Weekends like this...

Will make me miss New Zealand so much!

This weekend with my mind free of uni., was so simple and soooo much fun. It was spent with lots of laughs and many great people.
Friday: I was so relieved to be done with lectures and homework, Terra and I headed to town and got some lunch at burger fuel, the did some window/real shopping. Drank the most brilliant hot chocolate I have ever tasted and then headed to the movies with some girls. We went to see Boy, which is a Kiwi movie about a Maori boy. It was pretty good. When we got home we drank some Craggy Range Riesling and it was very yummy and we headed into town to go to a show. After some wanderings we finally found said "show" in a run down flat on top of a shoe store. Hung out there for a bit and in every way it reminded me of Chico. Then we headed out for some drinks. The night ended with a Jester's pie and Trevor scaring the living daylights out of me.

Saturday: We dyed Terra's hair in the morning. She actually trusted me with her hair and dye. EEEEPS! Everything went well though, a little darker than planned though. Next on the agenda was a Tui Brewery tour with Margo, Terra, Trevor and Nicky. However, we got to the brewery too late and so we didn't get to go on the tour but we did have a beer sampler. Then we jammed back in the car to get some pizza. Not sure I have ever eaten so much and laughed about nothing before. After that we went and hung out with some newish French friends. We went to their Flat and just hung out and talked and then headed to High Flyers for some dancing. Got home around 3:30 AM and therefore slept in super late the next morning.

Sunday (today): After sleeping heaps, I met up with Gemma, Cyril (sp?) and Terra. We went back to Cyril and had brunch. After that we loaded back up into the car and headed to Woodville to experience some yummy mummy cheesecake. The cheesecake was decent, but I have definitely had better. It was still a fun adventure though. Then we headed up to wind farm because Gemma had never seen it. On the way back home we got some kebabs and Terra and I headed back to my hostel to watch a movie and now I think I will just be cozy in my bed for a while and ignore the fact I must start studying tomorrow.

The weekend doesn't sound like the most thrilling thing ever but it was just completely carefree and fun. Things just fell into place. Good memories were made, and it is sad to think that my time making memories in NZ is coming to an end, but at the same time it will be nice to get back home and make some new memories with friends and family. It is just weird to think that all these people I have spent the last 4 months with I may never see again.

I think getting ready to leave NZ has taught me the true meaning of bittersweet. Some days I am dying to get home and get back to "my" life and other times I never want to leave.
OK well I think this has gotten mushy enough so here is a pic to lighten the mood...Karaoke to Spice Girls "Wannabe"...
Love Jane

WARNING: This may be a spoiler if...you plan on watching the saddest movie ever invented

So today is the day I finished ALL of my assignments for the semester...my last one came in at 25 pages (ewww). Since today is the 27th it also means that Katie will be here in just two weeks.
Overall, even though I worked my butt off finishing 2 assignments it was still a great day and I even got to spend some time hanging out and not doing homework.
I started today off with going to class and then headed out on my meat's field trip to the abattoir (fancy word for meat plant/slaughter plant and/or meat works). I have already seen the biggest lamb plant west of the Mississippi (yes, totally just sang the song in my head so I could spell that). So there were no real surprises about the gore etc. However, just one quick thought about the employees there. I think they could easily become serial killers...spend all day literally inside a beef carcass wrapped in blood and guts...thinking it could make you crazy real quick. Not that I am making fun of the people who work there, in fact I am thankful for them because I like my burgers and such!
Then I got home and worked my little behind off on my dairy project. I didn't even eat while I was working--BIG MISTAKE, I then became so hungry I had to rush home and cook noodles as fast as I could before I wasted away.
After I had nourished myself, I diddled around a little bit. Then got back to the finishing touches on my meat assignment. Ran to the library in the freezing cold printed it and ran back to Miro...all in enough time to join Margo and Trevor in watching the saddest movie ever invented. Like so sad it should be illegal.
So we bundled up in Margo's room (not sure I have mentioned it but it is like the Antarctic here) and watched the movie Hachiko. It is about a dog who is goes to the train station everyday to pick up his owner and then ...(don't read if you want to watch the movie)...the owner dies and the dog waits at the train station for 10 years for his owner to come back. So you think eventually the dog will learn to love somebody else, like the wife or grand kid but NO, it ends with the dog dying. Now if that is not just the saddest thing in the whole wide world--you need to get a heart? or you could join those meat plant workers and start your serial business? There was definitely not a dry eye in the room at the end. Margo didn't tear up to much, me well I was me and got pretty teary eyed and I think the boy in the room (he will remain anonymous) needed an absorbent depends diaper to soak up all of his tears.
Now I am off to dream land...and tomorrow, and the next day and the next day the thought of school is not even going to cross my mind. Love Jane
P.S. I always try and make my blogs look better and more interesting by posting pics but I just dont think me and blogspot get along that well I can never do it...so sorry you will just have to deal with pages of words...I know, but picture books are so much better than novels.
ok I know I just went on that rant about blogger not letting me put pics up but then I tried one more time and here you go...I know this pic has nothing to do with anything I wrote, but I just found it on Myspace and thought it was very funny! Jake is so into those tights

Love, but not the mushy kind!

So tomorrow I have to give this presentation in my class. It is like a no big deal kind of presentation. It can only help your grade so if you do a horrible job it just won't count. That is why I have no idea why I am so nervous about it. I have given much bigger and harder presentations and not been this nervous...maybe it is the whole foreign country thing...so wish me luck. In the mean time enjoy some of my thoughts (procrastination at its finest).

Now I will compose a list of random things I LOVE- or at least really like! I am going to leave out all the mush like I love my family, friends, the boy and Maggie and Lucy (because that is all just assumed).

1. I love good water pressure...not like needles puncturing your skin, or being under a rock slide kind of pressure, but just decent good pressure. You feel so much cleaner, nothing will compare to the shower I grew up with (mom and dad you are forbidden to ever remove that shower head)...but I am so pleased they FIXED our showers in Miro (my hall). I love taking showers now.
2. For my dairy class we have partners for all of our assignments and I love that my partner and I have the same work ethic...hard work, stressing out and laughing lots--pretty much sums it up.
3. My new reddish/burgundy heels I bought for just 30 bucks, can't wait to wear them out.
4. Kat comes in 20 days and I know I will LOVE being in NZ with her...I will especially love seeing and possibly swimming with wild dolphins with her.
5. I definietly heart skype...like how is it possible that it is free. I think I talk to people at home more here than I do when I am living in the same state as them.
6. I love pump water bottles! They have sports caps and it is just the best when you get one that has the good kind of sport top. I can't explain what good means, but it is just better than the bad ones.
7. I love the picture next to my bed of me on xmas day when we just got max. I am holding him down so tightly trying to get him to do what I wanted...he was stubborn from day one. Love that dude.
8. I really like, not love becasue I don't love anything about the dinning hall, when the desserts there involve chocolate.
9. I really love when I don't look at the bus timetable and just go to the bus stop in hopes of there actually being a bus there, and there actually is a bus there.
10. I really love that I have become a crazy swan lady...oh not sure I have told you yet about my swans (Bonnie and Clyde). They are 2 black swans that live on campus and they have a nest and eggs and I have become oddly obsessed with watching them and checking on the progress of there eggs. It is like a crazy cat lady, but worse I am the swan lady. I think they are used to me and expect me to come make my visits. This whole swan issue could be a whole other blog and I really must get back to practicing my presentation
11. However, my last thing I love is Bonnie and Clyde. I just don't like that I named Bonnie, bonnie very cliche, but I really liked the name Clyde.


Bye love you Jane

Happy Mother's day to the most wonderful mom of all!!!! Love you Jane

Underground in the Down Under

So I am completely exhausted from the awesomeness of today and possibly delirious, so I can not promise what I write will be coherent or even mildly entertaining but I will try my hardest because today was probably one of my FAVORITE days in the NZ yet.

Today was the day I went CAVING!!! We went to the Piripiri (sp?) road end caves. It was just a 40 minute drive out there. The whole time I am driving out there I am thinking what the heck am I getting myself into? Tempted to back out I decided NO I am definietly going underground and that was that. Next thing I know, I find myself hanging by rope and harness off a bridge and I am lowering myself into a crack in Good Old Mother Earth's crust. We probably repelled about 10 to 15 meters. Little did I know that at that point the repelling part was the least of my worries. I actually thought it was really fun and would 100% do it again. In fact I would do everything I did today again. So I get down and unhook my harness, and am left standing in a big room (cave) there are some ferns and a stream and it looks like a nice little place. I think to myself "oh this is caving I can completely do this." I then see a rope leading up to a hole in the side of a rock wall and am told we are standing in a canyon NOT a cave and the cave we will be exploring is the hole in the side of the wall. What I am not a gecko, no sticky feet here, so exactly how am I supposed to get to that hole in the side of the wall. With much effort and alot of deep breathes I am able to use the rope to climb to the hole in said wall. My hands were so tired I felt like I had just skiied a whole set. I sit at the cave entrance and wait for Terra. She gets to the top and we are greeted with a huge hole in the ground filled with water. That is where we learned that by getting wet while caving is an understatement. We were in chest high water at some points. (which just made it that much cooler)


Next we wade through some water, get stuck at this very tight crack, but make it through all on our own. Some people were ahead of us and the trip leaders were at the bottom helping get more people up. So it wasn't like we were completely on our own or anything. Finally, some skilled cavers catch up with us. We keep on heading further and further in walking through water, laughing hysterically (waders though would have made it funnier), climbing over rocks and occassionally turning our head torches off to see some glow worms. The rest of the trip was pretty awesome and involved lots of climbing and me thinking there is no WAY I can do this, and then coming to the realisation of "oh hey, I just did that!" There were times where the only thing holding you up was the fact you were wedged between 2 rocks and having to shimmy across to get through, some of these if you became "unwedged" you could have fallen like 2 meters. I definitely have the bruises and scrapes to prove my work though haha! We had to use some ropes to climb in and out and off and onto ledges and cracks. There was lots of team work like Terra supporting the weight of my whole body (aka butt) with her face to help me climb out and me pulling the "beached whale" out of some cracks. There was also this big mud pit that was the softest mud ever and we had some fun playing in it. ie: mud facials and mud artwork on Russel's white coveralls.


