Tidepooling, Ferry, and More PICTURES!

Some more photos from my adventures!

Fishing!

 

We helped build a gravel path at Hutton's Shearwater Enclosure
 

We helped deconstruct and move a yurt at Ngatiawa

And visited at Adi Leeson's House

 

Our whole group visited Billy Graham's "Naenae Boxing Academy"

While there Leah and I helped Rob work on his muscles :)

 

This is our group on a ferry ride through Marlborough Sounds

 

I'm taking a Marine Ecology class right now and as part of it we went tidepooling out on the peninsula.  It was REALLY cool!

This was our whole group at the tidepools

 Leah and I found a brittle star in the tide pools, it's a cousin of the sea star

Rob found this squid!

 

 This past weekend we went hiking and camping up on Mt. Fyffe.  We had expected to stay in the cabin there overnight, but it was REALLY full.....so we had to sleep outside.

It was really cold!

Good thing the sunrise was pretty!  Even if only for a few minutes because of the clouds!

 

 

 

 

Classes, Tsunamis and Surfing

First time SURFINGGGGG!!

One eyed Lambie and Ant at my homestay.... 

It's wicked windy here today! Another big storm has blown in a wicked hot warm front and it’s the warmest it has been all year! I can’t go outside and tan in it though, because they won’t let us out of the convent because a tree might fall on us or a shingle might fly off the roof and slice me open. If I had my red cape I'd be all set though, right Dottie? Huge gusts have knocked the power out which means I have time to let you guys know what I've been up to this week: not too much!

Sheep slaughter: 

Monday we went back up to the Topps sheep farm (my homestays house) as part of class and watched Kevin kill/slaughter a sheep for us. It was a pretty bloody mess, as I'm sure you can guess because it was a live sheep at one time. During my homestay, Kevin was wondering how the Americans would like watching it. He had some good opinions that I agreed with. Monday came. We went up and he talked to us about what scripture said about killing and eating, that was cool. Then he talked about large scale meat farmers and how they inject different chemicals and what they feed the lambs to make them grow faster and what not. He did the deed really respectfully and it was as normal as you could make a sheep slaughter. But some people were pretty upset and felt free to voice their opinions the next day in class. As I was taking notes in class, I wrote down the four M words that I kept hearing; Murder, Massacre, Manipulation, and Mutilation. I was screaming on the inside that this person decided to talk for 20 minutes about the four M’s. Needless to say, the women ate two chicken legs for lunch that day, so, I guess it didn’t turn her into a vegetarian. Later that week we ate the lamb for supper and the rest of it is in the freezer for a later feast.

On the town:

Because we are right on the coast, there is an alarm that is sounded from the center of town every day, a single long blast is a tsunami and a up and down siren is just letting the fire fighters know its time to meet or something. It blasts from a huge speaker on top of one of the hills-a siren and you can hear it all the way out at the convent. This Sunday, our professor, came early and was woken by this loud alarm. He thought it was a tsunami and ran out in the drive way to find Lisa (funny kiwi women) getting into her car driving driving to church. The professor ran down the drive way banging on her windows and trunk so Lisa stopped the car and asked what he wanted. He told her he thought it was a tsunami and Lisa said “if it was a tsunami, don’t you think I'd be in a little more of a hurry?” The professor thought it was every man for themselves and Lisa was leaving him at the nun house and he had to get out!

We also had to pick a tree that could become our “treebuddy.” As you can guess, I'm really enthused about this… not! We pick a tree and go sit with it for 30 minutes a week and write a journal of what our tree is saying to us. Let's just say, my journal entrees are wicked short because for some reason my tree doesn’t have much to say.

This week at the aquarium I was volunteering again with Bekah and we got to do a bunch of odd jobs. They have a new octopus that is as small as a gumball-with 8 legs. It's so small and it is in a little tank that has fish eggs in it so it reaches out and eats them while you watch. It was wicked cool. They also have a blue crayfish on display. This week Bekah and I made good friends with the women who runs it. She gave each of us a Kiakoura marine aquarium T-shirt for free and free ice-cream on a stick. The aquarium is great!

