A Week Down Under

Kia Ora! I apologize in advance for this ridiculously long post. So Fall Break here is actually two weeks long, so Nicole, Jess, and I headed to Australia for a week where a couple, Peter and Sue, that met Jess' grandparents a few years back let us stay with them for the week. Nicole and I hopped on a plane Monday afternoon to Sydney. It was a bit surreal as we both realized that we had always wanted to go to Australia and here we were on a plane to Sydney. We managed to navigate the train system from the airport out to Emu Plains where they would pick us up. We were starving, and Sue made us way too much food for dinner. We immediately felt at home. Sue is so nice and Peter is frickin hilarious. He had us laughing all week. When we first walked in the door he asked us if we wanted a beverage. He later realized we had a love for moscato and went to stock up for the week. There was always a fresh bottle and refilled glasses.

Tuesday
We headed out to Olympic Park for the Royal Easter Show, which is basically a state fair. Sort of felt like home especially with all of the farm animals, but the food wasn't nearly as good as the Wisconsin State Fair. Nothing beats cheese curds and cream puffs. However, we did find some Mexican food, which is hard to find in NZ, so we jumped at the chance to eat that for lunch and a snack. We spent most of the day there looking through all the little shops. We had a dinner cruise booked for that night so we headed into the city to catch that. We booked our tickets on a mystery dinner cruise website, which means we wouldn't know what cruise we would be on until we got there. All we knew is that it included dinner and would be between three and four hours. Without thinking, we went down to the Sydney Harbour. As I was looking for the confirmation paper, I could only remember something about King's Wharf, so Jess quickly asked where that was. Oh we were definitely at the wrong harbour. We were supposed to be down at Darling Harbour, a good ten minutes drive, and we were supposed to be there in ten minutes. Oops. Probably should have looked that up before we left the house. So we grabbed a taxi, and the driver wasn't understanding where he was supposed to take us. I kept saying King's Wharf, but apparently it is King Street Wharf, and he just wasn't getting it. Somehow we got there right on time. We grabbed our tickets and found out we would be on the showboat dinner cruise. We were served a delicious three course dinner. We then had time to go to the outside of the boat to take pictures. We had beautiful views of the city, the bridge, opera house, and the surrounding area. I sat outside for a while thinking about how unreal my life is. Here I am on a boat cruising around the Sydney Harbour staring at the beautifully lit opera house. I couldn't ask for anything more. We then headed inside for the show. It was a singing and dancing show...right up my alley. I loved it. The night was absolutely perfect, expect for Mary not being there. It was quite strange for her not be with us on this trip as she's travelling around the South Island with her parents. Part of booking with the mystery website was getting a discount. We each paid $55 per ticket. We were curious as to what the normal prices were. Jess looked it up and boy were we shocked. Original tickets are priced at $188. All three of our tickets weren't even that much combined.

Wednesday
We headed west to Katoomba in the Blue Mountains. Of course they're not really blue, but a bluish haze comes from the eucalyptus trees. Here we bought tickets for a hop on hop off bus. You hop on the bus and there are different stops with cool things to see that you hop off at. We did some bush walks (the bush is the forest), got to see some awesome waterfalls and views throughout the mountains including the three sisters which legend says they were turned to stone by their father, and we also got to take some skyway thing across the valley, which let us see an awesome waterfall, took the steepest rail road in the world down to the valley floor where we walked around the rainforest on this cool elevated board, and took a cable car back up.

Thursday


We then made our way over to The Rocks for the best part of the day, the Sydney Harbour Bridge Climb. I had been so excited about this. Except by this point in the day my legs and feet hurt so bad I didn't even want to do it anymore. Of course I got over it, and we had some time to sit down before the climb started. It took quite a bit of time to get all of our gear on, and we weren't allowed to take much up there with us. I even had to take my bobby pins out. Everything was strapped or hooked on to us. Of course we weren't allowed to take our cameras up, which really sucks so we bought the package of pictures to share between the three of us, which was definitely worth the money. So we made our way up. Our guide told us a lot of people think the scariest part is at one of the lowest points because you walk along a narrow path with steel mesh under you. Not really that scary. We had to climb up a few ladders to get to the arch and then walked up stairs along the arch. You're chained to a cable the entire time. We went at the perfect time. Night time is the cheapest climb, but I thought it had to be the best one. We started the climb during sunset. The sun was already below the horizon, but the colors were still so vibrant. It was absolutely beautiful, and then of course you get to see the city start lighting up. There was no way you could be bored up there. While yes it was really expensive, it was totally worth it. If you ever get to Sydney, I would recommend it to anyone. Interestingly enough, only sixteen people died during the eight year construction of the bridge, and only one of them died from falling off the bridge. Craziness. We all assumed it would have been quite a few more.

Our guide recommended a few places to eat after the climb one of them being the Australian Hotel where you  could get kangaroo, emu, and some other animals on your pizza. So that's where we headed. We decided to try the kangaroo pizza. When in Australia. It was surprisingly delicious, and I'm not much of a meat eater. Nicole couldn't really get past the idea of what she was eating. We were planning on heading to some bars afterwards but were just too exhausted.

Friday
We decided to have a nice relaxing day after three busy days. So we headed to Manly Beach for the day, which meant taking the ferry across the harbour. It wasn't the best day in terms of sunny weather, but it didn't matter. It was just nice to lay around in the sand with the sound of the ocean in the background. We headed back home pretty early because Peter was making us a Good Friday dinner, and boy was it delicious. He went and got us fresh prawns, calamari, and snapper along with some other food, which we enjoyed outside with the nice weather. They seem to enjoy shoving food down our throats. I was always stuffed after dinner with them. This was also a night where we went through three or four bottles of wine at dinner. Peter was enlightening us with great stories of traveling. At the Seattle airport, they were watching the luggage coming off the plane on the conveyor belt, and for some reason all the workers were paying attention to one suitcase, but behind it was a cooler that had been duct taped shut. Well it fell over and the duct tape didn't hold, and pounds of olives went rolling out onto the tarmac. What did these guys do? They saw a guy walking past with a dust pan and broom and told him to come clean it up. They put all the olives back in the cooler and acted like nothing happened. Can you believe it? I mean I don't know what else they would have done, but seriously? It was definitely a Good Friday to remember.

Saturday
Peter and Sue's son has a caravan up in some small town along the coast, so that's where we spent the afternoon. Unfortunately it was quite rainy, so we didn't spend the entire day up there as planned, but we had fun anyways. Everyone there was super nice and fun to talk to, and of course there was more drinking involved. A few bottles of wine, some mixed drinks. Apparently we don't get enough. It cleared up enough to walk down to the beach where the water was surprisingly warm. I totally would have gone swimming, but the air was a bit cold. We also got a chance to feed the parrots, which fly around everywhere. I wish we had parrots. They're so pretty. Peter and Sue took us out for pizza when we got home, which sadly didn't have kangaroo on the menu.

Sunday
While I'm used to not being home for Easter, it was a bit strange to be in Australia for it. Peter and Sue drove us back into the Blue Mountains to check out some of the fall color. Now that was strange looking at fall colors on Easter. We stopped at another botanical garden and drove a little further to eat at a cafe nestled in the bush. It was amazing how many people were out and about on Easter. We then headed home and to Peter and Sue's daughter's house. They have three rambunctious boys ages 6,11, and 12. They were hilarious and kept us laughing all night. The boys took us out on this four wheeler like thing. They have a bit of land in their backyard. I think the twelve year old, Bill, was excited to be driving around college girls. He even put some cologne on right after he met us. We had a great dinner of lasagna and you guessed it, more wine. It was a really fun night, and none of us were ready to leave, let alone go home and pack considering all the stuff we bought over the week. Plus we were a bit worried about the weight of our luggage. We did end up having to stuff a bit more in our carry ons at the airport.

Overall, this was by far an amazing trip, and I was so not ready to head back to Wellington, which is strange since I was going back to NZ, but I think it is because Wellington has been my daily life for the past two months. It was said to say good bye to Sue and Peter as we had such a good time with them. I'm really hoping I'm able to stay in touch and will hopefully see them again someday. Until next time...

