a man heard us discussing that in there, he was like 'christchurch is flat you'll have no problem walking' which was really funny/random, i guess compared with auckland which is super hilly, flat would be easier). so we booked that, for $280, which isn't bad split 3 ways (we were prepared for $450 or more by that point, and were just really excited to have any car at all). then we went to a little cafe we had gone by on the way there, and sophie and ej got smoothies and i got a chocolate sundae, which was vanilla ice cream, chocolate sauce, and pieces of kiwi. it was delicious.

then we walked to the warehouse, which the kiwis compare to walmart, but feels more like a giant dollar store (where things do not cost a dollar). i wanted to get pushpins, hangers, a bungy clothes line (ej got one there earlier) and travel shampoos. i ended up with a clothesline, 2 bottles of water, a birthday present for serita, and a little notebook.

by then it was getting pretty late and we needed to get sleeping bags. b had told us about a place that has used outdoor equipment for sale on k' road, which we were gradually walking toward, but probably would not make it before it closed (most everything closes at 5 or 5:30 here), so we went in one store in the mall with the warehouse, and the cheapest sleeping bag they had was $109, and it didn't pack very small (a necessity for our purposes).

so then we were walking down queen st, looking for the dollar store where they had gotten hangers and pushpins, and we went by a store called kathmandu, and decided randomly to go in, and they said they were closing in 5 min, but they had sleeping bags that packed smaller for 90 bucks, so we decided we weren't going to find any others before the stores all closed, so we each got one, and the guy happened to see ejs student id, and gave us a 25% student discount, which was really nice, so we were excited about all our good luck, and walked home.

then there was a bbq ("barbie") outside in the courtyard, so we went upstairs quickly and then came down, and ate, and met 4 girls from california. they had gone to the south island the week before and done basically everything we're doing, and they said everything we've got planned is really fun. they also told us about these ice cream bars that are really good, and we were hey lets go get some from the convenience store next door, so all 7 of us did (kendall had a hall meeting). they also told us that the chicken flavored chips were actually really good, but they didn't have those at the store. so we took our ice cream back and ate it in the basement common room where there was going to be a group movie, but sophie ej and i had to do laundry and pack and go to bed early, so we didn't stay for the movie.

there is powdered detergent in the laundry room which is apparently free for us to use so we used that and did our laundry, and cameron and barret went by outside and yelled in the window and scared us to death. then i went up and figured out our driving directions for the trip, and sophie called a cab to pick us up at 5:45 am for our 7:10 flight (the busses don't even run that early). then i put pictures on facebook and hung my laundry around my room with my handy new clothes line (because i don't want to pay another $2 to dry stuff and most of it i hang anyway). now i'm goign to bed and getting 5.5 hours of sleep. again. goodnight

ies orientation

2008-02-24T00:11:00.000-08:00

wow i have lots to write about, so this may stop being so detailed.

so my bags never came friday. luckily i heard sophie coming through the courtyard and yelled down to ask if i could borrow shower stuff and she said sure, so i went down and she, ej, and kendall (all living in IH), and lee and rachel, who are both from UR were just getting back from the 20th anniversary of the U of A marae thing, which they said was cool, except a lot of it was in maori and not translated. so i borrowed shampoo, conditioner, lotion, facewash, and a shirt, and became clean!

then all of us went to the chinese lantern festival in albert park, which is right next to campus. apparently it's a pretty big deal and is one of auckland's 6 major festivals. it was really cool there were all these big lanterns shaped like everything from flowers to a turtle band, to moving dragons, to cows and sheep that made sounds. and tons of all kinds of asian food vendders! kendall and i split some peanut satay kebab type things, and i got a "coconut juice" which turned out to be a whole coconut with a straw stuck in it. i also got roti with curry sauce, which was kind of indian bread, and very yummy.

so then we went to see the official opening ceremony, which started with these guys in dragon costumes and drummers in a little parade, that we followed to a stage. there, we stood as some important looking people filed right by us, including two guys with little security ear piece things (like in men in black). a minute later, they introduced the lady in the purple coat as helen clark, the prime minister of nz! we were amazed, we easily could have reached out and touched her as she went by! there were some speeches, and then some chinese dancing and drumming performances. unfortunately it had been raining the whole time, so we left after 4 performances and came back to IH. i called gael freaking out a little about my bags, and she said she would bring me a rain jacket and towel, and we could stop on the way tomorrow if i needed to buy anything.

