Guess I'll go eat worms and other antics

The past few days have been quite the experience here in Auckland. I don’t much remember doing anything particularly crazy on Friday night, and Liz doesn’t either so we’ll start with Saturday. In the morning time I got up early to go down to Queen St (a major avenue here in Auckland) to do a homework assignment for my geography class. I ran into a great street market on Queen and so procrastinated for a bit as I wondered through the tents. The hw mostly involved looking at buildings and determining the change that’s taken place on the street over the past century. It turned out to be interesting, especially after I ran into two other girls in my class. We were all about adventuring around the area and we ended up finding some cool things as we explored several of Queen Sts older buildings.

I left the girls and walked home to meet Liz by noon. The plan was to walk to Mt. Eden to get some field hockey stuff for my practice the following day. It’s about a 3km walk to the store, which turned out to be refreshingly nice (but uphill as always.) Something I may not have mentioned about Auckland is that no matter where you’re walking it will inevitably be up the biggest or longest hill you could imagine. Makes for nice leg muscles I’m hoping. After playing around in the store for a while, we walked back towards Unilodge. Liz branched off to Queen street to find a new pair of sunglasses since she’d lost her first pair.

Soon after this escapade, Charlie texted us about the Blues game at 5:30. For those of you who aren’t completely engrossed in the rugby scene, the Blues are Auckland’s home team. The plan was to go to their game, but this soon changed when Liz lost her credit card. Liz, Alex G, and I searched the apartment entirely (found her old sunglasses in the process,) checked to make sure no money was gone, and finally figured out that the card was at a store she had been to the previous day. So all ended well on that end. The three of us headed to a local pub on Queen to watch the game on a big screen since it was far too late to head to the stadium to join Charlie and Alex Falenczykowski (we address him by his full name because it’s amazing and sounds to me like Mike Wazowski from Monsters Inc.)

The Blues were winning the whole game but lost it at the very end. After the game we left that pub and headed up yet another gigantic hill to another Pub called Shakspeer’s. We had some really good wedges and were eventually joined by Charlie and Alex fresh from their own rugby practice and the game of course. We headed home around 9 so Liz and Charlie could get ready to go out for real. As per usual I didn’t.

Sunday turned out to be a laughably horrible day. The morning was bad for stupid reasons…and then I headed off for field hockey practice. The bus was supposed to leave around 11:15am, but didn’t come till about 10-15 minutes later. The 6$ nearly 45 minute bus ride made me motion sick and not all together too thrilled about playing field hockey. I traveled with this girl Jaime who happens to live in the same building complex I do. We had an hour before practice started so we watched the adorable coed kids tryouts. They were of course intimidating but adorable nonetheless. In the middle of the game though, these huge sprinklers, I mean the kind that could water a crop field, went off on the field. Evidently it’s common to send huge jets of water across the turf during play because the kids barely flinched. Later during our practice I got hit with one jet and was entirely soaked from head to toe. Not to mention that the water gathered in these gigantic puddles on the field. I don’t much understand it, but it felt pretty good under the 75 degree ozone hole sun. So the long in short of it was that field hockey practice was fun, but quite the new experience playing on turf. I’ll get used to it though, and it should be fun to play games.  Right now I'm remembering the soreness that accompanies the first field hockey practice of the season.  Mostly on the left as usual.  Dad says I can't come home if I get injured (again playing fh) so here's to hoping something happens so I can stay in this beautiful place : )

So for the sake of y’alls reading, I’ll just say that I got a ride home from another player, realized when I got home that I somehow left my stick back at the field, had to jump back on the bus (liz came with me) to go back to the park. We both got sick on this bus, my stick was just where I had left it, probably because there were so many people around and so it just blended right in. We laid on the unbelievably soft grass to get away from getting back on the horrific bus.  There was this great minty smell but we couldn’t figure out where it was coming from.  Probably because neither of could muster the enthusiasm to get up.  Either way, we did finally get back on the bus, rode back to the central business district (home), laid once again on the grass outside our apt building to calm our stomachs, and ended up on our faces in the living room. Good fun all around. Mostly I just felt like a complete idiot for leaving my stick there. I don’t usually make such idiotic moves but I was distracted after the stressful morning I suppose.  Funnily enough, I kept thinking on the way home that I had forgotten something, but kept running through all the little things and they were all there. Well now you all know my stupid move so that’s that.

Today, St. Paddy’s day was good fun. We went to street festival from about 3-8 and listened to some live music, danced a bunch, and got our faces painted by these fun girls at the table next to us.  As you may be able to see from the picture, she painted my eyebrows green. I felt like all my facial expressions needed to be exaggerated because my eyebrows were so over done. You can probably see this in some of the pictures.  None of the boys wore any green so she painted their faces in total.  That's Falenczykowski on the left and Charlie on the right. 

 

This is a short story of Charles Baldwin the first describing his face washing experience once we arrived home.  "I tried washing my face, but when I came out, I looked like the incredible Hulk...So then I used soap.  I'm smart like that."  He speaks the truth.  My eyebrows were died green for a bit even after intense scrubbing, but a shower did it for me.

So continuing on, we went to Burger Fuel on the way home for the most satisfying of meals. It’s too bad most of y'all will never get to experience this place because it has the best burgers. I’ve gotten the Combustion Vege twice now (it has no meat,) but I here from all the others that the meat burgers rock as well. They're about the size of my face and they can, if one can exercise some level of self control, be used for a meal and a snack.  The self control bit is key and very difficult.  Kyle would probably just think it was a snack.  They also have kumara fries (that’s a sweet potato here.) 

So that’s that, there are some other random photos that illustrate the good times of Auckland. This one is Liz and I eating a bowl of icing we made after discovering Leighanne hadn’t made it with the original batch of brownies it came with. Good good good, I can’t wait till we make the next box that’s currently taunting me on top of the microwave.  (no matter what this photo refuses to rotate so I give up)

This coming thursday Liz, Charlie, and I are heading to the South Island for our Easter vacation…yeah we get a five day weekend for Easter. Molly Ryan (for any Potomac folk reading this) will be joining us all the way from Perth, Australia, and Lyns, Jess, and Vikki should be in Queenstown Saturday evening as well.  It’s going to be fun and we’re going bungee jumping!!!

It's late now and I have class and a field trip bright and early so I'm off to sleep. I'll try uploading more pictures when I have more patience for the internet.  Hope this finds you well wherever you may be in the world.