"Hey guys! Guess what?! I bought a green dress today!" "Uh, Victoria, you're kind of a week late..."

Yes, it has been nearly ten days since my last post, and time has been flying by lately.


I've decided to take a slightly different approach to this blog post, given that I am rather tired of writing (and I'm sure you are all rather tired of reading) accounts of the events that happen everyday I am here. If I go on a trip outside of Wellington, I will probably revert back to the daily-log format, but right now I feel like mixing it up a bit.


Suffice it to say that during the time in which I have not explicitly described my activities, I spent it doing one of the following activities:
a) dancing
b) studying/doing school related work
c) sleeping
d) eating


Now, onto to business.


In case some of you were keenly looking forward to incriminating St. Patty's Day photos of me, allow me to say you have been thwarted- not because I simply have those pictures on lock down, but because they don't exist at all. I spent my St. Patrick's Day evening chilling out and going for a walk by the beautiful Wellington harbour. That day was a wonderful mixture of dancing, gelato, great conversation, and a massive burger from a very good little burger joint called "Burger Fuel". It would have also been a fantastic swimming day if I could have convinced the native (and non-native, alike) Kiwi break dancers that swimming was a perfectly agreeable activity in 20°C weather. Alas, I could not. 


I have learned something though, that I've wanted to learn for a long while- ever since I saw the following Big Bang Theory episode. Here is the excerpt most relevant to my new-found (and hard- fought for) talent:




Yes, yes I did learn how to do that finger trick. Amazing, I know. To be entirely honest, I don't have it down perfectly yet, but it's a work in progress.


The much awaited break dance photo shoot was meant to happen this past Wednesday, but due to crap-tastic weather this week, we had to re-schedule it to this coming Monday.  I will post pictures from the shoot once I get them, but I want to say right now that there might not be as many pictures of yours truly, given that we're trying to get a fairly big group to come to the shoot, and my current b-girl skills aren't all that impressive. With that said, it's going to be a great time!

I love this plaque- right at the waterfront.

On that note of things that were going to happen and then didn't, well I was going to go rock climbing today, but due to lack of sleep, crappy weather (and therefore a re-scheduling of the trip to an indoor climbing gym, instead of outside) that isn't happening. I did get to go to a rock climbing gym on Thursday night with many other international students- and this was a hoot and a half. The mixture of such a wide variety of cultures and people (and language barriers) made it so much fun! There was a particularly awkward moment when we had to explain what a 'wedgie' was to those who weren't familiar with the term. I got stuck on a couple courses, so I must now go back and conquer them- preferably when my forearms don't feel like they're going to fall off.


I have to say that Thursday was a wonderful day here- for several reasons. Firstly, I slept in late and managed to shower, brush my teeth, get dressed, put my contacts in, and get my books together in under 30 minutes. I volunteered at the Exchange Fair at the university- this was an event basically designed to advertise why going on exchange is so great, and afforded all of us the opportunity to do a little self-promotion for our own schools at home. This was made all the better by the fact that the Canadian commissioner lady had hard maple candy- sooooo goood! I hadn't realised how much I missed maple syrup until that moment. They do have maple syrup here (mostly imported from Canada), but it is superr expensive. I did bring maple syrup here from home, but I have nothing to eat it with- must find someone's kitchen to make pancakes in.


My classes that day were pretty interesting, but the highlight of the day was the periodic sunshine (it was raining alllll week) and the fact that I got to see some people at the jam (there hadn't been any jams earlier this week because of the weather). Tali, sweetheart that she is, got my a bracelet in Australia for looking after her fish for the weekend- it's quite pretty and has little blue kangaroos on it.


Oh, you know what? I lied- the highlight of the day was coming back to residence and getting the parcel that my wonderful, lovely mother had sent me (love you mom!). On the front of the parcel were about a million stamps with polar bears on them- here it is:

To say that I was excited to get this package is a bit of an understatement- so thanks goes out to mi madre for putting this together for me.


And now, on to the blog title- yesterday I walked into a little store called "Indeja" on Cuba Street. This place has quite the nice selection of dresses that you wouldn't find in your typical department store. I found a really cute green one, which I was very excited about. I decided to share this news in the common room last night- but most people seemed to think I bought it for the sole purpose of St. Patrick's Day. Nope, not the case at all. I will take a picture of me in it the next time I wear it, so you may see what I'm talking about.


Now that I think about it, this post is still resembling a log of sorts- I think I need to come up with more interesting stories for you all. I'll work on this.


As some of you may know, tomorrow is my father's birthday. I really wish I could be there with him for this special day, but because I can't, here is a song for you dad ( I hope this works):

MALLOW PUFFS!!!

This short post is dedicated entirely to Kiwi idiosyncrasies, starting with my most favourite by far- how to eat a mallow puff.

Now, a mallow puff (whose existence I was entirely ignorant of until earlier this week), is a biscuit with a marshmallow on top, and covered with chocolate. I think we have something similar back in North America, though we do not call them 'mallow puffs'. Kiwis sure do like their marshmallows...

So, the proper way to eat a mallow puff- no jokes- is to smack yourself in the forehead with said mallow puff (some do this quite violently) and then eat the chocolate off around the outside. Some people will suck the marshmallow out of this cookie-chocolate mass. It all depends on personal preference- but one thing remains constant- you must crack this biscuit on your face before eating it.

These, my friends, are mallow puffs.

This was probably the most hilarious thing I've seen since coming here- at least 4 people in the common room helped eat a package of mallow puffs and all of them smacked themselves on the forehead before commencing the ingestion process. It might be one of those things where you have to be there to see it, but trust me, it's quite the sight. Below is a rather crappy video of how to eat a mallow puff that I found on YouTube, but it gives you an idea of how people do it.

And now, defining Kiwi slang:

Bathing suit= toggs (never call your bathing suit a 'bathing suit' here, apparently it's quite the social infraction)

Jello= jelly

Toasted sandwich= toastie

Sweater= jumper

Permanent marker= "Vivid" (a name brand)

Squash= pumpkin (this one confuses me still...)

Latte= flat white (maybe I've just never heard of this before, and it's not actually particular to New Zealand...)

"Did you have lectures today Victoria" "...Noooo" "Do you have lectures everrr?"

Hello Hello!!
It seems as though my blogging pattern has taken on a weekly frequency- despite my best efforts to blog more, and thus include more details about my oh-so-thrilling life (*insert slight sarcastic tone here).


So I last left you all on Thursday the 8th of March. Hmmmm, well Friday I had another Maori studies class- we had the same lecturer as Wednesday, and though he zoomed through quite a bit of material, he managed to be engaging at the same time, so I quite enjoyed it. I had a dance jam again that day (big surprise to all of you, I'm sure) and several of us (Tali, Ahmed, Pique, Nan mie, and Tringe- please excuse the spelling of the names, because I'm not sure if they're all right) went to a food court to get some dinner after the jam. If you really want to know, I got butter chicken from a (loosely defined) Indian cuisine spot. I also got myself this unbelievably tasty smoothie from a place there, and the smoothie was called something along the lines of "The Caribbean". Mango, pineapple, frozen yogurt and coconut milk- sooooo gooooood. I think it was the coconut milk that made it so lovely. Anyways, moving on from the food fixation... I had the best intentions (don't all great stories start this way?..) of going to a salsa night that night, but I was super exhausted from dance, so I ended up chilling out with the other people on my floor. I think we had a movie night, but I can't actually remember that far back right now...


Saturday was going to be my study day- I was going to get things done....


Uh huh, right.


It was +20°C outside, and sunny, and beautiful- definitely not the recipe for a productive study day in my books. So, as you may have already guessed, I spent the day outside, in the sun, soaking up my Vitamin D. A group from my floor went into town, and we browsed some shops for a bit- not too long though, because I don't think any of us were really in the mood for it. Then we walked down by the waterfront and got some a-ma-zing gelato from a little cafe there. I think I got raspberry and chocolate- a combination I would highly recommend by the by.


