heart and home
Well I've been sick the past week or so and since I've had nothing to do except dick around the flat and be bored while everyone else drinks the weekend away, I guess I'll catch ya thoroughly and boringly (and sometimes thoroughly boringly) up on things.
Ilam Village has been a blast, pretty much. It's the kind of life you could totally get used to. Well, it's mostly drinking and cracking incredibly politically incorrect jokes, really, so I guess it's the kind of life I could get used to. My flatmates are an awesome bunch: Jarrad, the dirty old senior RA on campus (all rumours of his surfing for kiddie porn are false, y'all); Kat, who has a potty mouth and is hella funny; Jamie, a science geek and hilarious when provoked ("we're not southerners! And science is cool!"); Sascha who? (he's this mythical flatmate of ours with a new girlfriend) and Gloria, who's really nice and, as we realised in the days following her short holiday, indispensible when it comes to having clean dishes in the flat. Also starring are the insanely pretty Bonnie (along with her therapy necklace) and her boyfriend / Jarrad's best mate Geoff.
Whatever, it's not like anyone'll care until I've got pictures up.
What else? Well, Ilam's been hit by a spate of eventfulness lately. When the main office isn't getting broken into, PS2s and sandwich makers and cars are getting stolen (I maintain that it's some bitter off-campus student who's doing it) and sprinkler systems are getting set off.
Jarrad and his twin are having their big 30th birthday party next week, and we've got this party bus thing (which I've already been on once in the time I've been here) which is going to bring us to - wait for it - different drinking holes on the outskirts of town. Eventually though, it's going to drop us off in town, hopefully roaring drunk and ready to party as obnoxiously as we possibly can.
I had a spontaneous mountain trip last week, and it was absolutely beautiful. The roads were insanely narrow and scary, with little to no barriers on the cliff side of things. The limit was an appalling 70 km/h, and even with the tiny little car barrelling along at 50, I was freaked. And this from a girl who's leapt time after time out of airplanes.
A sharp turn left though, and all of a sudden the glittering whole of Christchurch was laid out in front of me. It was as breathtaking as all that, but you'll never understand unless you're actually me. It wasn't like I'd never been up mountains before, and it's not like I haven't had better views from the tops of them. It was that, only 25 minutes before, I was having steak (fillet; medium rare, leaning to rare) and chugging beer in town. The sheer novelty of living in a city with such amazing displays of nature right beside me was... so cool.
I also saw a goat.
And did I mention the cattle bridges? They're these iron bridges they lay out every so often along the mountain roads to (according to Jarrad) keep the cattle from escaping. I don't know much, I was too busy gripping the dashboard to really care.
I went to the botanic gardens too, and gawked at picnickers along the Avon. You'd think I'd be used to it after seeing the office people lounging, fully office-clothed, on the grass in London during their lunch break, but I'm still not. It's still such a charming idea, picnicking by a river! Don't you just want to - I don't know - twirl around and toss your hat in the air when you think about it? I know I do.
We plonked a stone into a stream, and it was one of the most musical sounds I had ever heard, rich and full and plonky. We were squicked out by the spores of a fern, and tried to tell time on a sundial (it was four twentyish). We saw the Old Man cactus (cotton white and fluffy amidst the general spikiness), tragically separated from the Old Lady cactus two display sections away (they'd had a wee spat, but they'd get through it).
I went to the Christchurch casino, less glitz and glam than good food and sad, determined gamblers. An old lady, who, in the Kiwi vernacular would be known as "fucking wasted," sat in the tiny roof garden smoking with us and showered Bonnie and I with compliments for 15 full minutes. And while Bonnie was showing the ten signs of the sexually harrassed, I crossed my "tanned, toned, I-would-kill-for-those" legs and settled back to enjoy the weird and slightly disturbing attention. The men watched for awhile with furrowed brows and vaguely amused grins, but we all soon retired back into the glowing warmth of the garish neon lights. And drank ourselves sick.
Charlie - have I introduced Charlie? He's a great guy - was nice enough to play designated (and, apparently, unlicensed) driver, and sent us all back. With a short stop by the Ilam Village office for us (okay, me) to throw up. It was the roofie colada that that perv Jarrad served up, I tellya.
(Yes, I know roofies don't make you do that.)
I am taking massage classes, smoking on the balcony while the cake bakes, noticing the pattern of the leaves, learning to say "jandals," dizzying myself pretending the clouds are still while I'm the one moving, laughing along my walks home, calling the Ilam flat I stay in "home," eating healthy, drinking unhealthy, loving the blinking message light on my deskphone, and having a fucking awesome time, really.
