Hey everybody, sorry for the missed post last week, I was busy curing all of the worlds diseases and illnesses, retrieving kittens from tall trees, making more drinking water for the world, and then walking on it.... you know how it is. But in all seriousness I am not sure I have ever worked harder on school assignments over a five day period, so glad it's finally over. That being said, yes, its true, I am about to embark on my second spring break of the year, at the end of August... epic.
Quick (or not so quick) recap on the last week or so of my life: last weekend I was finishing up a mountain of ridiculous work and assignments. These assignments were of course given extensions as I turned them in on the original due date after pulling all nighters, my life would not work any other way. However, this punctuality provided me with a bit of free time in between papers and so last Friday I probably made the worst purchase of my time here in New Zealand. Friday night was set aside as a 'blow off some steam and relax' kind of night so what better way to spend it than to head down to Rosie O'Grady's (my favorite pub for pints and rugby). After splitting about four pitchers (or jugs as they are called here, don't even bother trying to ask for a pitcher, they will ask you for your camera) with my American friend Alex, my Scottish friend Graeme decided we should go across the street to the grocery store and get some wine. Great idea. Nobody had beer or wine back at the flats and so now would be a great time to pick some up. As we weaved back and forth through the wine aisle we stumbled upon what appeared to be some great looking boxed wine, which is otherwise known here as a 'Goony Bag' of wine. Golden Bay Medium White Wine.
"Sounds good to me"
"Me too, this is gonna be awesome, and it's only twenty bucks for this 3L box bag thing, I think I'll get one too, wicked" (I sound so cool in writing eh...)
As we are standing at the checkout we start up some drunk conversation with the cashier lady who is already kind of laughing at us. We think she's being friendly and we kinda joke along with her and then off we go on our merry way. When we finally got home after our forty minute walk from downtown we were starting to sober up a bit and so we crack open the first box of wine. We of course are drinking out of mugs because nobody has deemed it necessary to get proper glasses but let me tell you something, this wine was not worthy of a proper glass, it wasn't even worthy of an empty margarine container. Folks, I wouldn't even give this stuff, whatever it was, to a feral cat. As soon as it came out of the bag, it was as if somebody had dropped a bottle of perfume in the kitchen.
"Ughh is that the wine" I said
"Yeah.... it smells like, like uhhh, like perfume or something, weird"
As we brought the mugs up to our lips, I am quite certain my eyes started to burn and water from the fumes, what the hell was this.
Then the first sip.....
"OH MY GOD! THATS TERRIBLE" shouted Graeme "It tastes like piss and perfume"
"I feel as though someone has sprayed a whole bottle of hairspray into a bag and then sold it to us to drink, no wonder that stupid cashier lady was laughing at us, what does it say on the box" I replied
"Fruit Wine 5%. You have got to be kidding me, I'll get diabetes before I get drunk off this stuff" said Graeme.
By now I am in stitches on the floor, just laughing my ass off. But now over a week later, we have taken our boxes of wine to two or three different parties, with the hopes of somehow making the twenty dollars worthwhile instead of throwing it out, and it's still not gone because nobody will touch it. By far the worst twenty dollars I have spent here in New Zealand. Golden Bay Medium White Wine.
Since then this week was also full of work and assignments but once Thursday afternoon rolled around, I was a free man with seventeen glorious days ahead of me to do whatever I want. I started by acquiring a GoPro camera to document my travels because my old camera just is not going to do the trip justice seeing as it is not waterproof or protected in any way. With my GoPro I can now mount it onto helmets when I am rafting, kayaking, horseback riding, bungee jumping, sky diving, snorkeling etc. The only issue is that a 16GB SD (memory) card that I ordered from the states will be arriving one day after my departure for my spring break trip tomorrow (despite some greatly appreciated efforts from some friends of mine). I do have a small 2GB card that was lent to me from a good friend of mine here so I will be able to record about 24 minutes of HD video per day before I have to transfer it to a thumb drive and wipe it for the next recording haha. Going to be very selective in my video taking. No worries though, either way this trip will be incredible, the downside being that you all may have to settle for more of my lame words instead of HD video... my apologies in advance.
Aside from this, there was a birthday party on Friday night for a German girl named Franzi who lives just across from my Flat. There was delicious German snacks, lots of drinks (thankfully no green jelly shots), and some great music. This all made for a great night which led to a pretty bedridden Saturday but the weather was bad anyways and I finally figured out how to use the new camera so all was not lost.
Tomorrow (Monday for me), I am embarking on an eight day tour of the North Island with seven other people in an eight person van. Glorious. There will be a guy from Scotland, guy from Ireland, guy from Germany, girl from New Zealand, girl from France, girl from Poland and myself, quite the crew if you ask me. So far we know where we are spending our first night, and.... thats about it. We will be camping the entire time, at least that is the plan and we have contact info and directions to get to our activities which range from horseback riding, to swimming in geothermal pools, hiking volcanoes and mountains, rock climbing, white water rafting or kayaking, possibly jumping off of or out of certain things from really high up (kidding Mom... ha... ha.) and if anything else pops up along the way you can be sure we will probably be doing it. Maybe catch some sharks with our hands or wrestle thought to be extinct Moa (look it up) or something, I don't know, I don't know if there will be enough time. Anyways, I guess what I am trying to say is that sadly, I will miss posting next Sundays post as well, because we return next Tuesday but hopefully with some ridiculously cool footage. I will then use my amateur film editing skills to scrounge together a little documentary of the trip and hopefully someone famous will watch it and hire me onto National Geographic or something, hell they'll probably want to give me my own channel and magazine, but lets not get ahead of ourselves here.
All of that aside, Happy 50th Dad! We are throwing some kind of crazy 50 year old party for you when I get home, or if you feel so inclined to find money on the money tree we have planted in the back yard, please feel free to buy a ticket and come visit me. Mom and Meghan can come too.
Well everyone, until next time, in the words of the all-knowing Red Green: "Keep your stick on the ice".
Take care,
Brayden
Thanks BJ! Enjoy your "spring" break.
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