A Good Time

So I suppose that I have a hefty chuck to fill you all in on so I apologize, but this will probably be a rather longer one.

I believe I left you last on Wed. afternoon right before I left for drinks as I usually do on Wed. nights. Wed. evening was fun, and really good news.... All the hot german nanny's are back in town now which is pretty sweet as (as they say here). Apparently shortly before I arrived here a large group of german au pair's returned home, but now it would appear that Auckland has stocked up again on a fresh batch of nannys. There were about 4 or 5 of them on Wed. night, which was pretty cool. So that was my wed. evening.

Then on Thursday my schedule was slightly different. Because I had watched Yannik on Wed. afternoon, I only had to watch him on Thursday in the afternoon rather than all night. This was good for me as the American friend of mine which I mentioned earlier was in town and we were able to meet up. It was a lovely evening Melissa (my friend) and her husband were here in Auckland for a week while the moved from Sydney back to the US. They were staying at friends of theirs, who were nice enough to have me over for dinner. They were also kind enough to make me meatloaf which was awesome. Melissa and her husband are vegans, but she reads my blog and knows my love of meat and my current vegetarian situation, so they made meatloaf for me which was really nice of them. At any rate, they lived in Parnell which I had never been too. It is a really cool part of town with a great nightlife, and just restaurant after bar after restaurant. After dinner we ended up going out to a chocolate shop which was AWESOME! I got an Italian Denso, which apparently turned out to be literally a large cup of thick liquid chocolate. As stated above: AWESOME! Needless to say it was a great night. We spent the rest of it talking and watching the Ian McKellan video from Extras on youtube. I would recommend it to those who haven't seen it yet.

I came home later that night, and was rather tired on Friday morning. So after a nap in the morning, and some german lessons. I cleaned the house and packed for my weekend trip which was to be down the Mt. Reapehu to race in the Club Champs. Christoph came home early which was nice of him so I could make down to city central. The club was providing two vans for rides down to the mountain (which is about 5 hours away). There was about 14 of us in the two vans. 5 hours may seem like a long trip, but the good news is that in NZ there is no such thing as open container laws. (Which is really hard for me to wrap my mind around, but its true.) So we were able to have a couple brews on the way down to the mountain. It was really funny for me, at one point (as it was a friday night) we were stopped by a DUI check point. (Interesting fact: Over here it is known as drink driving rather than drunk driving) Anyways, I was in the front seat and had a beer in hand while the driver was given a breathalyzer. It was a pretty bizarre feeling, the police didn't even look twice at me. So we made it down to the mountain that night in good time, and in good spirits.

The next morning unfortunately I woke up to rain on the window. So I decided not to go boarding that day. It just wasn't worth the money, and there was plenty to do back at the lodge (aka some serious ping pong tournaments (of which might I say I won with a 3 to 2 game win in the finale)) So it was a great day even though we stayed indoors. I would say that there was a good 25 or so people at the lodge.

On Sunday I (amazingly) woke up at about 7:15 to a beautiful clear day. The mountain looked picturesque so I ate and got ready and was out by 8:05. I was able to lay a couple runs down on fresh corduroy which was sweet. Then I met up with a bunch of the club and we rode together on the far west territory (like anybody but me knows what that means but oh well). Around mid day they set up a race course for us and we competed. It was pretty cool to say I have now raced in NZ. It was also pretty amusing to see how they do things. It was a really informal race. They used a stopwatch, and instead of numbers they just had a walkie talkie, and would say Wes is in the gate now, UUUUuuuuuuuP! and when your foot crossed the plane of the starting gate is when they would say the P in "up" and the dude at the bottom would start a stopwatch and stop it when it looked like you crossed the finish line. Also there was no order it was just like everyone went wherever in line they happened to be standing. But it was pretty sweet none the less. I messed up my first run and ended up taking the last three gates switch, but I still managed to come in 2nd so I was happy. After the race I took off and hiked a massive bowl I had been staring at all day. It was a sweet run and maybe a half hour hike. After this I headed out West again and met up with some other people who were thinking about hiking the crater. "Hiking the crater" as its called means a hike to the very top of the Volcano where there is a large crater lake. The hike ranges from anywhere between 45min to 1hour and a half depending on how energetic and fit the people doing it are. Its a pretty nasty hike, and all of it is atleast a little uphill, and most is alot uphill. So I tagged along with them which my legs instantly screamed at me for after their previous hike. However we made it to the top in about 50 minutes, up a beautiful hike if you could catch your breath long enough to appreciate it. Once we reached the top we were all extremely glad we had done the hike. It was pretty amazing. (I keep using the words like spectacular and breathtaking or amazing perhaps, but really its like you need a different set of quantative words to describe things here they are so far above and beyond many of the sites I've ever seen.) Regardless it was a breathtaking/spectacular/(take your pick of words) view, and the crater lake was awesome to see. Although it smelled somethin' fierce. There are stories of people that used to hike up in the early like 30's and 40's and they would go swimming in the lake, and by the time they made it back down the mountain their bathing suits had practically disintegrated because they were pretty much swimming is sulfuric acid. Well after spending some time at the highest point on the northern island, I was able to snowboard the entire length of the volcano which was pretty sweet. Not to mention we had started hiking at around 3:30 so when I came down it was roughly 5 and so everything was shut down and no one was on the slopes. At one point I came over a ridge and quickly stopped as I realized I was about 3 feet from a 40 foot cliff, I slowly backed up and unstrapped and then walked around. The top part of the ride was pretty icy to be honest but then it was sweet bowl after sweet bowl so I can't complain. We left that evening at around 6:40 and I got home to Onehunga at about 1:30.

So on Monday I was pretty tired (not to mention my legs were screaming at me with every move I made) so Monday was a pretty lazy day. Christoph had made pizza on Sunday night and there was leftover dough and cheese so I invented my own cheese rolls (with onions and garlic of course). They were tasty, but I will perfect the recipe soon. That evening I had improv class which is nice cause we are starting to do some real scene work finally which is good. After that it was one the hot german au pair's birthday's so I met up with Chris and Mark(a native Kiwi that I know from Wed. nights) and two of the au pairs. We had a drink or two and then I headed home. Late last night I was able to catch part of the Emmy's and a bit of ABC World News Tonight (which plays at about 11:35 at night here). It was my first real taste of home since I've been here. I had a little pang of home. I couldn't really help it though since the first piece on the news was on Obama's overexposure, and so of course who do they interview: Larry Sabato (professor of politics at the University of Virgina). So I really had a reminder of home.

Well now its Tuesday, and I must go do laundry. Hope you guys are doing well back home. Till next time.