visitors and the great migration

It feels like a long time since I was last here attempting to express the intricacies of Kiwi life in words, probably because it has been a long time, and for that, I apologize.

Since my last post there has been a fundamental change in my life here in New Zealand, but more on that later, don't want to get ahead of myself...

Life with Baby Bey continued much as life without the her, except now traveling farther than the Octagon (the center of Dunedin, so named for the octagonal park in the center which is surrounded by a "roundabout," which obviously is a misnomer since its an "octagonabout") is done by motorized transport rather than foot.  This simplifies life a lot.  Going to the beach, going for a large grocery buy, hauling surf boards, etc. is all much easier when one actually has a vehicle and does not have to depend on others' generosity or public transpo.

The day after we picked up our beloved Baby Bey, my good friends from the North Island graced Dunedin with their presence.  The compass-point girls and Sunny Sarah arrived in Dunedin on Thursday evening and after getting settled into their backpackers (what Kiwis call a hostel) at the North end of town they joined Scruffy E and me at Kiwi Justin's flat for some shenanigans and revelry.  Thursday night is a big party night in Dunedin and so we did it up right, which produced a late wake-up Friday.  I called up Northern Leah and I figured out where to meet the girls - they had eaten brunch at a place in town.  Considering how beautiful the weather that day was, we made a B-line for the beach.  We piled into the Gus Bus with all kinds of beach toys and rolled the couple miles to our favorite part of St. Clair Beach.  After several versions of soccer and other balls sports had been exhausted we decided to explore the end of the beach we had not yet seen.  We headed down towards a bluff which Ethan, Justin and I had been told was a spot frequented by suicidal New Zealanders until the government closed the road which ran to the end of the cliff, now its just a beautiful park.  The bluff was a lot farther than it seemed when we began our walk, but eventually the whole crew, Northern Leah, Southern Browning, Chillin Matt, Kiwi Justin, Scruffy Ethan, and I (minus Sunny Sarah who had passed out on the beach during our soccer game so we decided not to disturb her peaceful slumber) made it to a rocky outcropping right next to the cliff.  We found a cave in the bluff and quickly developed a game involving the water droplets dripping off the roof of the cave.  Similar to Neo dodging the Agents' bullets (reference to the movie The Matrix, for all those over the age of 30), one looked straight up and watched the drops fall in slow motion towards them and tried to avoid getting hit by them.  It was an (almost) endlessly entertaining game, but neck pain and hunger soon drove us back to Baby Bey and then on to the grocery to buy supplies for dinner. 

Scruffy E. lookin' fresh with the bluff in question in the background on the right.

E, J and I cooked up a delicious mess of sloppy joes and salad which were thoroughly enjoyed by all the Americans at Justin's flat, but were utterly scorned by his Kiwihost, Craycray Sasha (short for Crazycrazy Sasha, so named because nothing else really seems to fit, she's just wild) and her Kiwi friends.  Equally mocked by the natives was our ingestion of potato chips with our sloppy joe's.  [Author's note, if one ever needs to have their ego tempered, I suggest spending a little time around Craycray.  She will make fun of just about every "strange" American habit/word/activity/fashion etc., but all in a funny way.  We let her know how weird her Kiwi-isms are too.]

Saturday I again met the girls in town and we walked around for a bit before deciding that the best way to spend the day was in the Botanical gardens checking out the last of the Summer flowers and wondering at the massive collection of flora that Dunedin has collected in its pristine Gardens.  Trees of all varieties, flowering bushes and other flowering plants abound, but the flowers themselves are now far more scarce than when we first arrived in February.

pristine is the word that comes to mind

the Mediterranean Garden

Saturday night we headed into town to find a club where we could get our dance on.  Since Scruffy Ethan, Kiwi Justin, and I had spent much of the previous two nights discussing the awesomeness/absurdity of a frequent first-stop of ours called Monkey Bar, so we decided to start there.  An old church converted into a bar and dance club, Monkey Bar is frequented by the "freshers" of Otago University, a clientele which definitely contributes to the absurdity of the establishment.  Dancing is encouraged everywhere at Monkey Bar, on the dance floor, on the tables, on the windowsills, in what used to be the choir loft, in the basement, and (for those girls attractive enough) on the bar.  It is definitely a novelty place, falling into the "you should go once, and just once," category.  After a short time I managed to lose every single person I came to Monkey with and, since my phone died, was unable to find anyone I knew for quite a while.  Searching through a sea of dancers is pretty difficult, for those of who were wondering.  The girls left at the outrageously early time of 5:30 AM on Sunday.  I didn't bother getting out of bed for a long time after that...



