:there’s a world outside of every darkened door

On this journey that you’re making
There’ll be answers that you’ll seek
And it’s you who’ll climb the mountain
It’s you who’ll reach the peak

Today has been.. really strange.
Woke up around noon, after Beth and my journey to Virginia Lake last night around 7:30. It was really quite spectacular – the lake, not the hill we had to walk up, haha. I’ll post a link and photos after I just get whatever ‘this’ is out of my head.

I found out I can’t take the Portfolio class as an Independent Study.

Can you hear it? Its the sound of life plans crashing like glass. There goes the neighborhood. I don’t know what I’m going to do quite honestly. I’ve been in situations like this where I had to finaggle some stuff, move it, twist it, -squeeze it into place and pull some strings. This is different. This is the difference between having a Minor in Photography and having a bunch of random photography classes that don’t count towards anything at all. I’m going to have to take it in Spring of 2013, but that also means I won’t have enough credits to fill out the semester, which translates to: I won’t have a place to live if I don’t take 12 credits, dorm life, fuggg. Which means, I’d have to fill it with random classes to take, which means I need to hear back from Galante now so that I know if I need to save credits for Spring, aka not take Summer classes and just wait to take Senior Show and Portfolio Photography class until Spring 2013 and then just.. take two more random classes or find an apartment, I don’t know which one is going to be worse, quite honestly. Either way, its going to be expensive and at the end of the day… I’d rather make my Portfolio book project on my own time, and just not get the stupid paper work for the Minor… but I really want the paperwork, that means a lot to me. as;dfa;lsdkfj

After that sour note, I watched the ‘Exit through the Gift Shop’ Banksy documentary and was amazed at how easily mass populations get sucked into things without realizing it.. All of “Mr. Brainwash’s” stuff is being created by other designers and people, he’s essentially a less than intelligent man copying the styles and subjects of people like Banksy and Sheppard Fairey – who essentially are taking already created pieces and re-inventing them.. so in a way, they’re copying too, and the masses are just buying pieces of ‘art’ that are unoriginal copies made by someone nameless working for this guy. It’s hilarious and sad all at the same time.

Proceeding that moment of cinematic epiphany, I put on my amazing Disney Pandora and started perusing the interwebs for something interesting. And then, I thought about the news my mom told me via skype yesterday and I tried to sit down and write a letter to someone I’ve never met, but have also been thinking about since I was at least 7 years old. I couldn’t do it, I had no idea where to start, what to say, how much to write. Nothing. Nada. Then I thought about Beth telling me that she woke up late too and had the oddest sensation of being homesick, which I haven’t really had troubles with, here and there of course, but overall its been fine.

And then,

I read about this girl’s dream she had about her grandmother who died ten years ago. It brought up a lot intense emotions that I’ve been working really hard on suppressing or at the least ignoring. And I started thinking about my grandpa and also about the new developments back home and… thought, Wow, how unfair is that.. one of the best I have ever come to know is gone and now there’s someone who had every right to know him, that could have known him, and I just got to thinking about how unjust all of it is. She would have loved him. It’s not fair. It’s not at all okay.

Its true, I’m not homesick.

But surely, I’m still in mourning because I only miss one person, and now I miss him for myself, my family, and the possible new face, I miss him for her a lot. She never was able to know him and that’s devastating to me. I hate this. I hate that he’s gone and that I can’t tell him about my trip and that he can’t ask me questions and that I can’t hear those stupid jokes that are only funny because of how awkward they are, haha.

I feel the oddest sense of peace and calmness when I start thinking about how … sad doesn’t even begin to describe it.. I feel, but its weird… its like I’m super devastated by the loss but insanely appreciative of everyone else that I still have and grateful for the people I’m being introduced to.. its the most complex mix of whatever this is, I’ve ever experienced. I don’t know what to make of it. I just know that if I start to hear anything about him I feel acceptance, peace, all of that.. and then when I cry about it, I can’t stop crying, but in my head I feel fine. Jibberish. All of this is jibberish. I don’t feel like talking about Wellington. It was a nice trip and I had a lot of fun, but I don’t feel like writing about it, because it doesn’t really matter, I mean, its whatever I guess.

I’ve been thinking about Ross and his sit spots. I don’t trust myself to go find a sit spot and meditate or whatever it is you’re supposed to do, my mind would stray to subjects like this and then I’d be by myself outside crying, hah, and that isn’t something I’m willing to risk.

AND THEN

Phil fucking Collins came on Pandora, followed by fucking Cat Stevens and I felt like someone was inside my head picking just the right songs to make me feel helpless to fighting off the ignorant bliss I’ve had going for me. Feck. I just want to sleep. I’ll wake up bright-eyed and brand new. Yep. That sounds perfect. Too bad its 5:20 at night and I have an early class tomorrow..

Onto Plan B, watch 13 going on 30 in my room with lots of spaghetti.
Sounds like a dream.

Another Phil song,

I see before me a new horizon
I want to know
Can you show me?

Come with me now to see my world
Where there’s beauty beyond your reach

Take my hand there’s a world I need to know

Please excuse my rant/meltdown/writer’s block/freakout.

Phil needs to stop coming on Pandora. Worst part, I can’t not listen to it – its so good! Feck.

When destiny calls you
You must be strong
I may not be with you
But you’ve got to hold on

I’ll be back to normal by 5:30.
Time for spaghetti.

Three Phil songs in a row preceeded by Cat Stevens and Gary Jules and stinkin’ Fleetwood Mac, I’m losing my head.

: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!

:”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!

: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!