my life is amazing

and by amazing i mean holy shit fuck what is going on...

all is well, sorta but lets just share some anecdotes of the past few days...

we are sitting in a separate booth on the train to picton, when at the next stop, this guy gets on and sits next to us the entire 4 hour trip.. even though there are a ton of empty seats elsewhere in the train car... how uncomfortable.

we get to the ferry station, go to the apex rental station to get the car, realize that we need to go to a different apex rental station a bout 5 minutes back the way we came, and finally get the car only to walk back to the ferry station to take the ferry to the north island (soon to be re-named, aint that just cute.)

at the hostel in wellington, Lisa, who is accustomed to wearing no underwear and we all accept her and understand decides to change into a pair of sweatpants while a room-mate who had just walked in was making her bed. Well. as soon as Lisa drops trou, the roommate turns around and starts walking in her direction (lisa was standing in front of the door) Lisa panicks, cant get her pants all the way off, cant put the other pair of pants back on... and the girl is trying to get otut the door. simply amazing. best awkward moment i have ever watched ever.

met our prof amy for tea whilst in wellington and that was simply the coolest conversation ive had with a teacher .. amys amazing!!

met up with michelle in palmerston north yesterday and met a whole bunch of people whom ill never see again.. and when i say meet, i mean awkwardly sitting in a room iwth cause they were not very social, haha, oh well i had fun.

today while we were hiking in maniwatu gorge, i hurt my knee again. ugh.

today while we were standing on the ballance bridge looking over the water in the maniwatu gorge lisa somehow unclipped the rental car keys from the chain and dropped them into the river. sigh... lol first we tried wading to find them and lisa almost died cause she went in too deep and almost got sucked in with the current. then we called the rental car agency who told us to call aaa, and finally 2 hours and $150 later a locksmith came and rescued us. yay! now we have two car keys. thank the lord.

finally, the place we are staying in right now is fabulous, $35 a night for a super plush living spce complete with pool table, tv in room as well as inthe common room, free internet, and super comfy beds. AMAAAZING. the perfect end to an oh so stressful day.

~always look on the bright side of dropping your car keys in the river~

PS Grilled cheese and avocado sandwiches rule.

Where in the world is Carmen SanDiego?

Right so the plan for the next few weeks..

Last night in Christchurch tonight, tomorrow off to the train station bright and early, taking that to Picton, and then Ferrying our way over to Wellington and staying there for a few days.

Then we are heading to Palmerston North to visit our friend Michelle! yay!

THEN DUH DUH DUNNNNNN we are going to MT Taranaki... or as many of you know it... MOUNT DOOM!!! yes. Heidi and I are planning a reenactment of Sam and Frodo climbing up the mountain. I am not sure who is Sam and who is Frodo though. we shall figure it out. and hopefully Lisa will film it so everyone else can see :D

Then I think we are going to Rotorua and going zorbing/ sulfur pooling/ who knows?

On to the Bay of Plenty and Whakatangi.. or Fuckatangerine if you want to know how to pronounce it phonetically. i am not kidding. hopefully going to go sailing or fishing or lay on a beach or something while we are there :D hopefully maybe a colossal squid will wash up on shore.. that would be awesome.

Then from there we are looking at going past Auckland and exploring the pennisula..

Basically our plans are not set in stone at all. We have no passports. My credit card is expiring in like 5 days so ill be out of money, and there might be a strike for the flight attendants of the airline company that i need to take out of new zealand.

Basically. I am boned. BUT ITS AN ADVENTURE! my grandpa would be so proud of me..

will update when ive got time at an internet kiosk or something, til then wish me luck and don't play too much DND. you know who you are.

21!

First things first, instead of second. I don't really understand that phrase, it is kind of redundant. anyway, thanks for the shout out tedsters lol. And thanks to Heidsters and Nickola for everything, you guys rock!

It was a happy birthday!

although... The first drink I consumed on my 21st birthday was bought for me by my 60 year old spaztastic professor. what does that say about me? lol at least it had rum in it!

I have a realized something in the past few days. one being I loathe stairs. They are okay in one or two story quantities. But if they involved over 500 stairs... I am done. count me out. no more.