Remember at the beginning of this post when I hinted at a big story?  Well, here it is:

A diligent reader of my blog will probably have noticed that I talk very little about my flatmates.  This is not an oversight on my part, it is a function of there being nothing good to say.  In my rather short life I have met many people, some with BIG personalities, some with little personalities, I had never met someone withOUT a personality, let alone, three of them who all lived together.  As any reader of this blog knows, I thoroughly enjoy the simple things in life like discussion, conversation, good food, and pleasant human interaction.  These may be very tall orders, maybe my expectations are unreasonable, but I doubt it.  My experience at 4/167 Dundas Street had not been terrible, but it was definitely not one that would ever merit the use of the word "enjoyable" in its description.  This is not to say that Quirky Betina (my Kiwihost), Drinking Suz (if tea-drinking were a sport, she would be a formidable foe), and Bustling Tom aren't wonderful people, I'm sure their mothers' love them very much.  We just shared ABSOLUTELY nothing.  I had been petitioning the woman in charge of Uni(versity) Flats since the day of the Christchurch Earthquake to find me a new spot to live which would augment my Kiwi experience.  As some of you may not know, many students who had been attending the Univerisity of Canterbury (the school in Christchurch) transferred down to Otago after the Earthquake.  Due to this significant influx of students and a crazed scramble to find housing for them, my petty request to switch flats was put on the back burner.  Despite the assurances of the woman at Uni Flats, I recognized that my desire came second to the needs of the Christchurch kids.  Finally, on Friday, March 25 I got the call I had been waiting for.  I was to have a meeting on Monday morning with the Uni Flats lady to discuss a possible transfer.  I eagerly awaited my 11 AM meeting all weekend.  Just before 11, as I was walking to the woman's office, I got a call from the woman herself saying that things weren't yet finalized and that I didn't need to come in.  I said that was fine and asked her to inform me when she was ready to meet with me, but as the day progressed I grew more and more frustrated with this game she had been playing with me and decided that action needed to be taken.  I walked myself over to her office and requested an explanation of what was going down.  This seemed to make a difference, so much so that she actually called the Kiwi host at the flat she was considering moving me into and asked him to stop by.  She introduced me to Josh and asked if he would walk me by the flat for me to check it out.  Within minutes of leaving the office, I knew that this new flat would be far more up my alley than the previous one.  Industrious Josh (not the most fluid name, but he is the most industrious person I have ever met.  He's always doing something.  Cooking, studying, working, etc.) introduced me to Goofy Andrew Skaggs (he's just a goofball.  that is all), Mellow Andrew Lund (yes, I live with two Andrews, and he's just very relaxed and hard to excite.  Even when he is excited, he's excited in a mellow way), and explained that there were also two girls who lived in the flat Emmy and Terri.  I explained that I thought I knew Emmy, and after some of the "is she this height, this color hair, kinda like this..." discussion, we determined that yes, I did in fact know her.  A close friend of Affable Dave's cousin Spunky Casey, Boisterous Emmy (big personality in a little girl) and I had met weeks earlier.

My exodus out of my old flat was the epitome of stealth.  I managed to pack all of my belongings including a fair amount of groceries (which I had to keep in my room because there was no space in the kitchen due to all of the stupid tea cups) into bags and load these bags into the Gus Bus (driven by Kiwi J).  I think the easiest way to describe the awesomeness of my new flat is to draw a list of contrasts:
Number of flatmates that partied at old flat: 0 (not including me, which would raise the number to 1)
Number of flatmates that party at the new flat: 6 (not including the 5 or so people who hang out here constantly)
Number of times I enjoyed family dinner at the old flat: 0
Number of times I enjoy family dinner at the new flat: every night.
Number of times the old flat threw me a welcome party: 0
Number of times the new flat threw me a welcome party: 1 (per night for the first three nights, starting Wednesday)
Number of engaging conversations at the old flat: 0 (come to think of it, there weren't any conversations period)
Number of engaging conversations at the new flat: too many to count
Number of times I went on a spontaneous trip with old flatmates: 0
Number of times I went on a spontaneous trip with new flatmates... there's a story here...

So one Sunday night sitting around the new flat playing rummy with the Andrews, Boisterous Emmy, and Eager Rachel (friend of the flat), I said that I wanted to go to a place not far from Dunedin called Moeraki Boulders (see pictures below).  After a significant amount of agreement that Moeraki was a cool place and definitely one that needed to be explored, someone suggested that we leave immediately and go camp out and wake up for the sunrise.  This was a brilliant idea.  The fact that it was already after midnight and that Moeraki is about an hour's drive away was entirely inconsequential to five enthused 20-somethings.  Once we had verified that we were in fact going and this wasn't another case of, "Yeah, thats a great idea. Lets do that!" only to be followed by inactivity, we all packed a couple necessities and piled into two cars and took off.  With only a rough idea of where we were going, what could possibly go wrong?  An hour north of Dunedin, we arrived at the Boulders' site quite easily.  Once my compadres had found an agreeable spot to camp on a bluff (I was sleepin in the Gus Bus) and had set up their tents, we found our way down to the beach and began exploring.  With the sky deeply overcast, there was very minimal light, only barely illuminating the almost perfectly round boulders rising out of the sand.  It was very eerie.  After getting our initial fix, we headed back to our beds and arranged to wake up around 6:30 in the morning to be sure we would catch the morning's first light.  I awoke around 6:00 to the sound of rain coming down fairly hard on the roof of Baby Bey.  This was not promising.  I fell back asleep hoping that in half an hour's time, the rain would have dissipated... which it did.  I got out of the Bus, dressed, and made my way back down to the beach.  Light was only just beginning to touch the horizon.  A picture is worth a thousand words, no?  Well in the interest of not trying to write another couple thousand words, here are some pictures: