Devonport, NZ style

Tuesday we took a ferry to Devonport, a small suburb of Auckland. We had sushi for lunch [finally. missing it too much] and walked up this 'hill that you should check out.' It was a treacherous 10 minute stroll to the top of it, to get a view of a small, not-too-exciting suburb. After we decided to get lost on the little island and ended up walking around the entirety of it, from one not too nice beach to another not too nice beach, until we were back home. Dinner was paprika with a little bit of cabbage, onion, and pasta [sorry jacob] and feeling feverish I went to bed early.

On Wednesday I woke up after 13 hours of sleep and we walked into an asian market to look at all the weird interesting things they had for sale. Then we wandered down the biggest highway I had seen in ages and hung around in a park and rose garden while absorbing the sun on this hot day. As expected, I got a bit of a sunburn, but it was all good.

On our way back home we stopped in indian spice city to pick up the necessary ingredients for our night's desire to make chicken tikka masala. Though we were both confused about what we were buying and couldn't tell the difference between any of the mysterious powders in large containers, the nice indian man working there merely had to smell the little baggies we presented him with to know what we were buying and ring us up. Dinner was a major success, even if I did cook the whole thing myself, and that made for chicken tikka masala 1 of 3 for the past two weeks.

At night we went up to another flat and drank there for a bit, turning 'The Biggest Loser' into a drinking game, by each guessing how much weight they would've lost at the weigh in, and drinking how every much off we were, or if correct, giving out 5 drinks. Moose Knuckle was returned to and that ended our nights.

On Thursday We went to the market on campus and then headed towards the bus that I'd be taking to Rotorua. On the way we stopped at Moustache, which is a cookie establishment that we had been hearing about and I got a nutella cookie which was awesome.. then off to Rotorua!

Toto, I have a feeling we're not in Dunedin anymore.

Auckland!

So, flight to Auckland was 'fun' as I lay my head against the vibrating oval window, video taping aimlessly shots of the country. Views were sweet, but once I landed in Auckland I missed the bus into city centre. All was well as my half hour wait was distracted with a weird beetroot, apple, carrot, ginger juice from some juice place.

Once I finally got to my destination of Jacob's flat, a chicken dinner with potatoes was waiting for me, and wine was sipped to prepare for a quiet Sunday night in the city. We went to a belgian bar where I finally had my good beer fix with a very overpriced delicious leffe blonde on tap.

Monday we walked to campus and I got toured around a bit. We wandered around thrift shops, but seeing as my bag was already too heavy on the way there, couldn't be bothered buying anything I particularly liked. My only money spent went towards the weird purchasing of a hot pink wig, a cigarette holder, dice earrings, and a mask [to be explained later].

We also went to the art museum which I thought was really quite awesome. I spent a long time in the learning center where you could play with optical and transparent items and sketch with stencils. I also spent a while in a mirror box room where the whole room was mirrors making it look like you were stacked on top of yourself forever. Dinner was venison sausages and spaghetti, coupled with speights as beverage. Another Liam in my life, my lovely neighbor, had been hitching up from Dunedin to the Bay of Islands and stopped in Auckland for that night to stay with us and shower off two days of hitching filth.

Night time was accompanied by drinking games in the flat like a new one Liam had introduced: moose knuckles.

Moose Knuckles:
Materials: Ice Cube Tray, Bowl, Coin, Alcohol, Friends to Consume Alcohol

Set-up: rest ice cube tray on bowl, like a ramp

Game Play: After filling a bit of their drink [varied] into the bowl, each person gets a chance to bounce the coin into the ice tray. If it lands on the right side, how ever many slots up is how ever many drinks they can give out to other people playing [could be all to one person, or divided]. If it lands on the left side, that's the amount of drinks they have to drink, and then it's the next person's turn. If it lands in the bowl, everyone must throw their thumbs to their temples, fingers pointing up, looking like a moose. The last person to put of their hands must consume the bowl, but it's a democracy.* If the coin does not get into the bowl, it's the next person's turn. If the coin lands in the bowl or on the right side, the player can continue to shoot.

