i dare you to search for Goblin Shark on youtube... , or, ba-ROCK OUT!!

since we last spoke i've been spending a lot of time around chchch in a meager attempt to save up for the upcoming farewell tour. this includes mistaking terrestrial shrimp for real bugs (who ever heard of such a thing, i ask you. is this any more believable then the land shark candygram?), chasing bees with comically oversized nets to the amusment of many japanese tourists, counting and measuring tree girth and meandering from social circle to circle goin to those same old dives. aside from a particular gem of an eve in which posh spice, straight shooting mexican, french minstrel and a yank saught out a fabled spring equinox field celebration everything has been running close to as per normal. as i was saying, we trecked for hours. i drove a blue station wagon with wood panels down all the wrong roads, each so right on. our only direction was based on the memory of a flyer and gas station attendents. at one point, we nearly called it quits and sat on the roof of the car down a dirt road that seemed so familiar but couldn't have been further away. swatting at faries, the frenchman sang a sad song about love lost and a lamb cried out from the trees. ...............................

ok that was a meager attempt to update from about a month ago. things were rad then, but the real meat of the matter is what's been the haps over the past few weeks. First, with the rabbit ears in one hand and a tuna sandwich in the other, i watched on our fuzzy little black and white kiwi tv our man address a sea of our nation's own big toothy smiles and tears and babies wearing campaign shirts and oprah. remember remember the fifth of novemeber, where at long last i can say with a gleam in my eye and a feather in my cap that i'm american, dammit. and not like those awful post 9/11 country songs proud, but proud of my generation, stoked on democracy and voter turn out and new voices being heard and revolution to come. giddyap.


in other news, class has ended and i have officially like three weeks left in treasure island. that's one week here to pollish off exams and then 2 up in the north island, trying to lap up as much sweet nz juice as i can before shipping out. now, my two or three loyal readers, you may have noticed that travel fell by the wayside for ol' mollykins over the past semester. funds were scarce, oatmeal and beans for every meal... dishsoap as shampoo...and not owning a single pair of functioning trousers. however, all that changed about a month ago as i realized that as long as a year seemed initially i really had to get my act together and make my final pilgirmages to those further corners. so after some hasty ebay deals involving kiwi birds and unicorn blood (did you ever doubt there were unicorns here?) i hit the road.

First and possibly most noteable stop was to hike to the meuler hut on a mountain neighboring Mt. Cook, New Zealie's highest peak. possible one of the most intense physical undertakings i've attempted, although i think this is just the memories for cross country fading, the hike to the summit was a doozie. We were there on the first weekend the trail opened, which to the DOC office ultimately meant: 8 over-eager under-qualified collegiates+over 3 feet of fresh powder=untimely doom. Going against their decades of experience and stern advice we strapped on our cramp-ons and picked up our ice axes and made our way up up up for four hours to the snow line and beyond. Needless to say, the hike was a rough one, often miss stepping and ending up buried in snow up to my neck or just sliding fifteen feet back down the mountain to where i was twenty minutes ago. Alone with the seven dudes i came with miles ahead of me, hearing the roar of avalanche before seeing them tearing down neighboring valleys. But yes friends, boy was it worth it. Indescribable 360 degree views of snowy mountain peaks, a navy sky and a halo cloud over Mt. Cook itself. The colors were so fierce at sunrise my mind couldn't quite perceive them, no bugs or birds or trees and the only sounds are our own and the wind. Our surroundings were untouched and we were erased from behind.

about a week after I took off with my charming english counterpart to the Catlins, which i believe to be nz's best kept secret. they are the most comfortable beauty here and no busses pass through so penguins go unnoticed. we were greated at our first hostel with a sealion in the front yard, 700 lb meat sack that sneezes at you and your heart skips a beat. A land of a gazillion waterfalls and land so fertile that tree trunks are covered with lush green mossies, this place was so untouched (one road only) that wildthings still have the run of it. Our second night we crouched in a prehistoric forest and waited for the penguins to come. Only 6000 in the world so believe you me i was a happy camper when three waddled up just as the sun was setting. We sat like statues for close to two hours reacting to them as they reacted to us reacting to them. At nights, sitting on the back porch musing and humming and whatever else you do on porches at night I was delighted to hear the gutteral wretching of a nest of little blue penguins under our house. The atmosphere there was warm and easy, and i felt like i was trusted.

We then continued to arrowtown, a little slice of heaven outside of queenstown where we worked for a salty matured horse girl and stayed in her hobbit hole. we shoveled manuer and pruned hedges and worked up a sweat every morning to earn our feed. home made aoli sauce and chutney, blistered hands and sunburned faces. provided us with an opportunity to hitch hike (check another one off the list) and pan for gold.