saturday morning, i awoke to my new nz phone ringing, but by the time i got to it i had missed it. i called back from the hall phone (so as not to waste minutes), and they said my bags would be delivered sometime that morning, but probably not before we had to leave for our weekend trip at 8:30. i was quite annoyed. i borrowed a clean t-shirt from sophie, as well as all her toiletry stuff again, and we met kendall for breakfast, which was just cereal and toast. as we were eating one of the ras, praveen, came over and was like 'are you guys going on some sort of trip, there's a van waiting outside' so we finished really quickly and went down, and went around to the right side of the van, where the driver sits here, and there was a girl with dreadlocks who was like 'the door's on the other side' (also opposite from home) so we all got in and the 5th ies girl living at IH, emily, who we hadn't met before bc she got there late came in, and then ej did too, and we went to pick up the 4 girls from unilodge.

we then met up with the other 3 vans, and our driver, B, told us it was about an hour and a half drive to the te kiri, or omaha, marae, near leigh, north of auckland. it was pouring rain and the windows were foggy, so we couldn't really see much as we were driving, and it seemed really far. we stopped partway there at a little bakery that was cute, and gael found me and gave me a raincoat. the bus drivers and some of the kids got food, and then we went back out and got in the van, and B was like oh, i left the keys in there, and went to get them and it was really funny.

after more driving, we finally arrived at the marae. we all got out and B (for bianca) introduced all the guides. she is the owner of potiki adventures, and then there was tia, who is maori and has a blueish tattoo like lipliner around her mouth, and then a design down her chin. it sounds really weird but it looked really cool. there was also megan, jono, and curtis. so we all gathered under a little shelter by the parking lot, and B told us what was going to happen, and she and tia taught us a maori song, where they sang some words and we repeated. then an older maori lady came out and spoke/chanted/sang to us, and tia spoke back, and lead us into the marae, with the girls and the front and guys at the back. we had to take our shoes off to enter (we also couldn't take any food or drinks inside). we all lined up along the right wall (our shoes had to be on the right side as well), and sat down when B signalled to. then the maori woman, her nephew jake, and his son, gabriel who was 5 1/2 welcomed us, first in maori and then in english, and then lee spoke for our group and said thank you. then they sang a song and we sang our song (which they sang along with as well), and then all lined up and shook hands and pressed noses with jake and gabriel (so cute!) and kissed the aunt on the cheek. then we went and had tea and biscuits (cookies) in the dining room attached to the back of the building.

after that we all got mattresses and sleeping bags and sheets and pillows and set up our beds for the night, and then sat on our beds and all went around and each spoke about ourselves, our families, etc. it was actually pretty interesting. it was nice to get a small synopsis of all the ies kids, and the guides were really interesting. B and tia are from the same tribe to the north, and B said she was worried about them in the rain because it floods really badly there. tia has 3 kids (oldest age 7! she did not look that old), and teaches maori language at their school as well as helping B at potiki. megan is also maori, and jono is just an adventure coach type guy. curtis, as it turned out, is tia's boyfriend who was just hanging out with us, and he is actually an american indian from vancouver, and he and kendall were talking about native american stuff because she is from a tribe in wisconsin so that was pretty cool. another maori guide guy joined us as well, i didn't get his name, but he is some sort of martial arts champion. he was the only one who i really had trouble understanding, i'm guessing maori was his first language. after that jake spoke to us more about the marae and his family - they only just got electricity at the marae last year! while he was talking gabriel was like playing on a chair and tipped over on his head and we all like gasped and a girl tried to help him up, and jake like, didn't notice, and then looked over and was like oh! are you ok? and gabriel was like 'yeah it didn't hurt i was just trying to stretch my back' it was really cute.

then it was lunch time, and we had chicken salad sandwiches which were really good, and then all washed our dishes in the kitchen. because they are on tank water, they just fill one sink with soapy water and one with clean water, and everyone swirls their dishes in first the soapy one and then the rinse one. by the end the rinse water is pretty soapy. some of my water glasses tasted a little soapy, but it's non-toxic so oh well.

after lunch B counted us off into 4 groups, numbered 1-4 in maori (i was tahi, one). my group first did maori martial arts with a stick, the taiaha. to "warm up" he made us divide up half on each side of the kitchen, and then one group ran forward and backward across 10 times, then the other side did the same, then we did 9 and so on, down to one. this was bad news for sean and me, with very limited clothes to change into (actually everyone complained a lot, but it was good for us). then he first taught us blocks, then jabs, then more complicated combos. it was a little hard to understand what he wanted us to do, because all the names of moves were in maori (he said he had not taught a class in english before). at one point he was like 'we're going to play a game, and made curtis act out stabbing and blocking shots with him, but i think the rest of us looked so terrified he didn't make anyone else. my favorite was a sort of lookout combo, where you twirl the taiaha, and first go to the right, then front, then left.

after that we did team building activities with megan and jono. first were some name games, then the "electric shock" game where you pass a signal by squeezing hands, and the last game was this animal game where everyone is a member of the animal kingdom with king, elephant, gorilla, giraffe, moose, crocodile, monkey, mongoose, fish, crab, and roadkill. each animal has a symbol, and the lion starts, does his own, and then another symbol, and then that animal does his own, and a new one. if the person goes back to the one who just signaled to him, or goes too slow, they become the roadkill, and everyone below moves up. it was a lot of fun and we kept playing 'one more game'. after that it was dinner time, and we had chicken and assorted other stuff. after dinner groups tahi and rua (1 and 2) had to wash dishes, and i dried a lot and rinsed some. then they took us all to the pub in town (matakana) and we hung out there and watched rugby and the live band for awhile.

after that we went back and they set up a projector on a sheet over some mattresses against the wall and we watched while rider, which ej and i were super excited for, only most everybody fell asleep by the end.

we were woken up at 8am on sunday for breakfast, which was scrambled eggs, toast, and cereal with yogurt. i forgot that i really do not like eggs, especially without cheese. groups 3 and 4 did dishes, and then we swapped groups, only some of the activities were different. instead of team building that group got to do flat weaving, with the reedy-leafy plant that grows on the coast. and the martial arts groups did MUCH less running than we did! the other groups on saturday had gone swimming at a black sand beach where it was super cold, but our group got wetsuits and went boogie boarding at omaha beach. i obviously did not have my bathing suit or anything, but shaymali, who lives in california brought 3 so she loaned me one, and molly gave me some shorts, and everyone was really nice with sharing. the water really didn't feel cold at all with the wetsuits on, even when it started raining. that was a lot of fun, although we were cold after we took the wetsuits off at the end. we went back and showered and got all nice and clean and warm and dry, and the sun came out so people were playing touch rugby in the grass, and i watched. then we had lunch, make your own sandwich, and then tahi and rua had to wash dishes againnn. i rinsed for awhile but then left because i had done a lot the previous night and there were a lot of other people.

after lunch we packed everything up, and did the farewell ceremony with one of the local maori ladies, who said thank you for coming and good luck with our travels, and then was like 'now the floor is open to anyone who wants to speak' and there was awkward silence for awhile and then one girl said thanks and stuff, and then gael said stuff, and then another guy said thanks and stuff. then we all took a picture outside the marae (with everyones cameras of course), and left.

we stopped on the way back at the waiwera thermally heated pools on the way back, but i did not go swimming because i was all dry and warm and did not have more clothes. we were all expecting a sort of natural pool area, but it was really kind of touristy with just a bunch of pools at different temps. i went around with some other girls who weren't swimming and we dipped our feet and stuff, and then just sort of sat and people watched.

then we drove the rest of the way back to auckland, and B dropped us off and we said goodbye and thanks, and went into IH, where all the other students were moving in. praveen, the ra was at the desk and told me my bags had come and he had left them in my room for me, which was fabulous bc i really did not want to carry them up the 3 flights of stairs. so i went and unpacked an changed, and then we had dinner, the 5 ies girls, and we sat with one of the kiwi girls, called D, who was originally from south africa, but has been in nz for 5 years, but this is her first time away from home. she was only 17, and we felt really old! but most of the upperclassmen at uni here don't live in dorms, so most of our housemates will be younger than us.

after dinner kendall, sophie, ej and i went to ejs room to plan our adventure for this week, because since it's just orientation and there's no classes, a lot of ies kids are taking trips. we decided to go to the south island, and after lots of guidebook reading and internet searching, we decided on this rough plan:

leave tuesday morning, fly to queenstown, spend the day there, then rent a car and drive to te anu, the closest place to milford sound, in fiordland and stay in a hostel there. wednesday we will take a boat tour of milford sound, and then that night we will drive 5.5 hours to the franz josef glacier and sleep in a hostel there. thursday we will take a guided tour of the glacier, and either spend another night at the hostel there, or else drive to christchurch that night. provided riley is not traveling that weekend he said we can stay with him, otherwise we will get a hostel there too. then friday and saturday we will do things in christchurch, possibly a horseback tour, a whalewatch, or various other tours of christchurch. then we will fly back to auckland from there on sunday morning, and classes start monday!

after getting that all figured out i came back up here and had difficulties finding the cheap flights we thoght we had found, but eventually found some that aren't bad. it's a little less than $300 nz for the flights i think. kendall figured out that its like $650, not counting food, and she's not sure she wants to spend that much money. i understand her reluctance, and also i kind of want to not miss all the friend-making with kiwis and other IH kids during orientation, but we aren't going to have a lot of blocks of free time like this to travel so i think it will be worth it.

so then i was sitting here on the computer with my door open, and kendall had just imed me saying her hall was still really quiet even with kids moved in, and two kiwi boys came to my door and were like hey we are going around to meet people and nobody has their door open (and i was SO reminded of karen and me freshman year going visiting), and so i chatted with them for awhile and i was like my friend was just saying she wanted to find some new kids to meet! so i took them over to her room only i couldn't really remember where it was, so we just stood by the stairs and i yelled kendall and she came down to find us ha ha. then we hung out in her room for a long time, and ej came over after awhile. we were quizzing them on the 'kiwi lingo' in kendall's book which was really funny, and we watched funny youtube videos, and it was just a lot of fun, but i didn't get back here till almost 1, and now it's almost 3 and i have to get up at 8 so i am going to sleep. good night

the beginning

2008-02-21T17:01:00.000-08:00

so last night we had an ies group meeting, and we met out in front of IH where the schedule said a shuttle bus would meet us, and i went a little early and a girl who introduced herself as jen was there, and we talked and then sophie, who i met at ur before, and ej, who goes to ithaca, and kendall, who lives in wisconsin came, and jen was like yeah i'm walking you over, and it turns out she did ies last year and ended up transferring here.

at the meeting, gael, our "mother while we're here" talked to us, and 3 ies alumni who have come back for various reasons talked to us, and everyone got their id cards, only we were supposed to bring our passports and i didn't so i did not get mine. the alumni told us all kinds of stuff, for example they described biking in the city as "an extreme sport" and there is a "bikes and busses" lane in the street. and one of them had a trainer kite surfing kite with her and i was really excited. and they said in nz culture, it's bad to be a "tall poppy" which means people don't talk about their accomplishments as much, and self deprecation is seen as better. and there is this tour company through the school that has all kinds of fun stuff like whitewater rafting and sailing and other stuff. and they said the best way to go on trips is rent a car, although driving is scary because it's either insane traffic in auckland, or tiny windy roads out in the country. and it takes 8 or 9 hours to drive to wellington, and then you have to take the ferry to get to the south island. so it might be better to fly, i don't know. a lot of people were already planning trips.

then we went on a tour of the campus, and i talked to a bunch of people, and we had dinner and i talked to more people. two of the kids have been here for a month, biking around the north island and camping. and there is a girl who lives on a farm in saratoga springs. and one of the girls from ithaca knows jennifer. and the kid who friended everyone on facebook, chris, was next to me at dinner and he says he does not like any outdoor activities, and we were all like, then why did you come. and sean just did not show up to anything all afternoon, i don't know where he is.

at the end of dinner one of the guys invited everyone back to parnell (where the boys live, a 30+ minute walk thru the auckland domain) but the four of us in IH were tired so we just walked back, and stopped at the gym to find out about joining, which costs $160. i think i am going to, so i can do the group fitness classes, and get a discount on the kiteboarding lesson program, which does not start till march 3.

then we came back to IH, and went around to see each other's rooms, which are all basically the same, although i like mine bc it has a sky light because i'm on the top floor. kendall showed us the "gym" which consists of a bike, some free weights, 2 medicine balls, and a deflated exercise ball, and one of the laundry rooms. i still do not have a good grasp of the layout of this building. then we hung out in ej's room for awhile just talking, and the three of them traded cell phone numbers, but i did not have one yet.

then we went into the common room and watched survivor (which was the first thing we saw when we turned the tv on), and i was falling asleep so i just came up and went to bed at like 9.

then today i set my alarm on my computer for 7, because my bags were supposed to get here early, and gael was taking people to the 20th anniversary of the uni marae, which we had to be at by 8:50, so the IH girls decided to meet at 8:30 to go. so i got up early to be ready in time.

however, when i went down to the office, it was closed, so i wandered and was bored for awhile, and i got an apple from the cafeteria, there were 2 other kids in there who i did not talk to ha ha. and i called the airline, who said my bag was in customs (after waiting on hold foreverrr). and the office was open by like 8:30, so i gave them my home cell phone number, as well as the airline just so i could be in touch (i've been calling from the landline out in the hall though don't worry). they said my bags were in customs and should arrive sometime in the morning.

and i decided not to waste all day waiting, so i went to campus and got my id card, and while in the international students office i saw the japanese girl i had met briefly yesterday afternoon, and another girl who was with her who saw my rochester hoodie and said she was from saratoga. and i wanted to talk to them more, but they were doing something that was taking awhile and i had nothing left to do in that office, so i went to the it place, and got my netid registered (so now i have an auckland email address), and then i went down to queen street again to got o the vodafone store and get a phone.

sophie said she got one for 90 bucks, with a prepaid sim card. so the first store i went in said they were out of the cheap phones, and the next one was $179, so they sent me to another store further down queen street. so i got the $89 phone, plus a $35 prepaid sim card, that has $5 on it now, and when i register online i get another $10. everyone here texts apparently, because phone calls are expensive, so i haven't decided if i should get 2000 txts a month for $10. i can add that anytime though. and the phone guy saw my rochester hoodie and asked where rochester is, and i told him upstate ny, and he was like "oh that's what i thought, i worked at a camp in scranton, pa last summer and went through buffalo and syracuse"

so i took my phone home, plugged it in, and tried to follow the directions to activate the sim card (which is just a piece of cardboard with a chip in it), which did not work, and i called customer service, and they said to go back to the store.

so my bags were still not here, and it was like 11:30, so i went to the cafeteria for food, where i met one of the ras (i think) and i forgot his name - i am really not doing very well with names. but anyway he said they don't serve lunch until sunday, and he was just using the toaster, and i told him about my bags and phone issues and he was really nice. so then i came up and ate some peanutbutter and bread (i don't have a knife so it wasn't so much a sandwich). and called the airline again, and they said my bag should be here within an hour.

so then i went all the way back to the vodafone store, and after waiting in line the guy did some computer stuff and fixed it, he said it was because they recycle phone numbers and there was some sort of hold on it from the last user. also, while he was on the phone with customer service he said, and i quote "no p no p, sweet as, thanks, bye" which roughly translates into "no problem, awesome, thanks, bye".

so then i came back, expecting my bags to be here because it had been more than an hour, but nope! (i feel bad i have bothered the guys in the office at least 6 times today) so i came up and called the airline, and waited on hold for ages again, and the lady said she didn't have my reference number in the computer, and was gone for a long time, and then came back and said she was going to call the airport people, and took my cell number and said they should call me within half an hour or so. it's been an hour. i think i'll go call again.

arrival

2008-02-20T16:14:00.000-08:00

so i made a blog. yay. and i made it to auckland. yay.

so i left buffalo on tuesday, feb 19, and it was snowing so we had to de-ice, but there was no delay. i got to dulles just in time, my flight started boarding as i was walking up to the gate. at lax i had longer, which was good because i had to find a different terminal and get a new boarding pass from air new zealand. i still had plenty of time though. i talked to a couple on the lax terminal shuttle with a little girl who were going to samoa, and they had a blanket over the little girl's stroller so she could sleep, which looked really funny.

the airplane for the long flight (which was actually only 12 hours, not 20 like i thought it was) was super nice, very new and quite roomy. i think it was a boeing 777-something, in case anyone cares. there were 3 seats, an aisle, 3 seats, an aisle, 3 seats. i was right over the wing, and had the window seat (i picked the "a" seat on all my flights, to ensure i got a window, but by the end i had a sore neck from looking the same way all the time. i should have put the middle flight on the other side). it seemed like the end of the wing was really high up, compared with other planes i've been on, and i remembered how michael parker told me to watch how much higher the wing is when you're in the air than on the ground.

