Adventureland

In the morning, I headed for the library to finally get all my internet stuff set up and check my mail and read some American news web pages so I kind of have a little bit of an idea of what is going on, maybe (they’re not very good at giving back story so when you have no idea what’s been going on it can be pretty confusing). I also tried to use the wireless service they have in the library so that I can connect to the internet via my laptop but no such luck. I ran out of time really. I had to be back at the Student Village or “No lunch for you!” (I’m mimicking the Soup Nazi for all you non-Seinfeld watchers). I will try again tomorrow.

At lunch I sat with Ben and Gigus and their friend with the car, Bruce. If you’re starting to wonder why all the Chinese students have names like “Julia” or “Bruce,” it’s because they are encouraged to take English names to better integrate into New Zealand life. Honestly, I don’t think Cho Lin (Julia’s real name) is that hard to remember and it’s defiantly easier than Agnieszka. As someone who’s had her share of “name issues,” I don’t know if I agree with the theory behind adapting an English name. Wouldn’t that make you less likely to integrate? Because you would stick to the people who could actually pronounce your real name and everyone who only knows your English name is kept at a distance? Anyway, maybe I’ve been thinking about this too much. It just makes me a little uneasy, but I digress.

So after lunch, we went to go see downtown Hamilton. It’s a really nice place. Not too big, but not too small (just right). There are no really tall buildings, it all had the feel of a less funky, but busier, Thayer Street. We kept running into groups of Chinese students from the same University that the three of them attended. Then, as I was walking down the street I spotted a bronze statue of a man that was very strange looking, but vaguely familiar. As I came closer, I realized that it was Riff Raff, the creepy butler/alien guy from The Rocky Horror Picture Show! He was in the alien costume he wears at the end of the movie so that’s why I didn’t recognize him right away.

  Riff Raff Statue

Anyway, I yelled out because I love the movie and the Chinese guys, well they had no idea about it, but then I had to stop and think, why in god’s name would there be a statue of Riff Raff in downtown Hamilton? The plaque explained it all. Richard O’Brien, the creator, director (mastermind, really) behind Rocky Horror (who also cast himself as Riff Raff) moved to Hamilton in 1957 and worked in a barbershop in the now demolished Embassy Theatre which stood on that very site until 1994. According to the plaque “he credits the many B-grade, late night double feature movies he watched here as much of the inspiration for Rocky Horror.”

How awesome! They should really put that in the student guides for the University of Waikato “come study in the very town that inspired The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” That would convince me.

After all that excitement in Hamilton, we went to the Hamilton Gardens. I thought it would just be a park and it would be nice to walk and that would be the end of it but it was so cool. Yes, gardens = cool. They have theme gardens.

  The Indian Garden

We spent a good deal of time wandering around just this one section. It represented the major gardening traditions of the world. So they had an English flower garden, an American West Coast Modernist garden, a Chinese Scholar’s garden, a Japanese Zen garden, an Indian Temple garden and an Italian Renaissance garden.

Chinese Scholar’s Garden:

English Fower Garden   

 The American Modernist Garden, it kind of looked like someone trendy person’s backyard 

The Japanese Zen Garden and the Italian Renaissance Garden

It was great. By the time we had finished with that it was about 3:30 PM and Bruce had an appointment for 4:00 PM so we headed back. But I’m really planning on returning and checking out the rest because it was so cool. On another note, I totally forgot my camera but I have all these great pictures because Ben took some for me, even when I didn’t know it!

After dinner, there was a meeting for all international students in Student Village where they went over the rules and stuff like that. That’s where I found out that Hamilton had the number one highest rate of Chlamydia infection in New Zealand, which happens to have the highest rates Chlamydia infection in the world. Now, Hamilton has lost the title and is just number two in New Zealand. I bet I know why they don’t put that in the student guide “come study at the University of Waikato and…get Chlamydia.”

Later that night, Ben came to my room and transferred the pictures from his laptop to mine and then he showed me some pictures of his from his home and his university back in China. We also listened to some Chinese 80’s music. Totally cool. It’s funny, so far I’ve gotten more Chinese culture here than the Maori culture I came to study.