* by saying it's a democracy, it means that even if someone is not the last person to put their moose up, if everyone thinks they ought to drink, everyone can vote for them to drink. This is a mob mentality situation where the last person can target another, or the whole group could target everyone, ensuring that the bowl is consumed by everyone.

a bit of catching up

So, I've been lazy and whatnot, but will try to catch up accordingly.

After a quite hungover wake up on Friday morning, following a night of jazz and company, there was nothing better than a bacon breakfast and tour of JMC [the high school that cmac, campbell, and liam all went to] with Campbell. The building was very nice and everything seemed extremely modern. Best part, epic bean bag chair stack in the library [would probably melt into that regularly]. The rest of my day was extremely lazy, largely dictated by my refusal to change out of pajamas. The projector was set up and the night ended with a cozy watching of "Half-Baked," which if you haven't seen, is hilarious.

Saturday's shining moment was the creation of meat pies [finally]. Liam and I made muffin-pan sized pies with mince, onions, and cheese and they were awesome. Such a surprisingly easy task. That night I went to a flat party and participated in vivid tattoos, leaving with a giraffe on forearm and seeing the evolution of an extremely detailed trampstamp.

Sunday meant a lazy morning followed by a frantic period of packing, and a flight to Auckland!

OH! i also no longer have a nose ring.

yea.

mew zeem

On Monday I finally made it down to the Otago Museum [which is impressively lazy since it's across the street from most of my classes, and cmac is always working there]. We were toured around, looking at all the weird shit oddities of the museum. With our friendly connection, Liam, Cmac and I went into the butterfly exhibit for free, as well as the discovery area [filled with fun games and stuff for kids, or people my age, but I'll describe].

Butterflies were cool but the extreme humidity of the room put a damper [ha] on my picture taking ability as well as comfort level. I'm also pretty terrified of butterflies which didn't help. There was a piranha. Cmac said it's not very cool and won't be very cool unless they starve it for weeks, which they won't let him do.

Discovery world was filled with things like an air gun that you shot at a ball to get it through hoops [ i swear it's impossible], a body bubble area [also, impossible], sound games, and the best, a brain activity race. So, you put this weird contraption on your head and sit across from someone with a small covered track running between the two of you. There's a little metal marble inside that apparently moves based on the brain activity of the participants. The less brain activity, the further it moves away from you, which is the goal, and the brain activity is shown on screens above the game. I played against Liam, who won with his flatlined activity against my hilariously spastic flutterings. There was a giant board with little nails in it that you could put your body against for an imprint. That was cool.

Walking through the rest of the museum was a bit weird though. There seemed to be a hilarious lack of order in things, and a weird array of time periods all featured in the same case. Not bad, but kind of strange as far as museums go.

In other news, class is done!

The Weekend Last

Ah, yet another shit-it's-thursday-i-should-blog-about-last-weekend-before-i-start-this-one kind of post.

So, last Thursday night I FINALLY mustered up the ability to hold in my alcohol and defeat laziness for long enough to make it to Robbie Burns for some jazz. Well, the part about laziness should be left out, because after being too consumed with facebook stalking to make the 830 and 930 sets, campbell calum and I decided to call a taxi to bring ourselves to the door of the pub for the final [1030] set. Instead of ringing a taxi though, somehow the phone led to calling Campbell's mum, who very sweetly drove us to the pub [shameful, yes]. The scene was on the emptier side, filled mostly with an older crowd enjoying the music of the reasonably old jazz band. Still, with snake bites [drink] filling us up, we all got our groove on.

The night then turned towards parting ways and separately going to just about every place where dancing could occur around the Octagon. Places were empty... literally, but that had no bearings on stopping us. Quite late, when our enjoyment at monkey bar was done, Campbell and I wanted to find a cab home. We quickly realised the empty streets would likely be of no help, and decided it would be wise to ask two random people who were entering their car right near by if they would drive us home. Not the smartest of moves, but hey, we made it home. cheers random people.

Friday evening [after eating an omelette [i've been trying to eat eggs finally.]] cmac cambell liam and I ventured off in the van to Lake Hawea to stay at Cmac's dad's place [described in an earlier post about skiing]. Friday night was just a game of relaxation as we got there quite late.