And then, we went swimming in the harbour. When I say 'we', I should probably clarify that in our group of about ten people, 4 of us were brave enough to dare the chilly dip. There is a wooden plank that juts out over the harbour, and it was perfect for jumping off of, so Abi, Josh, Kent (with some persuasion) and I all went for a swim in the ocean. In the rather cold- but refreshing- ocean.


Bliss.


On our way back we stopped at the grocery store (called "New World" in case you wanted to know) and I bought a gluten free chocolate chip cookie which (after I heated it up in the microwave), was so yummy! I think the company is called "cookie time", but I'm not too sure...


Right-o. So now onto Saturday night... Which started off with drinks at Tali's again (methinks a pattern emerging, there is), where I met some of her extended fam jam (2 cousins- both female), and another friend of hers who is also female- this was quite nice, because the male to female ratio was much more balanced than it usually is- a pleasant change indeed. The first club we went to- Rain. A word of advice? Don't go to Rain. If no where else is open, and Rain is- just go home. Okay, honestly, it wasn't thattt bad, but the bouncers didn't like our group very much because we were break dancing on the floor where the non-existent bar patrons were supposedly walking (we were basically the only ones there), and they also made some reference to broken glass on the floor (though it was far too early in the night for that to be the case). Anywho, we didn't spend long there. Next stop? Boston. It was a pretty happening spot that night, but good fun, good fun. In case you're wondering, I did get out of my shell more that night and danced my heart out. Tali and I did our set (aka routine) that we'd been working on, but ah, it didn't go quite as well as it had during practice (I blame the combination of restrictive clothing, nerves and alcohol). Oh well, we're working on a different set now, so maybe this one will be better. Boston ended up getting too crowded, so where did we end up? The Big K. Blech. It seems that despite the general feelings of loathing towards that establishment, we always end up there. Well, it's not the place you're at, it's the people you're with that counts- and these people are all lovely, so it was a fantastic night.


Moving right along.. to Sunday.


Sunday was a recuperation day. We were all very tired, so our 'dance jam' was more of a "lie on the mat and talk" session than anything. I tried to Skype mi familia that morning, but the internet was being temperamental, so that didn't pan out as we'd hoped. This was a very low key, hang out, sort of day. That night we had another floor movie night and we watched the movie "Jennifer's Body". The only two people on our floor that had seen it swore up and down that it was a (and I quote) "funny movie". Well, we all like a good comedy, don't we?


Well, I learned a lesson that night- Google the film synopsis before taking people's words for it that a movie fits into the genre of 'comedy'. This movie (which I don't recommend watching, because it wasn't even very good) is about a girl who is best friends with one of the popular girls in her high school. They both go to a concert in their small town, and the popular girl (played by Megan Fox) gets abducted by the band. To make a long story short, Megan Fox turns into a zombie and starts eating the men in her town to survive. The main actress (Amanda Seyfried) is the only person who suspects her and tries to stop her, but fails (of course). I won't ruin the ending for you, in the rare chance you want to watch it after reading my 'rave reviews'. So, no, that movie was a poor attempt at horror, and far from being a comedy. Oh dear...


Monday- the other day of rest...


And here is where the title of this post comes in because, as you may or may not know, I do not have lectures on Mondays, so I basically am blessed with a 3-day weekend- making Monday the inevitable "do-all-the-things-I-was-supposed-to-do-this-weekend-but-didn't-get-done" day. One of the guys on the floor asked me about my classes (see title of post) and seemed slightly exacerbated that I never seem to be going to classes (this is entirely untrue, by the way, but it was kind of funny to hear his reaction). I spent the day studying, dancing, and doing some administration-type stuff for the upcoming week. That night "John Tucker Must Die" was on TV- yes, I like that movie, though please don't judge my taste in movies based on that alone.


Tuesday!
Quite the busy day- classes, dance (learning some new moves lately, so that's been pretty cool), and a tramping (aka hiking) club meeting that night. The tramping club here looks so awesome! They have organized trips almost every weekend and there is one this weekend, but I don't have all of the gear to go (and I only had two days notice to get ready for it). But I'm hoping I'll get to go on the next one. The membership fee was $20, but with that membership you get discounts at most of the camping-type stores in town, so that's pretty exciting.


Wednesday!!!
Pretty much the same story as Tuesday- classes and such, except that a few of us after the jam (Tali, Ahmed, Nan Mie and Tringe) went to a little cafe called "Enigma". They had really good gelato there as well- and I got a toasted sandwich with ham, cheese, tomato, and spinach on it. Mmmmm.
The remainder of the day was pretty tame- studying mostly. Some people in our common room (and therefore the rest of us by default) watched the movie "Step Brothers". If you like Will Ferrell, you will like this movie. Because I am not a fan, I can't say that I enjoyed it that much.


And last, but not least, Thursday!


Today was laundry day- which was much needed I should also add. Louise (another Canadian exchange student and I) went out for coffee this morning and got to catch up for a bit, which was really nice, because it was another beautiful sunny day here. I went to my tutorial that I thought was at 1, but it actually was from 12 until 1- boo. So I missed that one. Luckily it was only the first one, so I didn't miss too much. I had my religion and human biology class from 2 til 4. The professor for that class (or 'paper' as they say here) is a bit... bonkers. He often goes off on tangents and takes several minutes to answer questions that should take 20 seconds to answer. Despite all of this, however, he's a decent lecturer and the class went fairly well. I'm super tired today, so I only jammed for about half an hour before taking off. Tali is going to Australia this weekend and I am her "fish sitter". This basically entails feeding her two gold fish (White belly and Goldie) once a day until Sunday- exciting stuff, I know.


And tonight I was going to do some work for my Maori studies class, but the website wouldn't let me log onto the site, and told me that my account has been suspended. So I sent IT services an e-mail to get that sorted out. This means that I lost all motivation to get work done tonight, and instead, I'm writing an insanely long blog post.


I would like to post pictures here, but sadly my camera battery has run out and I haven't had time to charge it (and I keep forgetting to, which is probably more to the point). But I promise more pictures will be coming soon- and i might take a picture of my knees to show all of you the bumps and bruises I have acquired while learning how to break dance. It's quite a mottled purple sight, and I'll leave it at that.


Some exciting news though- the photographer that took the break dancing pictures I posted earlier might be taking some more pictures of our group next week if we can arrange it- so stay tuned for those as well!!


Well that's all folks!


xo

Forgot one!

"So what DO you have in Canadia?"

The title of the post has nothing to do with the post, but it was a question I received last night when I told some floor mates that we didn't have chocolate fish in Canada (as far as I know anyways). A chocolate fish is a chocolate covered marshmallow- ick.
Anyways, a photographer was walking by our dance jam yesterday and took some pictures, and here you are:

Pop Pop!

Well it has been quite the wonderful week since I last wrote to you all. I suppose I'll start off from last Friday. For the most part my days/afternoons have taken on a similar eat-run errands-dance-eat pattern that I am particularly loving. Last Friday was no different, but that night was even better, because I went out with about 8 people who I've met over the past couple of weeks here who do varying forms of break dancing, popping, tricking etc. Basically all very cool forms of dance.
We started off with some drinks at my friend Tali's house (a fellow female dancer). I only had one drink, ensuring that I would be functional and aware for the remainder of the evening. The entire night was basically a dance party everywhere we went. We started off at a club called 'Boston' which was really great, because at the beginning we had the entire dance floor to ourselves, but then other people started invading the floor, and so we left. We walked down Courtenay Place (which is basically the bar/club hub in Wellington) and started dancing outside this bar that had really great music, but not so much floor room inside. The employees at the bar (called "Betty's") actually cleared away some tables and chairs and such for us to come inside, and gave our group 2 complimentary pitchers of beer- very generous. We stayed there for a while, because it wasn't too crowded. The remainder of the night we stopped by for a very short time at a Karaoke bar (awful, apparently the music between the drunk singers is supposed to be good, but it wasn't that night) and at the Big Kumara- again, didn't stay too long there, because it's definitely not that great a place to be. After that we all went our separate ways for the night. I was pretty shy about dancing around all of the amazing dancers that were there, but I started opening up a bit, so hopefully when we go out this weekend, I'll be a bit more ambitious.

Saturday was super rainy and windy and miserable out, so a few of us ventured into town for a walk for a bit, but most of the day was spent doing absolutely nothing and hanging out with people on my floor. We watched 'Big Mama 2" on tv that night and also "American Beauty" on someone's laptop. It was a big pillow and blanket fest in the common room- very cozy.

Sunday I got to skype with my beautiful family- Mom, Dad and Nan. It was very nice to see their faces! I had dance practice that afternoon, but the rest of the day was pretty uneventful.

Monday was technically the official start of classes, but I've organized my schedule so that I have Mondays off (score!), so I spent the morning buying my text books, getting my student ID card, doing laundry etc. Then I went to a film set I was invited to (by the director- I met him at a cafe on my first day in Wellington), and it was super neat to see them doing some scenes and such for their short film. I helped them clean up after and talked to some of the cast. I got one of the main actor's numbers for a friend of mine- first time playing matchmaker, and it was kinda fun. Then, you guessed it, danceeeeeeee practice (when in doubt, that's probably where I am). This is also wherethe title of the post comes in- one of the b-boys from Japan (Nan mie) was doing some popping, but instead of calling it 'popping', he called it 'pop pop'. It resulted in a great deal of teasing afterwards, and he hasn't been able to live it down since. I had a quick dinner when I got back to res, and then went for a walk with some people from my floor and the one above. We walked down to the harbour, went to the grocery store (I spent about ten minutes deliberating over the gluten free cookies before deciding that they all looked wretched and bought some coconut chocolate and mints instead).

This is our lovely group at the harbour.

And on to Tuesday...
My first day of classes (I only had one) went just as I expected- intro to the course, this is what you will be learning, blah blah blah. I stopped by the film set again yesterday but didn't do much. I ended up talking to the producer, who was interested in having me come help them out more in the future, which I thought was pretty cool. I had dance as well, and Tali and I worked on our break routine (very short, meant to help us get ready for this Saturday when we all go out again). I did some reading for my classes today, but just took it pretty easy for the rest of the night.

.... TODAY:
I was, I'm happy to say, quite productive today. I got up at a reasonable time (8ish) and did some reading before class. I had my 'Religion and Spirituality in New Zealand Literature and Creative Arts' class today (quite the mouthful, isn't it?). It seems like it's going to be a pretty good class, and despite my ignorance of NZ literature and artwork, I think I'll be able to make do. My Maori studies class was right afterwards, and that was really good- the lecturer was very knowledgeable about the topic and he didn't just read off of his slides either. He basically just used a map for the majority of the lecture, and talked about the migration patterns. Lunch, and then a significant amount of reading before dance today. Practice was kinda cool today because a photographer came near the end of practice and took some shots of us- I'll post some when I get an e-mail from him! It started raining, so we cut the jam short. Tonight I re-typed all of my lecture notes from today, and we had a fire drill- woot woot. A note to anyone from New Zealand reading this- your weather here is really not that bad- or cold- I would dearly like to take some of you to Winnipeg in the middle of February and see how things turn out. I mean this in the nicest way possible, as I love you Kiwis dearly, but when it comes to weather, you guys have it quite well off. And that, mes amis, is my synopsis.

Kiwi slang: "That's so mean!"
Translation: "That's so great!"

Yeah, I had to ask about that one...

"You know, you kinda made me look like an idiot when you left" "... well I think you kind of did that by yourself when you fell over..."

Good day everyone!


This week has been quitee eventful! The Orientation Week events are still going on, and I've been a good sport and gone to some of them, and have met quite a few kiwis here in residence (though I am probably the oldest one here, apart from the RA's and staff). All of the people on my floor are really great to get along with, and it's a pretty interesting mix of different people as well, so there's rarely a dull moment.


Monday consisted of basic university orientation activities- how to be safe, cheer off between the halls, various residence activities etc. I managed to get away for a few hours and dance for a bit, so that was nice.


Tuesday was the international exchange and study abroad student orientation, so that was slightly more of the same information that I had received the previous day. When one of the presenters first walked into the lecture hall (of about 200 people) she asked everyone from the States to raise their hands, and about 90% of the people there were American- unbelievable! I think there are about 10 Canadian students- more or less. And there are a number from Europe and Asia as well. Tuesday afternoon was painfully boring, as I had to wait in line for 3 and a half hours to enroll in my class and get all of that sorted out. I went out that night with a few people from my res to a bar called "The Big Kumara" (Kumara being a sweet potato, they just call them kumaras here...). It was very grungy, definitely not my cup of tea. But since it was a Tuesday night, it was really the only place open, so we made the best of it. It was actually pretty fun watching Rocco (an Indonesian student on my floor) open up and start dancing more.


Yesterday I was sort of having an off day, so I decided to set out and go exploring. I eventually ended up climbing to the top of this mountain-type thing where there's a big wind turbine there. Only one, which I thought was strange, particularly since it's not even that big, compared to some of the wind turbines we use in Canada. Apparently it was put there as a pilot for other wind farm projects in New Zealand. Wellington is a great place to maximize on wind power, because I heard one person say that it is the windiest city in the world- and even if that's not true, I can definitely vouch for it being quite the blustery urban centre, regardless. Anywho, when I got back form my hike, I stopped at a little cafe in Te Aro (just down -literally- from Te Puni Village). I had a really good spinach quiche thing, and a chocolate pancake thing-a-ma-bob that was also quite tasty. When I got back home, there were a few soccer games going on on the field beside campus, so I changed, and headed down there to play soccer for an hour or so. It was so much fun- I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed playing it. Last night was an exchange meet and greet at one of the bars in town. It was really great to meet people from all over the world. The quote in the title happened last night at this bar (called "Hope Bros") when a very drunk guy came up to a few of us and asked if we wanted to dance. I typically have a strict no dancing with drunk guys policy, butttt the song was "500 Miles" by The Proclaimers, so I had to. Well I tried to teach him how we dance to that in Canada- i.e. linking arms, stomping it out, jig-style. And he didn't really have the coordination to do much. Then he ended up falling over. It was kinda funny, but I ended up helping him up, and then walked away, because there wasn't really any point in prolonging that any further. Then he came over after and the conversation in the post title ensued. Poor guy.
The rest of the night was a lot of fun, though it poured rain last night, so it was quite the walk home.


Today not much of consequence has happened- I slept in because I was super tired from last night. And then I went and danced/stretched for a bit. I also bought a pretty cool hat today too.


Andddd the moment you've all been waiting for- I'm sure- Pictures! I haven't posted any before, so I'm hoping this will work...


This is the opera house in Sydney, Australia. I didn't go inside, but I walked around it, the harbour, and the beautiful botanical gardens there as well (which is where I got sunburned). Something I've learned since then is that apparently there is a hole in the ozone layer near here (near Antarctica I believe, but don't quote me on that), and therefore the sun's UV rays are much more powerful than they are at home, which is why us North Americans often get sunburned on this side of the world.

  This is a picture of the Sydney Harbour and Botanical Gardens

These are massive bats that were in the Sydney Botanical Gardens, outside, in daylight. Super cool.

Welcome to the beautiful Wellington harbour front.

More of the harbour...

This is the cool man statue that marks the shortcut I take to get up to the uni campus.

When I went on my hike to see the wind turbine, I took some pictures of the Wellington landscape (#1).

#2

The walk up to the wind turbine- up and up...

Made it!

The view back down- so beautiful.

Self-explanatory

Ze 'arbour. Finit.

I'll have more pictures to post later- preferably ones with people in them.