The Sea, Bananas, and Seabananas

Friday afternoon turned into another bout of exploration with two mountains [well, one is a hill] on the list. Mount Cargill and Signal Hill, and holy shit it's beautiful here. Aside from the immense slight discomfort of my pressure-sensitive ears trekking up and down roller coaster roads, weather conditions couldn't have been better. Clouds [below us, I must mention] were resting perfectly atop rolling hills. I rested less perfectly on rocks that I swear would be the last thing I stood on before dying, but that's just what it's like hiking around with me.

Mount Cargill

Mount Cargill [I turned around I guess]

Signal Hill

At night I ventured out to a Vietnamese place [new for me. apparently eating a vietnamese sandwich doesn't really count] and had delicious pho, which apparently is pronounced 'fuh.' Then, I had to see the source of all the ice cream I've been seeing and hearing about. It may be winter, and I may be lactose intolerant, but ice cream is always an option. This place, man, it was like the small was the most massive two scoops of ice-cream love I could've dreamed of. I tried hokey pokey, which is the goto kiwi flavor, but settled with chocolate chip cookie dough and chocolate mudd. My insides weren't too happy.

Friday night ended with a movie as well as a chocolate chip cookie cake, which disappeared almost as quickly as my furnace oven cooked it.

Saturday means Farmers Market. Farmers Market means I spend way too much money on way too delicious things. Purchased: Brie [from a kid who seemed to love cheese more than anything in the world. He told me all about the travesty it would be to serve brie straight out of the fridge, and by god, I will try my best to never], havarti cheese, Green Man brewery beers [the stout is like a loaf of bread], ciabatta loaf [bodes well in comparison to my flatmate's purchase of some baguette with a density similar to lead], lamb chops, lamb shanks [which came with a detailed spoken recipe from the nice meat man], 4 steaks, salmon, and pear-lemon jam. My 5 kilos of apples from last week are still going strong, so I didn't need to replace them.

Saturday afternoon was kind of lazy with errands and whatnot being run. The weather was crappy. To lighten the mood, lemon shortbread thumbprint cookies were made, with a chocolate filled thumbprint. My current cooking desire though is making challah. More to come on that I reckon, because there's no god damn challah anywhere, and ciabatta french toast is weird, especially without maple syrup. <rant> how the hell do they not have maple syrup here? I don't even eat it at home very much, but its absence is making me crave pancakes and french toast and all other things maple syrup requiring like crazy. </rant>

At night I learned a new drinking game having to do with dice, but Americans taught me it so I'm probably just slow in not having known it.

Today I went out to Tunnel beach, which was crazy gorgeous, even though the tide was coming in strong [my stupidity and fear of jumping a mere meter led to soaked pants]. I have now made it unfortunately clear to my flatmate that I'm not fun to hike with, and afraid to walk. whoop.

It's called tunnel beach because there's this creepy sweet tunnel you have to walk through to get to the beach. 

That's a seabanana. [sounds cuter in a kiwi accent]

Weird little plant thing that was squirted in my face by my wanker loving kiwi host.

I carried around a bunch of them in my pocket to get him back, but failed whilst trying.

Dinner tonight involved the aforementioned salmon, and I must say, the cooking skill set has not failed to increase. twas amazing. I must though now find something else that the citrus yogurt sauce I made can be consumed with. It was too good to part with.

I finally got tickets to the All Blacks game in September vs South Africa. Gonna be messy.

New Findings:

• They pronounce aluminum the way that my dad [who my family has all collectively made fun of him for] pronounces it. Al ooo min E um. [sorry dad]
• Traffic cones are thinner here.
• Nutella is just as good.
• but I reckon at least 4 times more addicting
• Seaweed looks weird and can be used as a whip.
• Our granola translates to their Muesli, which I can now pronounce.
• The concept of microwavable burritos is absurd.
• but meat pies are totally fair.
• Nigglie means annoying
• The spelling of Niggly isn't settled
• My second kiwi host is the mother-fucking man. 
• This was not my idea, and I can not hear him snoring from my room.