Kia Ora,
Laura

I Want to Plant a Kauri Tree

Kia Ora! This past week has been slightly entertaining. I'll start with the random tree guy. I'm walking down the street when I see a man starting to approach me. In my head I'm thinking, 'Shit. What could he want? Well maybe he just needs directions." Wrong.
Man: "Excuse me ma'am can I ask you a question?"
Me: Umm, sure.
He then starts talking about the old exit off the motorway, which of course I don't know anything about.
Man: "Wouldn't that be a great place to plant a Kauri tree? It would grow to be so tall. Taller than most of those buildings. I mean it would take a hundred years, but it would be so cool."
Me: "But you'd be dead by then."
Man: "I know, but my kids or grand kids could still be able to see it. It's the perfect place for it."
He continues to talk about how great this would be and how he needs to go to the City Council to have it done, but would have to lie to persuade them. Apparently that's the only way to persuade people these days. I finally had to cut him off by saying I had somewhere to be but that sure would be a great place for a Kauri tree.

I seem to have an extended family of lady bugs living outside my windows. I came home one day to a very hot room as my room is pretty much a greenhouse. So I opened a window. Not five minutes later, I turn around to find around twenty or so lady bugs running around my window sills. As I was flicking them all back outside, I realized that many of them are hanging out in the cracks of my windows. Fantastic. Guess my windows are stayin closed.

Tuesday night, Mary and I ventured up to Mt. Vic. It's not really a mountain by any means, but its a great lookout point. You can see the entire city, the harbour, the surrounding "mountains", and the ocean. It was sort of a last minute decision, and we didn't feel like climbing it, so we made a dash down the hill to catch the bus, but not without stopping at New World to grab some wine, cheese, and crackers. We make it to the bus stop in plenty of time and then watched our bus drive right past. It didn't even slow down. We sort of followed it at first, but quickly realized that was hopeless. So we walked to the next bus stop and caught another bus there. We got up there in plenty of time to see the sun set. Alcohol seems to be the choice of beverage up there as just about everyone had a paper bag with a little somethin somethin in it. After taking plenty of pictures, we sat down, cracked open the wine and enjoyed the sunset. Nicole had warned us about leaving while there was still plenty of light as the buses no longer are running. There is a pathway that runs through the bush, but of course there are no lights. Of course the prettiest part was as it was getting dark so we ended up staying a bit too long. Somehow we made it down. We used the torches on our cell phones and slowly and carefully made it down the hill without either of us falling. We stayed in town to see a movie, and of course because it was so late the cable car was closed. We looked to see if any buses were still running, and they were. So we waited around. When we realized the bus was about ten minutes late, I checked the schedule again. The time I had read was for the morning. Oops. Guess we wasted twenty minutes and had to walk up the hill anyways.

Wednesday was Mary's twenty-first birthday so we headed out on the town. Unfortunately it wasn't as exciting for her as it would have been in the States because she's been legally drinking here since we got here. Oh well, we still had a blast. We tried a new place for dinner. Casa Pasta or somethin like that. I had a mushroom, spinach, and lemon risotto. We then were hoping to go to the Flying Burrito Brothers for some margaritas, but for some reason they were closing early. So we headed to The Southern Cross, a place we had been to briefly once before. It has a really cool outdoor patio area. For some reason, the drinks took forever to get. We had a waitress, but she never came back, so we went to the bar where they told us they would bring us our drinks when they were ready. I felt like we had ordered food it took so long, but I was not disappointed. I ordered a Perky Nana, which consisted of Frangelico, banana liquor, Baileys, Kahlua, and pineapple juice. Definitely a new favorite.

To put some faces with names. Nicole, me, Mary, Jess

Heading to the other site of town, we ended up at The Library. One, because its full of books, which was very intriguing to Mary. Two, they have a 2 for 1 drink special on Wednesdays. This is also a really cool bar with all the books. But yet again, we had to wait a really long time for drinks, but this time they felt bad so we got them all on the house. Score.

We were again disappointed by the closure of Alice, one of our favorite bars, but our stomachs were grumbling so we made our way to Mackers (McDonalds

The walk home had Nicole and I in a fit of giggles. Across the street was a man walking with a butch looking woman walking a ways behind screaming at him.She suddenly stops and starts stomping her feet in anger. This of course makes us laugh harder. She continues stomping after him when he sits down on a bench. She retreats into a recessed area of a building and starts bawling. By this time we are way past them, but I can't help myself. I stop and watch the action, while trying to hold in my laughter. She then proceeds to lie down in front of him on the sidewalk. I can no longer contain myself. Probably best if we now walk away.

Mary's parents arrived in Wellington on Thursday and politely invited all of us out to dinner on Friday night. Unfortunately, the restaurant was ridiculously loud, so we didn't get to talk much, but the food sure was good. It was fish and chips Friday, which meant you get fish, chips, and a glass of wine or beer for a special price. This was one of the best fish and chips I've had since coming here, and they served it with tartar sauce! Its hard to find a place that serves tartar sauce here. But they also served oil and vinegar with it, which was surprisingly delicious. Mary had a cheese fondue that was to die for. I will definitely be going back just for that.

I was pleasantly surprised with an Easter package from home this week. It was packed full to the brim with Easter candy, Easter socks, girl scout cookies, family pictures, a Brewers shirt, Burlesque, chocolate chip banana bread, and my favorite, Velveeta mac n cheese. It's nice to get a piece of home. Thanks Mom and Dad.

So I'm all packed and ready to leave for Australia tomorrow afternoon. It is finally sinking in, and now I'm super excited, and can't wait to get there. I can't wait to share all my stories when I get back. Until next time...

Kia Ora,
Laura

Tonga, Pizza, and Studio

Kia Ora! So Monday started the week out with a bang. Mary, Nicole, and I finally booked our trip to Tonga for the second week in June. We've been waiting for tickets to drop in price and suddenly there was a deal that expired that night. So we booked them that night. Jess, Nicole, and I also started making a list of things we want to do in Australia next week. We leave a week from today, and I am so freakin excited. Jess' grandparents have family friends there, so we'll be staying with them. They sound really great and have some stuff planned for us.

So most of the week was spent in studio as my project was due today. I had really been slacking in the school work so it had all caught up to me, and I spent just about every night in studio. Somehow I managed to finish before everyone else though. But this was definitely not my best work which might have had something to do with it. I also had a test in Peopling of Polynesia on Thursday, which meant squeezing in study time amongst studio. I took a short break on Wednesday for quiz night. It was supposed to be with our Vic buddies, but mine was unable to make it, but I went anyways as there was free pizza. I will never pass up free food. Plus it was a fun night with fun people. This brings me to how many times I had pizza this past week. Three times. Monday night of course was the typical pizza night, and then there was free pizza on Wednesday, and then on Thursday I had planned on getting fish and chips from the place around the corner from studio, but a girl from studio had Hell's Pizza, and it sounded really good. So I went on their website to see if there was anything I really wanted, and well there most definitely was. I put my own pizza together topped with BBQ sauce, chicken, cream cheese, and black olives. It was freaking fantastic.

Mary shared a fun fact with me; Kelburn, the neighborhood I live in, is the windiest place in the country. So cool. Not. It sucks, but the wind dies down when you get off the hill.

Thursday brought some scary news. Tess, one of the girls downstairs, had a classmate in her chemistry paper die the night before. Apparently she had meningitis. She thought she just had a bad cold, and then realized something was happening and quickly went to the hospital where she shortly died. Super scary. So glad I had to get a meningitis shot before college.

With working so quickly on studio, I was able to take Friday night off and hang out with the girls. Friday is quickly turning into the routine of coming to my place, watching Glee, then a movie, with a lot of talking and laughing in between. I even got to take Saturday night off because I finished my project by early evening. Woo hoo! Nicole and I spent the night running downtown to grab some ice cream and wine before the cable car closed, and then coming back up to the house to watch Sex and the City.

Sunday consisted of lunch down at Wholly Bagels and some shopping around town. I did a lot of souvenir shopping that I had been slacking on. I then got a little bit of work done in studio and spent the night reading, watching a movie with my flat mates, and just having some awesome girl time with them.

I had to get up extra early this morning to get down to the printers to pick up my project. Vic unfortunately doesn't have their own large plotters. This also means you have to pay out the butt for your projects. Three A1 sheets cost me $60. At home it would have been about half the price. But crits were pretty laid back, and mine went pretty well. Although Martin likes to discuss the problems he has with a project rather than what he likes. Apparently I had a very interesting strategy and innovation, but I just wasn't selling it to him. It went a lot better than I thought considering the amount of work I put into it.