Have you ever thought about what happens to your toothbrush when you throw it away? How many toothbrushes to you think you will have in your lifetime? Well all that plastic doesn’t just go away in fact your toothbrush will never go away. So what can you do about it? Buy a bamboo toothbrush then when you are done with it you can recycle it! Hahahha! This is a topic that was brought up a week or so ago. I ordered a couple for the fun of it, but for the sake of actually keeping your teeth clean, I’m skeptical if they will really work.

Surfing:

Sunday I woke up early and went to Lisa’s church because she was leading worship. She gets pretty into it, I'd say, as with anything she likes to do. The sermon was something about how each of us are a car. Monica sat beside me and told me that she was a motorcycle because she only cared about herself, and I told her, I must be a side-car then because I can’t get anywhere without someone pulling me along! I think mom would agree with that! Then we came back to the old convent and filled the van up with our surfboards and wetsuits and I ran up the stairs to grab my “bootie surfing shoes” that I got at Mardens for $5 before I came. People were pretty jealous because they didn’t have any and their feet were cold. So we got there and there were waves so big! I'm not kidding! they looked so big! Then Brian (a CCSP employee) said, “Wow, these really aren’t very good waves to be starting surfing on.” So the waves were wicked big! Rob, Steve, Leah, Kelsey, and I went surfing and Bekah read the required reading we were supposed to do this week end so, she could tell us what it was about for class.

I was pretty cocky. I mean, I've wake boarded and snowboarded, but surfing just didn’t come to me ya know. First, I didn’t know you had to time the waves so you could get out from shore. So I ran right in and tried to paddle out but I kept getting thrashed around like the toothpick that I am. The water wasn’t cold at all with the wetsuit, so that was nice. I kept trying but I was too weak and couldn't really get out far enough (you have to get about 500 feet off shore). The waves were just too big for my little arms. So after I drank a good amount of sea water and ate an unhealthy amount of rocks, I took a break and watched from shore with the girls. I'm just going to say, it's just as much fun to watch people try to do it because they weren’t good either. I think Rob got on his knee once that day. I'll probably go again.

When you’re paddling out on your belly and you see huge waves coming at you it makes you feel like the wave in front of you is 12 feet above you and you hope it doesn’t break while you’re trying to go over it because it will push you way back in. It’s pretty freaky. When you get thrown around from the wave its like rafting; you don’t know what side is up, or if you will even come up, or if the board will slice your head open and let bloods spill out and you then have a million sharks chasing you trying to kill you. I don’t know, that's just what I think of when I'm being thrown around like a jellyfish in a washing machine.

Character development:

Rob: when I first met rob he would try to tell me has been to Maine a million of times. Well, let me tell you, Kennebunkport (for you flat landers, Kennebunkport is literally 5 inches over the border in southern Maine) is not the same Maine I am from-no matter what anyone tells you. Finally, this week he was telling someone about Maine and I heard him confess that it’s not the real Maine!!

Monica: don’t know if I’ve talked about her yet but she is normal and a senior form Messiah studying occupational therapy. Anyway she is here and a random person came to stay at the convent because they were supposed to be going to Antarctica but the trip got canceled because of the American government shut down. So this 'random person' is somehow related to Monica… small world we live in people. so keep it green. Just kidding

!

New Zealand fun facts:

1.Farms here just have 1 big fence around the entire property (1,000 acres) and their animals just stay in that. They don’t cut down big fields and fence off small parts of it; the animals are pretty much wild in this huge fence. They can do this because there are not any predators.

2. It’s a little bit warmer and the leaves are coming out. So maybe someday soon I can thaw out.

The All Blacks rugby team is what everyone loves. And if you don’t know what to talk about you just talk about the All Blacks.

3. Americas Cup, have you heard of it? None of us have until we got here. It is a sailing race that happens in San Francisco Bay and it came down to America vs New Zealand. To win you must win 9 races. Well, NZ was up 8 wins to Americas 1 and all of the kiwi people were talking smack about the American boat. In the end, America got 8 consecutive wins in a row and the USA came in for the win!

City life, Homestays and Yoga!

Well it has been a wicked long time! Sorry to leave you guys hanging. It has been pretty stressful here with lots to do and lots of assignments. You know how I get when I get stressed out and pimples start growing.

