Orienteering, Airline Clearing, WOVEN Choir to Sing Endearing

Hey, everyone! Wow, it's my birth month! W00t! Now, on with the post.

Let's start out with an activity that I find surprisingly fun, that I've just tried twice over the past 2 weeks: Orienteering. Some may know it, some may not. For those who don't, orienteering is a sport where you get a map, and you have to copy down a route. Here in the Hamilton Orienteering club, they have 3 levels of routes: White (usually around 2k), Yellow (around 3k), and Orange (around 5k). Orienteering almost always involves navigating through wooded areas. The route you copy out contains "controls", or points where there's a small patterned hole-puncher. Apparently there's an electronic version now but I like the hole-punching better. Why, I don't know. Anyway, there are over 20 different controls, and they all have different numbers. The numbers match numbers on a card you're given that tells you something that the control is next to. You have to figure out where you're going, traverse by foot to the control, and punch a hole in a card that you're given. It's really fun to do because it's not only running, you actually have to do navigating too, and I think that's really fun. When I get back I want to find out more about the Western Pennsylvania Orienteering Club.

Airline Clearing. Yes, I'm getting on planes again...for the SOUTH ISLAND TRIP!!! I've gotten all the forms in, all the cash in, and now I'll be going to the south island for 11 days starting the 13 of April! But I'm not going to let you know what I'm doing yet...hehehe. Aren't I evil? I'll let you know when I get the uber-updated itinerary close to the departure date. But I do know that I'll be going to Mount Cook and Milford Sound, at least.

WOVEN is the only youth choir in Hamilton, and I'm a part of it! We've only had one practice, but it should be quite good. I heard them sing last December, and they were great. Too bad I won't be with them for the whole year, but at least I'm a member of a choir now!

Yeah, that's it for now. Have a happy St. Patrick's Day everyone! If you celebrate that that is of course. Bye!

A tad late, but hey, I can still write about it

What's "it" you ask? Well, the fact that I've passed my halfway point here. I didn't realize it until recently, but I have 5 months left here. It's quite strange how things like these go, because as I was going through it it seemed really long, but as I look back part of me thinks it went by really quickly as well. Then again, this seemed to have happened in many other situations of mine...Tongariro Crossing, Global Game Jam, the 2 vacations, the Rally New Zealand...All of them felt like they were really long-lasting as i went through them, but then right when they stopped, it felt unnaturally abrupt. It's so strange how these things all go through that same cycle. To me the strange part about it is that at usually the only things that take forever are the things you don't like, but I liked (understatement) all of those activities. Yes, even standing at a crosswalk for 18 hours at the rally. How is it that life seems to go by in such a manner? For all I know I could have an experience that no one else in the entire world could or would ever experience sometime, yet once it ended it would still seem like anyone else's moments. Everything would eventually get swallowed by the relentless advance of time, no matter the uniqueness, no matter how fun, no matter how long it lasted.

I can't think of a whole lot else to say on the subject right now, but I might as well write a small thing relating to my post, "The Night Before..." As I look back on my first half or so of my trip, was my not being knowledgeable about New Zealand as I came a good idea? I personally believe my choice was a good one. Why? Everything I saw I got to experience completely anew. In my first days, I saw a country that had an unmatched fondness and care for nature throughout the population. I saw a country that truly had 2 different sets of people that were treated as different sets, yet no one on either side had problems of racism, nor was there any negative separation. The Maori and Pakeha (used in the neutral sense) were treated as equals, and there were no apparent stereotypes directed toward either group, something that still plagues American people, consciously or not. I saw a country that had many different likings than my country's own, whether they were in work or play, in the house or out. These differences let me see my own country in a different light. Many things I thought were truly "American" were fully apparent over here, while many things I thought were common all around were nonexistent.

With these experiences at my back, and more experiences to come, I will see more new things, and as I first came prepared with an unprepared mind, I will head onward into these new things in the same manner. No premature expectations and no premature fears always leave an unblemished slate. That's a rule I intend to follow as I have in the past.

Neuron-style plan for the next month or so

Another quick update...