I also had a mid crit for Colour, Pattern, & Light, which went pretty well except for my teacher telling me I needed cool colours in my composition. I told her I disagreed and that I purposely did not use cool colours. There was a lot of laughing from the class and a "you go girl".

Well I'm off to pizza with the girls.  Until next time...

Kia Ora,
Laura

Tattoo!!!

Kia Ora! I can't believe I forgot to write about my tattoo! I was planning on getting a tattoo while I'm here. I had been looking around and finally decided on the Manaia, which is the Maori spiritual guardian. I was planning on getting it under my shoulder blade kind of on an angle. I went in to the tattoo shop to make a booking. This was on Monday. The first they could get me in was Friday. I had to come back later that day to pay my deposit, and the artist told me he could fit me in in twenty minutes. I said sure, but then I sat down and realized what I was doing and got a bit nervous. It wasn't going to be my first tattoo, but it was still a bit nerve wracking.

The design I chose was a bit of an abstract form of the Manaia. The artist asked if he could change a few things so that I would have a unique tattoo. I easily agreed to this. He then tells me that the way I want it is sort of wrong. He should be standing up not laying down. Umm, okay well I guess I can deal with that. He was Maori so I figured he knew what he was talking about. He then tells me that the back is more of a place for larger tattoos. I said I didn't care because I wasn't planning on getting a big tattoo. Apparently, he chose to ignore this comment. Instead of drawing on paper and then transferring it to my back, he just drew on my back free hand. Super cool. He told me to go take a look before he started. I guess I wasn't really paying much attention when I looked at it. From what I could tell, it looked cool and I told him to get started. It took him about an hour and a half to do the drawing and the tattoo. I had forgotten how much it hurts. He told me to take a look when he finished. This is when I realized I now had a tattoo about twice the size as I thought I was going to get. He also used his artist's license a bit too much, as this design was very different than what I had intended, but not to worry I absolutely love it. The first image is what I was planning on getting.

Until next time...

Kia Ora,
Laura

Fed Up

Kia Ora! So my life here is becoming very routine now I'm in my sixth week of uni. Get up, go to class, do some work, hang out with Mary, Nicole, and Jess, get pizza on Mondays, gelato and crepes on Wednesday, and then wherever the weekend take us. We never made it to Zealandia last weekend. We went downtown to grab some lunch, and it had been drizzling which was fine. We all had raincoats. Shout out to Mom and Dad for buying me one. I would be a drowned rat without it. But then it started pouring, and we decided it just wasn't worth going to in a downpour. We planned on going this weekend instead, but that never happened either. Hopefully we'll get there someday. Our plan this weekend was to go to the rugby game, which I was super excited about. I don't know much about rugby except for going to a few games my freshman year, but it is a huge sport here, and I haven't been to a sporting event since KSU's last football game. Of course we didn't know that the Hurricane's, Wellington's rugby team, has two home stadiums. One is here in Wellington, and the other is up in Napier, which is about four hours away. This weekend's was of course in Napier.

Friday consisted of Nicole, Mary, and Jess coming over to my place to watch Glee with me and then to watch Tangled. Of course everyone brought over a package of TimTams, and we had a TimTam party after the movie. Everyone  but Nicole had yet to try a TimTam slam. This consists of biting off the opposite corners of the cookie, sticking it in the beverage of choice (we chose milk), and sucking it up through the cookie like a straw. When the liquid hits your mouth you shove the rest of the cookie in your mouth all at once. Its like you let an Oreo sit in milk for a little bit. Amazing. Mary had some difficulties. For some reason, she couldn't get any milk to come up. After quite some time, she finally got it. This was all videoed by the way. I then had some problems when I tried to do another one but didn't have much milk in my glass. I tilted the glass too far, and the milk came pouring out between the glass and the cookie.

Anyways, Friday was an absolute blast. Laughing is inevitable when we're together, and we don't do much else. Saturday, I had to get some work done, but then we took ourselves out to dinner to make up for the rugby game. We've been hearing mixed reviews about this place called The Flying Burrito Brothers. We decided to try it because we'll never know for ourselves if we don't. We had a forty-five minute wait, so we sat at the bar and let the bartender make us fun drinks. Special of the night was a Sea Breeze margarita. The bartender let us try a sample. It was good enough for us to order a pitcher. I probably should have had a snack before because I was drunk through dinner. Oh well. It made for a better night. Dinner was good, but not like the Mexican food back in the States. Probably because there are no Mexicans here. And it was way to pricey for what we ordered, but again, oh well. We then headed back to Mary and Jess' to watch Despicable Me where we collapsed into a fit of giggle all over again.

So frankly I am just fed up with studio. The other papers really aren't too bad, but I just can't stand studio anymore. I knew it was going to be different. Not all schools are alike, and I don't think there are many programs like K-State's, but I'm actually missing studio at home. Weird, I know. That phrase will probably haunt me forever. To start off, probably around the second week of uni, I noticed that a good half of the class was missing. That's weird, I thought. At home, you don't miss studio. There are a few select people who will miss once in a while, but overall everyone goes to class. It is looked down upon if you don't go, and considering the program I'm in, you just don't miss. So I asked one of the guys if this was normal, and he said no. So I thought it was maybe a one time thing. Wrong. A good quarter of the class is missing everyday. How is that possible? It's studio for Christ's sake! And you're an architecture major! Maybe the professors care, and they just don't vocalize it. I don't know. So I decided to skip today. When in Rome right? The only time I have ever skipped out on studio at home is when I left for Thanksgiving early.



Then there's the problem with how the studios are set up. They have computers provided by the school for students to use, but of course these are shared computers, and no one gets their own. Unless of course they have a laptop of their own. However, during my studio time, there is another paper using almost all of the computers. So when it comes time for the professors to come around and talk to everyone about what they're doing (this doesn't happen very often, which is super weird since this happens everyday of studio at home) I usually don't have a computer to show them what I've been working on. Plus, I can't work on anything anyways during this time. Actually, most of the time we don't get any time to work on stuff during studio. However, if we do have something on the computer to show them, they have a portable computer with a large screen that you can pull your stuff up on. However, this still doesn't allow me to get any work done. It is super frustrating. I just miss having my own space. I'm really grateful that they provide students with computers, but I just work so much better when I have my little square to work in with my computer and all my stuff lying around all over the place.

The good thing about studio is that I haven't had much work up until now, which is of course very strange. However, it helps that I'm not taking the full landscape course load. Plus, I'm used to working on a studio project and construction project, along with some work for a few other classes. Its been nice having time at night to do as I please.

Colour, Pattern, & Light got a bit better this week. I missed Tuesday's class because my eye was burning and watering. I headed to the student health center to get it checked out. I had Conjunctivitis, some sort of eye infection. The doc gave me a prescription, but of course the two pharmacies in town that will give you the prescription for free through school's insurance were nowhere near by, but I walked there right away because I couldn't take it anymore. They called a pharmacist here a chemist. Of course I had to wear my glasses and no make up for the next few days. Not a huge deal, but I hate having to wear my glasses. My depth perception gets weird, and I get nervous to walk down stairs. Plus,of course the sun chose these days to come out and play. Not cool. But I'm  back in my contacts and life is good. Anyways,back to colour, pattern, & light. We have an assignment where we choose a context from her list and transform it into whatever we choose, but we have to be conscious of the objects we choose and what we're portraying. Lighting is the key factor in this assignment. Check it out

One last thing. I was at this little market just down the hill, and there were these hot dog like sausage things. I considered buying them, and then I saw the cheese filled ones, and that talked me into getting them. So last night, I was making some potato wedges, and I threw the sausage in the oven when the wedges were done, but I was too impatient, so I took it out and threw it in the microwave. I've never seen such a disgusting looking sausage before. It was pale and looked like shriveled up skin. I overlooked this fact and took a bite. It was disgusting. I took a second bite just to make sure, and then promptly threw it and the rest of the package away. Looks like I won't be having a hot dog until the 4th of July. Oh well. It will make it that much better. Until next time...

Kia Ora,
Laura