Since I've been in NZ I've been having really elaborate, crazy dreams. I've always had crazy and detailed dreams, but here it seems they've become a really prominent figure in my everyday life. I like to talk about them and think about them. However, the only person I've really talked to about them has been Chris and he doesn't really have the interest or patience to listen to my extremely long, detailed, and vivid recounts (which I completely understand because really only I can see and understand the complexity of the images and happening in my dreams). So, I've created a blog for my dreams. So here is the link: http://dreamsophiadean.blogspot.com/
If you're at all interested in dreams or even seeing how crazy I really am, check it out.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Grades and campus life at Victoria
So I know I've written very little about school in my blog, and that's mostly because being here and experiencing things outside of school has been more important and more exciting for me. School, sadly was kind of a let down here. I expected to be focused a lot more on school and classes but I've found that those things just don't seem to interest me as much here because I'm surrounded by beautiful mountains and incredible people that distract me too much.
Now that's not to say that I haven't been doing my work and that school has been completely dropped out of my conscious thought. In fact, I've been doing quite well here. In my psychology class (a 300 level course, which is considered their hardest level for undergrads) I've received only A's. I'm not bragging, but instead making a point. Despite my best efforts to put school second, I've still managed to pull off fairly good grades.
Here are some little facts about the University that I have failed to mention up until now.
Victoria campuses are located all around the city, I believe there are three main ones. I go to Kelburn, which is the liberal arts campus and is a 15 minute "hike" up The Terrace (the street I live on) and then up a steep pathway located next to the main road that passes through campus called "Kelburn Parade." The Terrace, at least the section that I live in, is a busy street because it involves the rush hour commute for the business district (Parliament is literally down the street from my building) and also the commute for a lot of students. I make my way up the street passing lots of business men and a heavy line of traffic. I always feel bad for the people in cars because typically I move faster than they do and I probably get to my destination much faster than them. The Terrace is kind of like a funnel for the wind and it can get really frustrating to walk up when the wind is really strong and it is even worse when it's raining.
Campus is large, compared to Mt.Holyoke. There is a main quad that is centered between the library and two different buildings (Easterfield - where I have a lot of my classes - and Maclaurin). A lot of the buildings are interconnected, which means that often I don't even need to go outside to switch buildings (Easterfield has a pathway that connects to Kirk (I also have a class here), Kirk connects to Old Kirk, which connects to the Student Union Building... you get the picture). Some of the buildings are across Kelburn Parade, but no worries because they have a bridge that connects Kirk with Murphy so you don't have to get wet or go outside, ever.
Most of the lectures, for me, are large. They typically are comprised of 40 to as large as 100 people. All of my lectures are conducted with a Powerpoint and there is little professor/student interaction (meaning few questions directed at the class). They never take attendance and always post lecture powerpoint copies on Blackboard (the internet database every class has).
I believe I've mentioned this, but, all lectures are accompanied with a tutorial that you sign up for after the first day of class. Tutorials are used for students to get more dialogue about the course topics. However, my tutorials haven't really worked out like that. Tutorials are run by TA's, usually grad students in that particular area of study. They are roughly an hour long, although my psych tutorial was 2 hours. Tutorials split the large class up into different smaller sections so that people get more chances to talk but, still, I didn't really find that I got a more personal atmosphere in tutorial. They take attendance in tutorial and they also attempt to learn peoples names, but none of my tutors ever did. It is in tutorial that assignments are assigned and turned in. TA's are the ones who grade the work and give it back.
Because Victoria is such a large school, inbetween classes can be rather hectic. There is a lot of movement and noise because of the large amount of people moving throughout the halls (something that overwhelms me coming from such a smaller school). There are two cafes (that I know of) on campus and a convenience store that are always packed with people. There are also lots of random computers scattered about for people to quickly check emails and such (they are set up in such a way that you can only stand at them and you also can't print anything off of them). The actual computer lab (where you can sit and down work and print stuff) is in the library and is always full of people. It's horrible when you need to print something out because usually there is a long queue already formed full of other impatient people. And while you're waiting there (which can take as long as an hour) you can see some people browsing (stalking?) on facebook, wasting time that you could be using to print stuff out. This is a huge difference from Mt.Holyoke where typically there is always a computer free in the computer lab. And if not, all dorms have computers and printers available.
The library is ALWAYS packed here. I've never been in there without there being a good amount of people packed around the multiple amounts of tables, couches and comfy chairs. As far as I know the library goes up at least 10 floors, but I usually only make it up to the 6th because I don't really like waiting for the elevator. All the levels of the library have lots of tables set up on the perimeter of the floor next to huge windows. The inner part of the floor contains stacks of books and documents. Most tables are located next to a plug for people who want to use their laptops. The view from the library is pretty spectacular. You can see all of Wellington, the bay and Mt.Vic. It's hard to concentrate on work when you've got that view distracting you.
The grading system here is very different from the states. In the states grades roughly go like this: 100-90% (A), 89-80% (B), 79-70% (C), 69-60 (D), 59-0 (F). Here, grades go like this: 100-75% (A), 74-60% (B), 59-50 (C), and below that is D, E, F, and G. You don't want a G. Haha. So far I've recieved nothing below a 70, which was pretty shocking to see at first because my standards have always been that a 70 = bad. Instead now, it'll be weird going back to the states and realizing that I can't get 70's anymore and it'll be okay. Haha.
Anyway, I've wasted a lot of time writing this up, it's a method of procrastinating because I have a test tomorrow I should be studying for.
Chris is still sick, he definitely has the flu and I'm nervously waiting to see if I'm going to get it. I do feel a little sickly today, so I'm scared. But as long as I get through tomorrow and complete my test I won't really mind getting sick. Although Chris's flu has been really miserable and hard on him (running a 102 temp, chills, body aches, etc), so I won't really enjoy it if I do get sick.
Now that's not to say that I haven't been doing my work and that school has been completely dropped out of my conscious thought. In fact, I've been doing quite well here. In my psychology class (a 300 level course, which is considered their hardest level for undergrads) I've received only A's. I'm not bragging, but instead making a point. Despite my best efforts to put school second, I've still managed to pull off fairly good grades.
Here are some little facts about the University that I have failed to mention up until now.
Victoria campuses are located all around the city, I believe there are three main ones. I go to Kelburn, which is the liberal arts campus and is a 15 minute "hike" up The Terrace (the street I live on) and then up a steep pathway located next to the main road that passes through campus called "Kelburn Parade." The Terrace, at least the section that I live in, is a busy street because it involves the rush hour commute for the business district (Parliament is literally down the street from my building) and also the commute for a lot of students. I make my way up the street passing lots of business men and a heavy line of traffic. I always feel bad for the people in cars because typically I move faster than they do and I probably get to my destination much faster than them. The Terrace is kind of like a funnel for the wind and it can get really frustrating to walk up when the wind is really strong and it is even worse when it's raining.
Campus is large, compared to Mt.Holyoke. There is a main quad that is centered between the library and two different buildings (Easterfield - where I have a lot of my classes - and Maclaurin). A lot of the buildings are interconnected, which means that often I don't even need to go outside to switch buildings (Easterfield has a pathway that connects to Kirk (I also have a class here), Kirk connects to Old Kirk, which connects to the Student Union Building... you get the picture). Some of the buildings are across Kelburn Parade, but no worries because they have a bridge that connects Kirk with Murphy so you don't have to get wet or go outside, ever.
Most of the lectures, for me, are large. They typically are comprised of 40 to as large as 100 people. All of my lectures are conducted with a Powerpoint and there is little professor/student interaction (meaning few questions directed at the class). They never take attendance and always post lecture powerpoint copies on Blackboard (the internet database every class has).
I believe I've mentioned this, but, all lectures are accompanied with a tutorial that you sign up for after the first day of class. Tutorials are used for students to get more dialogue about the course topics. However, my tutorials haven't really worked out like that. Tutorials are run by TA's, usually grad students in that particular area of study. They are roughly an hour long, although my psych tutorial was 2 hours. Tutorials split the large class up into different smaller sections so that people get more chances to talk but, still, I didn't really find that I got a more personal atmosphere in tutorial. They take attendance in tutorial and they also attempt to learn peoples names, but none of my tutors ever did. It is in tutorial that assignments are assigned and turned in. TA's are the ones who grade the work and give it back.
Because Victoria is such a large school, inbetween classes can be rather hectic. There is a lot of movement and noise because of the large amount of people moving throughout the halls (something that overwhelms me coming from such a smaller school). There are two cafes (that I know of) on campus and a convenience store that are always packed with people. There are also lots of random computers scattered about for people to quickly check emails and such (they are set up in such a way that you can only stand at them and you also can't print anything off of them). The actual computer lab (where you can sit and down work and print stuff) is in the library and is always full of people. It's horrible when you need to print something out because usually there is a long queue already formed full of other impatient people. And while you're waiting there (which can take as long as an hour) you can see some people browsing (stalking?) on facebook, wasting time that you could be using to print stuff out. This is a huge difference from Mt.Holyoke where typically there is always a computer free in the computer lab. And if not, all dorms have computers and printers available.
The library is ALWAYS packed here. I've never been in there without there being a good amount of people packed around the multiple amounts of tables, couches and comfy chairs. As far as I know the library goes up at least 10 floors, but I usually only make it up to the 6th because I don't really like waiting for the elevator. All the levels of the library have lots of tables set up on the perimeter of the floor next to huge windows. The inner part of the floor contains stacks of books and documents. Most tables are located next to a plug for people who want to use their laptops. The view from the library is pretty spectacular. You can see all of Wellington, the bay and Mt.Vic. It's hard to concentrate on work when you've got that view distracting you.
The grading system here is very different from the states. In the states grades roughly go like this: 100-90% (A), 89-80% (B), 79-70% (C), 69-60 (D), 59-0 (F). Here, grades go like this: 100-75% (A), 74-60% (B), 59-50 (C), and below that is D, E, F, and G. You don't want a G. Haha. So far I've recieved nothing below a 70, which was pretty shocking to see at first because my standards have always been that a 70 = bad. Instead now, it'll be weird going back to the states and realizing that I can't get 70's anymore and it'll be okay. Haha.
Anyway, I've wasted a lot of time writing this up, it's a method of procrastinating because I have a test tomorrow I should be studying for.
Chris is still sick, he definitely has the flu and I'm nervously waiting to see if I'm going to get it. I do feel a little sickly today, so I'm scared. But as long as I get through tomorrow and complete my test I won't really mind getting sick. Although Chris's flu has been really miserable and hard on him (running a 102 temp, chills, body aches, etc), so I won't really enjoy it if I do get sick.
Monday, May 25, 2009
Videos by Brian: North Island to Samoa
These are videos that Brian took throughout our trip from Wellington to Samoa. Most of them are of us driving or are out the window shots of around Samoa. They're pretty short, but I think they're cool because it gives you a chance to see what we saw outside of a snapshot photograph. I hope you enjoy them!
The beginning of the trip: Me and Chris jamming to the Beach Boys on the first few minutes of our drive out of Wellington. We're heading out of Wellington toward Lower Hutt.
Me and Chris again from Taupo to Napier
Napier - Hawkes Bay, me running away from the water, which was freezing.
Driving, I think this may be from Napier to Rotorua, but I'm not sure. Be warned, this video is loud due to wind noise.
Craters of the Moon - In between Taupo and Rotorua. This video is also loud because of wind. Brian comments on the smell of the sulfur. Haha.
And that ends the New Zealand videos...
Samoa!
Funny thing is that these videos are of stuff that I have yet to write about in my blog, so bear with me, but I think you'll enjoy them none the less.
This is from the day after my birthday when we went to see the Dwarf Caves. We had two Samoan guides that gave us coconut to eat and drink right off the coconut tree. They gave us a tour of the caves and taught us some Samoan words. In this video, one of the guides finds Brian a fruit opens it and eats it.
This is at Stevenson's resort, every weekend we had a little performance. All the guys in the band are locals, living in Manase literally right next to Stevenson's. One of them worked at the BBQ place where we got lunch on my birthday.
This video is of two boys fishing. The fish they catch are very small and were the ones we saw most frequently because they would come right up to you and swim around in the areas away from the coral. The people eat these fish, but they mostly use them as bait for deep ocean fishing. We saw people all the time doing this along "our" beach. I don't remember what particular day this was, but we had all just taken a walk together up and down the beach and Brian had stopped to talk with the boys and take a video of them.
This is a video of the coast of Savaii. We took a day trip around the entire island. We paid 120 tala each (which is like nothing for us) for a man to drive us around and show us all the sights of the island. It gives you a pretty good idea of how small Samoa really is. Our driver told us, without stopping, it would only take him 4 hours to do the entire perimeter of the island (there's really only one main road you can drive on). It took us from about 9:30 am til roughly 5:00 pm. Which just shows how much we stopped and how much we saw.
