:Follow me down, out of this town

Today was really kind of fantastic. Let me tell you why, I feel like for the first time that I’ve been going to school here – I’m actually feeling like I GO TO SCHOOL HERE. Better yet, stoked beYOND buh-lief for our project in Illustration. The first project we have to do is create our own design for a book cover for Alice In Wonderland. I can’t wait to compare and contrast everyone’s styles and what direction we all went in and holy crap I’m looking forward to making some ART. Our first day of Illustration was today and even though our teacher wasn’t there – which doesn’t even bother me, it was grand.  We have to research classic and modern renderings of past Alice covers, read the original book (which I’ve been wanting to do for the past 5 years but didn’t think I’d ever find the time to… yay new zealand.) I’m finally ready for the laid back NZ lifestyle everyone’s been preaching, which we’ve been hating, but now, I’m feeling it and am kind of nervous that I’ll get used to it, go back to the States and feel like I got hit by a truck.

But that’s then. Right now – prognosis is good. I did almost of all of this week’s ‘tasks’ except some printing stuff and actually reading the Alice in Wonderland book. Which normally would be no problem at all, but we’re going to Wellington on Friday and we won’t be back until Sunday night, so I’ll have to print out these illustrations (research shtuff) by Thursday at the latest and read the book by Friday morning. The book is online, so, there’s that lame hurdle. Hate reading things online. I want the paper version! Meh. Whatev. I’m finna check out the library for some paperback options. Pumped for the assignment, not procrastinating on homework, made some more headway with the animation, and am still searching for my story element for the Photojournalism thing. Probably going to look into Maori legends or something. Who knows, we’ll find out. Thank gawd for Illustration, lets hope I’m still saying that 5 weeks from now, lol.

Here’s some inspiring illustrative book covers I found…

Yesterday Laura and I skyped for a whopping 3.8 hours or something like that, we came up with a plan/name for our saweet dorm room for next year!! WHOO!! THE OCTOPUS GARDEN!

Um, I’d like to try and make these, as they’ll cheer up my boring old flat room real quick!

:”What a hoot and’a half!” – l.m.

Well.. hm.. where to begin? Our night included a chinchilla, uni-bomber-esc art flat, a death metal kiwi – who couldn’t say his name properly, haha, um, – a live chicken, a mountainous climb, recreational ..herbs, obscure music, making fun of accents, people peeing in bushes, trespassing on private property, the pronunciation of ‘aluminum’, rats and cats, animals drinking rum and beer, skateboarding, tripping in the dark, random drunk kiwi giving an in-depth tour to an invisible group, my nose catching on fire for a half-second, a hand-drawn fire breathing dragon on a drum set, cuts-bruises, and Simba-worthy grasses.

Oy, choice night yesterday.

And that’s all the Kiwi lingo you’ll get out of me at this point in time. And, in the American fashion, there’s photos of all of it. Well, the highlights: Chris trying to fit a chinchilla in his mouth, group photos, me having dumb expressions, and everyone just being extremely-extremely sober. . . .

Photo courtesy (stolen) from Leah’s blog, click it to see more fabulous moments from that night, that we remember only percentages of.. slowly but surely its all coming back to me.

We’re going back tomorrow.

Life choices, check.

On a completely separate note, I’ve been on Etsy.com for roughly 3 hours today.
Currently sorting out my priorities. G’nite!

:you know that you have seen this all before

Had my first class today, huzah, mission completed. I’m thinking its definitely going to be better than History of Design, but its also the same class… but you do projects?

Our flat, yeah, it doesn’t come with tools. You know, modern man-made tools like pliers or wrenches, or my favorite – the screwdriver.

What I’m getting at, is that.. I put my fan together with a butter knife. These screws aren’t like American screws I’ve come in contact with, oh-no, they don’t turn for anything, well maybe a screw driver but as previously stated I own zero of those.

Chris had another fun and eventful day. I think he threatened the entire country of New Zealand after the purchase and incredibly awful walk from the Warehouse to our flat, which I understand. Carrying the fan was pretty awful, carrying a disassembled bike, YIKES. JENKIES! Well, um.. what else, hm.. Not too much. Don’t have class tomorrow, as its Wednesday. Gots ta wait til Thursday. Getting more accustomed to NZ, um.. not much to say about THAT. Might meet up with some kiwis for caw-fee.

PHOTOS!

