The Month gone Missing

Happy Holiday's everyone!!! My Christmas present to you all is a large blog update. As I start all of these posts, I again apologize for not updating often enough. This is a new record I will say of about 4 weeks though. I will do a quick overview of everything so I don't bore you all with the boring old details.

In general about the past four weeks I should say that it has been lovely weather. It is about 75 degrees every day, bright, beautiful, sunny, and perfect weather. I have been filling my time with hikes, trips to the beach, and just laying lazily in the sun. Let me tell you guys. My life here is really difficult. Haha.

Well, to go back to 4 weeks ago. The weekend after I left you I took my friday night nice and easy staying in that night. However I did get a text from the Chris that I had met a couple weeks back on Queens st. Well he told me that on Saturday was a the concert called Farmaggedon that he and I had talked about last we were together. He told me that he had an extra ticket if I cared for it.I told him I would love to go and would meet him at his house around noon. Well I should probably through a disclaimer out right now and say that I knew Chris was well how should I put it, a little sketchy in his own way. So I thought if anything tomorrow will certainly be an experience. Now I should also give you guys a bit of background on NZ lingo. Here in NZ there is a term "bogan" which is used to describe a certain type of person. A bogan is what you might call like a mix of a metalhead mixed with a redneck I suppose. Commonly known for their long hair, Metallica T-shirts, and large quantities of tattoo's covering them. Well now that you understand the term bogan, back to my story. On Saturday, I arrived at Chris's place around noon, taking the place in at a glance. I knew for sure after that that the next 24 hours would be both exciting, sketchy, and to say the least interesting all rolled up into one. The door to the house was partially blocked by the overflowing recycling bin that was piled to about 2/3 my height with beer and wine bottles. Walking through the yard to the house I found my foot squishing on something. I looked down to find I had stepped on a several day old decaying body of a rat. Well, I thought, Onwards and Upwards. With that I entered the house and found it much to what I would expect. A extremely messy house full of young guys all in varying levels of snobbishness on a variety of couches all watching discovery channel on a large screen plasma tv with all the gaming consoles you could imagine beneath it. It was somewhat obvious where most all the money is this house went, (alcohol and video games). Well I found Chris's room, and found him busy packing for the night. I should add that Farmaggedon is a concert in the middle of a farm north of Auckland. One can only get tickets to it if they have friends of friends essentially. It runs from 2pm till sunrise the next day. So everyone had to pack booze, food, and a tent or sleeping bag or such, (not that anyone thought they would get any sleep that night). Well I waited around at Chris's and slowly people started heading out for the concert. Chris and I had to wait till "the girls" (as they were called, I knew little beyond that) arrived. In the meantime Chris was more than happy to show me the fire staff, and the fire poi poi's that he had for the occasion. Finally, "the girls" showed up, and we made our way north to Matakana (after of course some debate about who should ride with who soe we had the fewest number of restricted licenses as possible driving) Well after an hour and a half we arrived at our location. Matakana and more specifically a man named Brody's farm. Brody (who organizes this thing and gives tickets only to friends and thus one must have friends of friends to get tickets) has a farm that overlooks the ocean and (as I say about every place around here) is spectacular. There was a large bandstand set up at one end of the field, and when we arrived (fair early like 3:30) only about 150 people where there. However I could immediately tell one thing. I seemed to have found myself in what I imagine Bogan heaven would be like. I felt somewhat out of place their not having a tattoo of my own to show off. However I put on my best Bogan face, and played the part as best I could. Experiencing the night in all its bogan glory. It was true that the concert was set after set. Honestly going from 2 till sunrise the next morning without stop. By the end I'd say about 600-700 people were there. The music varied, but overall, was surprisingly really good. The cool thing was it was all NZ bands and that was neat. When night fell, Chris and I broke out the flame staff and fire poi poi's. Now in case anyone is curious what that may be, the staff is essentially a long metal rod with sponges at each end. We dip these sponges into a bucket of kerosene, and then light them on fire. Thus you have a flaming staff. The fire poi poi's are similar, only they are essentially two straps with finger holds at one end, and a sponge at the end. Again this sponge is dipped in kerosene and lit of fire. THus you have two chains (one in each hand) with a ball of fire at the end. You can then spin these in fun and beautiful patterns. This was both fun to do and fun to watch. Chris's girlfriend was exceptionally good with the poi poi's; she could make them spin like just a blur of yellow and in dazzling ways. Anyways, it was quite the experience. Finally around 4 in the morning I was pretty much spent, so I went back to the field where all the cars were parked. Grabbed my sleeping bag, and rolled it out on a hill overlooking the ocean. About an hour later I woke to the sun rising over the hills around me and the golden orb rising about the ocean in front of me. It was pretty breathtaking. The next morning a bunch of us headed to Talafuney, which is another exceptional beach. We stayed there till about noon at which point we headed home. All in all, it was exactly as I had expected: exciting, sketchy, and definitely interesting. I had a blast being a Bogan for an evening. Needless to say all of Sunday, was then spent recovering.