More of the same day, driving around the island. This is a village, I'm not sure of the name.
On our adventure around the island we stopped at this thing called the "Canopy Walk." It's an enormous tree that has stairs built on it that spiral up to the top and you can get a good view of the surrounding jungle from uptop. It also has a scary plank, rope and wire bridge (I can't think of the appropriate name right now of course) that connects to another tree. It is this bridge that gives the tourist attraction it's name. I, for one, am pretty scared of heights and Brian got this video of me slowly making my way down the stairs after having climbed up and looked around. You can see me taking one step at a time. Haha. And Brian and Chris are joking about it the whole time. I obviously did not walk across the bridge because it looked dangerous and also like it would break really easily but Brian, Jon and Chris did it.
More driving around
We stopped at some blowholes. It would require too much effort to write in detail about them right now, but they're basically created by the ocean hitting rock and the water finding it's way through crevasses and exploding out with immense power. This particular blowhole is famous in Samoa because of it's size and also because the people like to throw coconut into the hole at precisely the right time and they come exploding back out. A tiny little old Samoan man, who we deemed "the coconut man", demonstrated this local tradition for us. Brian later went up and threw a few coconuts in himself. This video is particularly funny because Chris jokes that coconut man had to attend 3 years of school in order to get that timing just right.
This is the waterfall where we went cliff diving. We jumped from the side (not from the top of the water fall! - but apparently you can do that! ahh!). This is also where I hurt my knee jumping from the cliffs too close to the side of the cliff. I slammed down onto some rocks at the bottom of the water and scraped my knee. Overall, I was okay, my knee just had a bad cut and I was mostly just shaken up, but I now have a scar to prove it all happened.
This is us walking through some lava ruins. All the villages around Samoa (mostly in Savaii) try to have some sort of tourist attraction in their village because that happens to be a great source of income to the people there. Some things were as small as charging people 2 tala for a simple place to take pictures and others were much more substantial, such as these lava ruins. It was weird because lava crusts are meant to reproduce life of plants and nature around it after the flow destroys them, but these people were "weeding" the budding grasses and trees because they wanted to keep the lava flow are clear and "new" looking as possible. Which sort of seemed backwards to me, but that's their living. The whole villages women were out there cleaning the area, sweeping and weeding. Jon is in the light blue shorts, Chris is in the orange and I'm obviously in the pink. The white ground that we walk on in the beginning of the video is cement the village lay down in order for people to have an easier time walking to a certain spot - the virgins grave (which is a whole other story I'll write about later.)
This video isn't really of anything because it's so dark but you can hear our friend Evan talking. He was the manager of the neighboring resort called "Vacations" and was a good friend to us throughout our time in Samoa. Through him we experienced a lot of Samoan culture that I don't think we would have been able to experience if we hadn't met him. This video is of our kava bowl ceremony. Chris had bought some kava - a root that Samoans traditionally use as a welcome drink and make a huge ceremony out of it. It used to only be drunk by certain people but it is now sold at local stores. Chris bought it at the gas station we frequented in hopes of tasting some because it's so popular here. He had it with him when we went to Evan's (Vacations) on the last night that Jon was in Samoa. He suggested we have some and Evan got very excited and insisted that his cousin and cook, Apu, make it special and put it in a traditional special ceremonial kava bowl. We were also served in a very formal fashion. Kava has effects similar to alcohol. It makes you feel very relaxed and sleepy and a little out of sorts. This video is funny because Evan is talking about the next time we all come to Samoa (which probably won't happen for years) and he speculates that Chris and I (since it was apparent that we were dating) would have children. Haha. Although it's nice of Evan to believe that Chris and I will still be together years from now, it's really difficult to for us to imagine that, let alone having kids.
Finally, this is the last video - although Brian has several more on his youtube account and if you're really interested you can check them out. This is of the fish market in Apia. On our last day, after we took the ferry from Savaii back to Upolu, we went back to Apia because we had HOURS to kill before our flight. We ended up going to a fish and chips place that was right in the fish market and after eating Brian insisted on going back to take a video of it because he thought it was so cool.
I hope you enjoyed the videos. I will hopefully write up a long update about Samoa and also NZ life, but I've been really busy recently. I have a test on Thursday and papers all due June 5th. Other excuses that I have are that my internet got cut off (they charge by the bandwidth here and I used it all up really early on in the week trying to watch the season finale of Lost season 5) and then Chris started getting sick on Friday and on Sunday was in bad shape. So I spent Sunday and today taking care of him and making sure he was okay. Surprisingly, I'm not sick yet... but I feel like I may be speaking too soon and that in a couple of days I'll be just as sick. Hopefully, this won't be the case, but I'm not making any sort of predictions at this point.
The beginning of the trip: Me and Chris jamming to the Beach Boys on the first few minutes of our drive out of Wellington. We're heading out of Wellington toward Lower Hutt.
Me and Chris again from Taupo to Napier
Napier - Hawkes Bay, me running away from the water, which was freezing.
Driving, I think this may be from Napier to Rotorua, but I'm not sure. Be warned, this video is loud due to wind noise.
Craters of the Moon - In between Taupo and Rotorua. This video is also loud because of wind. Brian comments on the smell of the sulfur. Haha.
And that ends the New Zealand videos...
Samoa!
Funny thing is that these videos are of stuff that I have yet to write about in my blog, so bear with me, but I think you'll enjoy them none the less.
This is from the day after my birthday when we went to see the Dwarf Caves. We had two Samoan guides that gave us coconut to eat and drink right off the coconut tree. They gave us a tour of the caves and taught us some Samoan words. In this video, one of the guides finds Brian a fruit opens it and eats it.
This is at Stevenson's resort, every weekend we had a little performance. All the guys in the band are locals, living in Manase literally right next to Stevenson's. One of them worked at the BBQ place where we got lunch on my birthday.
This video is of two boys fishing. The fish they catch are very small and were the ones we saw most frequently because they would come right up to you and swim around in the areas away from the coral. The people eat these fish, but they mostly use them as bait for deep ocean fishing. We saw people all the time doing this along "our" beach. I don't remember what particular day this was, but we had all just taken a walk together up and down the beach and Brian had stopped to talk with the boys and take a video of them.
This is a video of the coast of Savaii. We took a day trip around the entire island. We paid 120 tala each (which is like nothing for us) for a man to drive us around and show us all the sights of the island. It gives you a pretty good idea of how small Samoa really is. Our driver told us, without stopping, it would only take him 4 hours to do the entire perimeter of the island (there's really only one main road you can drive on). It took us from about 9:30 am til roughly 5:00 pm. Which just shows how much we stopped and how much we saw.
More of the same day, driving around the island. This is a village, I'm not sure of the name.
On our adventure around the island we stopped at this thing called the "Canopy Walk." It's an enormous tree that has stairs built on it that spiral up to the top and you can get a good view of the surrounding jungle from uptop. It also has a scary plank, rope and wire bridge (I can't think of the appropriate name right now of course) that connects to another tree. It is this bridge that gives the tourist attraction it's name. I, for one, am pretty scared of heights and Brian got this video of me slowly making my way down the stairs after having climbed up and looked around. You can see me taking one step at a time. Haha. And Brian and Chris are joking about it the whole time. I obviously did not walk across the bridge because it looked dangerous and also like it would break really easily but Brian, Jon and Chris did it.
More driving around
We stopped at some blowholes. It would require too much effort to write in detail about them right now, but they're basically created by the ocean hitting rock and the water finding it's way through crevasses and exploding out with immense power. This particular blowhole is famous in Samoa because of it's size and also because the people like to throw coconut into the hole at precisely the right time and they come exploding back out. A tiny little old Samoan man, who we deemed "the coconut man", demonstrated this local tradition for us. Brian later went up and threw a few coconuts in himself. This video is particularly funny because Chris jokes that coconut man had to attend 3 years of school in order to get that timing just right.
This is the waterfall where we went cliff diving. We jumped from the side (not from the top of the water fall! - but apparently you can do that! ahh!). This is also where I hurt my knee jumping from the cliffs too close to the side of the cliff. I slammed down onto some rocks at the bottom of the water and scraped my knee. Overall, I was okay, my knee just had a bad cut and I was mostly just shaken up, but I now have a scar to prove it all happened.
This is us walking through some lava ruins. All the villages around Samoa (mostly in Savaii) try to have some sort of tourist attraction in their village because that happens to be a great source of income to the people there. Some things were as small as charging people 2 tala for a simple place to take pictures and others were much more substantial, such as these lava ruins. It was weird because lava crusts are meant to reproduce life of plants and nature around it after the flow destroys them, but these people were "weeding" the budding grasses and trees because they wanted to keep the lava flow are clear and "new" looking as possible. Which sort of seemed backwards to me, but that's their living. The whole villages women were out there cleaning the area, sweeping and weeding. Jon is in the light blue shorts, Chris is in the orange and I'm obviously in the pink. The white ground that we walk on in the beginning of the video is cement the village lay down in order for people to have an easier time walking to a certain spot - the virgins grave (which is a whole other story I'll write about later.)
This video isn't really of anything because it's so dark but you can hear our friend Evan talking. He was the manager of the neighboring resort called "Vacations" and was a good friend to us throughout our time in Samoa. Through him we experienced a lot of Samoan culture that I don't think we would have been able to experience if we hadn't met him. This video is of our kava bowl ceremony. Chris had bought some kava - a root that Samoans traditionally use as a welcome drink and make a huge ceremony out of it. It used to only be drunk by certain people but it is now sold at local stores. Chris bought it at the gas station we frequented in hopes of tasting some because it's so popular here. He had it with him when we went to Evan's (Vacations) on the last night that Jon was in Samoa. He suggested we have some and Evan got very excited and insisted that his cousin and cook, Apu, make it special and put it in a traditional special ceremonial kava bowl. We were also served in a very formal fashion. Kava has effects similar to alcohol. It makes you feel very relaxed and sleepy and a little out of sorts. This video is funny because Evan is talking about the next time we all come to Samoa (which probably won't happen for years) and he speculates that Chris and I (since it was apparent that we were dating) would have children. Haha. Although it's nice of Evan to believe that Chris and I will still be together years from now, it's really difficult to for us to imagine that, let alone having kids.
Finally, this is the last video - although Brian has several more on his youtube account and if you're really interested you can check them out. This is of the fish market in Apia. On our last day, after we took the ferry from Savaii back to Upolu, we went back to Apia because we had HOURS to kill before our flight. We ended up going to a fish and chips place that was right in the fish market and after eating Brian insisted on going back to take a video of it because he thought it was so cool.
I hope you enjoyed the videos. I will hopefully write up a long update about Samoa and also NZ life, but I've been really busy recently. I have a test on Thursday and papers all due June 5th. Other excuses that I have are that my internet got cut off (they charge by the bandwidth here and I used it all up really early on in the week trying to watch the season finale of Lost season 5) and then Chris started getting sick on Friday and on Sunday was in bad shape. So I spent Sunday and today taking care of him and making sure he was okay. Surprisingly, I'm not sick yet... but I feel like I may be speaking too soon and that in a couple of days I'll be just as sick. Hopefully, this won't be the case, but I'm not making any sort of predictions at this point.
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Friday to Wednesday
Friday I don't think was particularly interesting or exciting during the day. I think that I spent the majority of the day doing homework at Stafford. Chris and I ate at a cheap Malaysian restaurant in Left Bank together and then went to Stephens. Chris and I showed up and then with Stephen and Colin we went to Liquor King and decided it was scrumpy hands night. Scrumpy is a really cheap cider drink that contains roughly 8 drinks in a fairly small sized bottle yet tastes pretty much like really bad apple juice or something. Thus it's a cheap and quick way to get drunk. People in NZ treat scrumpy the same way that people in the States treat 40's. In the States people play this game called "Edward 40 Hands," which is where you duct tape two 40's to your hands and have to finish them before you can take them off. Hahaha. In NZ they called it "Edward Scrumpy Hands" or simple "Scrumpy Hands." It's the same concept, except with scrumpy. However scrumpy packs a bigger punch of alcohol and I think is a way worse drinking game than with a 40. So we didn't technically play scrumpy hands. We started out with one scrumpy each and then Stephen thought it would be a good idea to buy 3 more (for him, Chris and Colin, not me because I didn't like that idea). To say the least, we got fairly drunk and ended up not even going out because we all got too tired. Haha.
Saturday Chris and I watched some Lost and then ate some indian take away food for lunch. It was really cheap and delicious. We ended up watching more Lost at Stephens and because it was really windy and rainy outside we ended up watching Lost until it got dark. We had plans to get dinner with our friend Derek and a large group of people for Dereks birthday at this place called "The Flying Burrito Brothers" but that wasn't until 9:30. So we ended up taking cat naps and listening to music until we had to leave.
Dinner was okay. It was over priced and the meals, although good, were very small in proportion to the amount we were paying. We had a good time talking and hanging out with the large group of people. After dinner we went to J.J Murphys, a bar that we had all pretty much banned from our list of bars to go to because of bad service, but our friends were there so we went (we didn't buy anything of course and joked about spitting on the floor). After hanging out for a bit half of us went to dance at "Boogie Wonderland" and the other half; me, Chris, Stephen, Colin, Lars, Brian, and Shannon went to the Matterhorn for a quieter night. We managed to grab a table even though the place was completely packed. We enjoyed a couple beers, Lars got a scotch and a cuban cigar, which was hilarious, and had an over all good night.
Sunday I think Chris and I watched more Lost (this has become a sad theme of my life recently...) and got Burger Fuel for lunch. After that I went home for a little to do some homework on the computer and Chris went to Borders to do some reading. We met up and got some dinner and hung out at Stephens to say goodbye to Colin and then called it a night early.
Monday I went to class and hung around campus all day. After school I went to Stafford and then Stephen and I went grocery shopping together. Chris and Brian joined us at Stafford later and we made burritos and tacos and made plans for our south island trip. We ended up buying airplane tickets (including one for Elizabeth) and planning out a bit of what we wanted to see.
Tuesday I went to class and hung around campus again. After that I went and met up with Chris at his place and we got coffee and pastries at a little coffee shop called "Aro Bake." We tried to do some homework outside but got distracted by Lola the kitty and then it was also too cold. We walked to the library and did work there until about 6:30 and then went to the grocery store and bought supplies for dinner. We met up with Stephen and went to Stafford and cooked burgers. Brian and Shannon came over and we planned our Abel Tasman trip (this is from June 6th - June 13th) and booked a ferry ride and a car rental for our trip.
Today I didn't have class so I slept in, ate left overs at Stafford and now I'm at the library trying to write a paper and feeling sickly. I realized that since I've been in Wellington I've really only had one cold, and that was at the very beginning of it all... so I guess I was kind of due to get ill in some way or another.
I'll try and post a blog entry about Samoa today or tomorrow.
Saturday Chris and I watched some Lost and then ate some indian take away food for lunch. It was really cheap and delicious. We ended up watching more Lost at Stephens and because it was really windy and rainy outside we ended up watching Lost until it got dark. We had plans to get dinner with our friend Derek and a large group of people for Dereks birthday at this place called "The Flying Burrito Brothers" but that wasn't until 9:30. So we ended up taking cat naps and listening to music until we had to leave.
Dinner was okay. It was over priced and the meals, although good, were very small in proportion to the amount we were paying. We had a good time talking and hanging out with the large group of people. After dinner we went to J.J Murphys, a bar that we had all pretty much banned from our list of bars to go to because of bad service, but our friends were there so we went (we didn't buy anything of course and joked about spitting on the floor). After hanging out for a bit half of us went to dance at "Boogie Wonderland" and the other half; me, Chris, Stephen, Colin, Lars, Brian, and Shannon went to the Matterhorn for a quieter night. We managed to grab a table even though the place was completely packed. We enjoyed a couple beers, Lars got a scotch and a cuban cigar, which was hilarious, and had an over all good night.
Sunday I think Chris and I watched more Lost (this has become a sad theme of my life recently...) and got Burger Fuel for lunch. After that I went home for a little to do some homework on the computer and Chris went to Borders to do some reading. We met up and got some dinner and hung out at Stephens to say goodbye to Colin and then called it a night early.
Monday I went to class and hung around campus all day. After school I went to Stafford and then Stephen and I went grocery shopping together. Chris and Brian joined us at Stafford later and we made burritos and tacos and made plans for our south island trip. We ended up buying airplane tickets (including one for Elizabeth) and planning out a bit of what we wanted to see.
Tuesday I went to class and hung around campus again. After that I went and met up with Chris at his place and we got coffee and pastries at a little coffee shop called "Aro Bake." We tried to do some homework outside but got distracted by Lola the kitty and then it was also too cold. We walked to the library and did work there until about 6:30 and then went to the grocery store and bought supplies for dinner. We met up with Stephen and went to Stafford and cooked burgers. Brian and Shannon came over and we planned our Abel Tasman trip (this is from June 6th - June 13th) and booked a ferry ride and a car rental for our trip.
Today I didn't have class so I slept in, ate left overs at Stafford and now I'm at the library trying to write a paper and feeling sickly. I realized that since I've been in Wellington I've really only had one cold, and that was at the very beginning of it all... so I guess I was kind of due to get ill in some way or another.
I'll try and post a blog entry about Samoa today or tomorrow.
Friday, May 15, 2009
Nothing particularly exciting and a concert.
The rest of Tuesday I can't really remember what I did. I think maybe I went back to Stafford and then Chris and I met up. He got a Kebab and I got burger fuel and then we went to Stephens and watched the rest of Howl's Moving Castle and then part of Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, but we watched the extended edition and it was too long so Brian, Chris and I all left before the movie ended.
Wednesday I didn't have class so I planned on reading by the water. Chris and I ate brunch at Aro St. Cafe. I got this delicious meal called "Bubbles and squeak" served with two poached eggs and bacon. It was mashed potatos with green onions with the eggs and bacon. So good. Then the two of us went down to the water and read a little. We read for maybe 2 hours or a little less. Chris remembered there was a Lakers game on so we walked over to Chicago and met up with Stephen, but the restaurant wasn't playing the game as were none of the channels that usually play American sports so we ended up going to Borders for the rest of the day looking at NZ travel guides to plan out our South Island trip and also just to pass the time. We went to Stafford later and Stephen and Chris cooked dinner (Pasta and Peas) while I cleaned the bathroom (we had dorm inspection the next day). After dinner the three of us drank some beers and played Boggle (YES!) After that we went to town, but it was pretty dull and we had wanted burger fuel, but it was closed. So we ended up ending the night there with Chris and I sadly eating at McDonalds (we had the late night munchies real bad).
Thursday, Chris and I didn't have class until the afternoon so the two of us watched an episode of Lost together. After class we met up with Stephen and his friend Colin who is visiting for some Nandos. We got ice cream afterwards and then Chris and I went to Stafford and then to Borders to do some homework. After Borders the two of us got Korean food and then wandered around for a little. We were going to go to The Matterhorn but we as were entering I remembered there was a Ratatat concert that night. Even though we knew the show was sold out (which is why we didn't already have tickets) we wanted to check and see if we could either buy some at the door or buy some scalped tickets. When we got there we met a guy from the band that was playing before Ratatat and he said he thought he might be able to help us out if we came back in 30 minutes. So Chris and I went to this outdoor movie that was playing. It was a documentary about free trade coffee and we ended up supporting the movie and some fund by buying coffee from the coffee shop that was hosting the event. We then made our way back to Bodega (the venue that the show was being held) and right when we got there were two french people who came up to us and asked us if we were looking to buy tickets. We said sure and thus got into the concert! We were really really early for the show so we got beers and sat talking until the opening band came on. Ratatat was amazing. The music was really good and we had a lot of fun dancing and getting really sweaty and enjoying the music. However, the crowd was really packed and really rambunctious. Everyone was really drunk around us and there were a lot of obnoxious Kiwi girls who kept pushing and shoving to get to the front. Everyone was just really really crazy and when the concert began the crowd became this wave of people pushing forward and then backward. My feet got crushed during this. Luckily the crowd sort of calmed down after the first song. The other downside was that people were lazy when they finished their beers and would just place their empty bottles and mugs onto the ground. This created a lot (A LOT) of broken glass on the ground. I was wearing OK shoes, but they definitely weren't entirely safe if I stepped on a large piece of glass. Chris and I were constantly trying to avoid the glass and picking up bottles when we could. The other slightly unforunate thing was that near the end of the show, one particularly drunk man threw his hands in the air and forgot he had a beer in one of his hands. His beer slopped down his back and also down the front of my shirt because I was standing directly behind him. Despite all this, I had a really great time. My feet were crushed and I was scared I'd get glass in them and I smelled like stale beer... but I had a great time - which I guess says a lot about Ratatats preformance.
Wednesday I didn't have class so I planned on reading by the water. Chris and I ate brunch at Aro St. Cafe. I got this delicious meal called "Bubbles and squeak" served with two poached eggs and bacon. It was mashed potatos with green onions with the eggs and bacon. So good. Then the two of us went down to the water and read a little. We read for maybe 2 hours or a little less. Chris remembered there was a Lakers game on so we walked over to Chicago and met up with Stephen, but the restaurant wasn't playing the game as were none of the channels that usually play American sports so we ended up going to Borders for the rest of the day looking at NZ travel guides to plan out our South Island trip and also just to pass the time. We went to Stafford later and Stephen and Chris cooked dinner (Pasta and Peas) while I cleaned the bathroom (we had dorm inspection the next day). After dinner the three of us drank some beers and played Boggle (YES!) After that we went to town, but it was pretty dull and we had wanted burger fuel, but it was closed. So we ended up ending the night there with Chris and I sadly eating at McDonalds (we had the late night munchies real bad).
Thursday, Chris and I didn't have class until the afternoon so the two of us watched an episode of Lost together. After class we met up with Stephen and his friend Colin who is visiting for some Nandos. We got ice cream afterwards and then Chris and I went to Stafford and then to Borders to do some homework. After Borders the two of us got Korean food and then wandered around for a little. We were going to go to The Matterhorn but we as were entering I remembered there was a Ratatat concert that night. Even though we knew the show was sold out (which is why we didn't already have tickets) we wanted to check and see if we could either buy some at the door or buy some scalped tickets. When we got there we met a guy from the band that was playing before Ratatat and he said he thought he might be able to help us out if we came back in 30 minutes. So Chris and I went to this outdoor movie that was playing. It was a documentary about free trade coffee and we ended up supporting the movie and some fund by buying coffee from the coffee shop that was hosting the event. We then made our way back to Bodega (the venue that the show was being held) and right when we got there were two french people who came up to us and asked us if we were looking to buy tickets. We said sure and thus got into the concert! We were really really early for the show so we got beers and sat talking until the opening band came on. Ratatat was amazing. The music was really good and we had a lot of fun dancing and getting really sweaty and enjoying the music. However, the crowd was really packed and really rambunctious. Everyone was really drunk around us and there were a lot of obnoxious Kiwi girls who kept pushing and shoving to get to the front. Everyone was just really really crazy and when the concert began the crowd became this wave of people pushing forward and then backward. My feet got crushed during this. Luckily the crowd sort of calmed down after the first song. The other downside was that people were lazy when they finished their beers and would just place their empty bottles and mugs onto the ground. This created a lot (A LOT) of broken glass on the ground. I was wearing OK shoes, but they definitely weren't entirely safe if I stepped on a large piece of glass. Chris and I were constantly trying to avoid the glass and picking up bottles when we could. The other slightly unforunate thing was that near the end of the show, one particularly drunk man threw his hands in the air and forgot he had a beer in one of his hands. His beer slopped down his back and also down the front of my shirt because I was standing directly behind him. Despite all this, I had a really great time. My feet were crushed and I was scared I'd get glass in them and I smelled like stale beer... but I had a great time - which I guess says a lot about Ratatats preformance.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
A case of the Mondays on a Tuesday
It's Tuesday, but it feels like a Monday. That's probably because it's glorious and sunny out, a rare occasion now that winter is starting to roll in here, and I'm stuck inside doing work. In between writing my blog and uploading pictures (as I said before, the internet in the library is horribly slow right now) I've been reading about religion and psychology. It's not particularly bland or interesting reading, but something I must get done and seeing the sun over all of Wellington (that's the kind of view you get from the library) and a nice calm ocean, all I want to do is lie outside reading a book.
Yesterday I woke up too late to go to my religion class and instead spent the time catching up on some homework and making myself a delicious tuna melt sandwich. At noon I talked with Ellie and Sophia on skype and then later my parents. By the time that was all done, I was hungry again. Chris texted me asking me if I wanted to grab some food at a restaurant we've never been to called "Mr.Bun." We met around 3 and Stephen joined us. Afterward we decided to go back to Stephens and watch a movie (the day was overcast with occasional spurts of rain). We ended up watching "Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring" with two other people staying with Stephen.
Stephen, out of everyone I know, has the most amazing ability for networking. I've never met someone who makes friends and stays connected with people as well as he does. Currently the two people staying with him are Czech and I think German, although I never asked her. Martin, the Czech, is tall, scruffy, and his english can be difficult to understand, but he is overall a very friendly guy. Stephanie, the possible German, has long blond dreadlocks and has been traveling only on the South Island for the past 8 months. Stephen met both of these people while traveling around the South Island and staying in hostels and both of them decided to utilized their connection with Stephen to gain some free housing for their stays in Wellington. Meeting people from so many different countries has been one of the many things that I've come to really love and appreciate about being abroad.
After the movie (which we all had seen a million times so we were able to joke around and share stories throughout the movie) we went out to dinner at an italian restaurant.
I ended the night doing a small portion of homework and then finishing "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle."
This book, as Julia, Chris, and Lauren all agree, is fantastic. I finished it within two weeks, if not less and by the last 200 pages (which is what I had left last night) I couldn't put it down. I think I would place this book within my top 10 favorite books of all time now. It left me satisfied byt wanting more of Murakami. I don't think I can get enough of his writing style and stories. Julia - I can't wait for our Murakami book club this summer.
Yesterday I woke up too late to go to my religion class and instead spent the time catching up on some homework and making myself a delicious tuna melt sandwich. At noon I talked with Ellie and Sophia on skype and then later my parents. By the time that was all done, I was hungry again. Chris texted me asking me if I wanted to grab some food at a restaurant we've never been to called "Mr.Bun." We met around 3 and Stephen joined us. Afterward we decided to go back to Stephens and watch a movie (the day was overcast with occasional spurts of rain). We ended up watching "Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring" with two other people staying with Stephen.
Stephen, out of everyone I know, has the most amazing ability for networking. I've never met someone who makes friends and stays connected with people as well as he does. Currently the two people staying with him are Czech and I think German, although I never asked her. Martin, the Czech, is tall, scruffy, and his english can be difficult to understand, but he is overall a very friendly guy. Stephanie, the possible German, has long blond dreadlocks and has been traveling only on the South Island for the past 8 months. Stephen met both of these people while traveling around the South Island and staying in hostels and both of them decided to utilized their connection with Stephen to gain some free housing for their stays in Wellington. Meeting people from so many different countries has been one of the many things that I've come to really love and appreciate about being abroad.
After the movie (which we all had seen a million times so we were able to joke around and share stories throughout the movie) we went out to dinner at an italian restaurant.
I ended the night doing a small portion of homework and then finishing "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle."
This book, as Julia, Chris, and Lauren all agree, is fantastic. I finished it within two weeks, if not less and by the last 200 pages (which is what I had left last night) I couldn't put it down. I think I would place this book within my top 10 favorite books of all time now. It left me satisfied byt wanting more of Murakami. I don't think I can get enough of his writing style and stories. Julia - I can't wait for our Murakami book club this summer.
Pictures from Samoa
Pictures from April 16th:
Our beach fale - this one ended up being just mine and Chris's.
Brian in the water, he's wearing his sunglasses in the water.
"Our beach"
The road that goes through the village of Manase, on our way to the gas station.
Walking to the gas station
Waiting for our BBQ
Sign for the BBQ
The arrival of Jon, that's him in the water.
Chris snorkeling.
The book I was reading, some of the collection of shells we had gathered, our lamp that Brian took from the dinner tables, and the essential sunscreen. By the end of our trip this table was filled with a large number of shells and various other treasures that Chris and I picked up.
Jon and Brian in the water
The beginnings of the sunset, it's not really setting yet, but we sat out until it did.
Sunset.
Jon petting one of the nasty little stray kittens. This one actually was one of the cuter and healthier looking ones, but it was also the most annoying. It would come right up and start meowing really loudly at you. It also wasn't too scared off by waving your shoe at it, so eventually we started to push this kitten away by actually lightly kicking it or shoving it.
Our beach fale - this one ended up being just mine and Chris's.
Brian in the water, he's wearing his sunglasses in the water.
"Our beach"
The road that goes through the village of Manase, on our way to the gas station.
Walking to the gas station
Waiting for our BBQ
Sign for the BBQ
The arrival of Jon, that's him in the water.
Chris snorkeling.
The book I was reading, some of the collection of shells we had gathered, our lamp that Brian took from the dinner tables, and the essential sunscreen. By the end of our trip this table was filled with a large number of shells and various other treasures that Chris and I picked up.
Jon and Brian in the water
The beginnings of the sunset, it's not really setting yet, but we sat out until it did.
Sunset.
Jon petting one of the nasty little stray kittens. This one actually was one of the cuter and healthier looking ones, but it was also the most annoying. It would come right up and start meowing really loudly at you. It also wasn't too scared off by waving your shoe at it, so eventually we started to push this kitten away by actually lightly kicking it or shoving it.
Samoa - Manase, Savaii - April 16th
Today's update will only be about my birthday because I am currently updating from the library and for some odd reason the internet connect is terrible compared with Stafford. However, I don't want to waste my bandwidth at Stafford, so I am at the library.
My birthday was a good day, although not very productive or particularly interesting. We woke up early, as we did almost everyday. It was near impossible to sleep later than 9:30 because it got so hot and humid and it was very uncomfortable to try and sleep under those conditions. So we woke up early and went to breakfast. After getting out usual meager servings of fruit (usually one slice of papaya, 2 or 3 small slices of coconut, a small slice of orange, and occasionally (if we were lucky) a slice or two of pineapple and other random assortments of fruit), toast (with butter and jam, which there was never enough of) and our choice of egg (I always had mine fried, Chris always had his scrambled and Brian started out with the scrambled but ended our stay always getting fried). We always had to request ketchup. Even though we had been requesting it every morning, they never just brought it out, they would wait for us to ask. Usually the procedure for asking for ketchup went like this: One of us timidly saying as they brought our toast or eggs out, "Oh, do you think we could have some ketchup, please?" The server then would either nod or not even look at us and act as though she never heard us say anything. Several minutes would go by and we would be uncertain if ketchup would never come, but then she'd come out with a small portion of ketchup (never enough for all of us, especially because I'm a ketchup hog). And usually she would stand staring at the table until one of us would rearrange our plates on the table to accommodate the ketchup to a spot on the table she wanted to place it, when she would easily have placed it somewhere else. Although I'm being rather negative about this dining experience, don't get me wrong. We were quite happy with our situation, but the servers and overall service (as I have said before) was really the only downside to our vacation in paradise.
Back in our fale, around 9:30ish we went for a swim to cool off. We spent the better half of the morning exploring the shoreline, picking up shells and swimming. By the afternoon we decided we needed to buy some water at the local gas station (one of the only "stores" in the area and was to become our stomping ground because of the constant need for fresh water and snacks.) We bought water, a bottle of coke and some pringles and headed back. We were slightly bitter about the fact that Stevenson's charged so much for us to get lunch there (our payment to stay there had included complementary breakfast and dinner but not lunch) so we decided to try and find a cheaper and better place. Right next to Stevenson's was a BBQ place that offered BBQ (chicken, bananas, and sausage) for 7 tala. We decided to eat there and got a chance to talk with the locals that ran the place while we waited.
One thing that really pestered me during our stay were the bugs. I guess that's really girly and sissy of me to be irritated with, but I could not stand the abundant amount of mosquitos, little red ants (they were literally EVERYWHERE, all over the fale, all over the ground, all over the bathroom), and cockroaches (in the bathroom). Obviously the bug problem was something out of their control and for the most part they were just little annoyances that by the end of the trip I was really grateful to leave behind, but it's worth mentioning. The nice thing about the bugs was that they attracted really cute little geckos that would sit by light fixtures, that all bugs are inevitably attracted to, and flick their little tongues out and consume them.
ANYWAY, I digress, while we were standing talking with the BBQ owners we noticed a huge amount of red ants (no surprise really) crawling around the counter top. I asked the woman if the ants bit. She looked down, almost surprised to see all the ants and started brushing them off the counter. She answered with a sort of vague yes. I asked her if the ant bites hurt. She replied, again somewhat vaguely, "I don't know". Thinking back on it, I feel sort of silly to have cared so much because I was only bit once by the ants and it didn't really hurt at all. I now realize she must have been confused why I was so concerned over the bite of these tiny little pests.
We got out BBQ (they had no sausage so we got extra chicken) and brought it back to our fale. The food was nothing special, but filling and I had a lot left over because they had given us so much extra chicken. We were all a little worried that we'd get sick from the food, (so far we had not eaten any local foods) but none of us did.
We went swimming again and then decided to walk down the beach to "Raci's" (I can't remember the full name of it) shop for snorkle rental, kayak rental, etc. Raci is a 50 something, little, tanned, wiry man from Switzerland. How he came to live and work in Samoa was beyond me. He spends his days sitting on his deck, that functions as his rental shop as well as a bar in the evening, talking with tourists that come by. He notes the tide patterns for his customers and also runs several other shops in the area including a coffee shop and an internet cafe that his wife monitors. Overall, he's a well-off beach bum. What a lifestyle. We rented a snorkle set for half the day to share between the three of us and walked back down the beach to our fale which happened to be the best snorkling in front of it. When we got back, Jon Bell, our friend from Wellington who was to join us, had arrived and was sitting on our little fale porch. Due to the fact that all the other beach fales in Stevenson's we no longer occupied (all our neighbors had left after the first day we were there) Jon and Brian moved into the fale next door and Chris and I shared the original fale. This began a wonderful few days in which the fales and beach were entirely ours. We called it our private beach.
Jon had his own set of snorkling gear and after presenting me with a gift of a large bottle of rum (for my birthday celebrations later that night) he and Chris went snorkling for a while. After Brian went, I had a go at snorkling as well.
Snorkling, for me, was eerie and scary. I've never been technically trained how to swim and thus don't always trust my abilities to swim very far out or for a prolonged period of time. Snorkling made me nervous that I'd get too far off shore (you sort of lose perspective of how far you're going out and in what direction you're swimming) and not be able to swim back. Further, I really didn't like that I could only hear the loud sound of my breathing and the laping of water against my body. I felt really alone and isolated, which made the idea of getting pulled out to sea even more daunting. But, I sucked it up (realizing what a silly fear I had) and snorkled for maybe 10 minutes. It was pretty cool. I saw some really vibratly colored fish, some really large ones and some very tiny ones. I saw a wide range of coral, some small and bluish colored and some red colored ones that grew quite large, some up so close to the top fo the water that I got scared to get too close for fear of touching it. I saw sea cucumbers, angel fish, little black clown fish, and even a puffer fish. It was amazing how easy it was to paddle along, simply watching them, and none of them really got scared off by my presence.
We continued to snorkle, some of us sitting reading in the fales for the rest of the day. As the sun started to set we returned the snorkle gear, bought 3 large cokes for the rum later and then watched the sunset on the beach. We enjoyed dinner (sans the bad service and stray cats constantly pestering us) and talked for a while.
The rest of the evening was spent drinking rum and coke, playing several games of uno (the last game, which lasted WAY too long) and then talking late into the night. I ended up going to bed earlier than the rest of the group (when you wake up so early, it hard to stay awake so late).
Overall a very good birthday. Birthdays, for me, always pass without any real significance. Brian and Chris joked all day, "You're the lady, it's your birthday" when we had to make decisions about what to do, and it was left up to me because of the specialness of the day. I don't feel older and although the day is spent with a special sort of tenderness, nothing makes me feel as though I've reached some pinnacle age.
I'm 21, an age that so many people, Americans in particular, wait for with great anticpation and usually celebrate by getting extremely inebriated. It the celebration of adulthood and the legal ability to drink alcohol. And although I can now legally drink and am now legally considered an adult I still feel very young, as though adulthood is something I need to achieve not something I am granted at a certain age. I feel like I need to earn my right to be called an adult.
To be continued... hopefully soon.
My birthday was a good day, although not very productive or particularly interesting. We woke up early, as we did almost everyday. It was near impossible to sleep later than 9:30 because it got so hot and humid and it was very uncomfortable to try and sleep under those conditions. So we woke up early and went to breakfast. After getting out usual meager servings of fruit (usually one slice of papaya, 2 or 3 small slices of coconut, a small slice of orange, and occasionally (if we were lucky) a slice or two of pineapple and other random assortments of fruit), toast (with butter and jam, which there was never enough of) and our choice of egg (I always had mine fried, Chris always had his scrambled and Brian started out with the scrambled but ended our stay always getting fried). We always had to request ketchup. Even though we had been requesting it every morning, they never just brought it out, they would wait for us to ask. Usually the procedure for asking for ketchup went like this: One of us timidly saying as they brought our toast or eggs out, "Oh, do you think we could have some ketchup, please?" The server then would either nod or not even look at us and act as though she never heard us say anything. Several minutes would go by and we would be uncertain if ketchup would never come, but then she'd come out with a small portion of ketchup (never enough for all of us, especially because I'm a ketchup hog). And usually she would stand staring at the table until one of us would rearrange our plates on the table to accommodate the ketchup to a spot on the table she wanted to place it, when she would easily have placed it somewhere else. Although I'm being rather negative about this dining experience, don't get me wrong. We were quite happy with our situation, but the servers and overall service (as I have said before) was really the only downside to our vacation in paradise.
Back in our fale, around 9:30ish we went for a swim to cool off. We spent the better half of the morning exploring the shoreline, picking up shells and swimming. By the afternoon we decided we needed to buy some water at the local gas station (one of the only "stores" in the area and was to become our stomping ground because of the constant need for fresh water and snacks.) We bought water, a bottle of coke and some pringles and headed back. We were slightly bitter about the fact that Stevenson's charged so much for us to get lunch there (our payment to stay there had included complementary breakfast and dinner but not lunch) so we decided to try and find a cheaper and better place. Right next to Stevenson's was a BBQ place that offered BBQ (chicken, bananas, and sausage) for 7 tala. We decided to eat there and got a chance to talk with the locals that ran the place while we waited.
One thing that really pestered me during our stay were the bugs. I guess that's really girly and sissy of me to be irritated with, but I could not stand the abundant amount of mosquitos, little red ants (they were literally EVERYWHERE, all over the fale, all over the ground, all over the bathroom), and cockroaches (in the bathroom). Obviously the bug problem was something out of their control and for the most part they were just little annoyances that by the end of the trip I was really grateful to leave behind, but it's worth mentioning. The nice thing about the bugs was that they attracted really cute little geckos that would sit by light fixtures, that all bugs are inevitably attracted to, and flick their little tongues out and consume them.
ANYWAY, I digress, while we were standing talking with the BBQ owners we noticed a huge amount of red ants (no surprise really) crawling around the counter top. I asked the woman if the ants bit. She looked down, almost surprised to see all the ants and started brushing them off the counter. She answered with a sort of vague yes. I asked her if the ant bites hurt. She replied, again somewhat vaguely, "I don't know". Thinking back on it, I feel sort of silly to have cared so much because I was only bit once by the ants and it didn't really hurt at all. I now realize she must have been confused why I was so concerned over the bite of these tiny little pests.
We got out BBQ (they had no sausage so we got extra chicken) and brought it back to our fale. The food was nothing special, but filling and I had a lot left over because they had given us so much extra chicken. We were all a little worried that we'd get sick from the food, (so far we had not eaten any local foods) but none of us did.
We went swimming again and then decided to walk down the beach to "Raci's" (I can't remember the full name of it) shop for snorkle rental, kayak rental, etc. Raci is a 50 something, little, tanned, wiry man from Switzerland. How he came to live and work in Samoa was beyond me. He spends his days sitting on his deck, that functions as his rental shop as well as a bar in the evening, talking with tourists that come by. He notes the tide patterns for his customers and also runs several other shops in the area including a coffee shop and an internet cafe that his wife monitors. Overall, he's a well-off beach bum. What a lifestyle. We rented a snorkle set for half the day to share between the three of us and walked back down the beach to our fale which happened to be the best snorkling in front of it. When we got back, Jon Bell, our friend from Wellington who was to join us, had arrived and was sitting on our little fale porch. Due to the fact that all the other beach fales in Stevenson's we no longer occupied (all our neighbors had left after the first day we were there) Jon and Brian moved into the fale next door and Chris and I shared the original fale. This began a wonderful few days in which the fales and beach were entirely ours. We called it our private beach.
Jon had his own set of snorkling gear and after presenting me with a gift of a large bottle of rum (for my birthday celebrations later that night) he and Chris went snorkling for a while. After Brian went, I had a go at snorkling as well.
Snorkling, for me, was eerie and scary. I've never been technically trained how to swim and thus don't always trust my abilities to swim very far out or for a prolonged period of time. Snorkling made me nervous that I'd get too far off shore (you sort of lose perspective of how far you're going out and in what direction you're swimming) and not be able to swim back. Further, I really didn't like that I could only hear the loud sound of my breathing and the laping of water against my body. I felt really alone and isolated, which made the idea of getting pulled out to sea even more daunting. But, I sucked it up (realizing what a silly fear I had) and snorkled for maybe 10 minutes. It was pretty cool. I saw some really vibratly colored fish, some really large ones and some very tiny ones. I saw a wide range of coral, some small and bluish colored and some red colored ones that grew quite large, some up so close to the top fo the water that I got scared to get too close for fear of touching it. I saw sea cucumbers, angel fish, little black clown fish, and even a puffer fish. It was amazing how easy it was to paddle along, simply watching them, and none of them really got scared off by my presence.
We continued to snorkle, some of us sitting reading in the fales for the rest of the day. As the sun started to set we returned the snorkle gear, bought 3 large cokes for the rum later and then watched the sunset on the beach. We enjoyed dinner (sans the bad service and stray cats constantly pestering us) and talked for a while.
The rest of the evening was spent drinking rum and coke, playing several games of uno (the last game, which lasted WAY too long) and then talking late into the night. I ended up going to bed earlier than the rest of the group (when you wake up so early, it hard to stay awake so late).
Overall a very good birthday. Birthdays, for me, always pass without any real significance. Brian and Chris joked all day, "You're the lady, it's your birthday" when we had to make decisions about what to do, and it was left up to me because of the specialness of the day. I don't feel older and although the day is spent with a special sort of tenderness, nothing makes me feel as though I've reached some pinnacle age.
I'm 21, an age that so many people, Americans in particular, wait for with great anticpation and usually celebrate by getting extremely inebriated. It the celebration of adulthood and the legal ability to drink alcohol. And although I can now legally drink and am now legally considered an adult I still feel very young, as though adulthood is something I need to achieve not something I am granted at a certain age. I feel like I need to earn my right to be called an adult.
To be continued... hopefully soon.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Wellington Weekend
Thursday, after my sort of cynical post, I went to Stephen's where Chris and Stephen had a little jam session. It was nice to just lie on the couch reading "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles" listening to my friends play.
As it got dark the 3 of us went and got dinner at a Malaysian take-away and brought it back to Stephens. We sat watching T.V and talking for a little and made plans to see a play called "The Intricate Art of Actually Caring" around 9. The play is based in Wellington and surrounds the journey of two college boys to the grave of James. K Baxter, a NZ poet. It's set entirely in a bedroom, but the characters utilize the setting for not only a bedroom, but a car and various other locations across the North Island. It turned out to be a very fun and interesting play to watch. Both actors were pretty fantastic and the way they used the props and stage was pretty cool. After the play we went to Stephens for a little and then called it a night.
Friday it was really rainy and miserable. Chris and I went to a pizza place for lunch and then I spent the remainder of the afternoon writing a paper for my religion course. After I finished I met up with Chris at the public library and we met up with Stephen, bought tickets to the new "Star Trek" movie. We had time to kill so the three of us went to the "Malthouse" for some beers and talked.
"Star Trek" ended up being really good, which surprised me because I've always been really skeptical of "Star Trek." But, I think the series benefited from J.J Abrams and a group of good actors. After the movie we got Burger Fuel and met up with Brian. We attempted to meet up with another group of people and we ended up just going to about 3 different bars until we actually met up with them. We played pool and had a beer until about 12:40 and then Chris and I decided to call it a night after the rest of the group wanted to go to the "Estab," a bar that neither of us like.
Saturday, Chris, Stephen and I watched the Lakers v. Rockets. Chris is a big Lakers fan, so we sat at the restaurant "Chicago" for a long time. I ended up getting tired and went back to Stafford for an hour long nap. When I woke up everyone in my flat was getting ready for the big Stafford Ball (which I didn't want to go to.) Chris came over and we went to a pre-game that Brian and some of his friends were having in a room down the hall. Chris ended up feeling sick (with a headache/feverish) so we left and went to find some soup for him. Stephen joined us downtown and we struggled to find a restaurant to eat at because everywhere was packed! We had forgotten it was a Saturday night, when Wellington is at it's busiest. We ended up finding a good, cheap, Thai restuarant with chicken noodle soup and ran into our friend Jon and a friend of his.
Chris, Stephen and I didn't feel like hitting the bars too much because it was cold and rainy and none of us wanted to spend money so we rented a bunch of movies and watched "The Royal Tennenbaums" and the beginning of "Howls Moving Castle."
Sunday, today, Chris and I planned out his and Stephen's trip to the east coast and looked at airplane ticket prices. Later, Chris, Stephen and I got Nandos for lunch and then all agreed we needed to do homework for the rest of the day.
As it got dark the 3 of us went and got dinner at a Malaysian take-away and brought it back to Stephens. We sat watching T.V and talking for a little and made plans to see a play called "The Intricate Art of Actually Caring" around 9. The play is based in Wellington and surrounds the journey of two college boys to the grave of James. K Baxter, a NZ poet. It's set entirely in a bedroom, but the characters utilize the setting for not only a bedroom, but a car and various other locations across the North Island. It turned out to be a very fun and interesting play to watch. Both actors were pretty fantastic and the way they used the props and stage was pretty cool. After the play we went to Stephens for a little and then called it a night.
Friday it was really rainy and miserable. Chris and I went to a pizza place for lunch and then I spent the remainder of the afternoon writing a paper for my religion course. After I finished I met up with Chris at the public library and we met up with Stephen, bought tickets to the new "Star Trek" movie. We had time to kill so the three of us went to the "Malthouse" for some beers and talked.
"Star Trek" ended up being really good, which surprised me because I've always been really skeptical of "Star Trek." But, I think the series benefited from J.J Abrams and a group of good actors. After the movie we got Burger Fuel and met up with Brian. We attempted to meet up with another group of people and we ended up just going to about 3 different bars until we actually met up with them. We played pool and had a beer until about 12:40 and then Chris and I decided to call it a night after the rest of the group wanted to go to the "Estab," a bar that neither of us like.
Saturday, Chris, Stephen and I watched the Lakers v. Rockets. Chris is a big Lakers fan, so we sat at the restaurant "Chicago" for a long time. I ended up getting tired and went back to Stafford for an hour long nap. When I woke up everyone in my flat was getting ready for the big Stafford Ball (which I didn't want to go to.) Chris came over and we went to a pre-game that Brian and some of his friends were having in a room down the hall. Chris ended up feeling sick (with a headache/feverish) so we left and went to find some soup for him. Stephen joined us downtown and we struggled to find a restaurant to eat at because everywhere was packed! We had forgotten it was a Saturday night, when Wellington is at it's busiest. We ended up finding a good, cheap, Thai restuarant with chicken noodle soup and ran into our friend Jon and a friend of his.
Chris, Stephen and I didn't feel like hitting the bars too much because it was cold and rainy and none of us wanted to spend money so we rented a bunch of movies and watched "The Royal Tennenbaums" and the beginning of "Howls Moving Castle."
Sunday, today, Chris and I planned out his and Stephen's trip to the east coast and looked at airplane ticket prices. Later, Chris, Stephen and I got Nandos for lunch and then all agreed we needed to do homework for the rest of the day.
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Another post, unrelated to Samoa
Today has been an extremely strange day. I did not get a lot of sleep last night and had an early morning class that I needed to go to in order to turn in a paper that is worth 40% of my grade.
The night before I spent with Chris, I cooked dinner for the two of us - a chicken dish with red and yellow peppers, tomatoes, thyme, oregano, wine, capiers, and some parsley served with rice and a glass of white wine. I was really proud of my meal. Although it was not perfect, it definitely was something I'd never done before and I felt extremely accomplished. We both felt a little silly, having cooked a meal together and sat down drinking wine and listening to music - we felt like we were acting like adults but neither of us really felt very adult like. We finished the meal eating ice cream (from the container), talking and I cleaned up the kitchen.
Then we went out for some casual drinks with Brian at the Matterhorn. The night was really great, just the three of us talking late into the night, sitting in the outdoor bar area next to a fireplace with the smell of smoke swirling around us.
So I went to sleep in a very comfortable and good mood. But this morning, things were just very strange. Not bad or unsettling, just strange. Maybe it was the lack of sleep or the fact that I had another weird dream about Zeus, but everything sort of felt funny today.
To start I arrived at the library around 8:15, to print my paper that I had to turn in. I was surprised to find it fairly empty (I got there early because typically I have to wait on a line for the next avaliable computer). After printing up my paper I went to find some coffee. The man I ordered from at first acted like I didn't exist, which was very bizzare. I stood there waiting to place my order and he was right there, but he didn't say anything to me for at least a minute. Then it was like he suddenly noticed me (even though I was in plain view?) and asked for my order. He proceeded to make me the most watered down, milky coffee I've ever had. I think maybe he was tired and had some sort of vendetta with early morning customers, but it left me with a weird taste in my mouth (not related to the bad coffee).
In my tutorial for my psych class, I handed in my paper and half expected her to send us on our way (which she did last time) but instead made us stay the entire 2 hours to watch the movie "The Eleventh Hour." It's a movie all about how the world is falling apart, global warming, oil and coal, blahblahblah. Normally I don't really mind those movies, they're very informative and I tend to agree with them. I watched a very cool movie about Cuba and how it had a mini-economic crisis in the 90's and how they resolved that issue. So, in no way do I disagree with these movies, but recently I feel like all my classes have been about the carbon footprint of America and how wasteful Americans are. I know that it's very true and it's a sad truth, but I'm getting really tired of it. All this talk and I see no sign of action. This movie in particular was just people talking at you about how horrible America is and how horrible the world is going to be and it kept saying, we need change, we need change, we need change but it never amounted to anything, they never presented progressive steps that could be made. It said things were being set in motion, but mostly it just said that we're fucked if we don't do something. It was uncomfortably long, and just flashes of sad images, of destruction and of animals that will go extinct. It made me feel horrible for being America and made me wish that I wasn't inheriting such a shit world. Further, I hate the expression "it is what it is," which I feel like so many people tell themselves in a lot of various situations. The world we're living in "is what it is." I can't imagine any situation so stagant and stable that you just need to accept it for what it is. I think, if you really want something to happen or to change, then you can take it and influence it. The same applies to history, what happened in the past, happened but that doesn't mean you continue to dwell on it or accept it as fate to happen again. As I was taught from a young age - you learn from your previous mistakes so as not to make them again. I wish the world was capable of seeing and understanding that. Understanding that throwing a plastic bottle in the garbage instead of the recycling bin has repercussions.
Anyway, to stop my rant, you get the idea... the movie left me feeling even more in a funk than my impassive coffee server.
I left the class with an hour to kill until my next class so I went to a cafe that I like to buy a sandwich and sit and read in. I think it's called the "Mount St. Cafe" and it's located on the bottom floor of the Student Union building. I bought a sandwich, some fries, and a spirte and sat on a couch to read my book. I was really hungry and had assumed that 11 o'clock was a perfectly reasonable time to have lunch, but when a server brought my fries over he looked me in the eye and in a sort of disdainful voice said, "here are your breakfast fries..." I sort of gaped at him as he walked away. Fries at 11? Who knew that was such a crime.
I read my book until 12 and went to my final class of the day. This tutorial (for my sociology course) is literally set up for the dumbest people in class. My teacher went over what went wrong with the most recent essays we had turned in. He pointed out things like "don't restate the question we gave you in your intro" or "make sure your paragraphs are longer than 2 sentences." I don't know what kind of essays these people are writing, but I wrote stuff in that format when I was in middle school. I was so appauled at how useless the information was that I read until we started talking about something more relevant. From then, the class was interesting, however yet again a good chunk of time was spent bashing Americans and western culture. I think that although I agree with it all, it's hard to have something that is part of you, something you can't remove from yourself or disassociate from yourself, bashed so openly and so frequently.
So I walked home, trying to play the read-while-i'm-walking-game (which always fails because I always run into something or someone). Right as I neared home I stopped reading, who knows why, but just as I chose to close my book and I was getting into the rhythm of my path home, I noticed a tiny little green bird lying in the middle of a busy sidewalk. I stopped and stared at it and in turn a woman next to me did the same thing. I felt like this little bird had somehow awoken me and this other woman up from the daze we get when we walk familiar paths down the street. We both looked at the bird and then looked at each other and then around us. Everyone was just walking by, some people (if we hadn't been standing over the bird) probably would have stepped on the tiny little thing. As we stood there wondering what to do, a rather tall man stopped by us. It was so bizzare seeing him realize what we were doing. I saw his face before he saw us standing there and the bird on the ground and his face after, and it went from emotionless and cold to concerned and, in a way, more human. He immediately stooped down and scooped the little bird up into his enormous hands and we all looked at each other unsure of where to put the little bird. The woman wanted to put the bird up high for she thought it may have fallen out of a nest, I suggested putting it in some bushes or a park so it would be on the ground (able to get some insects and stuff if it could eat those) and it would be out of the way of human traffic. We all started walking together, the man striding next to the woman and I ahead of them. I wanted to continue with them, but I knew there wasn't much else I could do and the man seemed to have taken the little birds life (literally) into his hands, so I just went home.
I think what has been the theme of the day is human detachment. We're all so capable of placing ourselves into comfort zones, walking the same path everyday, going through the motions of the day and thinking within our own realms that when change occurs or is necessary, when a little injured bird is suddenly placed before us, it's jolting and confusing. I'm glad there are people like that woman and that man who make the decision to stop their daily path in order to put a little bird safetly under a bush in a park.
The night before I spent with Chris, I cooked dinner for the two of us - a chicken dish with red and yellow peppers, tomatoes, thyme, oregano, wine, capiers, and some parsley served with rice and a glass of white wine. I was really proud of my meal. Although it was not perfect, it definitely was something I'd never done before and I felt extremely accomplished. We both felt a little silly, having cooked a meal together and sat down drinking wine and listening to music - we felt like we were acting like adults but neither of us really felt very adult like. We finished the meal eating ice cream (from the container), talking and I cleaned up the kitchen.
Then we went out for some casual drinks with Brian at the Matterhorn. The night was really great, just the three of us talking late into the night, sitting in the outdoor bar area next to a fireplace with the smell of smoke swirling around us.
So I went to sleep in a very comfortable and good mood. But this morning, things were just very strange. Not bad or unsettling, just strange. Maybe it was the lack of sleep or the fact that I had another weird dream about Zeus, but everything sort of felt funny today.
To start I arrived at the library around 8:15, to print my paper that I had to turn in. I was surprised to find it fairly empty (I got there early because typically I have to wait on a line for the next avaliable computer). After printing up my paper I went to find some coffee. The man I ordered from at first acted like I didn't exist, which was very bizzare. I stood there waiting to place my order and he was right there, but he didn't say anything to me for at least a minute. Then it was like he suddenly noticed me (even though I was in plain view?) and asked for my order. He proceeded to make me the most watered down, milky coffee I've ever had. I think maybe he was tired and had some sort of vendetta with early morning customers, but it left me with a weird taste in my mouth (not related to the bad coffee).
In my tutorial for my psych class, I handed in my paper and half expected her to send us on our way (which she did last time) but instead made us stay the entire 2 hours to watch the movie "The Eleventh Hour." It's a movie all about how the world is falling apart, global warming, oil and coal, blahblahblah. Normally I don't really mind those movies, they're very informative and I tend to agree with them. I watched a very cool movie about Cuba and how it had a mini-economic crisis in the 90's and how they resolved that issue. So, in no way do I disagree with these movies, but recently I feel like all my classes have been about the carbon footprint of America and how wasteful Americans are. I know that it's very true and it's a sad truth, but I'm getting really tired of it. All this talk and I see no sign of action. This movie in particular was just people talking at you about how horrible America is and how horrible the world is going to be and it kept saying, we need change, we need change, we need change but it never amounted to anything, they never presented progressive steps that could be made. It said things were being set in motion, but mostly it just said that we're fucked if we don't do something. It was uncomfortably long, and just flashes of sad images, of destruction and of animals that will go extinct. It made me feel horrible for being America and made me wish that I wasn't inheriting such a shit world. Further, I hate the expression "it is what it is," which I feel like so many people tell themselves in a lot of various situations. The world we're living in "is what it is." I can't imagine any situation so stagant and stable that you just need to accept it for what it is. I think, if you really want something to happen or to change, then you can take it and influence it. The same applies to history, what happened in the past, happened but that doesn't mean you continue to dwell on it or accept it as fate to happen again. As I was taught from a young age - you learn from your previous mistakes so as not to make them again. I wish the world was capable of seeing and understanding that. Understanding that throwing a plastic bottle in the garbage instead of the recycling bin has repercussions.
Anyway, to stop my rant, you get the idea... the movie left me feeling even more in a funk than my impassive coffee server.
I left the class with an hour to kill until my next class so I went to a cafe that I like to buy a sandwich and sit and read in. I think it's called the "Mount St. Cafe" and it's located on the bottom floor of the Student Union building. I bought a sandwich, some fries, and a spirte and sat on a couch to read my book. I was really hungry and had assumed that 11 o'clock was a perfectly reasonable time to have lunch, but when a server brought my fries over he looked me in the eye and in a sort of disdainful voice said, "here are your breakfast fries..." I sort of gaped at him as he walked away. Fries at 11? Who knew that was such a crime.
I read my book until 12 and went to my final class of the day. This tutorial (for my sociology course) is literally set up for the dumbest people in class. My teacher went over what went wrong with the most recent essays we had turned in. He pointed out things like "don't restate the question we gave you in your intro" or "make sure your paragraphs are longer than 2 sentences." I don't know what kind of essays these people are writing, but I wrote stuff in that format when I was in middle school. I was so appauled at how useless the information was that I read until we started talking about something more relevant. From then, the class was interesting, however yet again a good chunk of time was spent bashing Americans and western culture. I think that although I agree with it all, it's hard to have something that is part of you, something you can't remove from yourself or disassociate from yourself, bashed so openly and so frequently.
So I walked home, trying to play the read-while-i'm-walking-game (which always fails because I always run into something or someone). Right as I neared home I stopped reading, who knows why, but just as I chose to close my book and I was getting into the rhythm of my path home, I noticed a tiny little green bird lying in the middle of a busy sidewalk. I stopped and stared at it and in turn a woman next to me did the same thing. I felt like this little bird had somehow awoken me and this other woman up from the daze we get when we walk familiar paths down the street. We both looked at the bird and then looked at each other and then around us. Everyone was just walking by, some people (if we hadn't been standing over the bird) probably would have stepped on the tiny little thing. As we stood there wondering what to do, a rather tall man stopped by us. It was so bizzare seeing him realize what we were doing. I saw his face before he saw us standing there and the bird on the ground and his face after, and it went from emotionless and cold to concerned and, in a way, more human. He immediately stooped down and scooped the little bird up into his enormous hands and we all looked at each other unsure of where to put the little bird. The woman wanted to put the bird up high for she thought it may have fallen out of a nest, I suggested putting it in some bushes or a park so it would be on the ground (able to get some insects and stuff if it could eat those) and it would be out of the way of human traffic. We all started walking together, the man striding next to the woman and I ahead of them. I wanted to continue with them, but I knew there wasn't much else I could do and the man seemed to have taken the little birds life (literally) into his hands, so I just went home.
I think what has been the theme of the day is human detachment. We're all so capable of placing ourselves into comfort zones, walking the same path everyday, going through the motions of the day and thinking within our own realms that when change occurs or is necessary, when a little injured bird is suddenly placed before us, it's jolting and confusing. I'm glad there are people like that woman and that man who make the decision to stop their daily path in order to put a little bird safetly under a bush in a park.
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Movies, kitties, thunderstorms, and earthquakes.
I wanted to make another quick update unrelated to my trip to Samoa, because if I don't do some interjections here and there I'll fall behind on updating my current life as well as my trip to Samoa.
I don't think I mentioned but on Friday, around 5ish there was 4.1 magnitude earthquake. To be honest it felt like a fat girl fell down either really close to be or above me. However, I realized that the whole building was shaking and that a fat girl would not be capable of this. I was pretty positive it had been an earthquake but, when I rushed to my window to see if there was pandemonium ensuing outside, everyone was moving about as if nothing happened. I realize now that because of my naive east coast I've-never-experienced-an-earthquake attitude I thought this was a big deal. Turns out, as my California friends informed me, things like that happen all the time and after a while you don't even notice them. Oh well, I was still excited.
The movie marathon continues with my friends. We've now watched "Rushmore", "Man On Fire" and "Old Boy." All those movies are extremely different in their nature as films. Our next endeavors will be to watch "Training Day" (Brian loves Denzel) and then I think it may be my turn to pick movies. On the top of my list is "Tommy Boy", "The Princess Bride", "Silence of the Lambs"... and I have to think about this more. It's essentially any movie that we really enjoy that other people haven't seen before. Chris has offended me by not seeing any of the above listed movies.
When I was walking from Chris's house in Aro Valley to Kelburn I ran into a fat, fat kitty. It was really adorable and when I came up to it, it immediately fell over and started vigorously rolling around on the ground and looking at me as if to say, "pet me!" So I obliged and pet the kitty for a little. But I had to make my way up to campus so I kept walking. The kitty would follow me so I'd stop and it's rub up against my legs and then flop over once again. It was pretty hard to resist such a fat, absurd looking creature. Eventually he got tired and flopped down on the ground and watched me walk away.
Last night there was a really loud thunderstorm that kept waking me up in the middle of the night. It was so loud and powerful I felt like the bed was shaking and the lightning would light up the entire room. I had a rough night of sleep in part due to that and also in part due to bizzare dreams involving Zeus (I've been dreaming about him a lot lately) and Tecca.