Field trip to the city. Lame. We went to Wellington the capital of New Zealand in the previous week. It was a good trip that started out with us driving a few hours north to get on a ferry. The ride was wicked long. That morning I had to get a lot of work done so I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off trying to get my papers in before we could leave. Here they really discourage the use of paper (printing paper, toilet paper, napkins, tissues but I’m from Maine so I’m like, hey use the paper!).  I had to try to figure out how to get the paper from my computer to the Mac desktop. One would think it would be as easy as a flash drive but oh no, nothing is that easy.  It took a good twenty minutes so I missed breakfast before we went so that means no coffee. And you guys know how I travel without coffee. 

We get to the ferry and its pretty exciting the whole thing felt like a bunch of cows getting herded into a cow trailer. Then we drove on and for some reason we had to park our cold, war styled van with all the tractor trailer trucks and dog kennel--there were so many dogs barking echoing off metal of the ferry. This boat was probably three times as big as the Atlantic Cat that goes to Nova Scotia. So, you can get out of your car and go into 2 or 3 restaurants and a few gift shops or sitting rooms or walk around the deck or go up to the top. It was pretty nifty and it was really swanky. So no one got sea sick or anything but the whole thing had a Titanic feel it and I felt like we were going to be going down any minute. 

On the ferry we saw lots of sea birds and even BLUE PENQUINS. They had about four tractor-trailer loads of cows on the boat which was pretty cool-so many cows packed into the trucks and they were stacked two high in the box. Wellington was a pretty nice clean city; not too many skyscrapers because of the earth quakes they don’t build tall buildings. A city is a city. (Except New York, Portland and Boston). We visited all kinds of different places; some cool and some really lame. I don’t have much to say about it but the trip lasted a week and it made me really home sick because I got pretty sick of being with the same people; staying with them for so long.

 It was also a field trip. We had to listen to a lot of guest speakers talk about pretty radical views of stuff most of which was hard to digest and overly opinionated. Lisa the funny kiwi women didn’t go with us so it was wicked quiet most of the time on the trip. We stayed in a place called a “marai.” It’s a religious type of building that the natives use and for worship and ritual. We stayed there and attached to it is a bingo hall type part with a kitchen. We ate and slept there and during the day they herded us around to different parts of the city. It was located in a neighborhood that reminded me of Fleming Street in Lincoln.

It was a really tiring trip that went on longer than I would have liked it to. We saw a stuffed Moe at the nation museum. (Extinct flightless bird, similar to an ostrich), climbed a really tall tower type thing on the waterfront (just for a photo opp.), saw the world’s largest giant squid at the national museum, toured a bunch of places: city gardens (vegetables), city forest, boardwalks and religious places. It rained most of the time. We also went to this off the grid, religious commune (I would describe it as a place where retired circus workers all go live somewhere in weird trailers, yurts, campers, and a few little metal buildings). I went down their steep drive way on a mountain board (like a skateboard on bigger wheels) and wiped out on the speed bump leaving lots of my skin and blood on the drive way. We came back to the nun house and Lisa greeted us and it was great! Felt so good to be at the convent and vent a little bit. After we came back we had to dive into an intense week of class on “sustainable community development” after not having a week of class. Having come back the day before I was wicked tired and not ready for class at all. 

One afternoon I had to mail some postcards for Hillary and dad’s birthday and rode in with my friend Emma. We decide we should exercise more so when we came back we got right into things and started Monday yoga on the deck. We did some downward dog and warrior position. And we breathed deep to let the oxygen flow from our mouths all the way to our muscles then relaxed as we exhaled until we have emptied ourselves of all the oxygen in our lungs... anyway I think yoga is great and we are going to try to keep things going and maybe get more people involved. Who doesn’t like yoga? 

Home stays. Well the only thing exciting I have to talk about is our home stay. So each American goes to stay with a kiwi family for a weekend to learn about the culture a little bit: it’s pretty fun. Leah (curly haired cow farmer) and I were assigned together to go to the same house for the weekend which is nice so it wouldn’t be as awkward and she could help carry the conversation. It was the same sheep farm I went to visit at the start of being here in New Zealand. There are some pictures in my previous blog. So, I had been there before and had seen them a bunch of times around town. Thankfully, I got to stay with someone that wasn’t a complete stranger.  

