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Showing posts from July, 2009

Happy Birthday, Dad

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Dad, today is your 50th birthday! Happy birthday, you old fart. I hope it is a good one and I'm sad I am not there to celebrate with you. I took my weekly walk to Mission Bay yesterday morning. It was nice and sunny when I started walking and then on the way back, out of nowhere, came heaps of rain! I walked into my apartment soaked to the bone. It was refreshing at least. In other news, last night some friends had a theme party. We were supposed to dress up as pirates, but I didn't feel like trying to put together a pirate costume I wore all blue and put some green streamers around my neck - I was "Davey Jones Locker," also known as the ocean. I was quite a hit. Today I am continuing my research for one of my courses today. It is on fish behaviour with underwater sound. Fact of the day - fish make sounds, mostly for mating rituals. Here's some pictures from my walk to Mission Bay. It's a four-hour walk, round trip. This is a view from the beach of Mt. Rangit

Keeping up with the pace of things.

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This week I have been encountering some ups and downs while trying to renew my student visa. But there shouldn't be too much trouble, just some hurdles. Woke up this morning to a nice sunrise. Sadly I have class at 9am, so I don't have time to walk down to the harbor and take some more pictures. This weekend my new friends are going down to the caves in Waitomo, but I need to save my money and study this weekend. There are a lot of terms that I need to make sure I have memorized for my Comparative Animal Biology class. It's so interesting! We had lab this week, and we have to wear lab coats. I didn't have money for one so I was allowed to borrow one from the department for $2. We watched a chlorohydra animal capture and eat a bloodworm! It was so cool...at least for me. I will try to keep updating as much as possible. Not too much happening at the moment. It's winter. It's chilly and occasionally rainy. But summer isn't too far away now! Here is the view of

Weekend Update

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This week has been a busy one. Been running around looking for a job and getting my visa renewed. I've been definitely living on the cheap by eating apples, oranges, salad, and the occasional "international meal" that is cooked in our flat by a new student. I'm inside the student commons right now, but it looks very nice outside. Yesterday was beautiful! I started my walk down to Mission Bay at 9:30AM and go there around 11 or 11:30AM. It was a very nice walk with a good view of the harbor. My only wish was that there weren't cars driving by constantly. When I was about 15 minutes away from the beach at Mission Bay, I bumped into Borghild, Skott, Jonas and Andreas. We walked along the beach and looked at shells. Then we walked up the hill to a monument and enjoyed the warm sun. We walked back to the city, bought a bottle of wine and some bread. We sat outside the Parnell Student Village at a picnic table and just enjoy the simple, good company. Tomorrow is the sam

Piha and First Day at Uni

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Sunday afternoon I went on a little day trip/hike to Piha on the west coast on the Tasman Sea with Borghild, Eike and Sawyer. It was a beautiful drive outside the city and there were great views of the sea and some mountains. When we got there, we parked the car and walked along the beach. We saw kite surfers, hikers, people with their kids and dogs, and jelly fish that had been washed up on shore. The waves were HUGE! The wind was pretty strong and there were warning signs of strong currents. In the middle of the beach was "Lion Rock." It looked like it would take us a while to climb to the top but it was blocked off half-way up due to unstable rocks. We ended up reaching the end of the little climb in less than ten minutes, but the view was great. We thought about staying up there to watch the sunset, but we had plenty of time to explore more of Piha. We then walked a little farther down the beach to a trail that lead up above the beach and over to a cove. The waves crashed

First Day Back in NZ

What a stressful trip back to NZ! Because I was held up so long in Detroit, I missed my flight to L.A. from Memphis and then once I finally got to L.A. I had to sprint to my flight! The man I sat next to on the plane said that he studied geography at Auckland Uni and he seemed really interesting and then all of a sudden I looked over and saw him watching the Hannah Montana Move. Interesting. There was a small chance that I would actually get my luggage, but the people working for the airline were awesome and I got my bags and headed to my flat. After getting into Auckland at 4:45am local time, I caught the bus to downtown near my flat. I got back to sleep around 7:30am and woke up again just after 1pm. I got lunch with my friend Ron and then picked up some groceries. When I got back my flatmate, Sawyer, asked if I wanted to help out with the iSpace quiz night (an event for new international students). I helped set up and after the newbies sat down and we began the quiz it wasn't di

In the Memphis airport

Hey all! Sitting in the Memphis airport wasting some time before my flight to Los Angeles. Then once I'm on the plane in L.A., I'll only have 15 hours until I'm back in Auckland, New Zealand. I'll be finishing my degree there. I will have a double major in Biology and Marine Science after another two years. This is very exciting, though I will miss everyone heaps. When I was laying in bed last night, it finally hit me that I won't see people for a long time. This whole thing is very bittersweet. My old friend, Nathan, told me that of all his friends I was by far doing the coolest thing. It's so nice to know how much support I have from everyone. I know that I'll be keeping in touch with everyone as much as possible, and if you send me your address then I will get a postcard out to you as soon as possible. I will continue updating my blog. I love you all lots and hope to come home next Christmas. If you're interested in visiting New Zealand, just shoot m

More Pictures from Auckland

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1 - Max, trying to play my mandolin, and James 2 - One more "family portrait" with "Big Brother" Sven 3 - Marius near Albert Park 4 - Flowers in Albert Park 5 - Sad to say goodbye to Max 6 - Partial group picture (mostly Norwegians). So many mates still missing from the photo :( 7 - My luggage in Los Angeles on the way back to Detroit.

Back in Detroit

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Arrived back in Detroit at 11:52PM on June 30th with Lisa. I was so sad to leave Auckland and all my friends. I got so close to them and wish that I could have spent much more time together. Monday night I had a spaghetti dinner at my place because I had bought a kilo of spaghetti and two cans of sauce and needed to use them up. It was so nice! Lilian brought her ukelele, I had my mandolin, and James had his guitar. We played music and everyone remembered all of our fun times together. Later, James and Max sang John Denver's "I'm Leaving on a Jet Plane," but changed it to "She's....". I took a picture with each person and then a group of us went down to Father Ted's Irish Pub to see another group of international students (mostly German and Norwegian mates of mine). There was some great music and we played a little pool. I almost cried when I had to say goodbye to people. (I cried myself to sleep later that night). I managed to be on the sam