it seemed like most of the people had boarded and no one was in either of the seats next to me, but at the very end a couple came and sat down, but they were really nice. they were coming from detroit and had missed their first flight and gotten switched, so if they hadn't i might have had all 3 seats to myself!

anyway, we got dinner (chicken, veggies, roll, salad, and orange cheesecake - all pretty mediocre, but i was starving at that point). and then i discovered that one of the movies we could watch was across the universe and was really excited, but i fell asleep pretty quickly, and slept on and off for most of the flight. i played tetris for awhile, and watched some nz tourism videos, and went to the bathroom and walked around once. i really didn't get bored at all, those personal tvs are really nice. then 2 hours before landing we got breakfast, which was a "cheese omelet" which was really more a roll of scrambled eggs, with mushrooms and some little cake things that might have been sausage or might have been potato, or might have been something else, and a blueberry muffin, and strawberry yogurt. at first i thought i didn't want the omlet, but eventually i was hungry enough, and it really wasn't bad. as breakfast was ending the sunrise became visible on the horizon, rising behind us, and it looked really cool. i took a lot of pictures, but most of them did not come out very well.

then after we landed (45 minutes earlier than scheduled) we had to wait awhile for the plane at the gate before us to leave, and finally got off. i made it through passport control fine (and got a stamp!), and went to wait for my bags at the carousel. and waited. and waited. and waited. and finally i asked an air nz lady if i should be worried if my bags weren't there yet and she said to go see baggage services. so i did and after checking the computer they told me my bags were still in la, but would be arriving at 5 or 6 am tomorrow morning, and that they would be delivered to my residence, only i did not know the address. so i got some paperwork, and went thru customs, and came out into the main part of the airport, and there a bunch of college students and a guy with a sign that said 'university of auckland' called me over, and a kid named lee who goes to the u of r who i did not know introduced himself, and i said hi to sean, whose bags were also lost. there were 2 other boys and 4 girls who i didn't really talk to, and they all left on the shuttle to their apartments (which are kinda far away from campus i guess), and the driver guy (martin, he was really nice) was like, do you mind holding the sign while we're gone, there's supposed to be one more student arriving, so i did even though i felt really silly.

but no one had come over by the time he got back. so he said he'd watch my stuff so i wandered around and called the airline and gave them the street where i'm living (martin had told me), and filled up my water, and came back and he was still waiting, and he looked at the list and was like 'it's an asian name, and i can't tell if it's male or female' and i laughed and he explained how he can usually pick out the students, because they have trolleys with lots of bags, and laptops in the front part, while people 'on holiday' have bottles of duty-free alcohol in the front. and the american students always have way more bags because i guess the rest of the world's airlines allow only 20 kg of luggage (we get about 40kg).

so finally an asian boy came over and saw the u of auckland sign and was really excited, and martin told him he was going to huia house, which is pronounced "wee-ah" martin said he is from south africa originally, and he had to ask the locals how to say it too. the kid practiced pronouncing it a bunch of times it was cute. and martin was talking to another driver guy for awhile, so i made small talk. the kid's name is 'mo' but i think he said that's his last name, and he's from hong kong. he had a lot of trouble repeating my name (bc l is a hard letter for native asian-language speakers), but he was nice.

then we went outside and martin got the minivan and the driver sits on the right side of the car! that weirds me out more than the driving on the left side. it was about a 20 km drive to the school, and martin said that should take about 25 min, but there was traffic (it was around 9 am at that point) and he said it was because that's when the schools all start so kids were driving or being driven. he said auckland has pretty bad rush hour traffic, and the only public transport is busses. he also told us that 1.3 million people live in auckland, out of a total of 4 million in all of nz, and that the city is growing really fast. (i also learned from one of the video's on the plane that auckland is second only to la in terms of urban sprawl). we saw "one tree hill" which is this hill with a monument on top (kind of the shape of the washington monument), which martin told us is sacred ground to the maoris, and up until about 10 years ago there was a lone tree at the top, but a maori guy cut it down with a chain saw about 10 years ago as some sort of protest, so then they built the monument there. he said there's a good view of the city from the top, but it's too far from the uni to walk to).

he also told us that the "winter" season means rain, but not necessarily all day, there are lots of "4 seasons in one day" days. and that the north and south islands are like different countries. the north island was created mainly by volcanoes, while the south island is from one tectonic plate being pushed on top of the other.