First night we got picked up, the radio was playing Maroon5. The women, Sandy, said “sometimes I like this kind of music but sometimes I just want to ask them what in world they are saying!” She is an older women around 65 and full of life. She drove us up to her sheep farm that is about 20 minutes out of town and sits between two big mountains. On our way up we saw some wild pheasants, wild goats and lots of their sheep on the hillsides. Kevin met us in the driveway and was holding a little lamb. The lamb was wicked cute and blind in one eye, which is why he was keeping an eye on it. Their house used to be a bed and breakfast so I had a really nice bathroom and hot shower with the shower head that was high enough for me to stand under! What a change from the nun house; I got my own room with a huge double bed, soft sheets, and four pillows. It was the best sleep I had gotten since I have been here. Also THEY HEAT THEIR HOUSE so when I put my contacts in it wasn’t like stabbing my eyes with ice cubes! Isn’t that amazing? Someone finally heats their house. That night we had Crayfish for supper (like lobster but cost 65 bucks each...) and other sea fish like pauwa, and grilled fish. Wicked good super and dessert. Then we fed the lamb, locked up all 8 of their dogs, fed the chickens and went in to clean the kitchen. Well, I didn’t have to lift a finger! Me and Kevin went in to watch rugby as Leah and Sandy cleaned up everything. It was great. They also brought us dessert with tea so I didn’t have to get up.

We talked about solar powered hot water and stuff while watching rugby. After ruby we watched paid programing a little bit: flash backs to Grammy and Papa! Luckily, I don’t think Grammy Pelkey watches it. When I rolled out of bed at 9:00 the next morning, they had toast with different spreads; it was good! We could see some cows that got out so we had to go round those up and get them in the pastures. He drove us around the property and told us stories; it was great! We were supposed to get on the 4weeler and go check on some sheep way up in the mountain but when Leah and I sat on it, Leah’s side had a flat tire, so that was disappointing and we couldn’t go. 

Kevin and Sandy have a swinging bridge on their property that goes over the river near their house. It’s pretty dilapidated now, but if I lived there I would fix it up. They also have a Tennis court on their property. They made it out of packed limestone and it is so funny. It looks really funny. It’s the first of the season so Leah and I had to “scrape it” and “pack it” and put the net up to get it ready. Then after we set it up Leah and I played some tennis. She was really pompous saying, “I played tennis in advanced PE I’m really good”. And I was like, “I go to Lincoln Tennis League once a month and I stink.” Well let me tell you, Leah’s strong point is not tennis. She was so bad. But she was playing in her gum rubbers. Then, Sandy came out and was wicked good. I was so surprised. And she had been to the Wimbledon. 

The Topps took Leah and I to church on Sunday; we hit a bird on the way. Then went to church and there were lots of people camping in the parking lot for some reason? It was a weird sight. After church, we left Kevin at church because he was talking too much and Sandy took us down to go on a cave tour. Well, this was my first cave and it was pretty cool. It wasn’t too big but it had the stalagmites and stalactites in them and they found fossilized penguins in them! Our guide, Barry, was a really “colorful” old man who couldn’t believe we didn’t eat cow stomach. He also couldn’t understand a word me and Leah said!!  I think it was also because he was half deaf, but I’m used to that from living with mom.

Character development:

Sandy: She is a great tennis player on her little limestone court: full of life and always has a good laugh. She’s is a great cook, has 4 dogs, 3 cats, and 20 chickens. She made us listen to children’s Sunday school songs on the way to church Sunday morning. It was pretty funny.

Kevin: He is a great story teller, loves to talk about his sheep, he has 4 dogs of his own (not Sandy’s dogs), 3000 sheep, 150 cattle and 1 horse. He is also a pastor; he told me and Leah the story of Jacob and Leah in the Bible. Well, in the Bible, Jacob and Leah get married and have 7 kids... He thought that was a good laugh because Leah and I came to stay at his house.

Leah: still the cow farmer with curly hair. She has started to call herself my sister (sorry Hillary, Elizabeth and Mary) because our bedroom doors were across from one another and she told me, “night” every night during the homestay.

Sept 29 (but post is from last week)

It has been awhile and I’m sorry about that I wrote this a week ago but I didn’t get to send it to mom to post it before I had to go on a weeklong fieldtrip. So I am uploading this without having someone filter it first because now mom is at the Fryeburg Fair. So there is going to be a lot of bad grammar and spelling.

Well on Tuesdays we have hot breakfast and it starts at 7:30 so that is kind of early. But anyway it was pancake breakfast and I was like yeah I think I’ll get up for  it. So at 8:15 I rolled out of bed and slid down the stairs to the dining room and saw bowls of whipped cream, chocolate chips, syrup, and berries. It looked so good. There was also orange wedges but I didn’t eat those because its too hard to eat those in the morning so I sat down at the table with Adam (ccsp employee) and emma (the cook) to eat. Everyone else was finishing up and the pancakes were cold but I was determined to enjoy my breakfast. But last week I made the mistake of saying the comment that breakfast is so much work to eat because it requires so much work to prepare it and cut it up. That time of the day I just don’t have the ambition to do that. So as I was struggling through getting my pancakes ready emma was making fun of me and said “here let me get that for you. It’s just too much to expect you to do that at such a wee hour.” So she cut up my pancakes an put the whip cream and chocolate chips on it for me it was so good and then she poured my orange juice for me it was the best. Then as I continued to eat and got to the bottom pancake where there wasn’t any syrup or cream so without asking she knew from somewhere deep inside her that I needed more on it so she did that for me too.

It’s still cold here but worming up! I remember when I used to be able to spread butter on my bread… but I haven’t done that since I’ve been here. It’s also wicked hard to shave.. I couldn’t bring my electric razor with me because of the electricity so I had to bring hand ones… well let me tell you it’s pretty hard to teach a cat new tricks. Every time I attempt to shave I end up miss entire huge spots on my face. Its wicked frustrating and I feel like I’m going to slit my own throat on accident.

Reading week:

                So reading week is when you are expected to do all the reading required for the semester so it had been a wicked lame week here at the nunnery. But to spice things up Lisa (funny kiwi women who lives at the convent with us) asked a few of us to eat lunch at her work. She works at the Kaikoura Whale Watch as the marketing manager and her office is right on the beach it’s a wicked cool building with a café, patio, volleyball court, and cool painted art walls. During lunch Monica (messiah student) put her hand in a huge pile of bid crap. After lunch she let me go ask her some qustions and see her cubical it was wicked fun and I got to see what she does. So im hoping that I can pop in again sometime because this week she had models come in to take pictures on the boat so she is pretty legit.

                So as you can imagine, the longer we read the more anxious we get to do something fun. Last night the girls stole rob steve and I’s boxers while we were out and then when we woke up we didn’t have any clean pairs to put on so I sucked it up and put the same pair I took off back on and went down to breakfast only to find our boxers were on something we call the napkin tree (a pole in the dining room that holds our napkins in special spots) so where the napkins where supposed to be our boxers where there instead. I mean it’s kind of gross because you are putting our boxers where we put our napkins that we use to eat?? So joke on the girls! HA buut anyway shortly after waking up the girls left to go into town and us boys where left at the convent alone… so we stole all there bras (it was pretty hard figuring out if it was a bra, underwear, bathing suit, or what it was) and climbed down the fire escape in our room and ran out back to the biggest tree in the yard. As you guessed rob and I climbed to the top of the tree with the bag of bras and continue to ping them around the top of the tree. After the tree was fully decorated we locked our bedroom door and biked into town to do our laundry.

                Maybe you’re wondering why im going to a laundromat. Well we can’t do laundry here at the nun house unless we do it by hand… which as far as ive seen looks like a lot of work. So no I have not done it by hand yet. Also Drew’s (kiwi kid who I talked about last time) mom owns it so I feel good supporting them and I’m too lazy and cold to do it by hand.

                In town Seafest is going on its like Lincoln homecoming. So there are tons of people in town and old cars. So there was a market in town that is like the trash and treasure sale in presquile people selling new stuff, used stuff, old stuff, food stuff, and crapy stuff. So we found this guy selling lasers and they were wicked cool but 20 bucks. So it was good deal but we needed a better deal. So we asked him and got him to go down to 18. Deal made (thanks Gram and Gramp). They are green and annoy the girls so they were a good purchase. I also got a hellokitty necklace that I bought from a really cute little kiwi kid. We had fish and chips on the beach and it was a great day in town not much to tell about it though.

