There she blows!	2004-10-11 15:50:18 EST
Well well, it's the last week of classes, and I can hardly believe it. I went whale watching this weekend, it was AMAZING. We saw about 10 sperm whales. I guess on an "average" outing they tend to only see 1-3 whales, so we were pretty lucky. I took a lot of pics, and have posted the best of them in the images section (unfortunately they're not nearly as impresive as it was to see them up close in real life). As I said earlier it's the last week of classes this week. I have one final paper due wed. that I'm working on, and a lab exam on friday. After that is the one week "study" break. I'm going to able tasman national park to do some ocean kayaking and a couple day hike. After that I'll come back with a few days to study for my exams. When exams are over I have about 3 weeks to travel before heading home. It's hard to believe it's that close to being over!
Long time no update.	2004-09-30 08:30:46 EST
I've been neglecting this site for a long time, so I figure I should do some updates. I just completed putting 4 sets of updates in the images section. These date back to my Australia trip. Since Australia, I've gone snowboarding a few times, surfing two more times, and done a few trips. I took the TranzAlpine (a train that crosses the Southern Alps) to the West coast of NZ and back. I did that With Paul, Elke, Andrea, Jule, and Robin. I also went to Akaroa and hiked through the sheep farms there with Paul and Elke. On Wednesday I had to skip class because it was supposed to be one of the best days of snowboarding this year in New Zealand, and well, it was!! Craigiburn was powder turn after powder turn all day. It was super sunny, and so warm that I didn't even need a jacket! Perfect weather! On another note, my cold is finally gone. I found mold in my room, so they moved me to a differnt flat, and my cough and sinus problems went away in a week. This weekend I have an Indoor ultimate frisbee tournament that I'll be playing in, so that should be fun. Other then that I don't have anything planned beyond getting homework done since I have two papers due next week. Well, that's all for now, I'll try and be better about updating this site.
In Aussie land.	2004-08-22 05:53:25 EST
Well, first term is over, so I took a short two week vacation to Australia. I left Christchurch at about 7:25am and landed in Sydney. I'm staying here until tuesday with Paul, my friend from Munich, Germany. Today we walked all around town, saw the opera house and a few other attractions such as the botanical gardens. (where we saw these bats with about 12-18ich wingspan).. tomorrow we're going to the beach, and then tuesday were getting a car and heading up the east coast towards Brisbane and the Gold Coast. I'll post pics when I get back to NZ, and update a bit more if I get another chance to get online.
Ilam Village Ball	2004-08-15 08:53:18 EST
Well, this weekend was the Ilam Village Ball. I bought some new clothes for it since I didn't bring any good dress clothes (I only spent just over $100NZ on new pants, shirt, tie, belt and socks. Not bad if you ask me). The Ball was a blast. We got an excellent meal (the best one I've had in NZ by far!), had a good DJ, and there was lots of fun people there. The Ball lasted until midnight, after which two busloads of us hit the town all dressed up. It was pretty fun. Paul, Elke and I discovered a new bar that we like a lot. It's called Mickey Finns, and is a bit of an Irish Pub. I like it because it's laid back, not too crowded, and they tend to have live music (not to mention Guinness on tap). You can check out all my pictures from the ball in the Images section. I've even update the Gallery so that you can start with the first picture on the first page, and go forwards from there to see the latest pics in chronological order (it's a bit more user friendly). Beyond the ball nothing too exciting has happened. Well, it did snowed in Christchurch today for the first time this year. So all the people from NZ, and other places around the world that don't get much snow were freaking out. We didn't even get enough for it to completely cover the grass, and it was wet and slushy. Yet there were soooooo many people playing in it, and taking pictures I couldn't help but laugh. I think they need to go to Marquette for a winter. That's it for now. Midterms are this week and I have some work to do...