:Here we go, here we go, here we go again

Alright, so finally found out when Illustration is, Monday from 1-4. Tomorrow, I have Graphic Design History from 10-1. I’m thinking it’ll be pretty good, the teacher seems nice, heck, all of the ‘tutors’ here seem cool, so that’s a plus. I think we’re actually getting our IDs tomorrow – even though Beth and I made the walk down there today because we were told they were ready, and of course they weren’t. So hopefully there’s an ID waiting for me tomorrow. I’m buying a fan tomorrow too, no questions asked, today was disgustingly hot. The sun shines in my room from like 3 or 4 until 8, my room gets insanely warm. GROSS. So yeah, outlook is good though, presuming things stop taking 3 weeks to happen.

I want to figure out what is going on for our 2 week trip, I know its far away and all, but I need to figure out how much cash to put aside. Chris is pushing a car to rent, which I see both good and bad things with that. There’s a bus option which, also seems like a good deal. BUT, again good and bad things. I talked with Beth about it and she’s really not into the idea of driving for two weeks, being in a car with everyone for that amount of time – plus if everyone doesn’t want to go to the same place or do the same thing, we’re kind of screwed. I’m thinking it would be a good idea to get both a bus pass thing so that the ferry is at least cheaper, and a car so that we don’t have to worry about walking anymore. I am so sick of walking. I know that sounds dumb and lazy but, my god, it takes like 20-30 minutes at least to go anywhere, not to mention getting back…  and then I can explore the North Island. Chris hasn’t shown any interest in the North island, but I mean that’s his prerogative. I still want to see Auckland, Rotorua, Waitomo, and Matamata FOR SURE. I can’t wait for Matamata, friggen Hobbiton, gosh, can’t wait. The only hitch is figuring out what the HECK is going on with travel and all that. I guess we’ll see.

:I’m looking in on the good life

Its the night before the first day of classes. I’m excited. It’d be nice to know whether I have class tomorrow or not. Illustration is up in the air. Weird. However, I’ve got some things to mail, have to check if I have mail, go buy some produce, see if our school IDs are ready to pick up-and if they are I need to check out some books to get an idea for my Photojournalism project, have to go to the bank to make a deposit for my rent money, have to pay Beth back for the hostel in Wellington that we’re staying at, and hm.. oh yeah, how could I forget, have to dedicate the rest of the day to my animation. I’ve got a good handle on it, at this pace I should be done before the BIG trip.

I was going through my planner to write down some important dates and what-not, when all of a sudden, gosh, I found the best thing I could have possibly found. From the dorm at Stout I stuck photos in there that were above my desk, and apparently never took them out. So now, I have photos of Laura, Shelby+Me, and Sam hanging up on my bulletin board. That was seriously the best find possible.. really.. I’m not all that homesick but, I think its starting to sink in that I’m here for the long haul. Although, looking at the calendar and thinking about all of the places we have to travel… I think the time will go by fast.

I’m going to make a conscious decision to cut back on the drinking thing though, I’m sure to a few people that’ll be a let down, should party it up.. I mean, I’m not drinking a lot right now at all, like once a week so far, but, I’d rather spend my money on other things: traveling, gifts for people back home, hah-food-don’t judge me! there’s so much cool stuff to try, and just enjoying the time I’m here.. not so much drinking, although we did meet a lot of local people and that was awesome. Once a week, probably Saturday nights if my homework load isn’t too bad and I get farther on these other two projects. So it’ll be like having 5 classes, just two of them I don’t go to. Which will be nice. I need to get back into the swing of having some self-motivation. I can think of a few people looking down watching me and I think they’d like it if I did some self-direction, and who would I be if I did not kindly oblige them?

I should probably expand a smidge on the above mentioned Wellington trip. We’re going March 2-4, we’re going to the TE PAPA Museum (Te papa is real fun to say obnoxiously, I suggest you try it some time, now. do. it.), the Wellington ZOOO I’m pumped, I don’t think my flatmates are though.., Planetarium – Leah is definitely looking forward to that, so am I actually, I don’t think I’ve really been to anything like that besides maybe the Milwaukee Museum, and I don’t think that counts. There’s also these Botanic Gardens, Cable Cars, an um.. well, of course there’s ‘sposed to be some good bars and club type places that Chris and Fahd are looking forward to. I am too, to be honest. I’m most pumped about the  Zoo though. We might head up to the Weta Cave and Mt. Victoria. Weta Cave (don’t tell Chris he’s right) is this awesome museum/gift shop thing that the people that made movies like Avatar and LOTR and stuff like that, have all these props and behind the scenes type stuff, which, since we’re all in design and some of us in Multimedia – I think it would be a really great opportunity to see what we could possibly be doing as future jobs, I mean, c’mon?! Mt. Victoria is part of the places LOTR was filmed, I think its the Hobbit Forest and some great landscape stuff that was also in LOTR. Which, I’m not complaining about. Might have to go to Wellington more than once, we’ll see.

I wish there was a way I could fly in Ross, Dan, and Laura because I know they would absolutely love this scenery, just everything about it, Ross for the wilderness and adventure stuff. Laura, for the fact that its New Zealand and everywhere you look is a photo op. Dan would like everything about it too, minus the whole O-Zone hole thing, but there’s so much Asian inspired art, hiking, great walks, like.. all of them would enjoy this place thoroughly.. If I ever come back.. one of them at least is coming with me. Evan would surely like it.. even though he doesn’t think he could handle it, I’m thinking he could. Perhaps, hah. Heck, my mom would love this place too. Its hard not to. Minus the little annoyances like grocery prices and no transportation, its a sweet gig. I won’t want to go back to Stout after this place. That’s my hypothesis. I’ll only want to be there for the people. That’s it. Hah. Well, I suppose I should call it a night.

zZzz

:Now we’re older its getting harder to see

Click on the photo to see more of Wanganui, New Zealand.

I could talk to you about what I’ve seen and where I’ve gone, but it’d be much more fun to show you.

Are you having fun? Well, are you still having fun?

You wouldn’t know would you, as I’m an awful blogger and haven’t been keeping up to date AT ALL with this blogging thing. GAH.

Here’s the quick re-cap of my life since the day I got to go to the public library, use their internet, upload OLD entries and then we got Internet that same day and I just forgot all about my responsibilities to blog about mah lyyyfe.

Hm.. Let’s see, the weekend. Let’s start there shall we?

Friday : Stayed in. Leah and Chris went out, check it on watchleahgo.blogspot.com or something very close to that.

Saturday : Went to Stellar’s, all of us, the CORE of NZ: Myself, Leah, Chris, Fahd, and Beth – drank before hand – it was  apple cider. 8.2% – Chris thinks thats a big deal. Drank cider and beer at the bar. Met a kiwi on LSD, a person – not the national bird – nor a fruit. Met other random kiwis that weren’t on LSD, made friends, got numbers. Smoked cigarettes because I felt like it. Don’t judge me. Received the greatest drunk call of my life from Chriss who drunkenly left the bar to make a phone call to his brother who was also drunk and then tried to get back in but they wanted him to pay an entrance fee, even though he was already stamped. It was $5.

And according to Chris St. Patrick Patrick, it was also the PRINCIPLE of the matter. He was shitfaced. So now, at this point of the story, Chris is no longer part of it.

Danced, alot. Danced some more. And then I told Leah to “Just go with it.” There was a very serious somber faced man dancing with/on/next to her and she wanted to go home because of him – she was pretty toasty too, I was very toasty. I didn’t want to, not yet, hence the ‘go with it.’ Hah. Drunk dick move. My bad team. Met some more Kiwis at the end of the night – travelled to McDonalds with them, Patrick, Sean, and two others that I either didn’t catch their name because I was drunk or I forgot sometime during the evening. They like Ron Paul. Everyone here that we’ve talked to, including Fahd, are better Americans than us. They actually give a sh*t about the election. Mainly to see who’s going to screw their country over next. No harm, no foul. I understand. I understand I should probably start paying attention to the US, as I have no idea whats going on in it.

Maybe tomorrow.

Made friends. Good night overall.

Woke up dizzy as f*ck.

INTERNATIONAL ORIENTATION
Learned nothing new but “You MUST go to 100% of your classes.” Dislike. You have to get a Dr’s note BEFORE you get sick. DUMB.

GENERAL ORIENTATION AT UCOL.
Biggest joke of my life. Need I go on? I picked Graphic Design History, Level 7 Illustration(?), and Level 7 Graphic Design 3 (?) whatever the heck lv7 means, IDK. Then, of course I’m doing the Independent Study for Galante: Photojournalism and Documentary Photography. We’ll see how this thing goes.

TOWER

Click the photo to be re-directed to my flickr so that you can SEE the Tower rather than me droning on and on about it.

Thursday February 9th – castlecliff beach

So today we went to Castlecliff Beach. I think we were expecting more of a swimming beach with nice sand, and people swimming and, just a nice, semi tourist-y beach. At least I was, however, that’s not what we ended up with. Don’t get me wrong, a beach, an ocean, and sunny weather is nice no matter what, but this beach is more of a surfing and swim at your own risk type of beach. Not exactly a tourist-y place to be. There was more driftwood there than I’ve ever seen in my entire life, extremely picture-esc and beautiful, but I wanted to lay out on the beach and go swimming, and this was not really the place to do it, haha. I went swimming, kind of.

