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.