On Wed. that week I ended up going hiking in the Waitekere ranges. They are mountains just West of Auckland. It is absolutely incredible that a place can be so close to a major city, and at the same time, so absolutely secluded and separated from civilization. It was a fantastic hike to do by myself. I parked the car and hiked through the mountains eventually arriving at a large lagoon tucked in just behind the beach. There was a gangplank that you could walk along which went over the lagoon. I took a couple pictures, and at one point decided I needed on that looked like I was truly in the lagoon. So I put the timer on the camera and ran off down the gangplank. I found a spot and then thought "Oh this bush next to me seems pretty sold I’ll just put a foot on it so that I can get a little more into the bush. No sooner was my foot off the gangplank then it instantly sank up to my knee into nasty lagoon muck. I quickly learned my mistake. Well I found a nice little sand dune, and at my lunch at the top of it. I was surprised to find that plain penne pasta sandwiched between two bbq chips, is actually a pretty tasty meal. After lunch I continued on. After turning a corner around the path I saw the trail end at the foot of a stream about 20 feet wide. Well I thought, "so much for keeping my other foot dry". I didn't even bother to take my shoes off. Not after my other one was already drenched. The water was cool and came up to my thighs. I crossed though and continued on till I got to the campsite. Now at this point I knew I was supposed to pick up another trail to head back to the car, but I'll be damned if I could find this other trail. Nothing was labeled, and it was getting late. Also as neat as the Waitekere ranges are, they are not exactly the place you want to spend the night alone and without help in. So I decided there was nothing for it but to turn back and go back the way I had come. When I got back to the stream I decided that since I hadn't seen anyone all day on the trail the chance of someone coming then was slim. So I decided I"d have a little dip to myself in the stream. It was probably one of the greatest feelings ever. To go skinny dipping in a stream in the middle of the bush in cool water after hiking all day in the sun. It was kind of what I imagine a man's first cold shower feels like after crossing a desert. Anyways, the hike back was all uphill, but it was finally done and when I got back to the car a wild chicken was outside the door waiting to greet me.

That weekend I ended up goin shooting with Andrew again. He picked me up early in the morning, (like 7:30) and we went up to Shakespear regional park (named after a family name, not the man. (and yes, no "e" at the end) It was the Christmas shoot, so it was pretty big. We did 100 targets which ended up doing a course of 50 twice. It was a beautiful day, and Shakespear Regional Park is a magnificent location. It is high up on cliffs that overlook the ocean. The ocean there is speckled with islands, and if you look way off in the distance you can make out the outline of the Coromandel.

I think I should also state about this sunday that I had decided the day before that I was going to fast for the whole day. I had never fasted before, and I wanted to try it. Let me just tell you now that... IT SUCKS! All day long you think of food, and everything you do is just passing time till you can eat again. It didn't help that I chose a bad day because after the Christmas shoot they grilled up delicious looking sausages and had beer out and everything. I had just shot all day, and having a beer and sausages afterwards seemed like the perfect complement to my days activities, but I had decided I wasn't doing anything but water. So soda or beer were also out of the question. As I was saying, IT SUCKED. haha. not only did I do it all Sunday, but then Christoph convinced me to hold off atleast till Monday rather than eating at like midnight that night. So I lasted till about 9 or 10 on Monday and then I just ate and ate. It was wundabar.

