Most Unproductive Weekend Ever. :)

Last week I spent hours upon hours doing research and writing two papers worth 45% and 40% of my grade respectively. They were kind of a big deal and so I focused all my energy on this. I told myself that this weekend I'd catch up on the work I kept missing out on. 

That didn't happen.

Friday night was my flatmate's 21st birthday. So all my flatmates and I went out to dinner to this nice restaurant on a tug boat on the harbor. Pearlyn actually got a free meal since it was her birthday! We had some pretty awesome seafood and afterwards we got Bubble Tea--Maddie had her first one and loved it! YAY! We got back home around 10 pm. When we opened the door, all her friends who had been hanging out in our flat for a few hours jumped out and yelled surprise! Success! It was so funny because some of them had been at our flat for a few hours and had ordered dinner and made brownies and stuff!  They made her some pretty awesome presents and it was so cute! We had a dance party with balloons, bubbles, and pin the tail on the donkey. It was like a little kid's party... except some people had beer. Ha.

 

That night my neighbors Daniel (from Chile), Lenny (from Germany), and Daniel's friend (from Argentina), Cassie, and I went out Latin DANCING! We actually ran into other friends there that night but it was SO much fun! I love REAL dancing and I have actually taken Salsa, Samba, Cha-Cha lessons. Daniel was really good and led well enough to where I was able to follow pretty decently. Which is hard, because I tend to lead. lol. Lenny was also pretty fun to dance with. I taught him some new moves (he'd taken a little salsa before too) and we danced a lot that night! It was a really, really, really fun night! 

Saturday morning I finished filming my scenes for the film competition through my church. It is the most ridiculous video ever... it's a musical about a post-apocolyptic world. Spandex of bright colors was involved. And I wore a ghost outfit. And had a dance battle. Yup. Then Cassie and I went to the World Press Photo Museum here, out on the Waterfront. It took us like 30 minutes just to find the place, but it was really incredible. I love photography and it was really awesome to be able to see those things. 

That night I went to Kara's house, a friend of mine through Student Life (NZ chapter of Campus Crusaders). There were 7 or 8 of us playing tons of games like Psychology, and the one where you put the name of a famous person on your forehead and you have to guess who you are. I was Jane Austen and the Fresh Prince of Bel Air, hahaha! Then Cassie came over and we had hot coco and watched Gladiator. ha, best combination ever. 

Finally, yesterday I was going to get work done!! And that didn't happen much either because last minute I was invited to go to a soccer game for free! So I went with my friend Cindy and we met up with my roommate Andy, Lenny, and our friend Fabien (from France). Later I read the one article I had to for today (so i guess I got a LITTLE work done), and then watched No Country for Old Men with Sebastian and Lenny. Really good weekend, and super unproductive. 

On a side note: I think New Zealand's weather may be in need of rehab, as it seems it's on crack. 

Their "winter" was not very winter-y at all. I'd say on average the temperature was between 45-60 degrees every day. (7-16 degrees Celsius). Now it's "spring" and freaking COLD. It's rainy, windy, and cloudy all the time. :( 

I woke up last night around 5 am. Not sure why, and realized there was a hurricane going on outside my window. The sound was cool though with the wind and rain so i started falling back asleep to that sound. I was abruptly woken up by the sound of water falling onto carpet... uh-oh. I ignored it, and 5 minutes later I heard it again. I got out of bed, turned on the lights and did a scan of my floor. No wet spots that I can see... where did it come from?! So i went back to bed and I heard that noise a few more times which was frustrating because it always happened right as I was about to fall asleep again. Eventually I got to a point where I was able to sleep through it. This morning I realized that water had been seeping onto my window sill and falling onto the floor. 

I swear its colder now in "spring" than it was in their "winter." 

O New Zealand--you and all your little quirks.

ALL BLACKS!!!!!!!!!!

So my two greatest goals in coming to New Zealand have been successfully fulfilled as of yesterday night!! The All Blacks, New Zealand's Rugby team and a source of national pride, played the Australian Wallabies (BOO) in Wellington. Being in the capital has its perks!

Friends from Canterbury and Dunedin came up to enjoy the game. Wellington EXPLODED. 

There were floods of people, all wearing black.. kinda looked like a really big funeral. But the All Blacks are INCREDIBLE. And we KILLED those stinky Wallabies.. Anhilated them. 

We won 33 to 6. And they had 6 points because they got 2 penalties--they didn't even score! Our boys creamed them and it was glorious. 

I have never screamed so much in my life. And we were pretty close: it was weird being SO close to these super famous players. 

The game is made that much better by the Australian-New Zealand rivalry that's always there! We got the opportunity to sit in front of this huge Wallabies fan section... so when it was clear we had won, at 26 and 6, we turned around and told them all to go home. Little did we know that in the last 5 minutes we would score AGAIN. Epic!! 