I haven't really been doing too much else besides the occasional homework assignment and going to class. The weather hasn't been too bad but it's definitely quite crisp and fall like outside right now. It feels like Halloween should be coming up soon.
I don't think I mentioned but on Friday, around 5ish there was 4.1 magnitude earthquake. To be honest it felt like a fat girl fell down either really close to be or above me. However, I realized that the whole building was shaking and that a fat girl would not be capable of this. I was pretty positive it had been an earthquake but, when I rushed to my window to see if there was pandemonium ensuing outside, everyone was moving about as if nothing happened. I realize now that because of my naive east coast I've-never-experienced-an-earthquake attitude I thought this was a big deal. Turns out, as my California friends informed me, things like that happen all the time and after a while you don't even notice them. Oh well, I was still excited.
The movie marathon continues with my friends. We've now watched "Rushmore", "Man On Fire" and "Old Boy." All those movies are extremely different in their nature as films. Our next endeavors will be to watch "Training Day" (Brian loves Denzel) and then I think it may be my turn to pick movies. On the top of my list is "Tommy Boy", "The Princess Bride", "Silence of the Lambs"... and I have to think about this more. It's essentially any movie that we really enjoy that other people haven't seen before. Chris has offended me by not seeing any of the above listed movies.
When I was walking from Chris's house in Aro Valley to Kelburn I ran into a fat, fat kitty. It was really adorable and when I came up to it, it immediately fell over and started vigorously rolling around on the ground and looking at me as if to say, "pet me!" So I obliged and pet the kitty for a little. But I had to make my way up to campus so I kept walking. The kitty would follow me so I'd stop and it's rub up against my legs and then flop over once again. It was pretty hard to resist such a fat, absurd looking creature. Eventually he got tired and flopped down on the ground and watched me walk away.
Last night there was a really loud thunderstorm that kept waking me up in the middle of the night. It was so loud and powerful I felt like the bed was shaking and the lightning would light up the entire room. I had a rough night of sleep in part due to that and also in part due to bizzare dreams involving Zeus (I've been dreaming about him a lot lately) and Tecca.
I haven't really been doing too much else besides the occasional homework assignment and going to class. The weather hasn't been too bad but it's definitely quite crisp and fall like outside right now. It feels like Halloween should be coming up soon.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Samoa - Apia, Upolu to Manase, Savaii
Samoa, part 1:
The flight itself was rather painless and only about 3 hours long. Chris and I sat together with an Indian man next to Chris and Brian sat a few seats behind us next to a crying baby that had a dirty diaper. Near the end of the flight the man seated next to Chris became rather talkative. He had been very friendly from the get go but he started asking about our trip and what we planned on doing when we landed. He offered up some advice and we ended up talking to two girls seated in the row across from us as well. They all told us to be wary of taxi drivers because they'll try to over charge you and all sorts of places we should check out. Dev, the Indian man, offered to split a taxi ride with us from the airport to our hotels once the plane landed. We were very thankful and took him up on his offer.
Landing was strange, it was pitch black and I could barely get an inkling of what Samoa looked like. I saw palm trees and green grass faintly lit by the runway lights and the lights of the airport, but that was about as much as I could see. The air wasn't too humid or too hot when we got off, but then again, it was night.
The airport itself was small, but not as small as I had been expecting. Customs went by very quickly and as we left the customs area we were bombarded by taxi drivers trying to get our business. Thank god we found Dev because we simply pushed passed them and followed Dev to his personal taxi driver, Taylor. Taylor loaded our stuff into the car and we were off.
Dev explained to us Samoa culture, the phenomenon of "island time", what to do with stray dogs, and how to be careful with taxi drivers. We tried talking to Taylor a bit, but he was soft spoken and didn't understand us half the time and vice versa. But when he did talk he'd also chuckle, a high pitched giggle almost, that became very familiar to us as the Samoan laugh.
Dev asked us if we had eaten and we answered no. He told us that McDonalds (of course!) would be the only place opened at that hour. He asked us if we'd rather just eat at his hotel with him and then Taylor would drive us home. We liked this plan much better and decided to eat at Dev's hotel, the Millenium.
Driving I caught some glimpses of Samoan villages and people. There were HEAPS (as a kiwi would say) of people walking down the street and stray dogs prowling. There were these large open houses with tons of people sitting inside them having some sort of family gathering. These were only nighttime visions I caught, for what I'd see the next day would be completely different from my impressions in the night. Further, due to a lack of mass artificial lighting, the sky was jet black and the stars were out in full force.
Dinner with Dev was very interesting. We ate hamburgers and french fries (which was funny to us that this would be our first meal) and drank Vailimas, the Samoan beer. Dev told us of his life and business. He worked for some international bank (I think, Chris and Brian probably remember this better than I do) and was working in Samoa with their Health department or something. He was a world traveler, born in New Delhi but currently called Washington, D.C home. He had worked and lived all around the world. He told of studying architeture in Copenhagen and traveling to Spain with his family. He had a wive and 3 kids. All 3 of his children were huge success stories. His eldest daughter worked for and was the CEO of some movie industry business and attented the oscars regularly. His son used to be a champion hockey player and his younger daughter was in the navy and about to come to NZ. He seemed to have lived a very fruitful life and was continuing to do so. He was very accomodating and pleasant to talk with. We ended up making plans to meet up for dinner the next night at a place Dev recommended called the "Italiano."
Taylor drove us to our hotel afterwards and we settled in for the night. Our fale was pretty cool, although I was skeptical how well it would withstand rain. We had mosquito nets and only a light sheet to sleep with, which I would come to love and appreciate in the days to follow.
In the morning we woke up all sweating profusely, but happy to see that it was going to be a rather sunny and cloudless day. We ate breakfast (fruit and toast with coffee) and immediately went in for a swim in the pool.
Our hotel called a taxi for us and we went into the center of Apia in order to pick up some vouchers we forgot to get at the airport the night before. Once we finished with that we walked around Apia breathing in the sights and sounds. Everyone honks in Samoa as a form of communication. A honk to a fellow driver, a honk to people walking down the road, a honk to thank someone for letting you pass, etc etc. So it was very noisy. Also, they drive on the right side of the road, but some of the cars are made for driving on the left and some for on the right. The country of Samoa is planning on eventually switching entirely over to using the left side of the road. They want to be more like NZ I think.
After buying some water we caught a taxi up to the Robert Louis Stevenson Museum. The museum is actually the remains of his house that he lived in for 4 years. We took a tour for 15 tala and learned all about the life of Robert Louis Stevenson. Our tour guide was another soft spoken Samoan (a typical trait of Samoans) and showed a real passion for Robert Louis. He explained how much Robert Louis loved Samoa and how in turn the Samoans loved him, which is why they had his museum and why they buried him on top of a mountain. He explained everything in the same sort of template, "And this, this is the only fireplace in Samoa." The house was very big, airy and beautiful. After the tour we wanted to climb up to see his grave but the hike would cause us to get too tired and too sweaty, so we opted to go find some waterfalls instead.
Our driver took us to this placed called the "Papaseea Sliding Rocks." The waterfalls were located deeper into the jungle of Samoa. We saw banana plantations and some poorer looking villages. The sliding rocks were managed by a village and we had to pay only 2 tala to get access to them.
We descended steep cement stairs into the jungle, down to the water falls. The falls were beautiful. Our taxi driver came down with us and immediately walked out of the second of the falls and pointed and instructed Brian to "slide" down the waterfall. At first I thought he was joked, I had thought that was just the same of the falls, but he was serious. Brian took off his shirt and edged to the spot the taxi driver was telling him to sit. We saw below a pool of water that wasn't nearly wide enough for my comfort and the rocks did not really look like they would be comfortable to slide on. Brian nervously asked, "What happened if I don't sit right here?" the taxi driver looked at him and said, "oh, you don't want to do that."
As sketchy as it was, and as nervous as I was that Brian was about to go to his death, Brian pushed off and SLID down the falls into the water. What a relief it was to see his head pop up from the water below and throw two thumbs up, exclaiming how awesome it was. Chris and I immediately got into our bathing suits and followed Brian down into the water. It was mildy terrifying, sliding down the rocks, but they were quite slippery and the pool below was quite deep. We did this several times (adrenaline pumping) and also did another waterfall, a 3rd, that was a bit longer but also with a shallower pool at the bottom of it. None of us liked that one and only did it once because of how scary it had been. Haha.
Afterward our driver took us to a fish and chips place and then back to The Outrigger (our hotel). After eating we went for a swim in the pool again and then decided to go exploring around the city. We walked from the Outrigger to Apia city center. It was about a 20 minute walk and by the time we were go there we were all drenched with seat. We walked along the water and decided to go find the market place. We managed to find one of the two large market places fairly easy. The market place was jammed with stands full of touristy stuff to buy. Chris really wanted to find the food market, but I was really exhausted so we stopped in a park for a little and then made our way over to the food market. It took us a while to find, but once we did we got ice cream and Brian bought a coconut to drink from. It was really cool to see and quite a culture shock to see the way these people lived and the buses they traveled in (jam packed, colorful buses with hiphop music blaring.) We were all really dirty and sweaty from walking around we walked back (stopped and bought large Vailimas) jumped in the pool at the Outriggers and then got ready to go out to dinner with Dev. We ran a little late but managed to meet up with Dev, no problem. We encountered more interesting stories from him and enjoyed delicious pizza and Vailimas (Dev's treat). We finished dinner with a glass of wine. Chris and I went back to our hotel after that, but Brian and Dev stayed out to drink some more. Brian ended up spending the night partying it up with some Samoans, which I found hilarious.
In the morning we checked out around 10 and took a taxi over to the ferry dock (which was an hour away from Apia, as was the airport). I was nervous about getting sea sick and we could see that Savaii, off in the distance, was shrouded by clouds and rain, so the water conditions probably wouldn't be too great. We waited for about an hour. There were little kids very fascinated by us and one girl kept trying to touch my hair. All I could think about was that I was probably one of the few white women they'd see before.
First few images of Samoa, in Apia.
Robert Louis Stevenson Museum
Robert Louis Stevenson's Yard... haha.
Robert Louis's lion rug
The only fireplace in Samoa
The deck
The silly thing about the museum was that they had hardly anything completely authentic. They had a lot of his books and of course some of his belongings but the house had been inhabited by a king of Samoa and also a German man for a while, so a lot of the original stuff has been lost. The only thing that belonged to the Stevenson's family in this room was that tattered dress and a trunk. WOW. We found that to be really funny.
This is where Robert Louis died.
Crazy bumping bus
Crazy Mormon church. So extravagant... so sad for the Samoans.
Sliding rocks!
House on the way to the sliding rocks.
The sliding rocks
From the top
Our taxi driver instructing Brian, haha
Chris about to go down
Somehow he is going sideways here...
Outrigger, Chris and Brian by the pool with this obnoxious Australian woman.
Our fale at the Outrigger.
The dining area.
The water close to Apia
Walking by the water toward the city center
Buildings in Apia
Another crazy church
The food market
Bus Station
A man waiting to catch the ferry...
With all our bags we waited on line with a large grouping of Samoans and packed ourselves onto the ferry. We sat outdoors to minimize seasickness and the whole time I stared off into the distance at two small islands that lay in between Upolu and Savaii. The boat did rock quite a lot, but I turned out to be okay. As we neared Savaii the rain hit us so we went inside and the boat started to sway and rock up, down, side to side. I still was okay but Chris and Brian both got very sick. When we finally docked (it was pouring) we met up with our arranged driver for our hotel (funny enough, called Stevenson's Resort) and took us. Brian and Chris confessed at how sick they had been and I was pleased that I had no gotten sick at all.
As we drove (it was about a 45 minute drive) the rain stopped and revealed a tropical paradise of palm trees, jungles, and crystal clear blue water next to a darker shadow of coral reefs. Savaii was significantly less populated than Upolu (if that's even possible) and there were stretches of the drive that we just jungle. Our driver was very fast and reckless and again Brian confessed to being terrified. Haha.
We arrived at Stevenson's, in Manase, around 230/3ish. The sun was out, it was hot, humid and we were exhausted. Our beach fale was beautiful. It was like our fale at the Outrigger except it was right on the beach, more open and much larger. We had a small deck space with deck chairs and a table and a view of the ocean. We had several neighbors, but they weren't very noticeable at all. After eating lunch in Stevenson's dining area, Brian and Chris immediately fell asleep and I sat reading for a while. Once Chris woke up, he and I went for our first dip in the ocean. It was wonderfully warm compared to the ocean water I'm used to in NJ. It was a little overcast, but still beautiful. We could see the coral reef really close to us and small fish swimming around in the water. Also, interestingly, some of the water would have pockets of very cold water and you could also see the salt differences in the water. Very interesting.