Also, I picked up the student publication and it said that Bomfunk MCs are going to perform on campus! I was so excited. For those of you who didn’t spend the summer of 2000 anywhere near Europe, this is a Finnish rap/hip hop/dance/electronic group. They’re awesome, ok. Don’t make that face, just download “Freestyler,” you’ll love it, I swear. And no one wants to hear your juvenile comments about what “Bomfunk” sounds like. Anyway, I am so there. I only wish Peter could be here for this. There is some great summer-camp-in-Poland nostalgia attached to this band for us.

Monday morning coming out of the bathroom, I met Kristin, one of the students from University of Minnesota Duluth who’s on my floor so we ended up deciding to go to breakfast with another one of her friends. Except that although it says that breakfast ends at 9:30 AM, everything was gone by 9:00 so by 9:10, when we went for breakfast it was no where to be found. So one of the Minnesota guys led us to another dorm area, Bryant Hall where they still had breakfast and we ate there. My first breakfast at the University of Waikato was kind of a let down. All they have is two kinds of bread to toast, strawberry and some kind of yellowish jam, vegemite, margarine, cornflakes, muesli and those wheatabix squares. I am not exaggerating, that really is everything. I think that will get really old really fast. Oh well, at least there is something. Afterwards, we all followed the red dots painted on the sidewalk that guide you through the heart of campus to the Study Abroad/Exchange Students Orientation. It was our first step towards being a fully enrolled and registered student at the Uni. After having the process explained and all our questions answered, we waited in line to get papers that said which courses that we had been approved to take. Little did I know that I would be doing a lot of waiting in line that day. After I got my course approval sheet, I had to get registered for each course by the school that offers it. In my case, the School of Maori and Pacific Development offers all of the courses I am going to take (Intro to Maori Society and Culture, Intro to Maori Language, Intro to Traditional Maori Dance and Maori Flax Weaving). I was lucky, other people had to go to four different buildings to get it all done. So I waited in the office, then I got registered and my paper was stamped. Then I had to go into another building to complete the enrolment process. Waited in line, got another stamp and was sent to wait in the finances line. I had already pre-paid so I hadn’t brought any money with me (I didn’t really bring anything except myself and all those papers I needed stamped). So after waiting in line I was told that the tuition had been adjusted from what I had paid so I had to pay the balance (some $165 NDZ) so, not having anything on me, I had to go back to my dorm to get it and return to the line. Finally, when I was all settled (with yet another stamp), I was sent upstairs where I had my student ID made. When this was finished, I was an official University of Waikato student. But I still had to wait for the system to update itself overnight before I could access my username and use the internet. The whole process seemed so 1991 to me. There are computers, but everything is still done on paper with signatures and stamps. Someone even took the time to cut large arrows out of colored duct tape to indicate where to go next.
So I went back to my room and listened to music until dinner. At dinner one of the “Asian guys” (they’re from China) who had helped me with the door, Ben, asked me to play ping pong after dinner so we went to the rec room with his friend Gigus. It was great, they were surprised by how good I was. Ping pong is huge in China, as anyone who has ever seen Forrest Gump or tuned into ESPN at a weird time can tell you. They also said that their friend bought a car and that he can take us into town tomorrow. Downtown Hamilton is about a 10 minute drive and like an hour’s walk from the campus. So we played ping pong for quite a while and then we went back to our block and listened to music and talked in the common room until I got tired and went to bed.

Just to explain some stuff: at the Uni, I live in this dorm called Student Village and each of the buildings is called a “block.” There are ten blocks in the Student Village plus three lounges that are their own little buildings. I live in block 5. At 10:00 PM every night, an RA goes through the block and everyone who doesn’t live there has to leave so it’s good to get along with people in your block. Also, every dorm has its own dinning hall. This is both good and bad. On the one hand, you see all the same people (and because there are specific dinning times outside of which there is no food, you always see them at the same time) and you always eat with the people you live with so you can get to know them better. Plus, it’s a short walk in the morning for breakfast. On the other hand, it’s always the same people and if you have a class and then lunch and then another class you have to walk back and forth which wouldn’t be so much of an issue if there was a more central cafeteria. Student Village has almost 300 people in it so I guess when everyone moves in Wednesday it will be a lot busier and more interesting.