                Then we biked back to the convent and found on the edge of the road a dead hare that was wicked big. Prob around 15 pounds and lonnnng. It was a fresh kill so I threw it over my back with my laundry and rode proudly back to the convent with my finds of the day. We found the girls with a huge 16 foot 2x4 trying to pick their bras out of the tree and a few of them were climbing with fishing poles trying to nock them down… just take a minute to envision it.          So being nice guys we went and helped them get them down and told them sternly “mess with the bull you get the horns” later that day I cleaned the rabbit up and now the pelt is drying out back of the convent. I named the rabbit peter.

Early this week:

*Warning contains my opinion read at your discretion*

                We went to a bird enclosure to volunteer for the department of conservation with our friend Bret (man who took us on peninsula walk) we had to reset weasel trap and set out poisons while others where fixing stairs and hauling gravel. The enclosure is to help reintroduce a bird that right now lives in the mountains in colonies of around 5000 birds in each colony. The birds can’t fly during the day or something and they can’t deal with any kind of predator so they need a lot of protection against weasels mice and other things that can eat them or their eggs. So they have a predator proof fenced in area that was real big and had two fences one on the inside and one on the outside and between the two fences are sheep to keep down the grass. In the middle of the enclosure is a speaker system that plays the sound of a bird colony over huge speakers to attract the birds. They also have planted special plants and hauled in special gravel that the birds prefer. They also have ramps for the birds to climb up so that they can take off easily. Each day they helicopter down 5 birds from the mountains to this colony. Last year they had one breading pair of birds and expect them to return back to the colony this year. They picked this spot because they thought it would be a nice place to have a colony of these birds and it has nice up drafts that the birds need to take off and fly with. I personally think this is odd to try to relocate a bird that lives in the mountains down to a different area?

                But anyway we went and set out bait and found so many snails. HUGE snails as big as grapes. Me and rob finished our job and were waiting for everyone else (for about an hour) and took these huge snails and put like 50 of them all over our van. We covered it, it was wicked gross. Also while we were working we found a dead bird. So put that in the car also. Anyway we were finishing and a unnamed person came over and I was showing them how you could squeeze the snail and it would squirt out of the shell and its eyes would pop out.  Well this person was modified and said a bunch of ridiculous living things are living remarks and I was pretty much going to burn down in you know where. I then threw my last snail I had on top of a huge concrete pillar and that was almost the straw that broke the camels back.

But the real straw that broke the camels back was when we went to down to get into the vans. This unnamed person saw all of the snails and was mortified so some of the girls helped her pick the snails off with her. But then her friend who she brought along got in the passenger side door and saw the dead bird we put in the van. He looked at it and the girl said to me and rob that had to remove it. Then we got into a silent van and she started the van to drive us back to the convent. My good friend emma (the one with the funny laugh) reminded her of the snails they removed from the van and asked her to go in reverse so they didn’t run them over. That was nice of emma to think of the snails. But I was  a little tense at this point about lets save the world campaign and said “we might as well airlift the van back to the convent, God forbid we might hit a june bug” then we rode home in a silent van.

So Im off to Wellington NZ this week the capital of NZ. Its on the north island and we get to take a fairy but it’s a long ride so ill let you know if I get thrown overboard because I everyone’s mad about the snail thing.

More Pictures!

Okay!  Here are some more pictures of my trip! 

This is of the Kaikura Penninsula

This is our whole group, just before leaving for our hike

We made it to the water taxi, BARELY on time!  Obviously, I had no razor on this trip.

Climbing trees wherever I go!

Cheering at the race...in our outfits from the dump, and shortly before I flew over my handlebars.

This is one of my classic poses

Another from our hiking trip

I got to go to work with Lisa and check out the whale watch, she took this picture the next day out on one of the cruises but i didnt go on the boat :(

September 15, 2013

So I came in from being out the other day and I was greeted with all kinds of these weird remarks that I didn’t know what they meant. And I was like what are you guys saying? And they were all like well what are you saying? Well needless to say the students here in my program at the convent found my blog. I mean I didn’t say anything mean but I did feel bad because some of them seemed up set but I mean I was filtering so I guess I shouldn’t be too embarrassed  but I was. So more filtering I suppose so people don’t get offended.