Who wouldn't?
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Ilam Village has been a blast, pretty much. It's the kind of life you could totally get used to. Well, it's mostly drinking and cracking incredibly politically incorrect jokes, really, so I guess it's the kind of life I could get used to. My flatmates are an awesome bunch: Jarrad, the dirty old senior RA on campus (all rumours of his surfing for kiddie porn are false, y'all); Kat, who has a potty mouth and is hella funny; Jamie, a science geek and hilarious when provoked ("we're not southerners! And science is cool!"); Sascha who? (he's this mythical flatmate of ours with a new girlfriend) and Gloria, who's really nice and, as we realised in the days following her short holiday, indispensible when it comes to having clean dishes in the flat. Also starring are the insanely pretty Bonnie (along with her therapy necklace) and her boyfriend / Jarrad's best mate Geoff.
Whatever, it's not like anyone'll care until I've got pictures up.
What else? Well, Ilam's been hit by a spate of eventfulness lately. When the main office isn't getting broken into, PS2s and sandwich makers and cars are getting stolen (I maintain that it's some bitter off-campus student who's doing it) and sprinkler systems are getting set off.
Jarrad and his twin are having their big 30th birthday party next week, and we've got this party bus thing (which I've already been on once in the time I've been here) which is going to bring us to - wait for it - different drinking holes on the outskirts of town. Eventually though, it's going to drop us off in town, hopefully roaring drunk and ready to party as obnoxiously as we possibly can.
I had a spontaneous mountain trip last week, and it was absolutely beautiful. The roads were insanely narrow and scary, with little to no barriers on the cliff side of things. The limit was an appalling 70 km/h, and even with the tiny little car barrelling along at 50, I was freaked. And this from a girl who's leapt time after time out of airplanes.
A sharp turn left though, and all of a sudden the glittering whole of Christchurch was laid out in front of me. It was as breathtaking as all that, but you'll never understand unless you're actually me. It wasn't like I'd never been up mountains before, and it's not like I haven't had better views from the tops of them. It was that, only 25 minutes before, I was having steak (fillet; medium rare, leaning to rare) and chugging beer in town. The sheer novelty of living in a city with such amazing displays of nature right beside me was... so cool.
I also saw a goat.
And did I mention the cattle bridges? They're these iron bridges they lay out every so often along the mountain roads to (according to Jarrad) keep the cattle from escaping. I don't know much, I was too busy gripping the dashboard to really care.
I went to the botanic gardens too, and gawked at picnickers along the Avon. You'd think I'd be used to it after seeing the office people lounging, fully office-clothed, on the grass in London during their lunch break, but I'm still not. It's still such a charming idea, picnicking by a river! Don't you just want to - I don't know - twirl around and toss your hat in the air when you think about it? I know I do.
We plonked a stone into a stream, and it was one of the most musical sounds I had ever heard, rich and full and plonky. We were squicked out by the spores of a fern, and tried to tell time on a sundial (it was four twentyish). We saw the Old Man cactus (cotton white and fluffy amidst the general spikiness), tragically separated from the Old Lady cactus two display sections away (they'd had a wee spat, but they'd get through it).
I went to the Christchurch casino, less glitz and glam than good food and sad, determined gamblers. An old lady, who, in the Kiwi vernacular would be known as "fucking wasted," sat in the tiny roof garden smoking with us and showered Bonnie and I with compliments for 15 full minutes. And while Bonnie was showing the ten signs of the sexually harrassed, I crossed my "tanned, toned, I-would-kill-for-those" legs and settled back to enjoy the weird and slightly disturbing attention. The men watched for awhile with furrowed brows and vaguely amused grins, but we all soon retired back into the glowing warmth of the garish neon lights. And drank ourselves sick.
Charlie - have I introduced Charlie? He's a great guy - was nice enough to play designated (and, apparently, unlicensed) driver, and sent us all back. With a short stop by the Ilam Village office for us (okay, me) to throw up. It was the roofie colada that that perv Jarrad served up, I tellya.
(Yes, I know roofies don't make you do that.)
I am taking massage classes, smoking on the balcony while the cake bakes, noticing the pattern of the leaves, learning to say "jandals," dizzying myself pretending the clouds are still while I'm the one moving, laughing along my walks home, calling the Ilam flat I stay in "home," eating healthy, drinking unhealthy, loving the blinking message light on my deskphone, and having a fucking awesome time, really.
Who wouldn't?
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