Catching up

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Well, It's been a while. I have gotten so many threats from my mother to write a blog that I doubt she will let me cross the threshold to enter my house when, and if, I return to the United States. Well, I'm sitting here, in an internet cafe, at 4 in the morning, listening to the bloomsburg game, so I thought I'd get alot of what has happened down while I essentially sit here on the computer, listen to the radio feed, and surf the internet. (It's 14-0 bloom right now, over the #5 team in the country)

I'm living in a city called Dunedin right now, which is on the south Island, and is the southernmost city with a university to the world. When I last wrote, I was living in Wellington, which is the national capital, and a city on the southern tip of the North Island, bordering the Cook Straight. When I lived in Wellington, I spent about 1.5 months there and I worked two different jobs. I lived in a hostel that was right in the center of the city, in the middle of everything, so I ended up going out a lot. A lot of other people lived there, and I got into a pretty good group of friends that I hung out with there.

My two jobs in Wellington consisted of the following: First, I worked in a place called "The Temp Centre" (notice the British spelling).. this was a hospitality company, and it worked as following: They would call you at any time of the day, and say something along the lines of, 'company x, at address y, needs a waiter/kitchen hand/bartender/server, would you be willing to work', and I respond with a 'God yes, I need all the money I can't get. I'll sell drugs if you want me to, Temp Centre'. The first job was at the airport, working at the VIP lounge clearing tables and stocking the buffet. It was pretty chill, really formal (I had to wear a dress shirt and slacks for every job I had through the centre), and I was getting ready to leave around 10, when a final traveler walked in to the lounge. She's pretty famous, and I had to serve her: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Clark

As you can see, she's quite the looker. I worked a bunch of other jobs, including an international rugby match between South Africa and New Zealand that took place in Wellington. I also worked as a waiter at a huge boxing match between the best Kiwi boxer, Shane Cameron, and some American Shmo I've never heard of from Detroit. I didn't serve anyone during the final match, because I was all fired up for the American (he came out to born in the USA and the American flag), but he blew it and got knocked out in the 5th round, to which I kept idly saying to all the south americans I worked with (the temp centre is all south americans) that it's not that big of a deal if the best kiwi can knock out the 23rd ranked American(I completely made this number up, but said it like it was the divine truth). My other job was working construction for a couple different places, and, let me tell you, construction is just as boring and annoying over here as it is in the states.

(14-0 bloomsburg at the half)

Well, I was having a blast in Wellington, working like 25 hours a week, which is just enough to get by, and just hanging out, writing, reading, and getting drunk the rest of the time. It was the life. But all good things come to an end. Some of the close friends I had met moved on (this is one of the tragedies of traveling. You become such great friends with people so quickly, but after a month or so, everyone goes their separate ways. It's frustrating, to be honest. I have made tons of friends, but I can almost guarantee i won't ever see them again)

So they started leaving, and then my ex-gf decided to come visit New Zealand and ruin everything. (Just Kidding, Katya). I took the bus up to Auckland to meet her, and over the next month, we traveled around the entire country. On the north island, we hitch hiked and took a bus everywhere we went. We went to Tauranga, saw Mt. Manganui, then went to Rotorua, where we went to The Polynesian Spas, a set of hot water pools heated by the geothermal activity in the area. We also went to Taupo and Wellington, which were cool.

On the south island, we decided to splurge and rented a van in Christchurch. It was pretty cool, a pop top or whatever you call it, and it had a double bed, a sink, a fridge, a heater(thank the lord), dishes, a microwave and toaster, and even a towel rack(Seriously, of all the things? What a waste. Well, that was our home for like 2 weeks. With it, we had the freedom to kind of go whereever we wanted and change our plans on a whim, which was essential with the weather we ran into.

Christchurch is about 1/4 of the way down the east side of the south island. We got the van there, then immediately cut west across the Southern Alps to the west coast, through a pass called Arthurs pass which was breathtaking (this will be a recurring word when describing the south island), a highway right through the high mountains. We got to a town called Hokitika, which is on the idyllic and (recurring word warning) breathtaking west coast, a small town situated just between the looming mountains and the tropical looking beach with harsh waves that the sun seems to always reflect off of. Hokitika is famous for its Jade, and we spent our first night there.

(14-7 bloomsburg, 3rd quarter. grr.)

The next day, we drove down to the glaciers on the west coast. There are two, about 30 kilometers apart (by the way, I have almost completely transferred to using Kilometers over miles, kilograms over pounds, and celcius over fahrenheit) and they are pretty cool. We took some sweet pictures, which I plan to post at some point but probably never will, and spent the night there. The next day, we moved down to Haast pass, another mountain pass, and well, things didn't go well. A huge storm hit, and we got stuck on the mountain, couldn't go up any more, and had to turn around. On the west coast, there is only one North/South highway, and south was blocked for at least two days, so we decided to drive north and cross over on the northern part of the south island. (umm, 14-14, 3rd quarter. Getting nervous) We tried to go north and the storm followed us, so that when we tried to cross the glaciers, that pass was blocked as well. So this was our situation: We couldn't go north, the pass was blocked. We couldn't go south, the pass was blocked. To our west was the beatiful but not very passable tasman sea, and to our east was the second highest mountian range in the world. It was fun. We just camped out, and waited out.

After a couple days, we were able to go south, and we crossed through to the southern lakes region, which was(warning) breathtaking. (17-14 Bloomsburg) The mountains loomed high above the lakes, and on the day we went it was so calm that the snow capped mountains reflected up to us from the lakes. We stopped in Wanaka and took a nap, then drove to Queenstown where we spent the night. We hung out there, Queenstown is pretty nice, and world famous, after all, but the next morning we what has been called the most beautiful drive in the world, to Milford Sound (24-14 Bloom). This game is too intense. I'll finish the blog tomorrow. Have a good one.

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