From here we met up with a couple friends from chch and set out for our shot at one of the fiord's great walks, the Routeburn. packing our bags at the emergency shelter at the start of the trail in horizontal rain and thunder, which i've only heard once before here. packing 3 too many cans of beans into my sack, i realized we were really in for it this time. my compatriots were good eggs, always with a smile and joke even as we ascended to the saddle without a fiord to be seen through the white out conditions no ranger thought to warn us about. as we climbed in deeper and deeper snow drifts one foot in front of the other on a westerlie facing mountain ridge we begin to accept our fates. andy proclaimed his undying love for the packers will live on long after his thawed body is pecked apart by eager kea beaks. we ducked into an emergency shelter on top of the peak equipt with only the essentials, the flares provided and the whiskey we packed along in an old orange juice bottle to weather the storm. the snow only worsened, so we kept on feeling pretty bear gryllzy and seven hours later found our capsite for the coldest camping of my life. we awoke to a tent flap frozen solid and an angry warden encouraging us to get a move on before conditions worsened. skipping down a track made entirely of greenstone, we were quite pleased to call this one a wrap feeling a little older, a little wiser and stankier then i had in a long while.i think that wraps it up for now, foks. i am so so eager to get back stateside to my plant water drinking kitty cat and warm smiling faces of family and friends and changed nation. take it sleazy, over and out.

give me the yellow brick road & a japanese car

for spring break, we stumbled into paradise (complete with lambies and seal pups). a group of us traveled north to sunny skies, turquoise waters and golden sands for a five day vacation from vacation. we based out of Takaka, a region known for its infestation of the "woodstock children" of nz, its beauty and its mellowtude. our first day was a treck through grassy knols to wharariki beach, undoubtedly one of the most magnificent chunks of land i've ever tromped around on. frolicking sheep babies showed us the way wide white duney beaches with giant rock arches and caves pushing out of turquoise waters. i could think of no better place for coming out of hibernation. we frisbeed, rolled down dunes, poked a dead penguin and watched baby fur seals surfin around and had a pretty jovial time all around. i believe the woodstock children are onto something.
at sunset we slunk back into town, and witnessed small town new zealand in its off season, where shop and hostel owners alike show up when they please and never really feel up to accommodation. it was nice not being treated like a tourist for once, and we were able to cheerfully blend into our surroundings over some tasty-as lates and falafel.

the next day we rose early and poked around the neighboring town of pohara, loping from day track to day track. the earth smelled great and we shed the last bits of our cocooons. we skirted around great mossy cliffs and ancient collapsing tree matter and stumbled upon a tiny beach near the abel tasman national park which provided us with gold sands, low tide seals and a perfect sunset. we swam and forgot ourselves and got to know some sea life. it was great.

finally, i decided i wanted to try my hand at the abel tasman track again so the last day we set out to complete the last leg, the leg that I had been thwarted by so cruelly in my first attempt months before. the weather was perfect this time, and the views unreal. Only a four-hour climb, we were able to take our time, plunge into the icy surf and climb around on the absurd rock formations peppering the shore. my toes in warm sand, a sand dollar in my hand and i know how lucky i am to be here.that's all from me for now, i'm back in chchch for the last part of my break, and then half a semester to go until farewells. time is strange. "get back home" he says. "just before the fade", he says it.

LOVE.

prove-it.

Well it's been a whopping two months since entry's last. hell of a lot of living in those two months, and i'm tired and confused and out of breath but happy. my friend teddi wrote me the other day with sensational news (content has been edited for sensitive peepers):
"tinker bell and peter showed up in my window last night and gave the mapquest input information (top secret and widely unknown) to get to never never land!! so put any insecurities and anxieties behind you. because we are never growing up. and guess what else. they have the same chef there as that was working when hook was made. so that means pastel colored goop food forever! retirement is looking a bit less desirable. 401k plan? social security? morgages? tax returns, alimony, child support, health insurance, a total failure in economic security. f*** that s*** hard. we're living the dream honeypie. and its going to taste like strawberries dipped in moonshine with a whip hit on top."
so who's with me? i imagine nz is more or less the gateway, if you can get to antarctica from here i'd reckon you could go pretty much anywhere. friends, foes and family alike. join in me in this great emancipation! it is time we take matters into our own hands and shed our hard crinkly exoskeletons and fly into the night. formal education and paychecks are for phonies and these are our years. are you people as excited for the revolution as i am? oil will run out and tides will turn and the sun will rise again.