I've successfully switched into my newest family's house. This family is the Jackman family. They have a small 2 floor house as well as another AFS student! Ja, this is my first time having the same family as another student, although the student here has only been in NZ for a few weeks, and she is still practicing a bit of the more complicated aspects of English. Though it isn't uncommon to hear her conversing fervently with some of her Spanish-speaking friends here. Anyway, I'm settled in for as long as I'm going to be, which may be as little as 2 weeks. Yeah, I might be hopping around families quickly for a while, hence the title referencing the way neurons send messages. A.K.A. a lot of jumping around. But yeah, everything's going fine now, though I can't wait for March 5 since Athletics day with Fairfield was cancelled today, and March 5th is the postponement date. I really hope I don't hurt myself attempting the high jump...ugh

Speaking of school, FFC isn't really receiving any good media right now. There's a bunch of problems involving the principal and students randomly protesting for a reason they don't even know. Yes, they only were a part of it so they could 1:skip class, 2:yell at the front office for no reason, 3:get on TV. The "protest" started with about 16 students, moved up to around 200, as, and I quote the Waikato Times on this, "As students tried to get on TV". They don't care if their school is getting bad attention from all this, all they care about is getting on TV because apparently they'll be able to act famous or something. That's my opinion on their behavior anyway. Kinda reminds me of the song "King of New York" from some musical I can't remember... I'm doing fine though, I among other students just found the "protest" funny because of the complete lack of any idea about what the topic was. Ja, that's all there is from me, but as I'm watching the rugby right now, might as well just say this for the heck of it: Go Chiefs! (That's the Waikato Chiefs, the Waikato area's Super 14 rugby team, not the Kansas City Chiefs the American football team. No offense to those, but I still support the Steelers)

Yeah...um...bye...then...?

Families Fanning Fortune's Flames

This one'll be quick, don't worry.

Basically, in the past week, I had a hard time figuring out what was going to happen to me. However, last Sunday, when the AFS meeting happened, everything changed. The first thing on the agenda for the normal meeting was letting everyone know that I desperately needed a family, and voila! 2 families apparently have offered to host me, and a third has offered as well apparently! So my situation is going to be fine now. W00t! I'm currently at my support coordinator's house again after leaving the Cooks. I'm going to get those photos at some point, so you don't need to worry, I'll have 'em up sometime.

In other news, I'm now fully back into Fairfield. Not much in terms of interesting stuff to say, but PHD is fun. PHD is a phys-ed/health class. 2 out of the 4 days we have the class we spend time in the school's pool (which doesn't have a greasy film on the surface unlike some schools I know *cough* ALLDERDICE *cough*) practicing kayaking! We're practicing rolling the kayak for in 7 or 8 weeks we'll be kayaking down the Waikato River, and rolling will be an important skill. It's a nice diversion to the normal school day.

GGJ, FFC, AFS, OMG

Big post? I don't know, possibly. Anyway, let's get this started.

This post really only involves the first 3 acronyms, as the 4th is just there to show the WOW factor of them as well as to add a little rhyme when you say all of the acronyms together in that order, letter by letter.

Let's start out with the first acronym, GGJ. GGJ is Global Game Jam! GGJ is a really really fun program where people of high school to uni age are given various restraints as well as a theme, and have to design, program, test, and upload a game of their own creation. The students split themselves into groups, allowing many games to be made. This GGJ was the first to ever happen over the world, and it happened in 13 different time zones. Ours in Hamilton was the first one to start, and surprisingly there was also one in Pittsburgh! So if I was at home right now I could have attended it anyway. Fun, eh? Anyway, to a moderately sized narrative...

GGJ in Hamilton took place at the Waikato University. It started at 5 PM Friday, January 30, and ended Sunday February 1st at 5 PM. Yes, I spent 48 hours straight at Waikato University. At the beginning I just formed up a group with 4 others just by talking about various game ideas, and we got to work. My main job was graphic design, but as our game involved mainly stick figures and such, it wasn't too complicated. We were using Game Maker 7, and at first I was thinking "why are we using such a terrible program? I don't see how we could really make something good with something like this. I mean, this thing seems like something complete programming n00bs would use.". Of course in retrospect, there were 2 problems with that statement. 1, we WERE complete programming n00bs. 2, GM7 is actually not half bad at all for this kind of thing. To keep you from getting bored about the various programming things we did, I'll just tell you what the game we made was like. Well, I should actually start out with the constraints for the game we had to make.