After swimming Chris and I read books on the beach until Brian woke up and we had dinner. The dining area of Stevensons was full of stray cats begging for food. At first I thought it was no big deal but in the days to come they became very obnoxious and none of us had any problem hitting them with our jandals or trying any method ot scare them off. The meals we recieved were nothing to talk about, a little bland at times and over priced. We ended up resenting Stevensons a lot because of the poor service (all the servers were really rude and all our meals took over 30 minutes to be prepared even after being preordered hours ahead) and also because of the blandness of the food. We later found out the reason was that Stevensons, unlike most of the resorts, was not family run so the people who worked there weren't working for the family, like more people do in Samoa, and thus they had little motivation to work as well and in better moods as people at other resorts.
That night we fell asleep after a long day. The next day Jon Bell was to join us and it was also my 21st Birthday!
TO BE CONTINUED!!!
First shots of Savaii, so rainy.
There were sad, wet horses tied up in front of nearly every house in Salelologa, the port village that the ferry docked in.
So flooded
Nap time...
The beach. All the dark "rocks" scattered on the beach are pieces of coral and shells. There are a lot of hermit crabs among them as well.
Chris reading a book
The flight itself was rather painless and only about 3 hours long. Chris and I sat together with an Indian man next to Chris and Brian sat a few seats behind us next to a crying baby that had a dirty diaper. Near the end of the flight the man seated next to Chris became rather talkative. He had been very friendly from the get go but he started asking about our trip and what we planned on doing when we landed. He offered up some advice and we ended up talking to two girls seated in the row across from us as well. They all told us to be wary of taxi drivers because they'll try to over charge you and all sorts of places we should check out. Dev, the Indian man, offered to split a taxi ride with us from the airport to our hotels once the plane landed. We were very thankful and took him up on his offer.
Landing was strange, it was pitch black and I could barely get an inkling of what Samoa looked like. I saw palm trees and green grass faintly lit by the runway lights and the lights of the airport, but that was about as much as I could see. The air wasn't too humid or too hot when we got off, but then again, it was night.
The airport itself was small, but not as small as I had been expecting. Customs went by very quickly and as we left the customs area we were bombarded by taxi drivers trying to get our business. Thank god we found Dev because we simply pushed passed them and followed Dev to his personal taxi driver, Taylor. Taylor loaded our stuff into the car and we were off.
Dev explained to us Samoa culture, the phenomenon of "island time", what to do with stray dogs, and how to be careful with taxi drivers. We tried talking to Taylor a bit, but he was soft spoken and didn't understand us half the time and vice versa. But when he did talk he'd also chuckle, a high pitched giggle almost, that became very familiar to us as the Samoan laugh.
Dev asked us if we had eaten and we answered no. He told us that McDonalds (of course!) would be the only place opened at that hour. He asked us if we'd rather just eat at his hotel with him and then Taylor would drive us home. We liked this plan much better and decided to eat at Dev's hotel, the Millenium.
Driving I caught some glimpses of Samoan villages and people. There were HEAPS (as a kiwi would say) of people walking down the street and stray dogs prowling. There were these large open houses with tons of people sitting inside them having some sort of family gathering. These were only nighttime visions I caught, for what I'd see the next day would be completely different from my impressions in the night. Further, due to a lack of mass artificial lighting, the sky was jet black and the stars were out in full force.
Dinner with Dev was very interesting. We ate hamburgers and french fries (which was funny to us that this would be our first meal) and drank Vailimas, the Samoan beer. Dev told us of his life and business. He worked for some international bank (I think, Chris and Brian probably remember this better than I do) and was working in Samoa with their Health department or something. He was a world traveler, born in New Delhi but currently called Washington, D.C home. He had worked and lived all around the world. He told of studying architeture in Copenhagen and traveling to Spain with his family. He had a wive and 3 kids. All 3 of his children were huge success stories. His eldest daughter worked for and was the CEO of some movie industry business and attented the oscars regularly. His son used to be a champion hockey player and his younger daughter was in the navy and about to come to NZ. He seemed to have lived a very fruitful life and was continuing to do so. He was very accomodating and pleasant to talk with. We ended up making plans to meet up for dinner the next night at a place Dev recommended called the "Italiano."
Taylor drove us to our hotel afterwards and we settled in for the night. Our fale was pretty cool, although I was skeptical how well it would withstand rain. We had mosquito nets and only a light sheet to sleep with, which I would come to love and appreciate in the days to follow.
In the morning we woke up all sweating profusely, but happy to see that it was going to be a rather sunny and cloudless day. We ate breakfast (fruit and toast with coffee) and immediately went in for a swim in the pool.
Our hotel called a taxi for us and we went into the center of Apia in order to pick up some vouchers we forgot to get at the airport the night before. Once we finished with that we walked around Apia breathing in the sights and sounds. Everyone honks in Samoa as a form of communication. A honk to a fellow driver, a honk to people walking down the road, a honk to thank someone for letting you pass, etc etc. So it was very noisy. Also, they drive on the right side of the road, but some of the cars are made for driving on the left and some for on the right. The country of Samoa is planning on eventually switching entirely over to using the left side of the road. They want to be more like NZ I think.
After buying some water we caught a taxi up to the Robert Louis Stevenson Museum. The museum is actually the remains of his house that he lived in for 4 years. We took a tour for 15 tala and learned all about the life of Robert Louis Stevenson. Our tour guide was another soft spoken Samoan (a typical trait of Samoans) and showed a real passion for Robert Louis. He explained how much Robert Louis loved Samoa and how in turn the Samoans loved him, which is why they had his museum and why they buried him on top of a mountain. He explained everything in the same sort of template, "And this, this is the only fireplace in Samoa." The house was very big, airy and beautiful. After the tour we wanted to climb up to see his grave but the hike would cause us to get too tired and too sweaty, so we opted to go find some waterfalls instead.
Our driver took us to this placed called the "Papaseea Sliding Rocks." The waterfalls were located deeper into the jungle of Samoa. We saw banana plantations and some poorer looking villages. The sliding rocks were managed by a village and we had to pay only 2 tala to get access to them.
We descended steep cement stairs into the jungle, down to the water falls. The falls were beautiful. Our taxi driver came down with us and immediately walked out of the second of the falls and pointed and instructed Brian to "slide" down the waterfall. At first I thought he was joked, I had thought that was just the same of the falls, but he was serious. Brian took off his shirt and edged to the spot the taxi driver was telling him to sit. We saw below a pool of water that wasn't nearly wide enough for my comfort and the rocks did not really look like they would be comfortable to slide on. Brian nervously asked, "What happened if I don't sit right here?" the taxi driver looked at him and said, "oh, you don't want to do that."
As sketchy as it was, and as nervous as I was that Brian was about to go to his death, Brian pushed off and SLID down the falls into the water. What a relief it was to see his head pop up from the water below and throw two thumbs up, exclaiming how awesome it was. Chris and I immediately got into our bathing suits and followed Brian down into the water. It was mildy terrifying, sliding down the rocks, but they were quite slippery and the pool below was quite deep. We did this several times (adrenaline pumping) and also did another waterfall, a 3rd, that was a bit longer but also with a shallower pool at the bottom of it. None of us liked that one and only did it once because of how scary it had been. Haha.
Afterward our driver took us to a fish and chips place and then back to The Outrigger (our hotel). After eating we went for a swim in the pool again and then decided to go exploring around the city. We walked from the Outrigger to Apia city center. It was about a 20 minute walk and by the time we were go there we were all drenched with seat. We walked along the water and decided to go find the market place. We managed to find one of the two large market places fairly easy. The market place was jammed with stands full of touristy stuff to buy. Chris really wanted to find the food market, but I was really exhausted so we stopped in a park for a little and then made our way over to the food market. It took us a while to find, but once we did we got ice cream and Brian bought a coconut to drink from. It was really cool to see and quite a culture shock to see the way these people lived and the buses they traveled in (jam packed, colorful buses with hiphop music blaring.) We were all really dirty and sweaty from walking around we walked back (stopped and bought large Vailimas) jumped in the pool at the Outriggers and then got ready to go out to dinner with Dev. We ran a little late but managed to meet up with Dev, no problem. We encountered more interesting stories from him and enjoyed delicious pizza and Vailimas (Dev's treat). We finished dinner with a glass of wine. Chris and I went back to our hotel after that, but Brian and Dev stayed out to drink some more. Brian ended up spending the night partying it up with some Samoans, which I found hilarious.
In the morning we checked out around 10 and took a taxi over to the ferry dock (which was an hour away from Apia, as was the airport). I was nervous about getting sea sick and we could see that Savaii, off in the distance, was shrouded by clouds and rain, so the water conditions probably wouldn't be too great. We waited for about an hour. There were little kids very fascinated by us and one girl kept trying to touch my hair. All I could think about was that I was probably one of the few white women they'd see before.
First few images of Samoa, in Apia.
Robert Louis Stevenson Museum
Robert Louis Stevenson's Yard... haha.
Robert Louis's lion rug
The only fireplace in Samoa
The deck
The silly thing about the museum was that they had hardly anything completely authentic. They had a lot of his books and of course some of his belongings but the house had been inhabited by a king of Samoa and also a German man for a while, so a lot of the original stuff has been lost. The only thing that belonged to the Stevenson's family in this room was that tattered dress and a trunk. WOW. We found that to be really funny.
This is where Robert Louis died.
Crazy bumping bus
Crazy Mormon church. So extravagant... so sad for the Samoans.
Sliding rocks!
House on the way to the sliding rocks.
The sliding rocks
From the top
Our taxi driver instructing Brian, haha
Chris about to go down
Somehow he is going sideways here...
Outrigger, Chris and Brian by the pool with this obnoxious Australian woman.
Our fale at the Outrigger.
The dining area.
The water close to Apia
Walking by the water toward the city center
Buildings in Apia
Another crazy church
The food market
Bus Station
A man waiting to catch the ferry...With all our bags we waited on line with a large grouping of Samoans and packed ourselves onto the ferry. We sat outdoors to minimize seasickness and the whole time I stared off into the distance at two small islands that lay in between Upolu and Savaii. The boat did rock quite a lot, but I turned out to be okay. As we neared Savaii the rain hit us so we went inside and the boat started to sway and rock up, down, side to side. I still was okay but Chris and Brian both got very sick. When we finally docked (it was pouring) we met up with our arranged driver for our hotel (funny enough, called Stevenson's Resort) and took us. Brian and Chris confessed at how sick they had been and I was pleased that I had no gotten sick at all.
As we drove (it was about a 45 minute drive) the rain stopped and revealed a tropical paradise of palm trees, jungles, and crystal clear blue water next to a darker shadow of coral reefs. Savaii was significantly less populated than Upolu (if that's even possible) and there were stretches of the drive that we just jungle. Our driver was very fast and reckless and again Brian confessed to being terrified. Haha.
We arrived at Stevenson's, in Manase, around 230/3ish. The sun was out, it was hot, humid and we were exhausted. Our beach fale was beautiful. It was like our fale at the Outrigger except it was right on the beach, more open and much larger. We had a small deck space with deck chairs and a table and a view of the ocean. We had several neighbors, but they weren't very noticeable at all. After eating lunch in Stevenson's dining area, Brian and Chris immediately fell asleep and I sat reading for a while. Once Chris woke up, he and I went for our first dip in the ocean. It was wonderfully warm compared to the ocean water I'm used to in NJ. It was a little overcast, but still beautiful. We could see the coral reef really close to us and small fish swimming around in the water. Also, interestingly, some of the water would have pockets of very cold water and you could also see the salt differences in the water. Very interesting.
After swimming Chris and I read books on the beach until Brian woke up and we had dinner. The dining area of Stevensons was full of stray cats begging for food. At first I thought it was no big deal but in the days to come they became very obnoxious and none of us had any problem hitting them with our jandals or trying any method ot scare them off. The meals we recieved were nothing to talk about, a little bland at times and over priced. We ended up resenting Stevensons a lot because of the poor service (all the servers were really rude and all our meals took over 30 minutes to be prepared even after being preordered hours ahead) and also because of the blandness of the food. We later found out the reason was that Stevensons, unlike most of the resorts, was not family run so the people who worked there weren't working for the family, like more people do in Samoa, and thus they had little motivation to work as well and in better moods as people at other resorts.
That night we fell asleep after a long day. The next day Jon Bell was to join us and it was also my 21st Birthday!
TO BE CONTINUED!!!
First shots of Savaii, so rainy.
There were sad, wet horses tied up in front of nearly every house in Salelologa, the port village that the ferry docked in.
So flooded
Nap time...
The beach. All the dark "rocks" scattered on the beach are pieces of coral and shells. There are a lot of hermit crabs among them as well.
Chris reading a book
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