so yeah, exams went alright. feverish study and instant coffee cocktails did the trick and a week of finals dumped me into a week of goodbyes, with 6 airport trips in total and all to many "have a nice life"'s as a final farewell. friends that were everything dropped off the earth as quick as they came and so it goes. the good news is i now have about 16 douves and 4 hair straighteners and a drawer full of half used conditioner bottles. The fam could not have come at a better time for a two week warp speed tour of our little kiwi nation. 6 months is a lot longer then it sounds and how dearly i had missed their faces! Alex seemed about 7 feet tall, and how comfortable they felt. We managed to cram 3000 miles of pavement under us and a ferry ride dubbed the 'poseidon adventure' with flying espresso machines and the ferry bar turned vometorium. what's blue and doesn't fit? snowed into wellington, but we all shared wine and stories and there was always a cat underfoot. it was family at its finest and its a memory i'll have for a while with their faces glowing in the fire flicks. essentially we drove everywhere i had been over the past five months and hit west coast sea cliffs, glaciers, fiords and mountainy passes. dad triumphed as he always does by grinning and baring it with a shoddy co-pilot and driving into what should be oncoming traffic and mom came to the rescue with precious commodities of black beans and stick deodorant. they smelled like home and i loved them for it.

since their departure i've been slowing trying to settle into a grind again. i've been traveling with a group of displaced stragglers from last semester's crew in a party van reminiscent of little miss sunshine. we're cooking together and i think we're beginning to grow accustomed to each other's quirks and i spend much of my time palling around with a delightful little english godsend with the regal name of 'isla duporge' who is one hell of a crack-up. traveling has slowed, with the total lack of funds and winter passes often blocking the west and south from the rest of us. this has given me a chance to sort of revamp my living standards as a normal functioning human in society and i've even started climbing and a workout plan. laughable, but at least i have the Olympics for their fleeting inspiration. highlites over the past few weeks have been an all night drum and bass dance rave, beach nights with guitar and dylan sang in french, batman, speights-feuled romp through the college town of dunedin, michael phelps, and most recently an actual winter ball, where i was immediately transported back to our highschool gym as we danced our faces off to a 90's grunge cover band. i am studying more often then not for once, and my life is consumed by trees. i now own a hardhat and FOREsoc singlet, both considered the epitome of kiwi fashion. all i need is a flannel overcoat and my canterbury stubbies. i know this entry was a long time coming, and i want to thank you all for keeping in such close touch with me, you have no idea how much joy your letters bring to my face and it makes the distance close in on itself. huge pulsing waves of love to you all, across the seas and over the upside-down full moon.

we got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses

regularity dependability are not my strongpoints. neither are spelling, cooking and punctuality for those keeping track at home. i am sorry for the repeated gaps in communicado, you, my loyal readers deserve better. i was thinking about hiring one of the local village children as a stand-in to note and post each of the undoubtedly fascination intricacies of my day to day life in this fantastical land, but shortly thereafter it became apparent to me that i have totally and completely run out of dough.

in other news, my dear darling maria came and visited me from the home land, baring gifts of truffles and curling irons and tales of all that had come to pass since my departure so many months ago. we shared nearly two weeks of merriment in the clutches of one another's arms, traveling to akaroa and castle hill (a mystical climbing spot nestled in the valleys of arthur's pass) as well as some days apart whilst she set off for wellington and i to the southern regions of fiords and more. i am forever grateful to her for crossing hemispheres and providing some sort of grounded regularity in this absurd lifestyle i've been leading. she provided a reset button of sorts, and really allowed me to get my head on straight again. i love you darling. i have a vague idea of what your capable of, so don't tell me what i can't do.
i set off for the southern part of the south island with a car full of wonderfully jovial nymphs...constant laughs and songs to dunedin, where we arrived at a house party on top of a mountain in a ridiculously swanky house with wood floors. we marvled at things like this, full dish sets and quilted toilet paper as we had forgotten what civilization was like outside our shoestring budgets, prison cellish flats and weekend tramps. we stopped off at all the little turn-offs along the way, me and four others with the most amazing laughs, every wave inevitably leading to a chorus of high-pitched giggles & twitters as infectious as they come. we pressed onto Milford and after clomping through an early dewy farmer's market. Breakfast and lunch of a loaf of bread, apples, cheese and goon, the car ride twisting through misty mountains that tower and shock when the clouds clear. We pause along the windy mountain pass at points when twelve temporary waterfalls shoot from the valleys above. Life is so rich and i have to keep reminding myself to look at this oh so temporary home with renewed gaze, this unspeakable beauty: my trusty sidekick.That night was rummy and soup and mad max III in the Milford hostel, the next morning we rose early to the top bunk plight of setting an alarm on a phone that will always ALWAYS plummet to the depths below, leaving no question that we were all on our feet afer a 5 minute search for the screeching mobile lost in the night. Eggs and leers and catcalls from the lecherous crowd of old British weirdos next door and we head out for our morning boat ride. The morning was crisp and the sky was deep west-coast blue. Puttering along deep turquoise waters, gliding through towering cliffs on all sides. Fur seals follow and we brush against the mist of waterfalls jetting from all directions. Strange tropical branches claw at the air above and the gulls are pterodactyls. Again, beauty was unreal and my puny mind can do nothing but surrender to these ancient forces pulsating amongst it. We leave after two hours of this, breathless and are attacked by a kea on the passenger side, gnawing at the window rubbers wiht a beak that could rip through your soft white underbelly with laughable ease. and it would. in that comically robust caw that echos from the mountains throughout the island.

That night, Queenstown. We did not venture out of hte city, so the night consisted of absurdly overpriced merriment in a typical ski-town which i honestly would not be able to distinguish from any other ritzy western likenesses. i did, however, sink my teeth into one of the best tofu burgs of my lifetime.

This past week classes have finished up and we all now have to face the exams and papers (often 75-80% of our final grades) that have been looming since arrival. Kiwis don't believe in the padding of projects and tests that exist in American universities, so the pressure is most certainly on. The answer, of course for many of us was to attend an organized and monumental weekend up north in a hot-spring moutain town, gathering around 5o of our closest comrades for a weekend of debauched hillarity and theme parties. i was posh spice, it all happened so fast. The second night set the stage for an incredibly picturesque and memorable evening in the hot springs. With the fall of twilight came the fall of my first NZ snow flurries, which rapidly accumulated around our steaming beaming bodies. This lead to a snowball fight from pool to pool, faceless enemies the air was electric.

Since return, most have left again for a six day tramp up north. yesterday was one for the books, spending a rich and lazy afternoon with a friend among old book stores and cheap indian food biking through the city so i felt human again. golden hour in the botanical gardens, and now it's time to study. i love you all, and miss you more then ever.

part 2.

part 2 is essentially this: break finished with a trip to a 4 day beach track which ultimately ended in disaster and our water taxi nearly killing four penguins (duck!). day one was beautiful and we kayaked through all of it and narrowly avoided the cracken in the mist. then it poured for four days straight in the sunniest part of nz and lets just say our little crew of four independent females were less then travel-compatible. cutting the trip one day early, we travel back to a tiny town outside of Nelson book a hostel and feign relaxation with bad beer and tense massages and dampened spirits and belongings because we were defeated by the same mother i worship. the next day rain remains but we collide with a very agreeable little hippie town and one of the greatest confectionery delights i've ever known...afghans, learn it and live it. this place reminded me of Floyd and smelled like Blacksburg, we played mancala in the mussel in and my favorite bob dylan song came on, the last song i listened to in our beautiful wooden living room before the plane. we stayed in my favorite hostel yet, big open wooden kitchen and a bowl of giant figs and a sheep sheerer with many stories; glacial galaxies and senior skiing (free if your over 65 but the powder's nothing like the west, amen brother.) He'd only ever seen a kiwi once and it was the one his dog killed. gardens in the rain and a thick matress and a cairn on the sunset beach because a year ago weighed on the brain. but what doesn't kill you makes you stronger...even if it says beach track, doesn't mean you should hike in chacos.
a day later i took off on a four day ecology field trip in the thick of the southern alps. surrounded by strangers, and the token american this was what turned out to be one of the absolute highlites of our fall break. we set out each frosty morning after a night of mountain goating in the moonshadows, setting up and checking aquatic insect traps in alpine streams. we climbed "hills" (Appalachian mountain sized hills i'd say) to incredible heights and views, me and the boys club forestry seems to be even across seas. at the summit we drink from an alpine pool and the men feel like men and sun with their shirts off good grief. The descent ultimately turned out to be one of the greatest tramp hours in new z yet. no trail, our fate in the hands of fearless leather skinned scrappy professor-type leader, and our compass. we bounded down slopes swinging through a beech tree slalom, leaving fate to gravity and chance and the occasional acrobatic twist to avoid the spinier vegetation. three hours later we popped out on a dried river bed and followed it back to our hut, to count dead bugs.

i came home after three weeks to a fantail in the house (a tiny bird that makes kissing noises and follows your footsteps in the woods) and i remembered how much i wanted to be like penny lane after a much needed movie screening in fresh sheets and tim tams.

freestyle walkin

part 1:
well i'm back. spent the last three weeks running from corner to corner to corner to corner of this place and returned a little older (21 in a week!) a little wiser, a little more trail haggard (i could walk on coals with these feet of mine), and a lot thriftier. funny how the worth of your dollar is split in half when one is suddenly transfered to a place where minimum wage is $12 an hour. meals were comprised primarily of porridge, carrots and nutella... a winning combination for any occasion and complimented delightfully by an array of cheap wines, alpine streams and powdered milk as it turns out! there is much to report, and with your interest in mind, dear reader...brevity remains king.