1. The game had to use ONE of these words as a part of a way to describe it: Blank, Cold, or Modern.
2. An average play session should last no longer than 5 minutes.
3. It had to follow the theme, "As long as we have each other, we'll never run out of problems."

Our game was called "Blank Slate". It is a quick game where you have to try to kill your opponent while hopping around rapidly changing terrain. It looked like it was drawn on a piece of notebook paper, hence the name. The 2 characters were a red stick figure, and a blue stick figure, all designed by me. I designed every animation for the stick figures; standing, running, jumping, and the uber-awesome OBLITERATION sequence all done pixel by pixel using GM's Microsoft Paint-esque image editor. The terrain as well as the sun (which had a random "lion" face in it that for some reason always sent me into hysterics) was done by one of my partners. The game has you using various weapons, from anvil traps that fall from the ceiling to homing missles reminiscent of the Descent series for those of you that know it. My graphics partner and I made all of those too. The programming of character movement, gravity, etc. was done by the other 3 guys. I liked a bit of how the game turned out, but there were a few things I didn't like: 1, they insisted on using network multiplayer as the only way to play, and that bothered me as while online multiplayer is good, it can get a bit annoying after a while, especially if you can't manage to connect. 2, there were still bugs in it after we uploaded it that wouldn't go away. 3, some parts of the game kept requiring stopping and starting because of various messages...in the middle of online play. How did I deal with these gripes of mine? Simple...

I got a copy of the game a bit before they started on the online thing, and made a version of my own. Some parts of it aren't as graphically nice, but there are more weapons/traps/tools, it uses 2 people on one keyboard, and I've managed to remove a ton of the bugs, but I'm still working on it. I think if I had uploaded that version we probably wouldn't have gotten the 1 out of 5 rating we got on the site. Yeah, we got a 1. Even one of the games that didn't even work whatsoever and didn't have much of the programming done had a higher score than that. Sad, eh? No. I found it hilarious, and I'm quite glad that I made my own version. But the best part of GGJ was the fact that we spent a ton of time playing Left 4 Dead with other groups. Left 4 Dead is an awesome Valve game where you play in a group of 4 people fighting off endless hordes of zombies. While it may sound cliche, it's actually really well made, has awesome co-op, and the vs. mode has co-op on both sides, of the humans and zombies. The zombies get to have various "super" zombies that can attack from a distance and more easily incapacitate the humans. The game was REALLY REALLY fun to play with the other people, though some people had a bad habit of swearing loudly. We mainly did this from 1 AM to...say, 7 AM. Yes, we didn't sleep. Some people slept a bit, but others didn't. I was one of the ones that didn't, and I'm glad for that. GGJ was probably one of the best experiences I've ever had.

On to the next acronym! FFC, as some of you may remember, stands for Fairfield College, the school that I go to while I'm here. The day after GGJ ended I had my first day of school...or so I thought. I biked to school normally (from our awesome new house with 2 floors and a pool) humming that little ditty from Billy Madison that Adam Sandler's character sings while waiting for the bus on his first day. I got there, and I found out...the year 13s were going to do NOTHING! Well, basically we were given a crash course in Haka Powhiri, which we had to perform in front of the Year 9s as they entered the Marae, and then, we sat down for some time between an hour and a half to 2 hours, on the grass, in the hot sun, listening to 3 or 4 teachers converse in complete Maori. Apparently this was about them agreeing to take care of us or something...and I was quite frustrated, as well as sweaty. Maybe 10% of the students at most could understand what they were saying, while the other 90+% was just sitting angrily. To add insult to injury, the teachers all had their own little parasols to keep themselves safe from the great UV ball in the sky. The kids however, did NOT know this was going to happen until after they got there, and therefore had no time to prepare, or even to get sunscreen or anything. I smell an idea for a lawsuit...Luckily we got to leave after that.

Anyway, my first ACTUAL day was 2 days afterward, where I got to check out all of my classes. I'm taking the same classes as last year, except I'm taking year 13 spanish since they merged the 12 and 13 spanish classes as they were so tiny. I'm a bit worried about whether I'll have to buy anything new, because I don't know whether I'm going to be there for very long or not. Why, you ask? The reason is...

...The third acronym. AFS. American Field Service, my exchange program. Only thing is, my exchange program can't find another family for me in the Waikato South branch area. As of today I have to leave the Cook family in 7 days, and no family has been found. NONE! There was some talk of doing national advertising, however I don't know if they have started that yet. Yeah, I might be switching cities, perhaps even islands. I don't know, and for once I actually do care. I'm not sure what will happen if I leave the Cooks with no destination family, and I don't know what'll happen with school if I don't know if I'm staying there or not. Yeah, I'm starting to get a bit bothered about this. So many things are stuck in limbo right now, and I don't know what's going to happen about them. I don't know if my exam results will transfer to the Pittsburgh Public Schools or not, and if they do, I don't know if my GPA will die on me or not. I don't know if I will have a family in 7 days, and I don't know if I'll have to get on a flight to somewhere else in NZ soon. I don't even know when our internet company will even bother to fix our broadband after screwing up so badly because they got the wrong phone number because of THEIR OWN PEOPLE. Yeah, I'm running into problems...again. I don't even know if a family will EVER be found, since AFS is kinda unpopular during our economic situation because of the fact that they don't financially compensate families. Meh, whatever happens happens, but I just hope something happens at all.

Taupo, Tennis, Tongariro, Tasty Trails, and Tenacious Tramps

So I've come back from a second vacation! Yes, you heard me. SECOND vacation. But this one had a lot of things that had NOTHING to do with camping. A.K.A. we were in an actual house! Hooray! Anyway, here I go.



This was a vacation that we didn't have a house for until about 4 days beforehand. We went to an area at Lake Taupo called Kuratau. We rented a bach of sorts, except it had more than 2 rooms, unlike other baches. For those of you that don't know, a bach (pronounced "batch") is a small little holiday home with basic anemnities. This one was quite good though. It had a garage, TV with Freeview (slight cable, not many channels but more than at home), fridge, stove, and 3 bedrooms. I was in the third one, which was actually a little room off of the garage, and it even had its own ensuite shower, toilet and sink! Nifty, eh?

Our vacation in Taupo lasted 5 days. So what interesting things did I do during those 5 days? Well on the night we arrived, Asher, Jonty and I checked out the tennis courts in the area. There was one by the lake, and 2 in an open field area with a great view of some mountains. But more on tennis later, as we didn't do much that day. Though I actually did test out a new racket that we had bought so we could have more than 1 full-sized tennis racket. I did terribly as usual, but a little better than with the junior-sized ones.

Aaaannyway, on the first full day, we went to Turangi, a small town close to Kuratau. I was going insane over wanting to get 20$ sent to the leader of the Global Game Jam, which I'm going to tomorrow (48 hours straight in Waikato University! W00t!), but after I got that sent I calmed down a bit. We went to the information centre, where we found out about a small trail on the Tongariro River. We drove there, and I was interested in the rapids that apparently weren't too bad for swimming on as long as you got back to the shore. Though all those thoughts flew out the window when I stepped one foot into the water. Z0mg!!! GAH! That water was REALLY REALLY UBER COLD! It was so cold, that when we were walking across a shallow area to a small island in the center of the river (the river wasn't very wide), my feet and legs were numb and hurting from the cold. To add insult to injury, I kept smashing my toes into rocks in the ground, and I lost my balance quite a few times, barely keeping myself from falling in. It's a good thing we didn't go on those rapids, since when we got to that island, we saw the speed of them. They were pretty fast, and if we swam in them, we would probably have been swept away quite quickly. Though I still don't think that was the area the guide was talking about.

We then went on a 40 minute walk along the river, going over a bridge, up some cliffs, and finally going back to State Highway 1 (the highway that goes all the way from the top of the north island to the bottom of the south, it doesn't seem to be very busy for a highway, even though it goes through residential areas) where our car was. The cliffs offered a nice view, but it was starting to rain, and we were eager to get back.

Second day: Sun and laziness. We didn't go anywhere. All I did was play tennis and write in 3 notebooks of mine. Though I played a LOT of tennis. I practiced for a lot of the day, serving, trying to get good topspin power shots (that worked perfectly in practice but in games I completely messed up), trying to get a slice that didn't lob...I spent most of the day at the tennis courts. It was actually very fun to do that though. A good day, in my opinion.

Third day:BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! Alarm: 5:00 A.M. I get up, silencing my alarm within the first second of it ringing. In a very quick and quiet fashion, I got some clothes on, creeped through the really cold garage, into the hallway and into the lounge, where I turned on the T.V. Why? The Obama Inaguration of course! I watched quite a bit of it, from the first speaking to the people by that woman from Congress (can't remember her name) to Obama walking back into the Capitol. It was a great thing to watch, and I'm glad I had gotten up so early to see it. I went back to bed to warm up a bit since I was quite cold, and ended up falling asleep, quite by accident in fact Then the rest of the day came...

We went to the Waihaha river area. Another not very wide river, there were also some small rapids. However, there also were nice amounts of rocks to jump around to and fro, and I spent about 15 minutes exploring the area. After that I saw that everyone else was urging Chrissy to go on one of the boogie boards that we had down some of the rapids. I was still pretty far away so I didn't see it happen, but she did it. She then said "I'm the only one who had the courage to go on those rapids!" or something to that effect. It didn't look like something that was that hard to do, and everyone else was starting to do it as well, so I gave it a shot. When I went down the rapids, I managed to stay on the board for most of the time (which was better than Jonty's attempt, he fell off quite quickly, but was perfectly ok anyway), but then slipped off as I tried to get a rock to grab on to. I couldn't keep my hold on many of them as they were all quite slippery, but after going a moderate distance I managed to get a firm hold, and climb up. Apparently I went farther than anyone else. We got back to the van, and went to the other side of the river where there was a trail. We walked the trail and saw some good views of a large gorge. We were able to go down to the gorge's bottom where the river was, and Jonty and Bella jumped in the water a few times. Now, one thing is really different about these rivers from the Pittsburgh ones: These rivers are NEARLY COMPLETELY CLEAR! Seriously, they were extremely easy to see through. So when Jonty and Bella jumped in, it was quite cool to see their bodies just suspended in the water before they surfaced. On our way back, we ran into 2 North Island Robins, which apparently were an endangered species.

We came back, and Asher and I played some tennis. We came back and found everyone rushing around packing. Why? Well there's something I didn't tell you (muahahaha!). We were planning to do the Tongariro Crossing the next day (as you may have guessed from the alliterative title), and we needed to get as prepared as we could. So we did.

Fourth day: BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! Alarm: 6:00 A.M. This time it was for Tongariro. Everyone quietly had some breakfast, got all their stuff together, and we went out in our van to a campsite. Why? A guy was there who was going to drive our van to the Mangatepopo start area for the Tongariro Alpine Crossing. Van ride to the start...It's still a bit cold. I'm wearing shorts and a short sleeved shirt, remembering a key lesson from my first time: "Start out with light clothing, you'll heat up as you walk. If you start out hot, you'll tire out really easily." And so we went. Going through the lower areas to Soda Springs was a breeze (almost literally, it was cool as a breeze but no breezes were blowing). Then was the climb to the South Crater, one of the hardest parts of the Crossing. Tiring, constant uphill for 40 minutes, but when we got to the top, it was great since the view was so good. I've spoken about the Crossing in my post "A Mountainous Task", so I won't go into as much detail. We went into the south crater, and headed up the way to the high point at Red Crater, taking many a break for chocolate chip muffins, cashews, peanuts, and bits of my very own 250g Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate block. I pointed out my favorite spot, the little area at the top that was perfect for eating as it was ALWAYS warm from the thermal gases. We climbed down the scree slope, me having a lot of fun with it but getting pain in my feet from the scree entering my shoes. We got to the bottom of that slope, had a big shoe-emptying fest, and went past the Emerald Lakes to Blue Lake. From Blue Lake was a long, long, LONG downhill that had good views but a lot of foot pain, all the way to the Ketetahi hut, and later the Ketetahi carpark, where I had a well-deserved rest after 7 hours of walking. With a bit of timing issues, we got back to our bach, where we immediately started to pack. Again.

Day 5: The final day at Taupo. We had finished our packing, and were cleaning up the place, when suddenly, NOTHING HAPPENED! Sorry, had to do that. Anyway, we cleaned, said goodbye to that bach, and drove 4 hours to Hawke's Bay. On the way there, we stopped at a small park area, where I noticed a man tending to a horse. I walked over, and got to have a nice talk about horses and how having a horse was so much nicer than having a motor vehicle. It was a nice chat, and I got to pet the horse Nanu a bit. That felt quite nice. We continued driving until we got to our new area, which was a full house! Yep, the last 2 days of our vacation were going to be spent at a nice house with some extravagant things like a large plasma-screen TV! So what did we do? We went to Domino's. We got 3 pizzas for 20$, thanks to a promotion they were having, and later just did nothing interesting until we all went to sleep.

Day 6: We had heard about Food Trails on our way here, and we decided to check out one of the farmer's markets that the Cooks had been to before. We went onto a food trail where we got to see a ton of vineyards, but the main attraction was the farmer's market. Everyone there had various different things, from jams to breads, gelato to knives and cutting boards. And walking all around it was a dog who walked up to ANYONE who had food, begging. I bought myself a croissant (baked at 2 A.M. that morning along with the other hundred or so bread items), which was awesome, and got some gelato. There was also a small wine cellar nearby which we checked out, and it was moderately interesting, but not as good as the market. However, I noticed a dog tied to one of the grapevines, who looked rather neglected by the people passing by. I felt sorry for it, and went up and stroked it for about 10 minutes. Man, that dog was happy to have some attention. After I felt it looked like it was cheered up a lot, we left for a moderate-height peak area where there was a trig station. A trig station...um...It's really hard to describe. It just showed a map of the surrounding area, even as far as Mt. Ruapehu, Tongariro, and Ngaruhoe, as well as a mountain that has the longest name I have ever seen, and I believe it is the longest one-word name in the world. We had some nice views of the many vineyards, and I looked down a cliff that really creeped me out.

As our last destination for the day, we went to a place called Ocean Beach. Yes, as you probably guessed, it was a beach at the Pacific Ocean. Nice name, huh? We stayed there for a while, eating the Mediterranean flatbread with cheese, rosemary and rock salt that David and Chrissy had bought, as well as talking to various people. With that, we headed home, had some dinner, and packed up. Again. Again.

Day 7: Driving home. It was a moderately long drive, but it was probably made much longer by the fact that we made like 4 different stops. 3 of them were in Taupo, and we ended up just about doubling our time on the road. However, one part of it I found quite interesting, and that was Huka Falls. We stopped there before getting some dinner, and I saw this pretty small but really fast and REALLY blue waterfall formed by the Waikato River combined with some erode-resistant rocks. It looked really good, and I really liked the color especially. After more driving (with more stops) we finally arrived home, me with an agonizing 5 days before Global Game Jam, and now my anticipation is nearly over.

Such ends this blog post. I've got to help move around a lot of stuff tomorrow, but I know I'll be just counting the minutes until I can get to Waikato University. After Game Jam I get straight back into school, and that'll be good as well. As for my family situation, I'm going to stay with the Cooks for two more weeks, and hopefully in that time a family will be found. I'm not worried. She'll be right in the end.

Coromandel Camping...uh...camp

Yeah, I've been in the Coromandel Peninsula area for 9 days or so recently, camping with some of my family's friends at Fletcher Bay, and later at Waikawau Bay. It was quite an interesting trip, with 3-hour walks, rock-hopping, wave bodysurfing, and a whole lot of bug bites. It started out with a 4-hour drive through Thames, Coromandel (the town), as well as driving over many a precarious edge road. I brought 9 books with me to read over the trip, and I went through 8 of them by the time the trip ended. But anyway...

I might as well tell you about Christmas first. When I woke up on Christmas morning, nothing was really different at first. The other kids were awake, and we were all impatient to open our gifts. Jonty was quoting lines from Kung POW! Enter the Fist, as usual, Bella was singing a High School Musical 3 song, and Asher was talking about the birds and other natural features we would find in the Coromandel area. When Chrissy and David got up, we began opening the presents each of us got. From my host family I got a Chocolate Orange (Terry's, just like at home! W00t! My Chocolate Orange Christmas Spree continues!), a nice 250g bar of Black Forest Cadbury Dairy Milk Chocolate (chocolate biscuit[cookie] pieces, and chewy cherry jelly-ish things, not sure how to describe them), and a black shirt that showed a globe with nothing on it except a ridiculously oversized New Zealand. From everyone back home I got a nice chunk of cash, which the day after I spent on getting some summer clothes. I then after the camping trip got some sandals (W00t for breaking the NZ fashion frenzy of jandals[flip-flops] for the sake of comfort and running ability! =D). But anyway, we then went to my host family's (grand)mother's rest home (or whatever the PC way to say it is, I'm not completely sure), and attended a short Christmas service. I also got a box of Favourites (a collection of Cadbury mini-bars) from Rona (the name of the Cook's [grand]mother) as well as a $30 Whitcoull's gift card (Whitcoull's is just like Barnes and Noble, a bookstore with various notebooks and games as well).

Later, we went to the house of our friends Susan and Tony (the people we were going camping with) and had a GIANT lunch, because apparently that's the traditional Kiwi thing to do on Christmas. I also condemned the unicycle for being so ridiculously hard to keep your balance on, played some petanque (in which I epically failed. Petanque for people who don't know what it is, is a sport kinda like bocce, but you use metal balls on a special court, and you have to throw them in a distinctive manner that will take too long to explain), and later barely won at croquet. But we weren't done yet! We then went to Chrissy's cousin Jenny's (or Jenni, I never saw the spelling) house. After I watched a bit of Home Alone 2, I noticed 2 guys outside on the porch, who were named Ed and Paul. They were shooting an air rifle at something I couldn't see. I went out after a bit of internal controversy over what to do, and found that they were taking turns firing at 3 beer/mineral water bottles on a fence. I noticed they had another rifle, and asked if I could also give it a shot. They were perfectly fine with it, and we made a nice cultural mix of things. An American student and 2 British guys were sitting in New Zealand firing Spanish air rifles with Australian pellets at German beer bottles emptied of contents brewed in Mexico. I ended up scoring 7 hits out of the...I don't know, a moderately large amount of shots fired. The 7th shot actually knocked one over and shattered it. Nifty, eh? Anyway, that's how Christmas went for me.

The day after was a big packing day, as well as a shopping day for me (and you all know how much I love shopping!!! That's right, I don't). I got some shirts, shorts, socks, 2 scoops of green tea ice cream, and a book called Dewey (a great book about a library cat in Spencer, Iowa. It's really awesome and if you've read Marley and Me, you will probably like Dewey too. Man, I sound like a bad book critic). But other than that, not much happened.

This trip was a big vacation that was being planned for a while, and it started 2 days after Christmas. We planned to stay with 2 of my host parents' friends for about two-thirds of the trip. After the somewhat grueling 4 hour drive (with the last hour being over complete gravel roads on the edge of mountains, combined with having to edge past drivers going in the other direction), we finally arrived at Fletcher Bay. Asher and I set up our tent, a canvas pentagonal thing that is hot in the day and cool in the evening. I then started an 3X7R3M3 R34D1N6 FR3N2Y!!! (For those of you that have a hard time reading 13375p33k, it says EXTREME READING FRENZY)

..So that's how the first day ended. I read a lot of one of my books, ate dinner, tried to get some people together to play Hearts, failed, and went to sleep after a while. On the first real day, we walked a 3-hour walk to a nearby bay called Stony Bay. There was a stream there which we swam in...until we found there were eels in there. Ugh... On the way back, Jonty finally actually managed to clearly explain to me the rules of test (5 day), one day international, and 20-20 cricket. Next day, Asher's birthday. And to go with it, we had perfect weather!!!...for plants. It was rainy, and occasionally gusty, probably one big gust every 2 minutes. The rain persisted throughout the entire day, while we were eating molasses cookies that I made beforehand (about 90 of 'em), lemon cake, and pavlova.

The next day, we actually did have good weather. We went to some other bay that I can't remember the name of. But, we did take a shorter walk, while I got to listen to Bella and Jonty keep asking if they could open the bag of Rashuns (since you guys don't have that back home, they're cheese-and-bacon snacks kinda like puffed Cheetos). We saw a smaller beach area, where there was a random pole there, probably from some old rail thing that involved a winch that was found farther up the hill. We went up a hill (or large hill, whatever you wish to call it, or even a small hill if you're in a big mountainous area) and saw a nice view of the ocean. However, Asher and I saw that we could go farther by going down and up a slightly steep area with a large slanted drop to either side (it was nice and wide, don't worry). So, Asher and I went to that while Jonty went down one of the steep sides using the bajilliion flax plants as handholds. Later, I climbed down that steep slope using a different method, mainly just not slipping on gravel and making sure I was standing on nice grassy tufts that worked well as footholds. Yeah, we saw a rocky beach, ate some chocolate, ate some Rashuns, ate some apples, and headed back. HOWEVER!!! I went back a different method than everyone else. I climbed back up that hill, while everyone else jumped across rocks to get back to where we were. I got back about a half-hour before everyone else. So I got to wait! Fun, eh?