Saturday I was awoken to the stomping of barbarians campbell and cmac upstairs, acting as an alarm clock. The four of us ventured off to wanaka for groceries for the weekend, which was more than 70% beer]. Once we got home, eggs, bacon, and toast were made to accompany our early starting beer drinking efforts.  We had intended on playing golf, with a beer for each hole, but after surveying the price as well as the crowd, decided to venture off to the beach for our own fun, but not before playing a little archery in the backyard [again, not quite for me]. The beach we got to was one of many gray rocks, not of sand, which was pretty cool and less irritating [not a huge fan of the glitter-like quality of sand getting everywhere... and word on the street is that gray is my favourite colour.]

Most of the day was spent drinking beers, golfing [holy shit i'm bad] and playing with the kayak [and by playing, i mean pulling people down the rocks to launch them into the water]. Brief interactions were had with cute families and dogs, but for the most part, like all beaches here, it was pretty amazingly remote.

Bike rides were also had to and from the beach... like an overgrown gang of mountain biking kids. There was a park set up with ramps which, as expected, I didn't try, but it was fun to see them attempted. Also we went to a playground which seemed to house all the playground toys that would've been banned already in America...

• see-saws : haven't seen one of these in years
• weird group circle seesaw : we were all a bit too heavy, and it became a game of how fast will liam hit the ground
• circle to run on : okay, like, 5 inch wide hoop that was on an angle and spun when you ran on it... so easy to fall off, but don't worry! there's padding on the ground in the form of a thin rubber perforated rug.
• web of doom : okay, like, hexagonal frame that went up 5 meters, filled with a spider web of tightly bound ropes that you have to climb through to reach the top, where impending death is an option, especially if you're like cmac and want to be lowered through the center headfirst.

Also at the beach a flying-fox was attempted, which is like a zipline, but the tree to van connection wasn't tight enough, and it was largely a jump towards the ground.

The peak of the adventure though was in finding a weird triceratops skeleton toy and a toy of a little dog... which were later glued to the front of the van, as well as a bottle [like a unicorn] and a rock that campbell had been particularly fond of. 

A bottle was also glued to a tree. 

Dinner was nachos and later on we went back to that beach to build a fire and play with sparklers.. as well as long exposure times on cameras. Overall, successful day of kid-like activities.

Night closed with a much-needed bath.

Sunday was a day of slowly immersing ourselves into the cleaning mood, while continuing to feed our beer thirsts, and venturing back to Dunedin. We left Campbell in alex , so it only made sense for the three of us to all sit in the front row of the van. cute.

Fashion of Dunedin

I feel like I haven't gone through the fashion here quite enough, for someone who's counting down the days until they leave, thus, I bring you my Dunedin fashion report... through the eyes of an amurrican.

So, firstly, it'd be fair to start by recognising that the people here are not in quite the same time period as the people in the states, though it's not really one that I could put my finger on. Best guess? 90s.

It'd also be fair to note that I'm speaking from a winter into spring view point, which fails to include the sometimes necessary fall and summer clothing categories.

We'll take this on a gender split, looking at popular trends.

Ladies of Dunners

• Printed Pants: flowers are the common, but basically anything that's overly colorful, eye popping, or overtaking is seemingly appropriate as a bottom. I like it, don't get me wrong, but it's definitely new. It's often printed jeans, but also extends to printed leggings. Printed stockings are not particularly popular though.
• Jumpers over Collared Shirts: the shirt will be some nice, girly colour, made of some nice, girly fabric like a chiffon looking bit... it's also often a sleeveless/tanktop style of collared shirt. The jumper will be big, and the shoulders wide enough to see more than just the collar-- often big enough to see the lady'd shoulders, which are bare due to the cut of the aforementioned sleeveless collared shirt. Whilst discussing this trend with someone, we came to the conclusion that it gave off the air of, "I wanted to dress up, and I got close, but just couldn't quite do it."
• Ballerina Buns: proper. bun atop the head. Cute... haven't done this since I was a wee kidling, but I've been taking advantage of this comfortable hair positioning.
• Super High Ponytails: like, a 2 year old. same view as the previous. 
• Shorts/Skirts over Stockings: done particularly with a jumper overtop all of it... Generally I find the length of the bottoms to either be uncomfortably short, or awkwardly long. Every other person does it though.
• Short Skirts [sans stockings]: now that the sun is shining pretending to be present, pants are coming off and legs are being left for the world to oogle at. Lucky for dunners boys, the legs are aplenty because holyshit do people wear short skirts here.... like 7th-grader-prepubescent-and-4-feet-tall-so-it's-okay-that-my-skirt-is-too-short short.
• Booties with Heels: the heels that make you no taller, but make it sound like a teacher is coming down the hallway when you walk. Kinda cute... sorta works...
• Obviously dyed Blonde Hair: emphasis on the roots, super streaky, fades to blonde as you go down. I don't mind it... it's definitely a look, and a look that's more acceptable than the chick with horribly dyed red hair who's sitting next to me right now.
• Puffers: like, that black northface that everyone HAD to have in middle school. 