The Haka live... is... wow. It's incredible. Try imagining like 20 HUGE rugby players, as serious about the game as you can get, yelling in Maori at you, with all these war moves...Youtube it. All Blacks Haka. It's serious. 

Here's my favorite player...team captain Richie McCaw:: imagine this dude running at you and try to tell me you wouldn't pee your pants a little bit...

Richie McCaw--#7

But when he isn't eating Wallabies for dinner and is not bleeding and being intimidating, I've got to say, God did a GOOOOOD job when He made Richie. :D 

Sweet as weekend!

Yes, it was a very good weekend for me. And it was extended as I skipped my only class today. But shh, don't tell anyone! :p

Saturday night my friend Karl was having a birthday party. He's one of the three leaders of my life group through church. Him, and two other guys were all celebrating their birthdays together to throw a themed party. Specifically, a robot and/or pirate themed party. Having only had a few minutes to pull my costume together, I went as a pirate. (but sort of looked like a gypsy).

It was incredible how all out some people went!! There were three girls who wore the same thing: robots and their outfits were made out of those silver car window shields designed to keep the sun out. Cute. 

My friend William looked like Rambo: I was completely ready to give him total crap for not sticking with the theme, until he told me he was a Somalian Pirate. Very clever. 

Two guys were wearing DVDs around their necks.... movie pirates. 

It was really fun!! Dance party, robot battles, robots vs. pirates... pretty epic. 

And Sunday was this beautiful, beautiful, beautiful day. The sun was shining, there was a cool breeze, I was wearing a skirt and flip flops (or jandals as they call them here). I went to church in the morning, was so inspired by the message that I ran up to my room, grabbed my quiet time journal and some homework, ran back down to the Waterfront and spent a good 6 hours in the sun, reading my Bible and then doing some work--all the while listening to worship music. I got SO much done, and I spent a glorious day in God's beauty!! And then I went to evening service, where the message was incredible. I got home around 9, talked to my roommate for an hour, and then went to hang out with my buddy Lenny. I got there around 10:30... and we talked till 2 am. It's probably the longest conversation I've had with anyone here and it was good! 

Finally today, I skipped class so I could go with my group to visit Parliament! Our tour guide was very quirky and had a great sense of humor. But we got to see just about everything that we were allowed to and that was really neat. We even got the privilege of seeing John Key's car (the Prime Minister).... that would NEVER happen in DC. Obama has to have 3 other decoy cars and two Air Force Ones. Security here is definitely lax in comparison! 

It's been a pretty good weekend. :D

EPICCCCCC!!! (Spring break, NZ Style!!)

I have returned from the most epic two weeks OF MY LIFE. I think I'm going to just try and outline every day that's interesting. It could be a pretty long blog. 

So, I was traveling mainly with this girl Kana from Chicago, and Jeff from Boston. 

We were able to meet up with other friends along the way, but mostly, it was the three of us, touring the South Island of New Zealand. :)

We flew to Christchurch on the 24th. I was supposed to stay with a friend from Orientation, but he ended up being out of town that day for his own spring break. Kana had made arrangements already to stay at this guy Patrick's apartment. Patrick was gone too, but had left his room key hidden for her to find. So I joined her, in free housing. :) Christchurch is a bit boring, in all

 honesty. Although I  bet its much more interesting when you get to see and hang out with people you know. It was a very BRITISH town... which sounds weird, but its true. We went to the botanical gardens and a museum and to Cathedral Square. Very pretty and quaint. We woke up to the most amazing sunrise. 

The next morning we caught a bus out to Dunedin, on the south part of the South Island. This was probably one of my favorite places to go. Dunedin is a very student-oriented place. 20,000 of the 10,000 people there are students. So yes, everything is oriented to our age group. I have a friend from GW named Alex, who is studying abroad for a YEAR in Dunedin! So a few weeks before leaving I called and asked if I could stay with him and he was kind enough to let me. He

 had a car, which I wasn't expecting. He drove up to the train station to pick me up, let me drop my stuff off, and then we headed to Sandfly Beach. This beach was SO cool. It was a very small, blocked off by two huge walls of rock: it gave the beach a very private feel. 

He convinced me to jump off of a little cliff onto the soft sand piles underneath and that was

 fun. We ran and played in these HUGE sand dunes, rolling down them, running up them, etc, etc. 

There were also a bunch of sea lions just lying around. They actually blended in VERY well with the rocks. To the point where I wouldn't see it was an animal till either I was very close, or it moved. We saw a movie that night and then went to sleep. Climbing sand is hard work.

The next day, Alex took me to this really cool garden. It started off at this beautiful little pond with ducks and wound around to this pretty, hidden place. 

