A long Wellington update

So Chris is on the mend, and things are coming to a close school wise. I took my test on Thursday and did fairly well. So now, although I have two papers due on Friday before Shannon, Chris, Brian, Stephen and I leave for Abel Tasman, I have some time to write a bit in my blog.

I haven't updated in a really long time, since the 20th of May, about what I've actually been doing aside from caring for Chris and preparing for a test.
On May 22nd Chris, Stephen, Shannon and I had been invited to and were attending a joint birthday party for our friend Derek and several other people with birthdays in the month of May. The party was to be held on a boat and was called "We're On a Boat" as a parody off the song. The dress attire was semi-formal and neither Chris or Stephen had anything close to formal wear. So Friday, after classes and after Chris finished and turned in 2 papers that he had been working on non-stop, Chris and I ate at Nandos and then went shopping for some formal looking pants. We went to Farmers (which is kind of like Macy's) but none of their pants really looked like they would fit Chris (too large) and none of them were really the color he was looking for. So we ended up going to The Warehouse, which is like Target or Walmart, and he got a pair of pants for pretty cheap and I bought some shower stuff I had run low on (because the Warehouse is soo cheap).
Then I hurried back to Stafford to get ready for the boat party. Boarding the boat started at 6 and it was leaving the dock at 6:30. I didn't start getting ready until 4:30pm. Shannon and Stephen showed up at my room around 5 and Chris didn't come till 5:30. We had a rushed "pre-game" and then headed out around 6:00. Shannon and I were both wearing heals and realized that we probably would be late if we walked the whole way, and it was really windy and cold, so we took a cab.
When we got there the party had just begun and it turned out that the boat was never going to leave the dock because it was way too windy out in the open water. This was a huge let down and although we had fun, and saw a lot of friends and explored the boat, we ended up only staying for 2 hours.
These pictures were taken by Stephen and Shannon:
This is the boat, "The Wellesley."
Stephen, Chris and my "we're on a boat" faces. Haha. It actually was rocking back and forth pretty substantially even though it was docked, that's how windy it was outside.
Jon, Shannon, Chris and I walking after leaving the party. You can see how windy it is because John and Shannon are literally leaning against the wind. haha.

That night was when Chris started to get sick. Saturday he felt pretty crappy all day but by Sunday night, after we had watched "Tommy Boy," he had a high fever and chills. I spent Monday buying him medicine, a thermometer, renting Lost and getting lunch. Then I had class and studying. Tuesday Chris had a really high temp of 102 and we thought he might need to go to the doctor so I went over to his place in the morning. The student health center ended up being no help so instead I bought lunch and we watched Lost together and then I went to class and had more studying to do. After class I came back to check on Chris and make dinner. We had some fish and pasta even though Chris's appetite was not really there at all. Then I went home to do more studying. Wednesday I didn't have class so I brought sandwiches over to Chris's and we watched the movie "Chungking Express." Then I went back to Stafford for the rest of the day to prepare for my test the next day. Thursday I was studying pretty much all day before my test which was at 4pm. Afterward I went to Chris's. He was feeling a little bit better so we went to Nando's with Stephen. Unfortunately it wasn't a very good idea because Chris ended up feeling sick again and took a cab home. :( I went home to Stafford and ended up hanging out with Brian, and my friends Hannah, Lizzie and Greg in Hannah's room looking at pictures of dogs and watching videos of the Daily Show and the Colbert Report.
Friday was one was the few sunny days we had all week so I took a lot of pictures. Chris woke up feeling better so I walked to meet him and get some coffee in Aro Valley.
Lambton Quay, packed with people. Everyone was trying to enjoy the nice weather. It's amazing how different the temperature feels when it's sunny to when it's cloudy.
It started to get a little overcast, but I didn't care as long as the sun was still shinning slightly. You can see the school library from this shot. It's the darker building in the background in the middle of the picture.
Ghuznee St! This leads down to the video store we rent movies from all the time and is also one of the routes to Stephens place.
Aro Valley Park. Lola the cat (one of my favorite kitties in Wellington - I know many, haha) reigns over this park and will come up to anyone who shows any interest in petting her.
This is Aro St. You can see Aro Coffee - one of my favorite places to get coffee, they make and brew their own coffee - and several other shops, including the video store which is considered one of the best in Wellington. This is pretty much the extent of the "town" part of Aro.
Walking toward Chris's. The grassy flat part is a dog park and above that is the Polehill Reserve hike that Chris and I took a while back together.
View from Chris's house.
More of the view from Chris's.