Now for the leaving of the cave...we had to go out the way we came in, I was dreading this becasue of my slight panic attack / inability to get up the wall to enter the cave and now that my arms are tired I have to climb down a rock wall? So we head out and I am in the lead there is one point that is a very tight sqeeze for probably 3 meterish. Oh on a side note while in the cave I had seen some pretty big spiders but from a distance and heard rumours of there being wetas in there. (I bravely chose to ignore all this) Ok so during this tight sqeeze your face is probaby no more than 6 inches away from the rock and to my surprise my face met one GIGANTIC spider. I let out the loudest scream and instant panic takes over my body. On the way in I must have not noticed the gigantic quantities of spiders that reside in this part of the cave becasue I was still experiencing shock from just being in a cave. I began looking everywhere and all I could see was spiders and then I saw a weta and I absoulutely lost it! I am embarassed to actually be writing this. I do not know what I was thinking in this time of panic, but I sat down in the middle of the path/stream and bear hugged Terra's leg and refused to let go. My heart was going about a mile and minute and I don't think I was breathing. However, I eventually realised we were almost at the cave opening, so from that point on it was eye on the prize time; we are getting the heck out of here. Nobody else even flinched about the BUGS! While waiting for some people to descend down, my panic over the bugs doubled due to my fear of descending back down into the canyon. We were waiting in this little room covered in spiders!!!! I just had to get out and was soon half way down the rock wall, where it was spider and weta free and could finally feel my heart rate adjust back to that of a normal human being.


Just some side notes:

1. Wetas and spiders alone are bad, but when put in a cave they are even worse.
2. I completely surprised myself in my abilites today. Normally do not consider myself brave in rock climbing type situations...but I loved every minute of it.
3. The hardest and scariest (well except the spiders) was the entering and exiting of the cave.
4. I really did feel like spider man (I can scale walls) and a fragglerock! --just wish there were big harry giants at the top of the cave.
5. I would definetly go caving again...because: physically challenging, good time with friends (lots of laughs, get to use your mind...figure out how to get around obstacles, and everything (except cave bugs) was awesome.
6. Glow worms are really cool...did not give them enough credit above.

I am not reading this because I am going to bed...so hope it makes sense. Love you Jane

Your journey to NZ and my Journey to the center of the Earth!

So I have been rather lazy, these last few days...but lazy in a good way, not like lazy in a bad way. lol I have really enjoyed myself and have gotten lots of sleep and re-adjusted to my Palmy schedule...that was tough to do after all my time on holiday! I think there is something ridiculous like 46 more days left here and my Kat comes soooooooo soon! Excited to come home, but at the same time not excited. Here is my dilemma:
I want to see everybody back home!
I don't want to leave NZ!
solution: EVERYBODY I know back home needs to get together and figure out a way to get here (as in NZ)
Then I do not have to leave NZ but I get to see all of my lovely friends and family.
Some cheap ways you could get to NZ...
1. well we know quite a few people with boats (Dad, Ed, Steve) you could all just cram in there...and set sail.
2. Another fun one, re-enact balloon boy's antics, but this time for real. Just get a bunch of balloons tie them together and off you go.
3. Just do it the old fashion way...book a ticket!
4. Maybe you could make a tunnel, gather all the shovels in the neighborhood and start digging. I am sure there are already some pre dug holes in my backyard, from the days of Chelsea and me trying to dig to China.
You know holes are kind of like Caves...which brings me to my next topic!

This weekend I am going caving or Spulunking...whichever you prefer, but the point is I will be abseiling (repelling) off a bridge and into a cave.

Exact quote from the trip leader: "There are two caves we'll be exploring, one of which is in a canyon we can abseil into off of a bridge.
You can expect to get very dirty and muddy, and you will definitely get wet. There will be crawling, climbing, and squeezing through tight spaces. These are not walk-through caves!" So excited but then again so nervous, I mean a cave is rather creepy and rather small...hope I don't get claustrophobic...and lets not even think about the chances of bats or other creepy crawlies! At least I have my brand new and very fashionable striped long underwear to get me through this ordeal. I will also get to dawn a helmet and my trusty head torch! Now I am off to work on another glorious dairy assignment!
p.s. Kat comes ridiculously soon (can you tell I am excited)

Life is all about finding simple pleasures...

Like a peanut butter, nutella wrap...all warm and gooey.

It will get me through this day of homework, and the sun is shining.
Love Jane