one of the girls from the previous load called and did not have her bag, although she had had it when they loaded them at the airport, so we took a detour to the parnell appts where the boys (all 6 of them) are all living, and sure enough sean and another kid were sitting outside with the bag, so we got it, and took it to the girl who lives in the wellesley appts. the parnell ones looked like little cabins kind of, and they are across the auckland domain (big park), which martin said is a 30 minute or more walk to campus. i didn't really see the wellesley appts.

then we dropped mo at huia house, and martin went in with him to make sure he was checked in ok, and then finally he brought me to international house. it's at the end of whitaker place, which goes down a steep hill and turns. there's a little courtyard and sort of a school-looking brick building, about 4 stories tall. we went into the office, where the man in charge gave me my key and had me sign a form, and then brought me up to my room. i'm on teh third floor, and you have to wind all around through the building to get to it. the corridor doors are locked at night, but there's a little key fob that you just tap to open them, it's really nice. my actual door has a real key though. we went past the cafeteria, which is all brightly colored and looks like a cross between a high school cafeteria and some sort of lodge, and we can just eat there whenever we want (when it's open), there's no card swiping or anything.

my room is about the size of my single in anderson, but its carpeted, and has lots of nice storage space, like the closets in sue b. there was bedding folded on my bed which the guy told me is now my property, and i am in charge of keeping clean. there is an internet port right by the desk, and i registered my computer (i think it said it's $7 a week for internet, but that's fine, i need to have it here). the bathroom is down the "hall" but the halls here have like, windows with no panes, so they are semi-outdoors. it seemed clean, and there are 2 toilets and 2 showers so i don't think too many people share it. (i hope)

it was really hot and i was pretty sweaty by then, but of course, my deodorant was in my checked bags. i made my bed, and read through all the paperwork in my folder, which has a list of all the ies kids and where they are living, orientation schedules, contact numbers etc.

martin had told me that travel insurance might reimburse me for anything i needed while my bags were gone, so i found the ies paperwork but it didn't say, so i went back down to the office to use their phone. the lady i finally got ahold of said they give up to $1000 (nz) if the bags are gone more than 8 hours, but she also said something about $100, so i dont know if that means the first 100 is my responsibility? i also called air nz, and gave them the whole address and phone number for international house, and the guy said they pay for stuff if the bags are gone more than 24 hours, which i think it will be slightly under if they arrive when they said they would.

the guy at the desk who had helped me with the phone said "is everything sweet-as?" and i was like huh? and he was like "oh sorry, everything ok?" and then i figured out what he'd said, because i remember from the last time i was here that they say "sweet as" all the time for "ok" or "cool".

i asked the people in the office (i'm not sure if they are students or adults, they all seemed to have kiwi accents) where to go to get a toothbrush and stuff, and they said just go down symonds (pronounced like simon's) st, which is the main street i'm off of, and that martin said the uni buildings are further down. so i went for a stroll (by this time it was 11-something am), and decided to find the westpac atm where i can use my bank of america card to get cash without a fee, and that was on queens street which is a couple blocks over from symonds. queens street is pretty city-ish, busy, lots of stores. i felt really icky in my comfy pants, sneakers, and big less than jake shirt, but i really don't have anything else and i won't see any of those people ever again so whatever. i found the atm, took out $160 (nz) and then walked back toward campus. i considered going in some shops to find clothes but it was too overwhelming.

i walked the length of the campus on symonds street, it's really not far at all from where i live, martin said 10-15 min walk which isn't any worse than walking to the med center from towers. symonds street is pretty busy, with traffic and people and stuff, but there are trees and it just feels bigger and more college-y than queens st did.

on the way back i stopped at the student union, and went in the bookstore and school pharmacy. supplies at the pharmacy seemed limited and i assumed was overpriced at home, so i went back toward IH to the convenience store they had told me to go to, but when i got there i discovered prices were more than at the school. i bought a bottle of water, a toothbrush, bread, and peanutbutter though. all the deodorant there was either spray or roll on, and i had seen regular dove at the school pharmacy, and i was certainly not short on time, so i went back and got that (for $8.90!) and a contact case because although i had a new set of contacts and soln with me, i had no case. i also got some eyeliner so i don't look completely disgusting when i meet all the ies kids tonight.

then i came back to IH, and here i am. it's now 2 pm, and we meet at 3:40 for our first orientation thing, so i may take a short nap.

cya

linnell