                Well this week not much has happened just having class. Class goes from 9 to 12 and then we have the afternoon off and then we have class again from 7 to 9 Monday through Friday. And each week we have a different professor. So professor A comes in week one then professor B comes in week two then professor C comes in week three then professor A comes in for week four then professor B comes in week five. Then professor C comes in week six. So that is how class works in a nutshell.

                Anyway I love sugar. Any form of sugar, syrup, granular, candy, marshmallow, fluff, and brown sugar. Well here I am having a real problem, I don’t feel like im getting my daily doses of needed sugar, but I had to refill the sugar bowl on the tea counter and had to go find the sugar. Well I found a HUGE 55 gallon trashcan in the kitchen, full. Of sugar. It was like heaven in a trashcan. I was so happy. Also there is a huge white Rubbermaid container at the tea station and I hadn’t opened it till this week. Its full of caramelized honey. I was so happy when found these,

                More in the department of food. Tim tams are a two rectangular chocolate cookies on top of each other and dipped in fudge chocolate. They are great so good. I don’t know why I have never had them bc I guess they sell them at target? But they are great. So we did the Tim Tam slam and that happens when you eat each end of the cookie and put one end in hot chocolate then suck the hot coco up into the Oreo and quickly put it in your mouth. Its great. Im salivating just thinking about it.

The Race:

so Kelsey (from messiah sophomore) and Allie (assistant program director) were in a 10k road race here in kiakoura. Well this is quite an event with tons of people. Well like Lincoln a lot of people. definitely not as big as Bangor. So those two are pretty quiet people so us guys (rob steve and i) decided to dress up and embarrass them. We went to the thrift shop, which is actually the dump and filled out bag of terrible clothes for 4 dollars. We didn’t have time to wash them first so we got these shorts that they call “stubbies” here and are wicked short. Shorter than regular short shorts that are high-waisted and look real bad. Wicked bad. And we had hats and tanks, we looked real bad. Theres a pic on facebook if you feel like checking out my upper thigh. Then we were wicked loud cheering on every person as they came into the finish line “lets go red, run red” you know all the good chants.

                Then we were leaving on our bikes and we had one bike with a trailer on the back to carry all our laundry cause we had to go to the laundry mat so were going along biking and still cheering on all the people we are passing and there are still crowds of people in the streets cheering on still finishing runners. Rob lost his hat. He dropped it off the bike onto the ground. Then he came to a complete stop and I was right behind him. So I had to break wicked quick and of course because we are in a different country we are biking on the opposite side of the road and that means the brakes are on the opposite side of the bike. Well I hit the front brakes and went right over the handle bars. Right over. I was so pissed. There were so many people there I was dressed like a loser and then I went right over the front of my bike and it went sliding off the road down the 6 foot ditch. Yup its cool im American.

Storm:

                We had a wicked bad storm that was so windy. Its called a north westerly and blew in at night and rattled our windows so much, and because we are in a 100 year old building the wind pretty much blew through it and it was creepy and the doors were all rattling and slamming. But old Agatha the nun outside my window held strong through the storm. Sadly. Any way the storm lasted about 2 days. At times it was pitch black out at like 3 in the afternoon with rain pelting down and wind gust of no joke up to 85 miles per hour. Windows rattling soooo much. And we lost power for a lil while.

Garden Walk:

                Well Sandy and Kevin Topp gave Leah and I free tickets to the kiakoura garden walk on Sunday afternoon. So I was wicked excited we saw 5 gardens with some pretty cool plants and landscapes. But one house had all these raised gardens and bonsai trees in pots it was wicked cool, but the house was awesome, glass balcony swanky windows and it sat right on top of a hill that went down to south bay and then on the other side of the house a picture perfect view of the mountain range. So if I could pick a house I would live there. But it did have a 8 foot high black fence all the way around it? So it kind of blocked the view but then they put windows in the fence? Its kind of weird but if it didn’t have the fence it would be awesome. We were so sophisticated going out on a garden walk, and I was 1 of 7 men that I saw all afternoon. Then there was a luncheon downtown at the church for all the people after. It was again all gray hair elderly women. But it was wicket funny and I we got a cuppa tee and a wee plate with like 5 tini tini pieces of hobbit food on them. Small sandwiches and mini cookies as well as a tini tini cube of seeds that were stuck together. Im not sure if we were supposed to eat it because it tasted just like birdfood. But then we came back and rob and Steve were not at the nun house so I asked where they were but no one knew. So then me and Leah went to walk around the yard and found the dead hedge hog that lisa had told us was in the drive way so we were like wow a dead hedgehog! (last week we saw a live one and picked it up and played with it) I think Lisa hit it the night before because she was riding in circles really fast around the driveway trying to be funny. Which she is wicked funny. So naturally me and Leah decided to pick it up and put it in Steve my roommates bed. And it smelt so bad. Like 7 days dead bad!  So Steve has 6 bottles of cologne (man perfume for pansies) so we put so much on it so it wouldn’t smell as bad when we put it in his bed. Well this was at around 4 oclock so it was in his bed for a real long time, but leah was nice and put a piece of newspaper under it so it would be as bad. Well I went to bed around 11 and steve and rob came into go to bed around 1 and were wicked loud so those of you that know me know that I love my 10-12 hrs of uninterrupted sleep. I naturally told them to shut up then he found the dead hedgehog and I remembered about it and watched the events unfold. Needless to say I played it off like I didn’t do anything but they wouldn’t touch it so I had to pick it up barehanded and throw it out of our 2cnd story balcony…. Well right outside our window is another building called the chocolate house. So the hedgehog bounced off the roof onto the porch roof where it remained until the next day when me and steve had to climb up and get the stupid thing and burry it. It was pretty bloated and stunk. I think I got the short end of the stick because I had to sleep with a dead hedgehog in our room and then I had to be the one to throw it out then I had to go get it again then burry it. After a very tense day of dodging accusation of who did it (I wasn’t even on their radar) we fessed up at supper and then the flip flops we used to pick up the hedgehog were Lisa’s and she was wicked funny about it. So that’s all I have to say about that. You know what they say payback is a B.

 

 

Character development:

Emma (the cook), loves spiders and will kill anyone who would harm them. That is what she told us. And its true. Anyway I tried to kill a spider at supper time and let me tell you she lost it. She came at me with her mug over her head. And angry face on. And im telling you she dumped her mug of water all over me then as I continued to kill the spider she tried to mug me! She tried to hit me with the mug then proceeded with the Amish tradition and shunned me for the rest of the day.

Leah, well leah and I got to go on a garden walk together! She is a long lost romantic, last week I caught her reading the weddings insert in the newspaper. She is a cow farmer in Washington and has 1000 head of cows to keep track of. Shes got a head full of curls

Drew, he is a little guy who lives just north of lover’s lane. Hes a 17 year old kiwi and wicked funny. Like Lisa he is sarcastic and quick with his wit. He has come over to the convent a couple times and both time we had to watch a movie for class and the movies were so bad I felt bad for him. He surfs snowboards works at the marina and works on cars.

Courtney, (program director) had a birthday and told us about her obsession with this skater guy from Canada when she was younger. But then proceeded to tell us his house caught on fire last year and he had twins and his wifes name and she dances in rowanda?? Then she said she got kicked off an elevator he was on when she was younger. And lied to get into a back stage party where he was… she has a twin sister and they were both obsessed. the guy even had a name for them because he saw them so many times they were “The Hamalton twins”…. Pretty funny stuff

New Zealand fun facts:

Driving down the street you will find half the trucks have these snorkel things on them. They are so the trucks can ford rivers. They go all the way to the top of the roof of the truck. When we went to the tops farm we had to drive over 3 different spots of water with our ghetto vans.

Over here they don’t really build bridges or bug culvers in like they do on dirt roads in Maine. Instead you just drive over them and hope its not too deep. Fingers crossed most of the time.

Birthday parties are over the top here just like at the Richard’s household. We celebrated Courtney (program director) birthday today it was a Curt Browning male figure skater themed party. It was pretty extravagant and we put Agatha (the 300lb nun statue) in the pool and pretended to skate around it and had to do our routine to impress Courtney. Yes we dressed in spandex and threw roses and pretended to do our twirling. I was pretty good but had a hard fall but I got back up to woo Courtney. Kristin (bird fanatic CCSP employee) planned it all and took some funny pictures.