Duuuuuuuuudes

• Long Backed Tees: okay, so, imagine you have two teeshirts.... one is the right size, and one is 4 sizes too big... you take the front of the first one, and back of the second one, and sew them together so you now can fully cover your butt.... since I guess that's what you were going for?
• Trackies: maybe I'm just clouded by their frequent wearing in my flat, but they're like track pants... with stripes down the side... like you're going to put on a sweatband and run for a while while watching richard simmons do something vaguely interesting. Fucking comfortable though, so as a constant pj wearer, I have nothing to say.
• Skinny Jeans: the skinniest of skinny jeans. Did you want to see every fiber of his calf muscle? well you'll have to. that option wasn't given. These will generally be worn with the aforementioned tail teeshirts or an equally oversized jumper. it's like, 80s female sweater over leggings look.
• Wrong Coloured Pockets: take a teeshirt and sew on a pocket that's the wrong material, wrong color, wrong pattern, or wrong size, and you'll be doing it right. 
• Rolled up Pants Bottoms: perfect in preparation for the floods..... only bettered by shnazzy socks underneath. 
• Stubbies: these are really just rubgy shorts but people wear them around everywhere. They're like the shortest shorts [though likely rivaled by the shorts of Europeans]. Would be made of nylon or some other comfy gym-short like material. I can dig.
• Teeny Boxer Briefs: want tightie whities? maybe you can find them if you look hard enough. Want regular airy boxers? no shot. Everyone here has hotpants for underwear. again, few complaints.

As an overall, everyone likes striped clothing here.

Lastly, and this isn't much a fashion trend, but everyone skateboards around here... often on the tinniest, brightest coloured little skateboards I've ever seen. 

Dikshunerie uhpdayts

New words:

• shout - pay for
• rate - feel positively about, in the sense of "yeah, I'd rate that"

holla

can't make challah with an inadequate amount of yeast. lesson learned on monday when challah was requested again.... this time it was braided real nice, but the densest piece of [still yummy] bread was the product.

to nose ring or not to nose ring

So, whilst in town on Saturday, I finally did it... I finally took out my septum piercing for good.

Until sunday evening when I was prompted to see whether or not the hole had closed up... it hadn't... I still have a septum ring.




Sunday evening I went to see the film, "2 Little Boys," which was NZ made and filmed in the Catlins where I had been a few weekends ago. I enjoyed a lot of it, or at least a lot of bits of it, but overall I didn't feel like it resolved very well.

Red card

So, in Dunedin there's this little thing called a red card. If you live in a flat, you get one red card a year that you can use at your leisure. Using a red card means that all of your flatmates, regardless of situation, desire, or lack thereof, must dedicate some period of time to joining you in a task which you have planned and prepared for. Though alcohol is almost always a necessary item in doing a red card, the rules otherwise are reasonably open, with red cards ranging from 'field day' like activities, to lock-ins, scavenger hunts, finishing a goon in a lecture theatre, blindfolded cooking, or getting dropped off on the west coast, forced to hitch home.

On Saturday, after planning mine forever, it was finally time to pull the red card. Each participant was given a small red handmade card stock envelope with some instructions enclosed and a role assignment, as well as a script. 'twas to be a day at the theatre.