That monday I ended up going to Bethels Beach with Brook. It was my first time at Bethels, which is another of the West coast beaches. And as a West coast beach it was true to itself. It was completely empty, and the currents were strong and the waves were massive. We went out to this Island and climbed to the top. We were amazed to find at the top a house with a bird sanctuary sign hanging from it. With a lone person inside. I think he was as surprised to see us as we were to see him (Especially considering the stairs to get there started about 8 feet up the rocks and we had to climb to get to them). To this day I cannot figure out how they got wood and a bed up there. If it was helicopter it must have been one incredible pilot to drop it in such a precise location. Anyways, after the island we decided to check out a cave Brook knew of. So we made off down the beach. When we drew closer we heard music coming from it. When we got there we realized there was a band playing in the cave. Once they saw us the all somewhat stopped and started giving us dirty looks. We were as confused as them till a man standing in front of them looked up from what he was doing, and we realized they were shooting a music video. Sweet as. The man was nice and let us quickly let us check out this massive cave that was sitting in the cliffs overlooking the beach. We scampered in and scampered out and then felt famous considering our footprints would be in a NZ music video. All in all the day was beautiful, and we had a sweet as time.

On tuesday Aaron (from couchsurfing (who's key I broke)) met at a pool hall and shot some billiards. Its so nice to find someone who matches you well in a game of pool. Anyways, that Saturday, I headed over to Aaron's place again for a Christmas BBQ. See here instead of like having family over in front of the fire or something everyone throws BBQ's at the beach for Christmas. (A weird feeling.) The BBQ was Academics and Adventures themed and costumed, (which was a lot of fun). I ran into Amy from my improv lessons at the BBQ. Its pretty funny to be here for 5 months and have friends that have mutual acquaintances with you. Even in a city of 1.4 million. That’s kind of Auckland for you though. Well the bbq was sehr gut, and I got a delicious potato salad recipe, and gorged myself on all the meat I could get my hands on.

Monday of this last week marked the beginning of Yannik's summer holiday. That means that I have very little free time any more as Yannik is always around. On Tuesday I had him for 11 hours. Let me tell you, by the end of that its always the same feeling... i need 2 beers and a really stupid tv show to just stare dumbly at for a couple hours while i recuperate. Monday also marked the end of a series of annoying appointments I had been having to do. So that was so nice to be done with before Christmas. Wed. and Thurs. I found myself watching Yannik, and running around getting Christmas presents and such.

Thursday night (aka Christmas Eve) I ended up attending a midnight service by myself. I went to an Anglican Church (as most churches are here). Really it was more a Cathedral than a church. It was massive. So was the service. It started at 11:30 and ended at about 1:10. They had around 600 people there I would say, and they served each and every one of them communion. It took forever. Anyways, it was an neat experience, but I doubt I would go back to the same church. A little to much pomp and circumstance for me. I was however invited to a Christmas dinner if I was all alone for Christmas (the man sitting next to me realized I wasn't from NZ and invited me). It was a very kind gesture, but I refused since I was spending the day with my family. On Christmas morning I woke at 6:30 first due to Yannik, but slept in till 9 after that. When I came up stairs everything was open and done with already. I don't think Yannik was going to wait for me that morning. It was okay though I gave my presents and opened the one for me. After that we went the Maretai which is a beautiful beach in southeast Auckland. It was something else. And the water is such a nice temperature now. When we got back we started to prepare for dinner that night. I took Yannik to Oma A's and he swam for a couple hours. After which we headed home and guests were starting to arrive. We had about 18 family members over for Christmas dinner. We ate outside, and ate and ate. After dinner I served dad's nuts and Creme de Menthe cookies both of which I had brought here. They were a huge success. Overall it was a lovely Christmas. It was different and I missed home, but it I enjoyed it. In the end though I have decided I like it cold for Christmas, as cool as it was to go to the beach, I like being forced to stay inside and hang out with family. Love all you guys. And I miss you all as well. Merry Christmas.

Surfing, Turkey, and Bachs. Oh My!

Well once again I have slackened on my duties to keep up with you guys. However in the past week a fair amount has happened, so I will skip the boring parts and simply go to the enjoyable parts. Or those points of most interest.

I believe I last left you after last weekend and my little adventure with a bunch of strangers I met on the street. Well skipping ahead to Wed. night at couch surfing I had a similar experience. I, as usual had a lovely evening at couch surfing. There was a great group there, and as usual someone came up and started talking to me who, obviously knew me, and I had no clue who they were. It turned out this time though that the person happened to be Aaron's girlfriend. Aaron, a good friend of mine and organizer of the weekly couchsurfing drinks, apparently had filled his lady friend in on many of the times and stories that Aaron and I have had, because she seemed to know a lot about me. Anyways, we started talking and I was discussing snowboarding with her. This inevitably led us to talking about surfing which inevitably led to me expressing my desire to learn, which inevitably (probably due to my incredible charm) led to her describing how she has two surfboards and an extra wetsuit about my size, and that she would love to teach me. "Aces!!!!" I thought. (I thought this both because its awesome, and because I'm trying to broaden my horizon of exclamatory’s.)

So hopefully sometime soon in the future I will be going surfing with all equipment provided. But, that was not the crazy part. It was also Chris's birthday so it was jager shot after jager shot for him. BUT! thats still not the crazy part. What could be so crazy you ask?
why the bus ride home of course.

Now as some of you know I have developed a bit of a friendship with my bus driver for the past 4 months. Well last week, he broke my heart by admitting he was switching routes on me, so starting this week I had a new bus driver to take me home. So that night I was picked up by a stranger. Well I figured I may as well make friends, even as reluctant as I was considering he wasn't my old bus driver. But I put aside my agitation and started talking to him. He is an upset man however. He is from Translyvannia (which in itself is pretty cool considering I've never actually met a Vampire before). He came over here because his sister did, but he has hated it since he arrived and wants to leave as soon as he can. Oh, well I suppose. Maybe its not for everyone. BUT! to the important part. While we were talking, I happened to mention that I would be missing Thanksgiving for the first time ever tomorrow. Now in my family, Thanksgiving is probably the biggest holiday of the year, and all the extended family meet up, and its just a great time. This was the first year that I wouldn't be a part of that. Not to mention I live with vegetarians, so it would be tofu turkey or nothing for me. So I happened to mention this in passing to the man. Well a little later on a man was stepping off the bus, when he stopped next to me. It was about midnight by this point, but he leaned over and said, "Hey I heard you were aifoiw Thanksgiving. iofaoweo someone aindoiaw American ijfaoi come over. iwoinw here's my card." I put in the gibberish because thats all the parts I understood between his accent, and my tiredness (not to mention I had just come from a bar). Well I thanked him and pretended I understood everything he had said. That night I returned home and had my evening-noodles-dish-while-talking-to-Leigh-on-the-couch-till-2 talk that we do every Wed. night During which I said, "Ya know, I think I might just have been invited to Thanksgiving dinner." So the next day I woke up and looked at the card the man gave me. It said Ash Freedman, and had the name and number of what looked like a jewelers. So I thought what the hell, and I picked up the phone and called. A man answered, and I told him I was looking for an Ash Freedman. He told me that Ash wasn't there and he'd taken the day off. Hmmm. I thought to myself, whats the best way to go about this. He asked me who was calling, and I thought, "uh a um well... a friend" not really wanting to say I was a random man he had met on the bus at midnight last night. So the man told me he thought Ash was surfing and so probably out of cell range anyways. I was debating what the best way to proceed was when the man on the phone said, "actually I think Ash just texted me hold on let me check" He then continued to read the text out loud to me saying, "If an American calls make sure you take his name and number." "THATS ME, DATS ME" I cried, "I'm the American dude!!" haha incredible timing I thought. So I left my info and a couple of hours later he called me back. He said, "You probably found that pretty random on the bus last night, but I overheard you mention that you weren't having thanksgiving with your family this year and I thought man thats what thanksgiving is all about so I thought I'd invite you to spend it with me and my family. My sister-in-law is an American, so we have celebrated it with her for the past 6 years. Come on over at 6:30." So that is exactly what I did. Leigh was kind enough to give me the evening off, and at 6:30 I showed up at their door with a bottle of wine in my hand. There were 18 people there in total, myself included. All of them family members (although apparently one was pretty new since they had just gotten married). Well, it was a lovely evening. Between courses we had to all go around in a circle and say something we were thankful for which I thought was a cool tradition. And it was just so incredible I thought that some one would open his doors and his family to a stranger he has never met, never even talked to, simply because he wanted him to enjoy the holiday. It was a pretty "Capital" gesture (again thats me working on my descriptive words). Not to mention their family was similar to my own thanksgiving family, Loud and Fun.