The paths into the woods were incredible. EVERYTHING was covered in moss. I felt as though I'd stepped into Nature's version of the Emerald City. 

There were also see-saws, monkey bars, and swings. Needless to say I had a great amount of fun on those. He had class from 2-4, so I met up with Jeff (O, Jeff and Kana had made other accommodation arrangements beforehand) and hit the Otago museum which was pretty cool. And when Alex got back, we hung out, cooked dinner, played Gin Rumi, watched a VERY weird movie, and then went to bed. :) The next day we left for Queenstown!!!! 

Queenstown is... AMAZING. It reminds me of the little mountain towns back home. The first day we got there the air was super dry, and super cold. It was that perfect, crisp, cold, mountain air. I felt at home!

The first night we just walked around this little town and hung out and relaxed. The second day we did a Canyon Swing... I never knew I could scream like that. You are harnessed to this awesome mechanism that allows you to swing over the Shotover River. But before you can start swinging, there's a 60 meter (or 197 foot) freefall drop. Now, I wasn't completely aware of how much of a free fall there was. But o boy there was. I had to just will myself to jump off that cliff. Everything in your mind and body is telling you to NOT jump, but it's amazing. And yes, Jeenie screamed like there was no tomorrow. It was absolutely incredible. 

Later that day, Jeff and I met up with our friends Ben and Charles while Kana went Bungy Jumping (which i WILL NOT do). The four of us did the Shotover Jet Boat, which is really like this big amusement park water ride, only you're doing it for real. We were getting super close to the rocks and then veering out of the way just in time, doing 360s in the water, getting really, really wet. haha. That night, Ben, Charles, and I went to this thing called the Ice Bar, or the Minus 5 Bar. It is quite literally a bar made entirely of ice. You pay $27 for 30 minutes inside this igloo for a drink, and lots of fun pictures. It was so cold you had to wear an additional coat, gloves, and hat if you needed. The cups were made of ice (which you're allowed to eat), there were ice sculptures, it was really fun! 

The second day is what I like to call EPIC DAY. Or perhaps Near-Death Experience Day. 

I started the morning by skydiving out of an airplane at 9000 feet! WOOO! That rush was incredible, and despite common perceptions, it's not scary at all! You just feel like you're floating. It is one of two things i HAD to do in NZ. Check. SO much fun. A few hours later we took a really cool helicopter ride to the beginning of our White Water Rafting site. We were doing class 3 and 4 rapids, and on the first set of rapids (class 4), our raft tipped over. All 6 of us toppled into the cold water... and I really had fun! I was rescued by another boat, but I legitimately thought it was awesome. I'm glad it happened! I thought it would have been ironic if I had survived sky diving but not white water rafting. But I didn't, and it was fun fun fun! 

When we got back, I took Kana night boarding. She had never boarded before so we stuck on the bunny hill and I taught her how to board! :) 

Day 3 in Queenstown was supposed to be a day trip to Milford Sound (supposedly one of the most beautiful places in the world), but the weather conditions were too bad. So we turned around, slept more, and then Kana and I went snowboarding again. Then we had Fergburger... which was amazing as well. Mmmm, yummy food! We left Queenstown the next morning and headed to Franz Josef. 

Franz Josef is a tiny little town. Population: 5. No, just kidding. But you get the idea. It was like 3 streets long. haha. We got in, settled down and went to bed early. Queenstown definitely wore us all out a LOT. The next morning, though, we went hiking on the Franz Josef Glacier!! Walking on a giant piece of ice, walking through the crevices, etc etc. It was fun! We were supposed to do a whole day, but it got cut down to a half day (we got refunded), because the weather stunk. Hail hurts when it hits your body at like a million miles per hour!! The wind was so strong it almost knocked over our experienced guide, who was this big Maori guy! SO yeah, needless to say, we couldn't face those. But it was fun nonetheless. I also drank water from the water pockets in the glacier: freshest water out there! 

Finally we headed to Nelson. (this is the top of the South Island, so made a huge loop). We stayed in Nelson one night, where we happened to meet up with several friends, some of whom I had not seen since Orientation! It was cool, actually. There were 3 boys I hung out with the most who went to a different school. They were there so it was cool seeing them!! The next morning, Kana and I headed to Abel Tasman, another remarkably beautiful NZ place.

The program had organized a 22-person trip to Abel Tasman. Kana and I had been unable to make the list, so we did our own Abel Tasman trip. We got to stay at the same lodge and hike most of the same hike. We just happened to return early. I spent almost all my time with my 3 orientation friends. It was really cool seeing them again. :D 

So that's it,  flew into Wellington this morning, and now I am sitting at my desk, finishing this blog. YAY SPRING BREAKKKK!