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:
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
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