first was the kepler track, one of the great walks located in fjord country in the southern region of the south island. easily the highlite of the break, this walk was stupidly scenic and for a good portion of the time my eyes were having a difficult time translating to my brain the electric stunner of the landscape before me. 4 days, brisk climb, sweaty faces high spirits. our huts were luxury with surly and informative wardens wielding stalactites as a friendly reminder that it was our heads if we forget for a second it was privilege to walk in such untouched territory. a cave under our first hut, with one light source between the eight of us footing was uncertain and hillarious. the nights were chatting with new friends, and american/irish duo and listening for kiwi calls...tried and failed to master this game Euchre, a midwestern tradition; cards behind the ears, milk my interlaced fingerweb. The thrill of walking on an actual mountain ridge surpasses anything i've known since arrival. climbing as high as possible above tree-line and cloud-line and bug-line on these endless passes produces a ridiculous combination of immortality and humility that could make a body loose its mind. the ridge offered giant alpine parrots in the mist, most certainly within tackling distance. they had no fear of us because to them people have never been a threat. so they squawk and charge and i feel real love for those razor beaks and beady eyes. soon after, a speedy descent through endless switchbacks into fern gully. too much time in my head and the mountains were hidden, but the surroundings were so fertile and so many different little greens. moss instead of grass and the most fantastic array of mushrooms some the kind that make mario big and some a purple that really shouldn't appear in nature.
here are some more mountain pictures, if you can believe it:

it's april, fools.

friends. for the month of april i'll be totally out of communication and touring the countryside. doing a couple of the 'great walks' which are 5-6 day tracks a piece and then some casual milling about. mom, i'll take lots of pictures and try and find phone booths. beth, watch heavenly creatures, it's not as good as invisible mom but it's set in christchurch and kate winslet is really intense. we've picked up a stray cat and it really looks like a lemur and the flat mates call it daniel day-lewis. it's pretty good with a tennis ball and so far is surviving pretty well on a primarily couscous diet. kisses.

puxatillie paul

listening to my ecology professor trying to explain the concept of groundhog day to a roomful of apathetic kiwis today has most likely been the highlight of the week. desperately searching the faces of his pupils for some sort of recognition when confronted with "bill murray? puxatillie paul? they have the movement of a rat but the cute of a rabbit? they're weather forecasters in the states." blue powerade is huge. locals bleed it i think. this weekend i went south south to the college town of Dunedin for the extended easter break. part of the reason it's taken me so long to post is because i believe this excursion to be more or less a bust with only a few minor notable or writable hiccups. nothing to write home about, so to speak.

one would think a largely agnostic country like this one would proceed with little more then the obligatory pleasantries of the rebirth of christ within the public sphere. logically, when maintaining a population as diverse as new zealand's one would assume it would be in the best interest of the government to try and stay away from the forceable celebration of any sort of exclusionary holiday. however, the one thing i've come to realize with relative certainty about this place is that hardly anything is handled logically, methodically or efficiently. new zed is in it's awkward teenage years, lanky and oily and snapping girl's bra straps at the lockers. still very much in it's colonial phase, this laid back culture seems to be caught in a timewarp and seems to still be resorting to a more or less 'trial and error' approach to life. not that i'm complaining. the mountains are close, the skies are sunny and to someone who often felt out of place in the drone of the great machine us of a, a more informal approach is most often welcome. man that was a doozie of a tangent. apologies and we press on.

so yes, the whole of dunedin was shut down upon our arrival. groceries, pubs, restaurants and all stores were closed in this party town 2 out of the 3 days of our stay. food was scarce and we were left to our own devices for most of our stay. lots of pidgeon watching. and kiwi watching. one interesting perk of our misadventure was that it is on these national holidays that the locals come out of the woodwork to do the same touristy things i've been enjoying since my arrival, including the cadbury factory and speights brewery tours (pride of the south!). these were a huge part of the experience and included a chocolate waterfall and 20 minute open-bar taste-test/pillage, respectively. so overall, the town was cute with interesting (volcanic) architecture, the world's steepest street, and i'm sure a lot of local flavor when it didn't look like a zombie town, but the true worth of our journey wasn't apparent until we ventured out onto the otago peninsula the following day.

The otago peninsula boasts and hosts the only northern royal albatross colony in the world, as well as yellow-eyed penguins, little blue penguins, fur seals and sea lions. unfortunately what they don't tell you is that you is the only way one can actually see the whole of these creatures is to pay copious amounts of shrapnel to the corporation that privately owns the beaches of Taiaroa to take a separate private tour for each species. so that comes out to: $35 for a tentative albatross sighting, $30 for yellow-eyed penguins and $30 a sea lion, so much as i can gather. we blew the whole thing off and took a hike to the edge of the world and i got to stand next to a few sheep on a cliff side staring out to pacific abyss. my god the sites! windows down arms out tiny dancer golden slumbers.

'happy girl COME SWIM'

welly welly wellington. i feel as though i've aged five years in the past four days, so many faces so many stories. my flatmate sam and i flew up to the north island this weekend for the Beirut show at a little venue that was spooky similar to the black cat, down to the extreme air-conditioning and coat room. more on that later, the show was amazing but as i'm experiencing more and more frequently here it seems as though the destination is never really what makes the weekend. the hostile we stayed at the first night provided a host of colorful characters to welcome us into this beautiful city. i bunked next to a beautician from liverpool and above an older chinese woman who talked to herself in the night and left us caramels just like your chinese grandmother is supposed to. she smelled like tobacco and peppermint! haa.. the next morning sam and i took a ferry out to Day's Bay, a little island off the coast of wellies. there we hopped on a bus until the driver wouldn't go no mo and jumped onto a rather inconspicuous hiking trail behind the bus depot. we climbed for most of the day winding amongst tropical switchbacks and loony amounts of silverfern, which seems to be the logo for all things nz born and therefor all things rubgy,beer and souvenir. summit was at the golden hour, and the light played sweetly off of the cutest little owl i've ever seen whos eyes followed mine and stayed as long as we did. dinner was kiwi juice down palm and wrists with feet dangling into a valley where dinosaurs live. that night was drinks with hostile kids, very diverse and outgoing group because at least we have the packs on our backs in common. met up with a group of gambleshark irishmen here on a worker's visa for a year and 'living the dream' they wanted to talk about Burning Man and st. patty's plans and claimed their home version of paper scissors rock was foot cockroach atomic bomb. day two was the zoo, cute but pretty unimpressive because zoos are depressing unless life of pi is true. unimpressive save the kiwitalk at 1:15. here, the zookeeper (american, i'll have you know so it can be done!) brought out a one-legged kiwi saved from a possum trap years before. it hopped around and even had a prosthetic leg, which was molded carefully by Weta Workshop (ring any bells?) fit especially for it's little stump. kiwi solidarity at it's finest.so it is the evening of this night that i was able to embark on a hike through wellington's nature sanctuary after sundown. thus far, the most important and fantastical portion of my trip i think. this is getting on, so i won't go as far into it as i'd like...but this hike did a tidy job of reaffirming my choice in career direction, a welcome relief to any undergrad to be sure. tucked into a rolling jurassic nook between two mountains, one by one each nocturnal species would reveal itself to us through it's own specific call. we were confronted by some parrots (kaka) and a couple of mockingbird-like tui birds on our treck, the birds of this region quite brash because it has no reason to fear humans due to extremely strict protection laws...birds, stoats and all other mammals are another matter entirely. as evening settled in i caught my first look at the southern cross and an upside-down orion as the call of the ru ru, a tiny little pigwidgeon-like owl floated out of the hills. ten mintues later, we were delighted with the "weep weep" of a female kiwi bird. the air was quite electric, and as we proceeded down the path we were slowly surrounded by tiny little light prick constellations of glow worms, and a short time later a male kiwi stomping and snorting in the trail in front of us.

the last day was a trip up mt. victoria, which availed to me a 360 degree view of this fair city and a number of lord of the rings filming locations. you can imagine the hilarity that ensued the hours after i found a 6 year old cracked sign in the mud with an arrow pointing to the general direction of these fabled glens. thank god for self-timers and relatively vacant trails, or things would have gotten awkward quick explaining to the locals exactly why i was looking for a specific root with a maniacal grin and a hint of desperation between the brow. so yes, blackriders take flight. the performance that night was amazing, the my fellow general admissions were actually waltzing along with this fantastic horn/uke get-up on stage and the band played well into the night and finished with a serenade of hallelujah. i melted, life is lovely and to the four of you reading this i miss you dearly madly.

no-name girl in jelly shoes

what they say is true, i believe they keep the rawest kinds of beauty here at the bottom of the earth. at the end of all things? this weekend i was lucky enough to experience a sort of scenery that was so effectively unhinging...i mean no words. i've tried to write this thing on like seventeen different occasions with the intention of conveying the particular sort of newglee i felt in these mountains, almost giddy. i don't want to be tired and overdramatic and i don't want to downplay this thing, but i think it's a personal sort of affirmation you'd feel when you make you really nail knitting for the first time or have just successfully cooked a dinner from start to finish with only minor third degree burns. So to set the scene; a german engineer, an aspiring film producer, a self-described woman's rights activist/hip-hop choreographer and i walk into a bar...and then the next morning all pile into a rental car named "sunny". steering on the wrong side where left is right, we set off across the country through wildly winding/jutting/plummeting mountain roads negotiating our way through some seriously stomach droppingly stunning scenes, too surreal to really comprehend. it was a kind of setting laid out in front of us that it would not have been surprising at all to have to break for an orc riding a t-rex around each prehistoric jutting cliff-face bend in the road. "new zealand....it's not just part of Australia!!!" Four hours and half a tank of gas later, it's sunset on the west coast over a slice of the weirdest pizza i've ever experienced (when placing our order, we were asked if we wanted apricot or barbeque sauce with our broccoli pie). We had arrived in Punakaiki, known for it's beach front blowholes and pancake rocks...intriguing. It was here I had my first mountain-cliff-beach-rainforest collision and still haven't fully recovered. A short hike spat us out onto this rocky outcropping overlooking this canyon of an ocean setting, giant rock faces emerging out of the sea like the remnants of some kind of ancient city. "new zealand....rocks!!!" i can't describe this scene adequately, and the pictures never do it justice, but i got that adrenaline rust taste in my throat and my chest kind of closed up and my pupils dilated and words weren't ready. after sunset we retreated back to an adoreable beach hostile thing and bunked with two french mons who picked out various django reinhardt battles until the wee hours. It's weird not being able to fall back on the same cheap cultural references for jokes or having all puns or word play fall flat. i find myself thinking about half a dozen times a day 'bummer, that would have killed back home'. humor with a language barrier is diminished and oddly enhanced with exaggerated facial expressions with no throwback inside jokes to fall back on. we laugh at phrasing, these guys nearly burst a blood vessel when i used the phrase "wailing on it" when attempting to describe how to really obliterate someone in foursquare. so yes. the next morning we loped along the beach and then got back into sunny and drove the rest of the way to hokitika, a small town where this annual Wild Foods Festival is held. It's interesting being in such a small country, the entire region has this sort of small town community type feel. no one has as last name on the south island, folks here on the east were talking about going to this festival like it was some theme party down the road, and it was known that very few would be left behind. some took party buses, many hitch-hiked (notably quite safe here, and a common practice for much of the starving youth of the nation) but one way or another the majority of Christchurch and everywhere in between set out on this weird kind of pilgramage to get their hands on some whitebait and mountain oysters. It should now be noted that this festival ended up being completely lame, the food was pretty tame and expensive...we were done with it in an hour and spent the rest of the day tramping around in the mountains we had seen the day before on the cross country drive that was easily the highlight of the weekend. in this case the journey truly was the reward. except the earthworm in a shot of redbull. that was pretty sweet.

wickets in atlantis

terrible at updates. much has occurred! but for the interest of sound bites and my vastly expanding audience (har har har) brevity is king. when i left you, i was preparing for my first cricket game with a girl i had met the night before who calls herself claire-lyne. she is french and witty and speaks in a kind of english that is far more eloquent and accurate then my own. we traveled to the stadium, purchased tickets from a fellow dressed as a giant caterpillar in a neighboring alley and made our way to the stands. we were immediately surrounded by masses of 'fans?', all boasting various types of disguises, full grown men dressed as babies, 15+ groups of students with gas masks, hula skirts, butterfly wings, etc... this is part of the cricket experience, as well as having the opportunity to drink uninterrupted for 6+ hours (more if you don't leave at halftime as we did). Claire-lyne did her best to explain the intricacies of the sport to me during our lengthy stay, but it was near impossible to pick up on the subtleties of this absurd game while the group behind you is competing to see who of them can alternately ingest the most spf30 and bacardi. sunburned again, for the hole in the ozone is directly above us. the most direct evidence of global warming i've witnessed in my young life. tell your friends! the day after, my flatmate sam and i traveled with a jane austin-obsessed/stiff upper lip sort of kiwi new friend fellow to the mountains for my first real day of newzealish scenery. we used the gondola to reach the summit, where a 360 degree view of christchurch was unveiled for us. astounding and breathtaking, and only made me want to see everything else this land has to offer so much more. not yet brave enough to mountain bike down the mountain, we made our descent on foot hiking through some very dense and elvish forests and rolling gold hills all around. we were spat out in a small sea town called lyttleton which provided for us a street fair and it's own harbor dolphin. i think this was the best day yet. something about that altitude makes your soul all jumpy and hungry for more, enough to push the silly fears and insecurities away that have resurfaced since i've arrived in an unexpected package of freshman year regression. the week following classes began, though they don't seem to be much of a priority around here. alcohol continued to run through the streets this week, part of the enrollment experience the locals tell me, complete with local music performances/toga parties/dance parties at the university pub every night. through this week we sort of acquired motley assortment of regulars around our own respective flats and began to make nightly potlucks and city walks a habit. Claire-lyne and sam have been showing me some cooking tricks, the pride of the week being green-lipped kiwi muscels and sushi. and a few nights ago we were all able to experience risotto prepared by an absolutely and unknowingly hillarious young german who is known as sebastian. these are the nights i miss blacksburg most, but also the times i can begin to understand how many of many friends who were already lucky enough to begin traveling can't seem to stop. there is so much to learn, folks! so much more then i ever thought possible! the days passed with classes, job hunts and club openings. i joined a tramping club with the usual goal of meeting more people and a promise of exploration of surrounding south island hot spots. somehow i also found myself signing up for more information in association with a local ninja society (putting the 'sass' back into assassitation). on Wednesday i was really able to explore the nitty gritty of the christchurch bus system though traveling to the farthest reaches of this city's public transportation to pick up a bike i purchased off a sketchy kiwi craiglist-type site. after about an hour of wandering around the outskirts of town into batch after batch of disintegrating suburb, i arrived at my destination. all the doors were all open, and there was the sound of about a dozen or so screaming children pulsing out into the driveway. i could see my bike from the road and feeling as though the I had reached the extent of my taste for adventure, really had to fight the urge to leave my money in the mailbox, grab the thing and run. as it turned out, the bike's owner was an amazingly jovial and kind fellow who proceeded to tell me all the wrongs of america, stories his beverly hills movie producer sister told him and he shuttered to believe were true. (i promise you, he showed me a picture of her in front of her mansion clutching three emmys.) here in front of me in his lazy boy with three small children scrambling over his considerable girth was another kiwi who promised me that there were, indeed no sharks around new zealand...a claim i still refuse to believe holds any merit.

so from here came another weekend of more of the same. saw some more local musics...as far as i can tell, all kiwi influence is originally derived from some kind of ragae/smashing pumpkins fusion. fashion mullets are very much the rage around these parts, and the phrase ("it's all g, boi" is considered fresh and edgy. and all the pubs play beyonce. constantly. including destiny's child favorites. i went to the beach today and had a surfing lesson. it was a hillarious failure, definitely can't wait to go back for round two. i miss you all more then i can say. it's proving more and more difficult with each day to resist the urge to start my senteces with "well back home, we..." i'm sorry if this dragged on, if i were you i'd use the speed reading method mr. gillespie taught us for Paul Revere's ride , and skip everything but the first and last sentences of each paragraph. i watched gross pointe blank last night, and will always love john cusak.

knackered.

9 am i woke up to a megaphone outside my window "get out of bed you sleeping daisies the time has come for the amazing race!" i stumble out with yesterday's mascara smeared down my face and barefoot, completely bewildered and surround by kids on decorated bikes, mopeds, xxrazrscooterzxx, segways etc... anyway, i signed up for what turned out to be like a 6 hour marathon around the entire city of ChCh. one of the tasks was to run around the city counting the number of blue neon "massage" signs which only pointed to an empty flight of stairs. these apparently, are not massage parlors..though the ring leaders were wildly cryptic about what they might actually be. details to follow, and there are 16 for anyone who's interested (lookin good, hoss; i picked up some pointers for our audition, we'll talk.). soon after, had to track down a domino's and a group of four of us had to eat two large pizzas and then run two miles through the botanical gardens and ford a river to play a life size game of chess. apparently the entire country competes in this today, in all the major cities...in wellington you're given a wad of cash to buy a rental car and tour the coast. these kiwis are out of their damn minds. classes start on monday, dont' seem to be a priority around these parts. everyone is laughably laid back, even the police were making date rape jokes at our orientation and passing around his baton and drug kit. always a hit. been called a yank by hordes of locals nightly, and asked questions like "oh, youre an american. do you drink mountain dew and eat corn in daytona at the nascar races?" i am boring the pants off. out like trout.

sweet as.

look right, then left

found out today leonard cohen is as big here as 9 am canned bourbon and coke...which says a lot. we've got 3 out of 6 flatmates settled in, all US native. the two guys are a couple of fratdawgz and insist on referring to our place (#20 Ilam Village) as "the big 2-0", and have spent the last 4 nights around the kitchen table taking shots of jager to Credence crooning in the background. Sam, another girl, is truly a kindred spirit i believe. Hails from San Francisco, and goes to school in Boseman, MO...two spots i've long coveted from hear-say. christchurch is absolutely gorgeous. the campus and immediate town remind me a lot of any coast town, tropical vegetation, big ol fruity trees. the city itself is a dream; cleaner then any i've seen back home i haven't even been able to spot a cigarette butt. today went to an art museum comprised completely of local art this month, as well as the botanical gardens. the gardens i couldn't believe and plan on spending many sunny hours wandering about acres upon acres of towering eucalyptys trees and rose gardens. oh yes. still, i'm already getting itchy feet thinking about the mountains, gandalf, mountains just out of my reach here. My "international" living situation is overwhelmingly saturated with terrified/super perky Americans, all with this sort of blank, stretched smiles and bewildered deer in the headlights look about them (myself included.) as far as i can tell from my bedroom window,i'm in some retro funky setup on the east coast of florida. hobbits and kiwibirds alike are elusive as hell, but mark my words i will find the tykes by summer's end. (ha! summer!) i can tell i'm rambling shamelessly on this thing, apologies for all 2 of you who have gotten this far (hey mom, doin bood, beth...) i'm gonna sign off for now, the kiwis upstairs just came by to invite us all for a "jug of piss and a kebab at the bah"... an invitation i'd be a fool to refuse. and pictures up soon i swear it ma.

kia ora!

baker's cousin

a snake went into a bar and ordered a drink, but the bartender refused to serve him. when the snake demanded an explanation, the bartender replied, "sorry snake, but you just can't hold your liquor."