"Did you know that men speak, on average, about 7000 words a day?" "Really? I'm scared to ask how many women speak..." "20,000! Almost 3 times as much!" "Wow! ...Wait, are you trying to tell me something???"

The post title conversation took place on Tuesday, at the university undergrad coffee shop, Milk and Honey. One of the baristas (I'm wondering if he should technically be called a 'baristo', to make the word masculine...) and I generally exchange friendly banter while I wait for my caffeine order- for those of you who may be concerned, I only get a caffeinated beverage about one to two times a week, so no fear of addiction... Anyways, so on Tuesday I mentioned that I had a 2,000 word paper due on Thursday before the two week Easter break. I think this must have sparked something in his memory about how that wouldn't be so difficult for me, given that I'm female, so he told me the above fact. He said he wasn't trying to hint that I talk too much, but to be honest, I'm kinda starting to wonder if he was trying to nicely tell me to stop talking.... more research is required, I'll report back with more data on the subject.


Last week= essay writing.


This Easter weekend= lots of fun not writing essays.


The next two weeks= Easter break, travelling up the west coast of the New Zealand north island, and even less time spent studying.


So, let's rewind back to Friday...


During the day Friday, was fairly typical- meaning dance practice and sleeping. Friday night, however, was mine and Tali's first night as hired 'dance floor starters'. It was so great! Getting paid to dance and encourage other people to do the same, was like getting paid to breathe. Now, because it was Good Friday, they didn't open until 12am (technically that would be Saturday morning), and we were there until 2am. At this point, I was pretty much out of steam, and went home. There are also a lot of international people who frequent that club (Rain), so that made for a pretty neat atmosphere as well. And from now until I leave, I will be a dance floor starter at Rain every Friday from 11pm-1am. Woot woot!!


Saturday I went to the movie theatre with Tali and Pique and we saw The Hunger Games. A veryyyy good movie! But this experience was made all the better by the fact that we got to be in the 'gold lounge'. Sounds quite exclusive, doesn't it? Well the gold lounge is where you pay $20 for your movie ticket, and you get to sit in the back of the theatre, in these amazingly comfortable lazy boy chairs, with table service. I had nachos (not those crappy, fake cheese kind, but the restaurant kind, cuz I'm pretty sure that was the only gluten free thing on the menu) and a super yummy chocolate ice cream sundae. Combine that with a great movie, and comfortable seating, and you have converted me to a 'gold lounge' fan. I wonder if we have those in Canada? I've never heard of them before now... 


Yesterday and today were pretty dance-y. Kris- the American film director I met my first day here- is having a fundraiser for his film next Friday and wanted a bunch of break dancers to come out and dance during it. Him and his crew were at the jam today, doing some filming for the show. That was pretty cool, and it also got more people interested in coming out next Friday.


And now- because some of you may be curious. I'll give you a little run down of the trip Sara and I are doing over the next ten days or so.


Leave tomorrow (Tuesday) at 7:45am (no, we did not pick that time, it was the only one offered...) to go to Ohakune. Paddle for several days on Whanganui River.


Take a bus to New Plymouth. Spend some time there hiking Mount Taranaki.


Take a bus to Torohanga. Shuttle it from here to Waitomo where there are glow worm caves and such.


Take a bus to Paihia (up north, past Auckland). Tour around Northland and hopefully go whale watching etc.


Take a bus back down to Auckland, tour around the city for a bit.


Take a bus from Auckland, back down to Wellington by Thursday (April 19th) night.


And, just for all of you, I made a little map in Paint to show our approximate travels. 


Purple= our trip out
Green= our trip back
Blue star= start point
Yellow star= end point

Well, wish me luck! I'll write a post when I can, either when I get back, or midway through the trip.

xoxo

"When I say PURPLE, you say FLOOR! ... PURPLE!" ... "FLOOR!" "When I say NUMBER- you say ONE..." ..................................................... "oh, NUMBER!" ... "ONE!"

Oh dear! What a week!

The majority of it was spent writing papers- not so exciting. But it started off with quite the bang- yes, my friends, the break dancing photo shoot did happen and it was a-may-zing!

And now, I shall commence to post my favourite pictures from the shoot- and there is an extensive number of them, so hopefully you won't tire of them.

This is called a 'Chair' freeze.

This is called crazy oblique muscles. (Josh G.)

Simba- man can this guy jump!

Ahmed- aka 'skinny' or 'bounce'

Gangsta Nan Mie.

NAN MIE!! So cool!

The Civic Crew y'all.

Yasuhito- fantastic popper.

Pique- he's been breaking the longest of the group- 12 years!

Note: His hand is actually above the ground!

Alex- super cool shot.

Nan Mie and our fantastic photographer- Big Mark.

Tali! The girl who keeps me sane with all these boys.

Show down... duh duh duhhhh.

Headstand! Working on this one...

Now I just need to get.. that.. other.. leg ... over...

Love this shot!

I hope you enjoyed all of those pictures, Big Mark and his assistant, Rob Wilson, were incredible, and very patient with all of us! Especially when we tried to get a group shot of everybody and then the guys in the back couldn't seem to jump at the right time- this is why we moved onto still-pose shots...

As for the rest of my week, I spent it writing papers due this Friday- not so much fun. Butttt Thursday and Friday night were spent watching the first and second Harry Potter movies, respectively.

And Saturday night was un-believable.

First though, I should probably explain the post title, which actually happened during the day on Saturday. Our Residence Hall hosted an inter-floor hall competition called 'Crazy Olympics'. My floor, purple, had about ten people volunteer to participate and quite a few of us went to cheer them on. This may come as a shock to some of you, but I happen to be fairly competitive when it comes to these sorts of things- I wonder who I get that from??? Anyways, so I was determined to make up an on-the-spot cheer for our floor, to cheer our floor-mates on. The cheer was the one in the post title. The only issue with it was that, while I was leading it, I would forget halfway through that I was leading it. So there was a dramatic pause, almost every time, when I forgot to say 'Number', for the group to reply 'One'. I'd try to pull it off as intentional, except that I always had a look of surprise on my face when I realised that I'd forgotten to say something... ah well..

But now, Saturday night...

Tali invited me to go watch the Wellington Hurricanes play the Cheetahs (I think they were from South Africa)- my first live rugby match! It was a lot of fun, and though the Hurricanes ended up losing, it was still a good time. We took a cab over to the Green Man pub, where we were awarded free drink tickets from the nice radio station people, because we had gone to the rugby game.

We hung around there for about an hour, but the live band wasn't very good and though the Hurricanes were promised to show up, they never did.

We re-grouped and then went out again. We went to a karaoke bar, where it was just us and 2 other guys. They left pretty quickly when we started pulling out the break dancing moves- I think we intimidated them too much. We left right after and shared a drink at a cheap drink place. But now, the most exciting part of the night: when we decided that the night just wasn't shaping up, we decided to just go home. On the walk back, a bartender at the bar 'Rain' stopped us and offered us free drink tickets if we went into the club. Well, we couldn't say no to that, so in we went. The staff there seemed to really like us, cuz we didn't pay for any of our drinks that night. We started- and rocked- the dance floor. The manager told us, right before we started dancing that if we were still there in 20 minutes, she'd buy us a drink. When we went back, after about 20 minutes, we got a free drink, but also she said she was interested in hiring "dancefloor starters", if we were interested. Rather ecstatically, we gave her our phone numbers, and are really really really hoping to get a call this week! Cross your fingers for us!

Well, that's all folks.

Peace.