study breaks

it's funny how just when you think your life has changed, you spend two solid days staring at a blank microsoft word document and berating yourself for being so unmotivated, and then when the clock hits midnight you scoot through your research paper downing coffee and just letting the words come to you. turns out, school's not really that different here.

then again, we'll have to wait and see if i get a decent grade on a paper that was thrown together at the last minute. then we'll know for sure.

thanks for all your concern, i am feeling better now. usually i shrug off being sick because i am a busy girl, but this time i actually emailed my teachers, canceled all my appointments, and haven't left the house in two and a half days. i'm really serious about getting healthy, partly because i got my dad's infamous "health comes first" talk (the man's got a point, though), and partly because i'm going to these places, among others, on saturday...




lake te anau...




yes, ROHAN...



omaru (home of the rare yellow-eyed penguins)...


dunedin...



queenstown (where i have committed to bungee jumping because i have no real reason to live anyway. plus, if you're ever gonna do it, that's the place.)...


and milford sound, one of the seven natural wonders of the world...


i hope you enjoyed my road trip preview. now go enjoy some oatmeal. it's the secret to a long life.

xoxo
maggie

Weekend in Taranaki

it's not lucky for me that i have strep throat. but it's lucky for you if you've been wanting pictures. let me take you through my weekend with my lovely friends!

we drove from wellington to new plymouth about 5 hours up the southwest coast, i have mapped it out in white for you. behold:



this was our chariot which rode us into the weekend. the party bus of champions:




here's a look on the inside, full of happy campers:


this is what mount taranaki looks like, it's very beautiful:
unfortunately, due to weather, this was our view of it:

sooo we headed to a museum in the center of the city full of ancient maori tribal relics. how scary would it be to be locked in there at night? very.
they also had some pretty art in the museum:
after the museum everyone went shopping, and i decided to go walking along the water. i watched the waves crash onto the rocks and listened to radiohead and bjork for about an hour, it was a really peaceful afternoon.

then that evening some of us headed out to the rugby game, which ended up being a tie and was a highly enjoyable game. i shared fish n chips with my friend liam and we were very happy about that.
also, the stadium is apparently sponsored by some bread company, or so i've been told, and they threw loaves of bread out to the crowd during halftime, like, you know, instead of t shirt guns? just chunking bread. david caught a loaf and made a french fry sandwich. which i thought was weird, but he seemed to enjoy it so that's what matters i suppose. please note that the rays of light were added by me in editing for effect.



luckily, on the second day, the sky cleared for a short time and we were able to see how lovely it was there:
also, we got pretty and went out to paint the town red. this is elizabeth, emily, me, and lauren. they're some of my exchange friends!



we stopped at this pretty lookout on the drive home:




we also stopped at dawson falls, a gorgeous waterfall:

this is me in the van, ridin' dirty. i just thought i would remind ya'll how cool i am just in case it's been too long for you to remember.


have a great day, everybody! and please don't take for granted your ability to swallow. you miss it when it's gone.



*photos (without permission but on good faith) by may tobar, emily rogers, aaron dolan, liam mccartney, and emma nichols

Monday on the Couch

I will try to update in the next couple days with some photos from our trip this weekend and let you know some more about that, we had a great time.

Right now I'm quite sleepy and I just wanted to stop by to say hello to you all and let you know that I miss you dearly.

I suspect that I got food poisoning from an ever so sketchy Chinese takeaway place on the drive back yesterday as I have had a terrible day and a half of feeling like death. So I stayed home today and successfully hid from my responsibilities underneath my thick blanket.

Anway, I'm resolving to start taking better care of myself. It's no wonder I'm sick, I've been abusing my poor body since I arrived. I need to sleep, exercise, and study more. I need to go out, drink, and eat junk food less. So that is the plan. I kind of wish I could stay home again tomorrow because the rest has been wonderful and I really want to make sure that this thing goes away, but I ought to go to my classes (only 2 though) and then I have my appointment with the hand specialist which I shouldn't miss because if I don't get a proper brace on this finger soon it might mean surgery (yikes!) so send out good thoughts that I might survive the day.

I hope you all had a great weekend, though, and I think that if you didn't, or if you're sick like me, you might want to listen to "Sweet Darlin'" by She & Him because it's a cute little song and it might make you feel better.

Also, congratulations to my friends Drake and Jenna who got married this weekend, and also to my dear friend Caitlin who finished her summer in Yemen with stunning success. Lots of love to you all.


picture by Blanca Gomez

From the Soul, Ya'll

I don't have class until about 1 so I'm sitting in the computer lab browsing through my Rough Guide and it's getting me pretty pumped for trips coming up. The mountain I showed you is either called Mount Egmont or Mount Taranaki. I'm not sure because my book says that the actual mountain is Egmont and that the region is Taranaki, but I've heard everyone call it Mt. Taranaki, anyway, we're going to walk around it I guess and that should be cool.
Speaking of walking for no point, hiking here is called TRAMPING. New vocab for you. Tramping involves less prostitution than it sounds, and people are actually pretty hardcore about mountain scaling here.
I should point out that I am not a tramper; I am an afternoon stroller.
I'm bringing this up because last night I skyped the 'rents and was talking to them about how glad I am that I joined the Amnesty group because I think that being involved helps everything a lot. Most of the Americans, if they've joined clubs, seem to have gone for the Tramping Club which is a group of people who hike up mountains on the weekends (I didn't join this because my weekends have already been committed to shaking my tail feathers at the club). But what's funny is that after the first weekend of the tramping club about 85% of everyone dropped out because it was waaay too intense (apparently the leaders were tools as well). This led to the start of the "Gentle Tramping Club," a collection of Americans who essentially can't take the heat. We are planning to scale down the 3 day tramps to afternoon hikes and throw in a couple bottles of wine and a picnic maybe. I'm looking forward to our first outing in the near future.

I'm nervous about going to test drive a car this afternoon which I'm so nervous about because I didn't want my first time to drive a car on the left to not be in my car. I'm hoping I don't smash up someone else's vehicle or I guess I'll just have to buy it. But I'm torn because I think the 2 week break trip is going to be costly, so we'll see what happens, I can't spend too much.

Also, yesterday I bought All Blacks tickets, going to a game vs. Australia in September with my flatmates, I'm pretty excited about that. If I DO have a car by then, I think a southern style tailgate is in order.

Friday I have to go to see a hand specialist because of Charles Martin and my mediocre sporting skillz. The 4th of July cookout at Andrew's house 2 days before I left Texas included an impromptu football game, and I made (dropped) a catch which slammed into my ring finger on my left hand (important one AYE BRO!) <--(that's how boys in New Zealand talk), and I thought I just jammed it, but it's been 6 weeks and it's still crooked. My flatmates said that I should get it fixed or nobody will marry me ever because it's such a repulsively crooked finger. That's how they are. Anyway, I stopped in on the physical therapist on campus and he did some bendy tests on it and said that he thinks I have a torn tendon, and he made me an appointment with a specialist. Hope that goes well so that I don't have to look retarded anymore.

Also, I've been oddly obsessed with a rapper named Young Jeezy lately. I didn't know I had so much gangster in me.

Sorry that I don't post pictures much anymore, it's because I always feel like updating at school so I never have them, but I promise to catch you up on my pictures soon, pictures of creepy finger also promised.

Cheese and Whine?

I wish that the time difference wasn't there because it's annoying that I can't skype people too late in the afternoon without waking them.
I'm a little stressed out today because:
1.I skipped 2 classes for really no reason. (I'll be fine without being there, I think, but it's lazy and uncalled for).
2. Paul Shelton (a great friend from home) is coming to Wellington for a week to visit before he heads further north to do farming. This would not be something stressful as I was quite ecstatic to hear the news, but I realized today that he is arriving 2 days into my 2 week break from school, and I was planning to be gone traveling the south island during that time, so I might not even get to see him which is heart breaking because seeing someone from home is something I think I could really use right now (it helps with the homesickness so much, seeing Kelsey Wilkinson in London during my last exchange was exactly what I needed at the time and was so great).
3. I still don't have solid plans for the break and everything being up in the air is rather bothersome.
4. I'm trying to buy a car but I'm too freaked out to go test drive and get inspections done on my own and begging other people to go with me is something I do not like doing. Why am I buying a car if I'm too scared to drive it? stressss
5. I miss home and because of being busy and poor time differences, calling is difficult. New Zealand is so wonderful, but Texas will always be home and I love my friends and family there so much. The homesickness is being eased by the amazing company I keep here in New Zealand, most of the people I've met have been so great and helpful. Plus, David has become like my brother and his sister Emma and I have grown extremely close as well. His parents have basically adopted me so I've been really lucky to find a second family in Wellington, it makes it all so much easier.
6. I haven't been to the gym in a long time. Must go tonight.
7. Started a research paper which means school is real. Bummer.
8. I think I'm out of things that are stressing me out... listing things always helps though so I feel better.

Tomorrow I am going to look at a car (and another one on Wednesday I believe) and then I have an Amnesty meeting to review all of our work from Freedom Week last week. Last week's activities really went superbly. I tabled a lot on the quad at school and sitting at a table talking to people about Amnesty is a really effective way to meet people, I'm glad I joined Amnesty right at the height of its activity because I think I've met a lot of people through it. Friday night we hosted a concert with like 5 reggae fusion type bands, and we were really nervous because nobody was buying tickets in advance, but then over 400 people showed up and it was incredible! I danced a lot, so that's always good. Anyway, it was 10 bucks a ticket so I know that we raised a LOT of money. Yay!

This weekend I'm going on a road trip with a big group of people to New Plymouth, I don't know what to expect really but I'm about to crack open my Rough Guide (half priced from when Intellectual Property went under, sad) to read up. Check it out, it would be really beautiful:

I hope you all have a great week!

update// My ipod died on the way to the gym and theres nothing more boring than a musicless treadmill, so instead I just explored the neighborhood a little more (which is in itself a workout with the crazy hills here) and I enjoyed it very much. Annie Hall in its entirety being on Youtube and the chicken cashew masala with rice that I'm making both also have me in a better mood.

Rice Crispy Dreamin'

First of all, happy 29th anniversary to my parents! I'm very glad that you decided to get married and that you are still married, and I hope that I will be able to find what you two have because it's absolutely beautiful. Love you both.

Well, it's a ridiculous hour in the morning for me to be up and blogging, but I volunteered to show up at school this morning at 7:30 to put fliers in the lecture halls for Amnesty.

I'm really happy I found a group here on campus because they've got a lot going on and I really like being involved with something besides just school and binge drinking (that's a joke. really.).

This week is Amnesty's Freedom Week across the world and so we're busy all week raising awareness about child soldiers. This Friday we're hosting a big reggae concert at this venue downtown called Bodega to raise money for Amnesty, so my Friday is planned and that should be fun. Also some of the members are dressing in full camo all week with the theme "I wear camo so kids in combat don't have to" which is a neat idea for grabbing attention but I did not volunteer to do that because I'm too vain and uncommitted to the cause...?

Whatever, I got up BEFORE THE SUN to put up fliers!

Today is the bake sale, and last night after a lovely dinner with my friends David and Emma's family I whipped up some rice crispy treats, an American staple. I grabbed the only bag of marshmallows that I could find at the super market and they were pink and white but I was just like "whatever. these will work." Come to find out that they are raspberry and vanilla flavored and that they don't even have just regular old sugar and fat marshmallows! Gross, who eats berry flavored marshmallows? That's wrong.




So long story short, I spent most of the night trying to get melted marshmallow off of me (I don't even know how it got all the way up my sweater sleeve) and the kitchen, and the final product is an odd pinkish flesh tone and tastes slightly of Children's Motrin, but it'll do.

That's sort of what they looked like except with no sprinkles and way less pretty.


I have had a sore throat the last couple days so I'm heading to the doctor this morning at 11. I stopped into the health center this morning to make my appointment and I asked for a couple bandaids to give me some relief from my new shoes and she said, "we can't give you bandaids." What kind of useless doctor's office doesn't have bandaids? Anyway, hopefully I'm not tragically ill, but I'd be lying if I said that having an excuse to watch movies all day and eat tomato soup (for which I have a new found love) wasn't appealing. I got these cords yesterday that hook up my laptop video and sound to our TV so I don't need a DVD player I can just play it all through my computer to the television. Neat.

I have some good pictures from my rompings this weekend which I will share with you when I get home, but I'm in the library right now so I'm unable to add them at the moment. You'll just have to wait.

P.S. I can't believe I'm missing Shark Week. Make it a great one for me!

2:38 p.m.

Today is Monday which means that in Texas it is Sunday, and I just want to say to all of you hungover college students (or perhaps adults, I'm not judging) that you should get yourself to the nearest breakfast taco place and consume as many as you can. Do it for me, thanks.


Really, I should just open up a breakfast taco stand here, I'd probably make a killing as that is something seriously missing in this town.




My weekend was nothing super exciting to blog about, to be honest it was pretty much a blur of alcohol. I'm paying for it today though and am determined to get my body back in working condition this week by chalking up the vitamins, hitting the gym, and eating nutritiously in general. I did, however, pull myself together enough on Saturday afternoon to head down to Oriental Bay and take a walk along the shore as the sun was setting. That was lovely, there were lots of seagulls and big sail boats coming into port in front of a landscape of mountains, quite picturesque. My ipod added a pretty sweet soundtrack of Cafe Del Mar which accented it brilliantly, so that was time well spent. I really love this city, it's got everything. Besides a taco stand, but I already addressed that.
That's a picture of Oriental Bay. You can tell I didn't take it because of how good it is.





If you're wondering, no, this blog entry has no structure or focus. I just finished my biology test early and I've got an hour to kill. I finally got my student ID today so I guess that makes me officially a real person. Hmmm.




Oh, I know, I will tell you about New Zealand television, you're interested in some of the culture differences, right? We'll start with TV because I'm American.


New Zealand, I guess thanks to their high tax rates, cranks out a LOT of public service announcements. The domestic violence ones are particularly intense/uncomfortable, and make it awkward to carry on a conversation in the room after the screaming and the beating. I realize that these are perhaps effective and a good strategy, but they're really good at bringing me down. Come on people, stop beating each other up so I can enjoy Who Wants to be a Millionaire in peace. I'll see if I can find it for you.



...I can't find it online, but take my word for it, it's depressing.


Speaking of, they say that domestic violence in New Zealand goes up 200% when the All Blacks lose. That's one of those statistics that is hard to react to because it's terribly sad, but so ridiculous that it's hard not to laugh. Don't laugh though, or you're a bad person.




I seem to listen to a disproportionately high level of country music when I'm overseas. Alabama's "Song of the South" has been a favorite lately. It's funny how the stuff you hate becomes nostalgic enough to attract you as time goes by.




I thought that today was going to be a bad day when I woke up because I seriously didn't want to when my alarm went off this morning. And then I had to cram for a biology test which I had forgotten about because I still haven't bought a calendar, and blackboard wasn't letting me on to access the lecture slides, and it was raining. But then blackboard started working and it stopped raining and I did pretty well on my test. So I changed my mind, today is a good day.


Also I have a chicken nuggets date with my roommates tonight. They're actually going to get 12 dollar all you can eat pizza, but I'm not really into pizza at the moment so I'll just get some chicken.


Oh, pizza. The main pizza place here is called Hell's Pizza and their logo is like this devil guy, and all of their pizzas are named after one of the seven deadly sins, which I find to be a very clever marketing strategy.



My favorite, and the most popular, is lust. It's weird though, it doesn't even have pizza sauce on it, it has BARBEQUE sauce. How weird is that? So weird. But surprisingly delicious. Try it at home sometime.




Oh- here's something that annoys me, the sinks here. This is what our sink looks like:


Hot on the left, cold on the right. This is the worst idea I've ever encountered because you have 2 choices, scalding or freezing. There is no "warm" faucet. So when I wash my face I cup my hands and fill them with freezing water and then add a little bit of scalding water in an attempt to get a decent compromise. If I designed sinks I would make faucets with adjustable temperatures. And I'm sure there is some reason behind these annoying sinks, like they're eco friendly or something. I haven't looked into it, but they suck.



Anyway, sorry that this post doesn't have any of my snazzy photography or fun media additives, and that it just consists of my random stream of thoughts, but I'm not on my computer so I don't really have anything more to offer you.


Cheers!

Rugby and Road Trips

The second part of my weekend was as lovely as the first part. It began Saturday night when I went to a local pub to watch the All Blacks game with some neighbors.
The All Blacks are New Zealand's rugby team, and they were playing Australia, and it was a VERY big deal. The pub was absolutely packed. That was one of my favorite things I've done, just because there were so many people and everyone was so excited and into it, and even though I didn't really have a clue what was going on it was fun to yell when everyone else yelled. It was like being a part of an important cultural aspect really, and I felt very lucky to be able to be there and enjoying it with so many locals. The All Blacks are known for doing the Haka before each match, which is like a traditional Maori (I'll talk more about Maori later) dance. Anyway, it's badass. And it's really neat because it's completely unique to here and it gets you really fired up for the game because it's so intense and the other team just has to stand there awkwardly as the All Blacks like yell at them and just be really cool. I was glad I wasn't Australia, also because they lost. Here's the HAKA for you.


The next day my friend David and I went on a day road trip up to Palmerston North and I got to see some of the New Zealand countryside for the first time really. Here, I've got photos!
David drives a convertible which was PERFECT because it provided a great open view of the beautiful countryside. Unfortunately, it was very cold so we looked ridiculous bundled up in a convertible. Good thing we still supa' fly.


First stop, Paua museum and factory! This is a shell unique to New Zealand that is popular in jewelry. Ooh Aah.

Then we kept driving along the mountains, the snow capped mountains were breathtaking.
Second stop, Bruce Wildlife Reserve. This was a really fun stop, we went for a walk through this reserve and it was sort of like a mixture between just a mountain and a zoo. It was like pretty trails through the woods and every once in a while there would be a closed in space with native birds, and that was cool because then you got to see them all, like this one...


Also, we saw KIWI BIRDS there! I couldn't take pictures of them, unfortunately, but my they were simply adorable. I think it's so great that they are the national symbol, they're such neat little animals. We saw eels too, they were cool but kind of gross/scary. We should still preserve them though.That's the trail that takes you through the Reserve. Pretty stunning.
The next stop on the journey was the Tui brewery! Remember when I talked about Tui and how it was my first local beer? Well the brewery was a neat little stop in a tiny little town.

Also, they have a cute ad campaign where they make a statement and follow it with "yeah, right." This one seemed picture worthy.

This is an epic picture of a windmill farm that was on top of the mountains in front of us as the clouds rolled over it, it was so beautiful.
Towards the end of the trip the scenery started really taking it up a notch.

There's me trying to get in on some of the pretty.
It was a spectacular weekend, clearly. I know that it ended a few days ago but I haven't been up to much since, mostly school and school. I did, however, join the Amnesty International chapter and we have a big benefit concert coming up in a couple weeks, and I went to a great open mic night to hear some poetry and music. Life is good, isn't it?

Beach Days

This weekend has been an amazing wild ride; I did so much and I have a lot of beautiful photos to share with you, but it's going to take a while to get it all blogged out, so I'll do it in patches.

Saturday was a fantastic day, particularly because the sun came out and I am a big fan. It's been so cloudy and rainy that the sunshine did my spirits a lot of good. Not that I had been down at all, I just missed the sun terribly. So Saturday it was beautiful and I got my fill of vitamin D and was a happy camper. It's funny how happy the most basic of things can make you.

After going to see my friend Peter play basketball all morning, I went on a drive with my friend David to the other side of the bay. We went along the beach and had ice cream and met people and just generally had a lovely Saturday afternoon, here are my favorite photos from the day (remember you can click on any to enlarge it).





I hope you all had a wonderful weekend too!

family matters

happy birthday, daddy (and uncle tom!)

love you, miss you, and i can't wait to see you!