I had found a 5 person play online, called family 2.0 that was to be filmed, and then eventually edited down into a hopefully humorous film. I also acquired 3 boxes of wine, and 2 extras to help with filming.

To start the night off right, it was crucial to play appropriate, relevant, drinking games... Hence my move towards improv. First we started with charades-- a simple classic that no one could honestly be too afraid of. The rounds were structured with everyone writing down 5 recognizable people on little pieces of paper, and putting them in a bucket. Each person that had a minute to go through as many names as they could in the bucket and get the other players to guess. That number, subtracted from 10, was the amount of drinks every one had to take. Once all the names were done, from a round where you could use any form of speech to explain the person, we moved on to the second round, where you were only allowed one word. Finally, at the completion of all the names once again we went onto proper charades, where you had to imitate the person, and the drink amount went from 10 - to 7-. There was an abundance of britney spears', will smiths, michael jacksons and flatmates in the mix, which was both peculiar and hilarious.

Next we played "honey if you love me you'll smile" which really just entails you walking up to someone, saying that, and if they smile, they drink... if they can go without smiling, and return a 'honey, i love you but i just can't smile,' then the drink is yours to have.

After we played park bench where you had to convince someone to get off of the park bench. award for best attempt goes to cmac with, " *longing, smiling stare at seat*... ahh, that's where my father and I first made love..."

Then we did freeze scenes where two people would improv something [anything] and do so with massive gesticulations, and then be told to freeze at a point, wherein the person first in the scene would get 'tapped out' by a new person, replaced, and the new person would be forced to continue the improv with a completely different scene starting from the same physical position.

The final game of ridiculousness was that of speed fairy tales and emotional fairytales... We split into a team of 3 and a team of 4 to discuss the fairy tale we had to put on (hansel and gretal, and 3 little pigs). With the opposite team as our audience, we performed it in 60 seconds, then again in 30 seconds, and then in 10 seconds... Massive breadcrumb-shout fest mess. Then each team was given a genre from the other, and made to perform it again. 3 little pigs went porno, and hansel and gretal an opera. The only regret is the lack of recording it.

With everyone good and drunk we were able to move into the most important roder of business, the play. No one knew their lines, of course, and almost no one could be bothered putting in more effort than the minimal, and with two epic takes taken, we all had enough. The products are absolutely hilarious, and a video has been made since filming it to reap the benefits of our labour... and capitalise on the epic embarrassment factor.

The night led us to a party a few houses away, and then an eventual trip to the octagon for a dance release.

The only Jew in New Zealand

As I've undoubtedly mentioned before, I'm close to being the only Jew in Dunedin...aside from maybe other kids from upenn. I had been wanting to cook a Jewish dinner for my flatmates, and finally on Friday decided it was time.

After spending copious amounts of time googling Jewish recipes and learning about Jewish foods (not the most authentic of ordeals, considering I didn't quite know what I was doing either). I racked my brain for memories of holiday past, and craved challah, Mandel bread, and noodle kugel. As three unbelievably sweet items, I decided it would only be appropriate to find some new savoury dishes to add.

I started cooking at 2 pm, leaving challah to rise in the sun and scrambling around frantically looking at photos I had taken on my camera of recipes to deal with the lack of Internet at my flat.

At 6 pm, 4/5 of the flat mates were seated, as well asa 3 additional dinner guest friends. Served was challah (which had all the right flavours but seemed to sag a bit in its braiding, and kind of just looked bumpy), pesto parmasean pinwheels (didn't know that was a Jew thing, but they were awesome), latkes, caramelised onion with raisins and quinoa, noodle kugel, roasted chicken, and eventually Mandel bread for dessert. All was a success and though I had little knowledge to impart on my guests about the nature and reason for the foods I had prepared, and used about 16 eggs, everyone was happy.

Happy enough that yesterday, when offering to bake bread, challah was the request. Braiding went a lot better and it actually looked like what it's supposed to, but with very little yeast left in the flat, the consistency was compromised.

I have such a new founded respect for all the crazy wonderful people that make epic dinners possible and try to cook for heaps of people.

Friday night meant setting up the projector and watching men in black 3 in the lounge.