After getting coffee at Aro Coffee, we got Thai food down on Cuba St. and then went back to Chris's place and hung out for a little. I went home to Stafford to have a meeting with Shannon, Stephen, and Brian to talk about our Abel Tasman trip. It ended up being me, Shannon, Stephen, my friends Lizzie and Hannah hanging out for about 2 hours just talking and joking around. My night ended pretty early because I was really really tired from the whole week of running around checking up on Chris and studying.
Saturday, Shannon had a rugby game on Kelburn Campus at 11:30, so Stephen and I met up at the cable car and took it up to the field together to see the game. It was cloudy, misting with rain and cold, but it was fun to see some rugby and hang out, talking with Shannon, Stephen and Lenny. Shannon didn't get to play that much, only the last few minutes of the game and they lost but only by two points. The other team was comprised of some really big girls and some very fast little ones.
The beginning of the game. Shannon's team is in green.
A scrum.
Walking around to talk to Shannon who was on the sideline on the other side of the field. You can see the random fountain that I've never seen actually on and also in the far background, Mt.Victoria.
There's Kelburn Parade and Kelburn Campus. The bridge with glass windows is the bridge I referred to that connects Kirk (the building on the left) with Murphy (the red building on the right).
You can see the trolley that we took up to see Shannon play.
Shannon actually playing. She's the one in the back wearing black leggings and black shorts with white socks.

After the game Stephen and I (our feet were absolutely freezing) met up with Chris at a bar/restaurant called "Arizona" to watch the Lakers game. We ate some lunch and hung out until the Lakers won. Then Stephen went home to take a nap, Chris went to Borders to do some homework and I went home to take a nap.
Saturday evening Chris and I cooked dinner at Stafford (pasta and meat sauce). We saw Brian and Stephen briefly and heard a huge party happening next door but we ended up just going to Chris's for the night to watch the movie "Step Brothers."
Sunday Chris and I met up with Stephen and got Burger Fuel. Afterward Stephen went home and Chris and I went to Stafford. Chris took a 2 hour nap while I worked on my papers. I cooked some chicken parmesan with pasta (which semi-failed only because I made it with chicken with bones, oops).
Monday, today, was the Queen's Birthday - a holiday in NZ, so... NO SCHOOL!!! YAY!! Chris and I decided to make cookies in celebration. We ate at a bagel place called "Wholly Bagels" that claims to make their bagels like NYC bagels. They were pretty good, but not on par with bagels from home. We went to Chris's where I baked and he called and talked to his parents. Chris's kitchen is ALWAYS messy and the kitchenware is always dirty because 1, it was like that when he moved in and 2, his flatmates (aside from one who has all her own stuff that no one else is allowed to touch) are all pretty messy. I ended up cleaning, pretty extensively, a bunch of dishes and the countertop. I was really proud of myself and as I was waiting for the cookies to finish I took some pictures of the kitchen area and more of Chris's house:

Chris's back "porch." He has a little area all to himself. To the left are some stairs that lead up to the front door of the house. To the right is a little pathway that we use instead of having to walk all the way to the top of the driveway and down the stairs.
View from his porch.
The kitchen before I cleaned it.
More kitchen and the view from the kitchen.
Chris on the phone with his family.
Clean!
Clean!
Chris's upstairs porch, again.
The kitchen area and also the stairs leading to the basement (where Chris's room is located).

After the cookies were done we ate cookies, watched some Top Gear and Arrested Development and then I walked home and on the way bought some indian takeaway.
That was an amazingly detailed and long update. I really hope that I can finished with my Samoa updates before heading to Abel Tasman, otherwise I have no idea how I'll be able to complete all of that before I come home!

A new blog...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.