Kia Ora,
So the semester has started and I can once again class myself as a participating student. I will now be (potentially) studying until the day I leave New Zealand (depending on how my exams fall) and so my life returns to a balancing act of work and play. This is going to be tough after such an amazing summer!
In week one we discovered that our new cosy little flat can actually hold a fair few people. We invited everybody over because Hanne had offered to make cookies for the occasion (well, we all pretended she had and thankfully she played along and brought some anyway)! We were even treated to crepes amongst some other tasty snacks. But it was great to see the crowd again; this was our first gathering as a large group for quite some time!
The following night me and Dannii were out on the Domain to watch "Group F: Skin On Fire" with Soph and Kelly. And after spending a bit of time mocking me for failing to give up sugar for lent (yeah, I don't really know why I even started, instead I now only eat it at social occasions) we watched an amazing hour long lighting/firework display! The fireworks were incredible and definitely better than the New Year display, especially with the fire canons and really creative projections across the museum walls themed around the top concerns in the 21st century. The "actors" were also interesting; the show definitely wasn't about choreography (critic time: this was the only thing lacking on the night), but if their role can be evaluated on their array of props then it was quite impressive. They controlled objects such as giant people and fire helmets whilst other "actors" were suspended amongst fire rings. Unfortunately my camera doesn't work well in the dark, but here's an idea of what went down.
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| Projections on the museum whilst the light men wandered through the crowd |
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| On this photo and the one above there's a man running on top of the world! |
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| FIRE! |
The first weekend came pretty quickly and I was booked on to a tramping trip in the Waitakere Ranges. This is one of the first "walks" I did in my previous semester, so it seemed fitting to relive it. Only this time I'd be camping out there too.
Thomas joined me on this trip. However he arrived hungover and of course I could only do the right thing on the bus :-)
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| Bus Selfie! |
But he perked up a little through the day! We ventured through the ranges on one of the harder walks offered. Unfortunately, thinking I was being wise I took a bag with some spare room and consequently I got lumbered with a huge speaker required for the party at the hut. That weighed a bit and certainly took some effort to carry. But it didn't spoil the walk; it's always nice to get out of the city.
At the hut we ate a great feast of Burritos and trifle (wait, who gave up sugar for lent?) before playing party games, such as balance on multiples of yellow pages phone books, sock wrestling and climbing around the table!
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| Thomas looking a bit more alive ;-) |
On the second day a team of 5 (disappointingly out of 70+ people) chose to do the harder walk. It was a good route and good old Rik got us lost again (as he did the day before haha). We stopped by an old freind, waterfall #1 (out of waterfall #789 in NZ), Kerikeri Falls! It's definietely one of my favourite waterfalls in NZ, and this time I succeeded in a bit of rock climbing next to the falls. After all this we were the last group to arrive in Piha (my third time at Piha beach in total! Love that place!) and only got 10 minutes to sample it before heading on the bus home. It was a great little trip and I met some more really great people!
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| 4 of the 5 strong team on day two! |
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| Me on a rock :-) |
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| Still so beautiful! |
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| Beautiful Piha, NZs deadliest beach |
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| Ah look what happened on the journey home! |
The next week was littered with occasions to meet new people and take advantage of those university freebies! Such as a wine tasting night put on for international students only. There were so few of us there, but it was great to sample wine form the universities own vineyard on Waiheke Island and pretend we actually knew what we were sampling. Oh yes, quite.
On another night, we were eating free pizza with the international society! FREEBIES! And more friends made too!
And there was also an event by the harbour put on for us internationals. In fact this was a bit dull. But look, me and Scott found a tank!
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| See?! |
Lets round of this return to uni with a mention of weekend football with the law students and an evening spent at White Night, an arts festival across Auckland in which public buildings open their doors with their own exhibitions. As with many modern art festivals, it didn't really make sense. From brochures being placed across the floor, to a giant fried egg, to an interpretive dancer in a fluorescent room. It was kind of weird. But we had a cool time wandering around the city. Although I'm sure the others had a highlight finding the play area in the park... Haha.
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| Group photo with Andy and Andy at the bottom! |
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| Our interpretive dancer |
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| And the park that captured our group at Silo Park |
And there's the first two weeks in a nutshell. But I've had some time to study also and now as I'm heading in to week 4 it's taking up the majority of my time. Exams, Labs and Assignments are all being thrown my way again! So for now,
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| Oh yeah, did I mention I casually met the PM of NZ? #PMSelfie |
Kia Ora,
Ben
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