Sunday I did not get up until nearly 11:00 AM (which is 8:00 AM in Australia) so I missed breakfast (darn that jetlag). After getting dressed and washing up, I decided to try and call home because it was my brother’s birthday. So I called home and talked to my parents but unfortunately Peter was not there. Then when I tried to get back into my building I couldn’t figure out how it worked. I had been issued a key ring with a meal card, a key for my door and something that looked like an oversized dog tag with an arrow on it. That is supposed to open the building door, you have to slide it up into this slot and then you can open the door, but mine was not working. So after about five frustrating minutes trying to get the door open, two Asian guys came to open the door for me and I asked them how it was supposed to work. They showed me using one of their keys and it turned out that that one didn’t work either. Finally, the other key worked and I got in. They must have told someone about one of their keys and mine because I got a knock on the door and Julia came to say that I could get another key so we went outside to wait for our new keys and Julia took the opportunity to show me around the Student Village. The new keys didn’t work either so while waiting for another set, we went to lunch. It was all corn dogs, baked beans, hash browns and hot dogs. To me, that is typical American food so it was really weird being served that in New Zealand. When I exited the line with my tray all full of food, I had some very uncomfortable flashbacks to middle school and high school. The agony of trying to find a place to sit seems to be something you never grow out of. So I stalled and waited for Julia and ended up sitting with her and some of her Chinese friends. After lunch, we got keys that finally worked and Julia took me to the library so I could use her login to check my e-mail since I don’t have one yet because I am not enrolled. I was there for quite a while since I also wanted to read up on what was going on in the US so Julia left and I got in touch with Nick through AIM and decided to call him. We were on the phone for a while which was nice. He told me all the news about his friends from back home and I found out that everyone at the project vote smart ranch already likes me, even though they don’t even know me. I’m really looking forward to visiting Montana in June/July when the semester ends.

Saturday, I woke at about 7:45 AM and went to go take a shower. I wasn’t planning on leaving until 9:30 AM and I was already pretty much packed but I wanted to check my e-mail before setting off. It turned out that the internet café was not open that early in the morning so I went back to the hostel, checked out and bought a train ticket and ended up catching the 9:00 train. It took about 20 minutes to get to the airport from the center of Brisbane. In the check in line I happened to arrive right after a group of Canadian senior citizens on some kind of trip who were a bit disoriented and were having some kind of troubles at the check in counters so that kind of clogged up the whole process. Other than that the airport stuff was not very eventful. My gate happened to be right in the main hall so I didn’t get too much of a feel for the size of the airport but it seemed fairly large. The flight was not full and I had an aisle seat with an empty seat between me and a woman who had the window seat. They fed me a salad for dinner/lunch (three hours time difference meant I left at 12:30 PM and arrived at 6:45 PM, even though it only felt like 3:45 to me) instead of the choice of beef or chicken sandwich. My second arrival in Auckland was totally different from my first. The first time there was chaos and literally hundreds of people. This time the airport seemed deserted. Lines were short, there was no wait and I got through all the customs stuff very quickly. When I entered the main hall, I approached the “Pre-arranged transport” counter kind of apprehensively because I had not gotten any correspondence or confirmation back from the university about my pick up. Luckily, I saw my name and presented myself to the driver, Garry. He was quite surprised by the amount (or lack thereof) my luggage. He said that when Americans, especially girls, come to study abroad they bring just about all of their possessions with them. And when Asians come to study abroad, their bags are the heaviest because they bring all of their books. The drive from Auckland to Hamilton took about an hour and a half and was very scenic. Garry told me that this ugly run down building on the outskirts of Hamilton that used to be a power station was used as a background in one of the old Star Wars films (he didn’t know which one and I couldn’t figure it out either). By the time we arrived at the University it was already dark. Garry phoned whoever it was that was supposed to show me into my room and they said that they would be there in a moment so he left me with my backpack and assorted other luggage on the steps of the Student Village office and drove off. Moments later, a woman who introduced herself as Suliana came out of the darkness and apologized for the wait. She said that she had been taking a shower. She went into the office, grabbed a set of keys and then took me to my building and my room. I’m not really sure exactly where I am because everything is dark but I figure I will get my bearings in the morning. Suliana checked me in and got me some sheets. While she was gone, I got a knock on the door and met my RA, Julia, who is from Shanghai. She told me what time breakfast is and offered to show me around in the morning. After everything was all set, I took a shower and began to unpack. So now I’m unpacked and the room feels so bare. I have to get some colorful things to decorate it with. Tomorrow will be a good day for exploration and errands like calling home and finally buying a voltage converter.

Friday, I did not have to check out until 10:00 AM but I got up a bit early in order to say goodbye to the group since they were leaving at 9:00. I helped Alison with her bags downstairs and waited with everyone outside the hotel for Trish to drive up with Trev. So we said our goodbyes and promised to keep in touch and I went back to my room and began to pack my stuff up. While traveling, there are two kinds of packing. One is for regular land travel like when we were driving through Australia where we were our own baggage handlers. The other is for airline travel. You can never trust those airline baggage handlers so packing for a flight is serious business and took me nearly an hour of shifting around ‘what should go where so that it doesn’t get broken’ even though I hadn’t really unpacked. Finally, I gathered my stuff and walked down the street (which was also actually downhill, thank god) to the Backpacker’s Palace. I couldn’t check in until 1:00 PM so I stowed my luggage and went to check my e-mail. After that, I walked down to the Queen Street Mall and had a look around the shops. There is this store here called Supré that has cheap trendy girl’s clothes and I was thinking that I should get rid of my Aussie cash and maybe buy a shirt or two but then I figured that I should wait until after I checked into the hostel in case they had a deposit charge. Also, I got hungry so I went grocery shopping. Among other things, I bought some Tim Tams which we don’t have in the US. They are these delicious cookies with chocolate cream sandwiched between chocolate cookies and covered in a layer of chocolate. Aussies do this thing called Tim Tam Slam where they bite two opposite and diagonal corners of the cookie (it’s rectangular) and then use it as a straw to drink a hot drink like coffee, tea or hot chocolate. So you suck out the chocolaty cream and then eat the warm, soaked cookie while drinking the beverage of your choice. That’s the theory. I tried it on the airplane with some tea but I couldn’t get the thing to work like a straw so I just dunked it. It was still really good that way, just melted in your mouth.

When I was done with my shopping, I headed back to the hostel to check in and I got a seven person room on the second floor. I took the elevator up and it was this very old elevator that has a door on each floor and this metal screen for the elevator and you have to open it yourself when it gets to your floor. I totally missed my floor because I didn’t know how it worked. Then the next person to get in must have seen the bewildered look on my face and asked if I had missed my floor. He helped me with the doors because they were really hard to keep open. The room was really big with large windows and lots of space and very high ceilings. There were a bunch of girls in there complaining about their hangovers and one guy who had lost his wallet and cell phone during their night out. The only bed left was a top bunk so I had to take that one. I really hate getting top bunks because you can’t reach any of your stuff while you’re lying down or hanging out. It’s really a pain. So once one of the girls left I got a chance to talk to one who was from Scotland and her name was Vicky. Then I met the lost wallet guy named Brennan who was from Canada (Saskatchewan). Later the girl who had the bed beneath me came in and it turned out that she was from Oregon. So when they left to get dinner, I made myself a sandwich using Brennan’s butter knife (cuz really how are you supposed to make a sandwich with just your hands?). And I got to talk to him about all sorts of stuff. Later, when the girls returned, they decided they wanted to watch a movie and asked to use my laptop so I said sure and they went out again to get a movie. They came back with The Office second season (the British one). And it turned out that it wouldn’t work on my laptop because of the region thing so we all went and invaded one of the TV lounges to watch it. It was hilarious and I don’t think that it’s come out in the States yet. After that we went to bed and discussed celebrities and all sorts of other stuff before actually falling asleep.

Thursday, we had a late checkout at noon and then we were off to Brisbane (affectionately called Brisie by Aussies). For lunch we stopped at the Humble Pie Company (it’s that the best name ever?) where they serve all sorts of pies, meat, veggie, fruit etc… It was good stuff. In all, the drive to Brisbane took about four hours so when we arrived and freshened up a bit, Jodi walked us though the Queen Street Mall, which is this outdoor mall in the heart of Brisbane, and down to the river where we stopped for a drink (I had “iced chocolate” which I thought was going to be like chocolate milk but was more like a milkshake, while Vickie had a chocolate milkshake and that was more like chocolate milk). The group then went off to do whatever each one wanted to do. I went back up to the mall area and bought some Aussie souvenirs. No one else wanted to buy any because everyone else was connecting to another Intrepid trip that would be led by Trish up to Cairns. I also found a hostel just down the street from the hotel we were at and booked a night for the next day. I had one more day in Brisbane because my flight was on Saturday. Since it was our last night together, Jodi had to fly home the next morning, we all, except for Vickie, went out to a steakhouse for dinner. Vickie had bought tickets to a performance in downtown Brisbane. As you can imagine, the steakhouse wasn’t my first choice, but it turned out that they do make a mean veggie lasagna so I was happy. Amy and Alison had got a card for Jodi since it was also her last trip and we all signed it earlier and gave it to her over dinner. It was nice. I also got to talk a lot to Trish when everyone went out for a smoke several times over the course of dinner. Trish is really cool, she’s kind of like a smart ass, sarcastic person and she was telling me all about her adventures in Asia where she lived and worked for several years leading Intrepid tours. Back at the hotel we said goodbye to Jodi and I went back to the room Alison and I were sharing to get some preliminary packing done. I turned on the TV and there was this weird anime on so I watched it while unfolding my bed (the room had a double bed and a fold out couch). Alison had gone to the hotel pub with Amy and Daryl but it turned out that the pub was closed so she came up shortly. So we ended up turning in relatively early, like 10:30 PM.

Wednesday, Jodi drove the whole group into town and Daryl, Amy and I set out for our surf lessons. We paid (about $55 Aussie), and then we were issued smelly, pre-worn surf gear that consisted of a blue wet suit type of shirt and yellow board shorts. Then we met our instructor, Dan, who just happened to be from California! He said that he’s been surfing since he was ten (and he’s 55) and that he’s been living in Australia since 1975. But he still sounded like an American. Anyway, he was super cool and you could tell that he was really into what he did. We drove down to the beach and after a few safety precaution things, we practiced getting up on our boards in the sand. It was pretty cool, I got the hang of it pretty quick. I think the snowboarding really came in handy with all the balance stuff. But practicing on the sand is quite different from actually doing it in the water. When Dan thought that we were ready, we got into the water with our boards. I totally loved it! I kept falling and I didn’t care, I just kept going back for more until I finally got up on the board and actually rode a wave! It was so amazing. I’m totally hooked and I want to keep doing it, even when I get home. It is really a workout too. Most of the time you’re just paddling in the water and then to get up, you’re basically doing pushups and then you’re up for just a moment (well, in my case at least) and then you fall and get water up your nose or scrape your knees on the sand or get conked on the head with your board and then you do it all over again. It’s great! I had a total blast. Amy and Daryl got kind of tired towards the end but I was in the water until Dan came out to get met because the lesson was over. That’s actually why I have any pictures at all. Daryl was taking them with my camera from shore.
When we got back into town, we sort of lost contact with Dan in all the shuffle of getting our belongings and changing while there was already another group waiting to go so we didn’t get to say goodbye to him. The surf lesson place happened to be right behind the internet place I had used the night before, so we all went to go check our mail. Then we wandered around town. I bought post cards and some souvenir t-shirts and then we decided to take the scenic beach route back to the cabins. About three quarters of the way, we slowly came to the realization that everyone on the beach was naked (the beach was pretty empty because it looked like it was about to rain), there was even a guy fishing naked! Then when we got to the stream, it was flowing a lot faster than it had been last night because the tide was going out. While crossing, Amy lost one of her flip flops in the mud. After that, we sat around and relaxed for a bit before meeting to go out to dinner at this very nice restaurant called The Balcony. Jodi had made a reservation so we actually got to sit on the balcony. It was raining pretty hard but the balcony was covered so it was really nice and breezy. After dinner, Amy decided that she wanted to get her nose pierced so we ran down to the tattoo/body piercing shop because it was about to close and we watched her get her left nostril pierced. Then we headed to one pub, then another and finally a club. I got into dancing but no one else really wanted to so they left me there and headed to another pub. It was kind of a bad night (Wednesday?) for clubbing. There weren’t too many people and there were these two very annoying tall blond sweaty guys who were apparently attempting to reenact “A Night at the Roxbury.” Yeah. So once the music degenerated into techno and my eyes began to sting from the cigarette smoke, I left. It’s nicer in New Zealand that you’re not allowed to smoke in clubs.

Tuesday, we left the hostel at 8:00 AM, packed up all our stuff, and went canoeing on the Bellinger River. The day was a bit overcast and slightly drizzly. Somewhere along the way, the town of Bellingen and the river, Bellinger, that runs through it ended up with slightly different names and no one knows which is the original one. The canoe trip was quite fun and a good upper body workout. Plus, we saw a koala in a tree! It was very high up and hard to see and at first I didn’t see it because I thought I was looking at a bunch of leaves, but then it turned its head and you could clearly see that distinctive Koala face. It was so cool!
After that we left for Byron Bay, stopping to see “the big banana” and the “big prawn” on the way (I don’t think they compared to the Big Blue Bug). Byron Bay was named for the poet Lord Byron’s grandfather, who was an explorer, by none other than Captain Cook when he first sailed into the area while exploring Australia’s coast. When we first got into Byron, we went shopping for food and then Jodi informed us that if we wanted to go hang gliding, we would have to go right then because she had just called the hang gliding guys and the wind was perfect right then. So Amy and I jumped at the chance. We got dropped off up on this high point where the most powerful light house in Australia is located and met the hang gliding guy. He didn’t take credit card but Amy had enough cash to pay for both of us (I paid her back later). Then they put us in these harnesses that kind of feel like some sort of bug costume because you have this thing behind you to put your feet into when you’re up in the air. Then we got strapped onto the glider right next to the guy that would be piloting it. I went first with the guy who owned the company and Amy second with some other guy. To launch, we stood on this little ramp waiting for the wind to be just right. I was getting more and more nervous the longer we waited, I wished that we could have just gone right away. Then, the guy said ready and we ran off the ramp into the air. It was amazing. The views were great and it’s really a gentle ride once you get over the launch part. It’s not like a free fall or anything. I really expected it to me more exhilarating but it was a very smooth and gentle sort of thing. We were up in the air for about 20 minutes. Then, as we came in to land on the beach we flew really low over some surfers and we must have scared them because they started to run out of the way. It was kind of funny because we were still pretty high in the air. Then when we were done, we got a ride to our cabins from the hang glide guy because it was their last hang glide for the day and he lived over by the Byron Bay Resort (where we were staying. “Resort” is just a word in Australia, it doesn’t have the connotations that it has in the US). So that was cool. I can’t imagine getting a free ride just because you need one in the US. It also turned out that they guy was a vegetarian too. Really, Byron Bay is just crawling with hippies and surfers. The number of pierced, tattooed and dreadlocked people you see in much higher than their numbers in the general population. It’s an interesting place. Back at the cabins, the group had decided to spend the rest of the day just relaxing and hanging out. I decided to venture back to town. The resort cabins are located right near this big main beach in Byron and you could walk along the beach to get right into the center of town. But it was a fairly long walk and you had to wade across a reddish-colored stream. So I set out in the late afternoon, waded across the stream which was up to my thighs at deepest (good thing I was wearing these loose, flowy pants) and it took me about 45 minutes to get into town. By then, it was dark. I found an internet place and used the internet and just got a feel for downtown Byron at night. It was also Valentine’s Day so it was quite busy despite it being a Tuesday. When I was done, I called a taxi that never showed up. I waited for half an hour, then I walked down the street and got into a parked taxi. I would have liked to walk back along the beach because it was a full moon but the receptionist at the resort said that sometimes people sleep on the beach and the can harass you if you walk there alone at night. When I got back, I found out from Vickie, with whom I was sharing the cabin, that the surf lessons I had wanted were all booked and that we would be leaving at 9:30 AM for that.

 Apsley Falls

Monday morning we left the farm for a small town called Bellingen, stopping in small towns and to see some spectacular waterfalls along the way. One of the falls we saw, called Apsley Falls, were off of this gigantic gorge. It said that European settlers were in the habit of running Aboriginals off of the cliff into the gorge whenever they were in dispute over land. This whole area is the Australian New England region. We did see some cute little kangaroos and I actually got a picture! See:

  He’s right there in the middle!

The day was rainy and overcast but we spent most of it driving so that it didn’t really interfere with any activities. Later in the day we visited a sub-tropical rainforest.