One AMAZING weekend!!!!!!	2004-08-08 08:24:34 EST
I just had the greatest weekend of snowboarding! There was a big party out at Temple Basin (a private ski field), for the University Snow sports club. Although the weekend was amazing, I did have my doubts at first. Where we parked, there was absolutely no snow. I knew we had a 45 minute hike up to the lodge, but I really doubted that the snow would be good. After about 30 minutes of hiking there still wasn't much snow, but as we got to the elevation of the lodge there was just a ton of it! Snowboarding at Temple was definately different then anything I've ever done. There's only three rope tows, no lifts, but there's also hardly any people. The rope tows weren't too bad for a snowboarder like me (who rides left foot forward), except for one of them. I was able to ride two of the rope tows with the rope in front of me. The other tow I had to ride with the rope behind me (due to what side of the poles the rope was attached to). You use a metal device attached to a belt you wear to hold onto the rope. This is so your hands don't get crushed by the pully's. On the latter tow, the difficulty came from when the rope went by any of the pullys. My hips would sometimes hit the pully (since the rope was behind me), knocking me off the tow. As bad as it sounds, all of this was well, well worth it. Temple Basin got 18 inches of snow just before the weekend, and it snowed more on Saturday. This made for AWESOME powder riding. The powder mixed with the great terrain at Temple made for some of the best riding I've ever done. Saturday night was the party for the Uni. Club students. We had a bonfire, and they set up a rainbow rail (which I was literally the only person to go on), and a jump by the lodge. People were able to stand around the fire drink and watch people hit the jump, as well as watch the fireworks that they lit for us. After that we all just crashed in our bunks and got up sunday to ride some more. On Sunday I took my camera out riding with me, and managed to get some good pictures. My friend Lizzy and I also decided to find some totally unridden snow since most of it had been tracked up at this point. So we ended up taking a long hike which resulted in my favorite run of the weekend. We took one of the tows up as far as it went, then hiked where about a dozen or so other people had already hiked up further then the tow went. Then Lizzy and I continued to hike up a lot further then the other people had gone. Blazzing a trail up a steep mountain in waist deep powder is not easy. But the reward was the greatest run that made me feel like I was floating and gave me a total feeling of bliss. Beyond that run, we got in a lot of other good ones on sunday. At the end of the day we hiked back down to the car and drove back to town. ****Note: Pictures from this weekend can be seen in my pictures section. To view the pictures in Chronological order, go to what is at the moment page 2 and go backwards ending with the first picture on page 1. (If this has changed, just look for the pictures of the bird and go back from there)
Getting better.	2004-08-05 00:13:22 EST
It's official, I feel a lot better today. My cold is going away! I still have a slight cough and very minor congestion, but nothing bad at all. I signed up to go on a trip with the ski/snowboard club this weekend. It's supposed to be a bit of a party out at their private ski field. It's a pretty good deal too. 2days riding, lodging at the mountain for the night saturday, and two meals included all for $90nz (of about $50US). Ya just can't go wrong with that. I'll let you know sunday night or monday how everything goes.
Photogallery software complete	2004-08-03 09:00:33 EST
I've finished the software for the Photogallery. I may tweak it a bit here and their, but now I can easily add captions, and navigation for you users out there should be improved a bit. I may add the option to display the images in order with the oldest pictures on the front page soon. But for now I'm leaving it with the newest pictures first.... ...Other then that I made it to the Dr. today. They said I had the flu and that antibiotics wouldn't help. So, I'm on my own, and hopefully my body heals it's self pretty quick here. I do feel a little bit better today. Now it's time to get ready for bed.
getting better?	2004-08-01 06:56:21 EST
I've had this cold a full week now. I thought I was getting better thursday night, but then friday I went and lost my voice. I finally got it back for the most part today which was good. The one thing I discoverd in this country is that you can't buy decongestants at the grocery store. You have to go to the pharmacy. You don't need a prescription, but I guess they can refuse to sell them to you. Aparently they're worried about people making methanphetamine out of them. At least that's what I was told. Thankfully the RA in my building had some Sudafed Cold and Flu that she gave me. That seems to be helping a lot. The way I feel right now I'm guessing I'll feel way better tomorrow. If not, I'll have to head to the Doc. As far as this week is concerned I don't really have much planned. I have indoor ultimate frisbee league tomorrow night, but that's about it aside from classes. I want to go somewhere next weekend, either snowboarding, or whale watching I think. We'll see when the time comes. It's about 11pm here right now on sunday, I'm just getting my stuff ready for school tomorrow and I think I'll try and get a good night sleep. That's about it.
another update	2004-07-31 03:03:32 EST
this is just to check that my formatting worked.
First Update	2004-07-31 02:45:38 EST
Ok, This is going to be short for now, I just got this working, and I don't feel like writing about everything I've done up to this point. I will say this much though. I am still sick, and have been sick since Monday. I thought I'd be better by now, but guess not. If I still feel like this Monday I'll definately be going to the Doc. Other then my recent cold everything in New Zealand is wonderful! (well apart from classes :-P ) I've been getting out when I can. So far I've discovered most of Christchurch, I've hiked the Port hills, and made it to the Ocean (and considering it's winter I didn't think it was that cold of water). I've also gone out snowboarding to Mt. Hutt. all the beautiful mountain pictures were taken there. Not bad for 3 weeks time if you ask me.