I jumped some crazy waves, was dragged in by two… I can honestly say I’ve never tasted anything saltier than the ocean, besides maybe that nasty Vegemite stuff, ugh, its disgusting!! See, I knew the ocean was salty, I guess I just didn’t realize HOW salty. Insane. Also, I was like, dur-da-dur I want to get brown, less sunscreen-more sun. ERRRR! Wrong answer. I look like a lobster, no joke. So burnt. I even put sunscreen on when I got there, I re-applied like twice? My arms, back, shoulders, LEGS, and my feet are completely fried. Not to mention my face. Oh, fun fact, hands—they burn too. My stinkin’ HANDS are burnt. I’ve never had my hands burn, or my legs, this is bananas. I bought tons of Aloe and Lotion today, but I feel like I’ll be a bright shade of red until at least Sunday. Its Thursday, in case anyone actually reads this thing.

Chris, one of my flatmates, is so pumped to go drinking tomorrow. Can’t say I blame him, we have no transportation to go anywhere, we’ve explored the town at least ten times, we went to the only beach the bus goes to-today, and school doesn’t start for about 2 weeks almost. There’s literally nothing else to do. Alcohol is insanely expensive here, like, I miss Wisconsin and it’s beer and liquor prices. Sucky. The only thing we can really afford is cheap ‘on-sale’ wine at 1 of the 3 grocery stores, New World, oh, and cider. Cider is like $10 for a 40 oz, or whatever the NZ equivalent for 40 oz is in ml or L. We bought some Tui beer, Leah and I, 11.99 for a 15 pack, on sale. Normally it’s like 18.99 for 15 bottles. THE FUGGGG?! We bought some off brand Bailey’s and then some Vodka, they came to like $45 for roughly 700ml or something, which is super friggen expensive. Chris got beer, went through his 40 of cider and tomorrow I guess we’re all drinkning ciders and then going out to have like one drink because the NZ double shot is equal to ONE of our shots, and that’s a $7.50 drink. If you want a double, it’s really a quad and that’s like $15. The first thing I’m doing when I get back home is buying a drink for $3, gosh I can’t wait. Insane.

Anywho, I’m super burnt, I think I got the most burnt out of all of us, Beth, poor Beth, she put sunscreen on like at least 10 times and she still got burnt, but in patches. Leah got burnt everywhere but her face. Chris was only on the beach for like an hour and a half, then him and Fahd (our neighbor) left, so he didn’t get burnt except for his shoulders and neck, and that happened AFTER he left the beach and was walking around Wanganui. Leah, Beth, and I stayed until about 3:30 so we were there for a little more than 4 hours. No sunscreen… I guess I earned this burn, time to own it.

Another plus, I got a few good photos, nothing too extraordinary, but as my first legitimate time in an ocean in a different country, continent, and hemisphere, there’s some good shots. Galante probably wouldn’t approve, but in terms of travel photos they pass. On the other hand that beach was literally covered in seashells, I have so many to give to people back home. I still can’t believe my legs and hands burned. So weird. I really hope I’m back to my Caucasian self Sunday, preferably a more brown Caucasian self, but I won’t be too picky considering every visible surface of my skin is burned and throbbing. I really really hope this turns to brown, I hope that’s the case.

We should have our Internet kick in sometime soon, the guy at Vodafone (our web service provider people), said it should kick in by the end of this week or early next week. I hope we get it soon, I’m dying. Although, if I could miss the whole skyping with my friends looking like a circus freak, that’d be sweet. I’m hoping I just get tan and lose the skin cancer look before I chat with all the cool kids back home.

Speaking of talking to people back home, I sent out Emily and Laura’s letters yesterday I think, was it yesterday? Hm… yes, yes it was. Hopefully they get them by Friday, technically Saturday my time, but yes, I’m hoping they get them soon-ish. It didn’t cost too much for a letter, I’m kind of surprised, I mean it did, but, less than I had anticipated. The days around here go by super slow, but really fast at night and I lose all track of time and days, I don’t know if we went to the farmer’s market yesterday or the day before and… yeah, it’s one big blob of days. I haven’t really felt the huge culture shock of being in a different country yet, probably because they speak English and we’ve been in Wanganui the whole time. Eh, whatever, tis cool. Another Brightside: if this burn leaves behind a tan, Laura’s going to be oh-so-stinkin-jealous, bahaha. That’s awful… nope, don’t care, lol. I’m way too glad to be missing out on yet another awful Menomonie winter to care, so… HA HA HAAAA!! Fools. Should’ve come with me. Well. I’m pooped. Going to sleep!