Well the next day was Friday, and the of the weekend. For the weekend me and about 13 other people all went to a Bach about an 2 hours northwest of Auckland (A bach is a NZ word that means beach house or more generally vacation home). It was Chris's birthday weekend celebration, and it was a really good time. Haha. As usual (similar to the other 2 trips I had done like this) we were about 25 feet from the ocean, with a massive beach directly across the road from us. It was a beautiful location that might best be described as "Gratuitously Majestic". The group I was with was about 7 or so of the normal people between Mark (Kiwi and organizer) Chris and myself (Mannies) Anna, Goody, and Friederike (German Nannies (Gerannies perhaps?)) and then several new people from couchsurfing. One of the girls named Alex was from San Diego. We started talking, and it wasn't long before I discovered her travel companion (who wasn't with us for this trip) was born and raised in Charlottesville Virginia. I cracked up at that. It really is a small world, even here in NZ I find people from home. Anyways, the whole weekend was superb. The water has warmed up enough that you can actually stay in it for a bit of time. Early on Saturday we went for a walk and harvested some mussels right off the beach. We took them back to the Bach and somehow Neils and Mark convinced everyone to eat them raw. So we spent the afternoon cracking open fresh raw mussels (or oysters I can't keep them apart) and putting some lemon squeeze on them, and then down the hatch. Here is the proof of that:

Later on Sat, Aaron and another friend Thomas showed up. There was, well lets just say an incident perhaps, involving myself, Aaron's car key, and an attempt to open a beer bottle. This incident may or may not have resulted in me having to drive 150km's the next morning on a 5 hour trip that should best be described as an epic journey is search of a locksmith. This epic journey in itself resulted in about 7 stops of which I was shot down in 5 and successful at the 6th however had to stop at the 7th since I had lost my phone previously, not to mention the 5 hours and the hunt for something in small towns of NZ on a Sunday. Anyways needless to say it was a long arduous trip on Sunday morning but I returned with 2 Toyota keys, cut for Aaron's Dawloo, praying that they worked. Luckily for me, They did indeed work. And that was that. Actually I believe there is a pictorial explanation of this story. (PS Don't be scared of all the mustaches you see in these pictures, I should announce that in NZ this time period is known as Movember rather than the more technically correct November. Thus everyone grows a mustache and raises money doing it for a specific charity.) But here you go.

Ya it went something like that.So that was my weekend. It was a blast, and full of adventure. This week has been rather uneventful for the most part. It has been rainy and drizzly here for the past couple of days. Even though on Monday it was the first official day of Summer.

On Wed. Night I went out as usual, and took a lot of shit for the key thing from Aaron. But thats his right, and I have a feeling I'll get it for a long time coming. Julia came by the bar which will be her last time till I visit her in Munich. She just got back from the South Island for 3 weeks. She said she loved it. I left couchsurfing early though and went to a Ski team event. I had a really good time there, (I always seem to enjoy myself around them). Anyways, I left to go wait for my bus at around 11 like usual. I was at a different stop than normal, but I knew my regular bus came by there. Well it was me and a friend waiting for the bus, when low and behold who should turn up, but my old bus driver on his new route. Well I couldn't help but have a brief chat with him. Well while I was talking my actual bus pulled up behind him. I said I had to run and waved my bus down. I turned to tell my friend that I'd see him soon and I had to run. I turned back around to get on the bus, just in time to see my bus driving away. I bolted after it, but it was gone. Once again I had managed to miss the last bus home. haha. I was rather perturbed after waving him down that my new bus driver just rolled on by. Needless to say he is going to get a talking too later. So my friend’s brother ended up driving from home, picking us up and taking me home again. It was a bit of an ordeal.

Anyways, that has been my last week and a half. I hope you enjoyed the reading of it, as I enjoyed the living of it. Till next time.

Wes