I am also fairly decent at walking with crampons on. (forget the fact that I tripped about 5 times and nearly killed sam when I dropped my walking pole on her)

25 days until training starts (not counting may 9th which is going to be 48 hours long for me due to travel) and I am really excited!!! I can't wait to find out my staff and get going... ahh!!

that is all.

let them eat rice cakes

Thoughts

1) The west coast of New Zealand is full of fern trees, making it look like Jurassic Park

2) I have observed that the building I am staying in is not velociraptor safe. There are a lot of glass doors and and large windows that would make easy entry points for any velociraptor that had an inkling to eat me. Despite the advice of a friends "block all of the doors except for one, and bottleneck them" I still fear that I might not make it through the week due to the fact that the only weapon I currently have is my stunningly good looks. Tell my family that I love them.

3) I am currently my mom's favorite child because my brother has yet to call her from Spain where he is on a school trip.

4) I want to watch The Princess Bride because Spain always reminds me of Indigo Montoya....

5) Naps are pleasant, and I think I am going to embark on one... :D

MAGOFFIN HERE I COME!!

So Magoffin County Center Director Jenny has a nice ring to it doesn't it.... yay!!

Here's the info that I know about the county, and for future refence how my summer is going to look and what is happening when...

I am in a new part of the county as per earlier years of ASP so, that will really be an adventure. I am working with a new facility manager as well as in a school that has been vacated for the past year because they consolidated the school system.

I am going to be in charge of a 4 person staff, or me and three other people ( one returner and two first year staffers)

So how this works is I will go to training on May 15th for just center directors (CD's) until the next week when everyone else arrives. We learn construction and how to manage a center and get to know each other. On Saturday the 23rd I find out who the other 3 people on my staff are.... But we dont tell them until the next day!! We spend the rest of that week doing more bonding activites and planning for the rest of our summer.

We will then travel to our school on saturday the 30th for set up week. during this week we will be picking our projects and setting up the school to get ready for volunteers!!

starting june 7th we will have volunteers at our center doing work and messing around until saturday the 1st of august!

hopefully certain people will be coming out on july 9th through 12th... cough cough... :D

my mom will be visiting probably some time in late june, and I already have a few weekends planned with some other asp staffers!

In case you couldn't tell I am really excited for this summer. I am also really nervous, but I know I can do this... if only I could learn how to relax for once lol!

PS. no I did not just do this because you asked me to.

Have a wonderful afternoon!

Top 5 Fav Bands (as of this second)

5. Blink 182- They are SO back this summer!!!

4. Lisa Loeb- Sooo talented,

3. Flip Grater-awesome enzed singer/songwriter.... Oh how I wish to be her someday

2. Incubus- amazing songs that express me so much better than I can myself right now

1. The Avett Brothers- my love/obsession lives on

Why I hate New Zealand sometimes.

OK. so to preface this, I have absolutly loved my experience here in enzed, and I am really sad to be leaving so soon. HOWEVER...

So today I was put through waay too many hours on the bus. Now the bus system in Christchurch is pretty decent considering it is only slightly larger than Stevens Point. ok that is an exagerration, but it is nowhere near as big as Milwaukee.

The goal this morning was to get to the town center, and turn our passports over to receive Visas to stay longer in the Country. While it was our mistake to put this off until now... we still had to get this done prior to our ten o'clock class, (otherwise facing dire attendence policy scares)

SO after realizing that there was no way to get copies of our tickets and passport pictures ready by the time we had to leave inorder to get back to class, we vowed to come back in our two hour break.

long story short, i took a bus right to the city, back to campus, sat in class, went back to the city, went back to campus, sat in class, then was finally able to go home, on yet another bus ride.
passport is in the mail so hopefully ill get that back soon, but otherwise school sucks.

one and half more weeks of classes and three papers. woot!

My First *GASP*

Indeed I am a blogger virgin. I guess you could say this is an experiment that I am doing about my self. (I am ever the scientist) My hypothesis is that through writing out my feelings/thoughts/words out there on the world wide interweb, then I will then be better able to open myself up and express how I am in fact feeling rather than putting up the walls that I do so tend to build at the first sign of trouble.

I don't expect you to read this, or even follow it, but I do hope that I can at least be entertaining slightly for however long you decide to read. I think a personal goal is that every post will have some point or punchline, so that this is not just the random ramblings of a socially impaired person, and that maybe you can actually get something out of your precious time being spent here.

So without further ado, I welcome you to my life and hope you enjoy yourself during your visit, because I most certainly do.