  Rainforest Canopy and floor

In Bellingen we stayed at the YHA Hostel and got our own building. It was a really cool place. They had these chickens there for eggs and they just wandered around the back yard area. The locals called them the “Punk Chooks.” Aussies (and Kiwis) call chickens “chooks.” It was really humid and hot when we arrived and a rainstorm seemed to be building. I decided to do laundry, which took forever because they only had one washer and one dryer. My clothes got washed fairly quickly, but the dryer was in use and it took forever to wait for it (I think someone got to it while I was still waiting so I had to wait out two cycles). Finally, just before we went out to the pub at 7:00 PM, I put my clothes into the dryer. Anyway, the pub was really nice and we had a good dinner. We were joined by the river canoe guys that were going to take us canoeing the next morning and we had some very interesting conversations. They were brothers in their, or nearly in their 40s, one of them had bleached hair and played keyboard in a 70s and 80s glam rock cover band and the other had just returned from a year long trip around the world with his girlfriend where they hitchhiked on yachts all across the Caribbean and Pacific. So it was an interesting night. They had a lot of good stories about all sorts of things.

Now that I have a moment I will attempt to answer everyone’s questions and/or comments.

Stacy, I have to tell you that I met a ton of awesome people doing the working holiday thing and now I’m even thinking of doing it myself! I think it would be the time of your life so go for it. You won’t regret it.

Babciu i dziadzu, dziejkuje bardzo za wasze pozdrowienia. Przesylam pozdrowienia dla calej rodziny. Caluski!

Mr. and Mrs. Horton, thank you for your comments. As you can imagine it’s been a bit difficult to stay in touch but I’m glad to hear everything is going well. I think that when I get back I won’t even recognize your house, the inside anyway. Good luck with all the renovations and tell Jeff I said hi.

Petey, the water does flush the other way around. Weird but true although it is a bit difficult to figure it out because most places have these European style toilets that flush straight down. Also, I did try vegemite and it is very salty. It’s made from the yeasty by products of beer making!

Ola, thanks for the comments, I hope everything is well in Somerset. I did plan my trip to include Fiji, but it sort of happened by accident as well because Air Pacific, Fiji’s national airline, just happened to have the cheapest rate to New Zealand and there was no extra charge for a three day layover. Plus, it was nice to break up what would have been a 13-14 hour flight into 10 and 3 hour chunks. That way, flying to Fiji from LA was kind of like flying from NY to Warsaw. Tell Kev I said hi.

Dad, in response to the Maori craftsmanship comment, you would not believe how beautiful their carvings are. About Auckland, I’d say everything here is much more laid back than the Northeast. People are a lot friendlier and helpful and the pace of life is slower. When Mel and I went to get a bite to eat it was just like that time at the Dunkin Donuts in Florida. Everyone took their sweet time. As for pacific people, they really do stand out, some of them anyway, because they’re so huge! You see some very large, tall and big boned men and women all around Auckland. And about the hostel in NZ, I really think that if you guys wanted to stay in Auckland for several days that it would be a great place for you. There were people there of all ages and I think that they do have single rooms too. The best part is the fully stocked kitchen so you can make your own food and meet people. About the koala “bears”, people down here just call them koalas not “koala marsupials” (kangaroos are marsupials too).

Ciocu, thank you for your comments. I’m glad you like my blog. Tell Asia to send me an e-mail one of these days. I want to know how she is doing. Hope all is well in Dartmouth!

Alex H., well you’ll be in Sydney quite soon I see. Congrats on the Shinn once again. You should think about setting up your own blog (it’s free!) at www.bootsnall.com. Plus, that’s where I found the Intrepid trip that I saw Australia’s east coast with. What’s good about Intrepid versus say Oz Experience is that the savings for the group discounts get passed onto you, not the company booking it. Anyway, check out the site for info and just talk with other independent travelers to get some ideas about where to go and what to see. Also, you should invest in a good backpack. Good luck, you’ll have a blast!

Artek, come on, I don’t need to ask my parents who you are. I remember the good old days on Erastus Street. How are you? And more importantly, where are you? Last I heard you were stationed in Iceland. Still there or have you moved on?

Ok, I think that is everything for now. To all the people reading but not posting, thanks for your interest and I hope you are all doing great!

Agnieszka