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Published: February 23rd 2010
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Beach? Party
Nic and Austin being themselves at a birthday party for one of Nell's friends. Today we left for New Zealand by way of Portland, OR. I spent the whole night before packing; I didn't get any sleep at all! Apparently I packed pretty well though. Austin was impressed @ how little I was able to take in terms of weight because we learned that we had a strict weight limit (carry on's included) for the flight to New Zealand which was far less than within the states.
The flight was easy enough. We got there a little late which made the security agent @ the gate scrutinize my every move and do another special inspection of my boarding pass and ID right before I got on the plane … but not of Austin's. We arrived and Nic picked us up as soon as he got out of class. We then moved into the front hall of Nic and Nell's little apartment, where we stayed for the next week.
For the rest of the time we were there our time was littered with errands, walking, and planning but mostly hanging out and free Ben and Jerry's ice cream! (Nic and Nell both work there and would give us free stuff every time we came to visit them at work). I think we got it 5 times which I now realize we should have taken better advantage of, but we did a pretty good job.
We had a few adventures while we were there too. The first night we visited Zach's school: Reed College, for some of the events going on during the optional first week of free-for-all classes, planned and taught by students, called Paideia. Apparently it means a thirst for knowledge in Latin or something but basically students petition the school to fund and house activities that give Reed students an alternative education experience. Some of the classes were: Cute Things (as far as we could tell, an hour long slide show of cute animals … we didn't go), Ultimate Frisbee, Painting w/ Vegetables, Bonfire, The Theory and Method of Walking like a Mother F*&%er (where one guy tried to speed up the collective walking pace on campus by teaching tricks of the trade like answering the fake urgent phone call to avoid pitfalls like chatty people), Buildering (bouldering but on the campus buildings), Bar-B-Que (where we went and got a free dinner of steak tips and shrimp marinated in honey and spices), and Flavor Tripping. We didn't go to too many but the one's we did attend were a great time.
Another one of the Portland adventures happened after walking Nell to work one day (and of course getting free ice cream). Nic, Austin, and I walked Nell and Indie (her dog) to work and then decided to take the dog for a walk through Washington Park. What we didn't know at the time was that Nic didn't know the trails there all that well and that it's something like the largest park in all of Oregon or something like that. What started out to be a stroll through the park turned out to be a 3+ hour 5+ mile hike through Oregon's pristine woodlands. It didn't help that it was raining literally the whole time we were out. We were all wearing shells but were not prepared in terms of footwear and I was wearing jeans that were soaked through by the end. It was really pretty though. The rain caused a mist/fog to settle among the trees making it eerily beautiful.
When we weren't out having adventures we were out getting gear for our trip or chilling on the air mattress in the living room watching Chuck, Entrapment, or youtube videos ("Babies everywhere!") We also had a dinner party and had a blast of a week.
Our last night we got everything packed up, I said "goodbye" to Annabelle over the phone (making her think I was going to NZ rather than to HI) and the next morning, the 27th, all 5 of us drove to the airport where Austin and I headed off for Maui!
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