Yeah, on New Year's Eve, Asher, Jonty and I decided we would climb across rocks to another beach that we passed by on our very first walk. So we headed out. We climbed a bit, and after a while I found myself going a slightly different route...mainly edging across a 4-5m gap over the water on a small ledge of rocks with grassy ground right below it. Just my luck, the rocks crumble, and I slip. I attempted to brace myself with anything at hand, and I caused a small rockfall before I managed to stop. Unlucky for me, a rather large rock fell right on my hand. It didn't hurt for some reason, though it seemed the rock punctured my hand somewhat deeply. I saw that it went straight through my skin and hit something hard, possibly bone. I think that because when I looked in the puncture, I could see my vein perfectly. Yet, it wasn't bleeding, so luckily it didn't hit it. I showed it to Asher and Jonty, and they didn't think much of it since they have had much more serious wounds before. I was a bit nervous however, since I don't experience things like that often, and I was a bit worried. The puncture wasn't very wide, maybe a centimeter at the widest point (and much thinner at other areas), but I had never had a puncture so deep I saw my own vein. Anyway, we finished the rock climbing, got to the beach where I ate some Crispy Noodles (an awesome snack that they really should have in America), and we walked back to our camp.

In the evening, I played some cricket with other kids around the campground, and later, closer to the evening I heard a surprisingly quiet amount of noise. That's not to say it was silent, not even close, but it wasn't nearly as loud as say, Pittsburgh on First Night. Though, since First Night has much, much more people, that's understandable. Everyone except David, Jonty and me just went to sleep early, but we stayed up until midnight, and at midnight, nothing really new happened. A firework or two went off, but that's about it. With that, we went to sleep.

New Year's Day, we pack up to head somewhere else. We say bye to Susan and Tony who are going home, and after driving through Colville (where I got a nice pack of gum, something I always do since I'm sort of a chewing gum addict. Don't worry, the gum I get is sugarfree), we arrive at Waikawau Bay. Stuff happens, I swim in the bay a bit (probably the best of the bays since it has good waves to bodysurf on), we walk up a hill again, and we sleep. Next day, walk, swim, rockhop, lather, rinse, repeat, etc., whatever other "repeat the previous day" statements you can think of, except this time we walked to Little bay, where we did just about the usual things. Day after, drive to some other bay that I also can't remember the name of, perform usual activities. That night, walk a bit in an area that is a Kiwi zone, don't hear anything, head back, play cards, sleep.

Final day. Pack up, and begin driving...to CATHEDRAL COVE!!! Now what's that you may ask? Well, if you've seen Prince Caspian (which I haven't, I haven't even read the book), than one scene or something takes place there. Yeah. We walked to Stingray bay, where everyone saw a bunch of fish, a jellyfish or two, and of course, stingrays. But when we got to Cathedral Cove, I swam out to a rock with Asher, and we saw a GIANT jellyfish. It turns out that the jellyfish we saw were the biggest species ever or something close to that. And man, it was pretty creepy since there were like 7 differently sized jellyfish all around those rocks. But yeah, after we got back, we headed home. When we got home, I went to check my e-mails and such, and voila! I couldn't. Someone had gotten a virus onto the computer, though we don't know who. There were some people taking care of the cats, and it was probably accidental. Though, I am still writing this from a neighbor's computer, since we still haven't gotten ours back yet, a week after we sent it to a tech place. I think I might have been able to take care of it, but I wasn't really sure. It's a good thing I didn't, because it turns out there were more viruses on it than food items named after sports players/teams. In other words, a lot of viruses.

Yeah, that's my post for this while, and now I'm back into filler episodes. I'm most likely going to be switching families somewhat soon, since the Cooks have found a house, and it'll be hard for me to go about my usual school stuff while in the process of moving. Or something like that anyway. But I'm not worried. Anyway, thanks for reading!