new approach

So i've decided to steal from the Twitter style of blogging and post more often but with shorter posts. this should be easier for me to maintain because on the whole i usually can't be bothered to post on this blog.

SO

Volley has ended.. on a low note so i won't get into our chronic losses. I've recently begun soccer trials. the soccer team is mainly comprised of international students and even with the Japanese and German students, the team shan't be super competitive. 

My activity as of late has been mostly school and socializing. 

Otherwise...

EPICLY LOVING LIFE

Kia ora.
so volley is slowly coming to a close as there's only two weeks left. It's been good, lots of fun, but i'm also glad that it's over in a bit. we didn't do too well but we improved heaps and i've had quite a few blocks. i must have grown or maybe i can jump higher now.. i dunno.

School has ben fantastic like seriously tip top. I have finally settled in with a core group of friends being Hannah, Daniel, Alice, Ari, Ashaa, Jordan, and Aurelio. We're tight. I love them so much and i really do not want to leave this country or these amazing people. These guys are in drama, art and music, and i feel right at home whenever i'm around them. Hannah is probably my bestie atm, and i have enjoyed every single minute we've had together. We are constantly laughing and carrying on.

I joined the choir as a result of my friendship with the group and last weekend I was at BandCamp which was a dream come true. in actual fact it was called a music intensive weekend but we thought band camp was a better name. in between learning songs and doing group activities we had amazing corridor dance parties mainly to Family Force 5. We also spent a lot of time doing each others hair and sleeping in a pile in the girls room, fittingly named The Love Shack. Daniel and I shared a room so that we'd be away from Reece, an incredibly obnoxious and strange individual. our room was not so fittingly called The Sausage Fest. Daniel is the drummer for a metal band called Darkest Before Dawn of which Jordan is the guitarist.

I often feel bad at school because I sit next to either Daniel, Hannah or Alice in every class and of course me being me i talk to them and distract them from doing their work. I can;t help it.. you know me.

This weekend is a huge fundraiser for the school. Its a skate day, meaning there is skateboarding competitions, live music (Darkest Before Dawn!!!!) and heaps of different things for people to spend money on. after skate day, Alice Hannah and i are going to rage at Mashely's flat. (mashely= man ashely) We're going to Mash's for preparty get readyness before we go to Omaha (ritzy part of town) for Aurelio's party.. the theme is: TIGHT and BRIGHT
*loves it*
Then sunday morning we're going to Albany shopping :D!!! yay, i haven't been shopping in AGES.

looking forward to it. i'll try and update a bit more often ae. it's just that i'm loving everything right now and don't take the time to settle down and relay everything in this blog.

love pete

today was a good day.

So a bit has happened in the past little while. First of which is my move from the Jones' to the Ashby's. It's not a bad move, very different from what i'm used to (quite religious) but i'm taking it in stride and it's alright with me. Now that I'm living in Warkworth lots of opportunities have opened themselves up to me. I joined the college volleyball team and we're entering the North Harbour tournament tomorrow. yikes considering i joined the team sunday, and today is tuesday. On top of that, we're playing in Division 1. It should be interesting.

i felt like my old self today.

walking barefoot in the garden

i came across a former bird

contemplating him over lemongrass tea

i concluded that he and i were friends once

in a past life among the weeds

our discarded shells now litter the asphalt

cracked and forgotten.

she's coming on strong.

Woah! what a time I've had these past two weeks.

So for New Year's Eve I went to the rich part of town haha. No but seriously, I went to Devonport to a fellow Rotary student's house. His host parents were having a party and so we were enlisted to pour champagne at the door until all the guests arrived. My friend Jose Tomas (Chile) was leaving the country to go home the next day on the 1st. Being from the southern hemisphere, his exchange runs from January to January. He was probably my best friend here in New Zealand so I was sad to see him go but it's all part of the program we're in so that's alright. My birthday was pretty uneventful, a friend of mine named Asger, from Denmark, was suposed to come hang out for my b-day but it fell through so that was a disapointment but all was not lost. We had a bbq here and then Callum and I went across the road to our friend Earl's place, played table tennis and listened to music.. PARTY!! haha.

For the 10/11th I was supposed to go camping with all the Kiwi kids who are leaving New Zealand to exchange it up elsewhere. I found out the day before that it just wasn't going to be a reality, so Callum and I decided it would be a good opportunity to go to the West Indies v New Zealand cricket test. It was the second last game in a 5 match series of 50 overs, if that means anything to anyone (it hardly means anything to me.) I learned alot in that afternoon, but I'm pleased to say that I now kind of understand cricket. Unfortunately the game was rained out after the Black Caps (NZ) batted and bowled nearly half their overs. It was still a great experience.

After the cricket, during the next few days I was at the beach nearly everyday and Cal and I played tennis a couple times.

During last week (monday?) I left with my neighbor Earl, his dad, and our friend Sam on a boat up north to Kerikeri. The boat trip was rough, I was seasick for 8 of the 14 hours it took to get there. Things brightened up on terra firma though when Sam, Earl, and I went to Earl's uncle's orchards. We walked through kiwifruit and plum orchards, harvesting as we went, to the single most amazing swimming hole I may ever go to. Unfortunately I didn't have my camera with me BUT there was a waterfall going into a deep pool surrounded by cliff-like rock walls. Some of the jumping spots were around 4 or 5 metres and you could jump through trees and jump from spots where you didn't see the water until you were in the air. I could have stayed in the orchard living off plums and just swim there for the rest of my life. Unfortunately that didn't happen so we drove back to Warkworth in Earl's car that he'd left up there the week before, and I spent the next day recovering from the adventure (we'd sailed through the night and so I didn't get any sleep being seasick and all.)

Finally it was time for possibly the most intense day I have had in a long time: Friday the 16th of January, Big Day Out. I got up at 7am and ate then went over to Earl's. We chilled for a bit and then went and picked up Dan, Sam, and Lisa. We went down to drop our stuff off in the flat in Albany (15 minutes from Auckland) and then went to the Big Smoke. We got to Mt Smart Stadium and the day really began. There was 6 different stages with bands constantly playing through out the day from 10:30am to 12am. I got separated from the guys I came with while in the Boiler Room (a rave in a circus tent) but I met up with Asger (denmark) Petra (finland) Laura (germany) and Petra's friend that I forget the name of.. but she was super cool and had dreadlocks. Just because of timing issues I missed out on Tiki Taane, Lupe Fiasco, The Prodigy, and The Black Seeds. I'm over it though because I got to see The Black Kids, The Ting Tings, Ladi 6, Scribe, The Mint Chicks, random DJs in the Boiler Room, Pendulum, TV on the Radio, Arctic Monkeys, and NEIL YOUNG. I can remember being a kid and thinking that before I died I wanted to see Bob Dylan and Neil Young in concert. The summer before I came to New Zealand, I got to see Bob Dylan and on the 16th I finally got to see Neil Young. I couldn't be happier. After Neil played and destroyed his guitar following his encore, I met up with the other guys and we went back to the flat and fell asleep/coma'd out. The length of the day + the sun/heat + dehydration despite drinking heaps of water = pain and exhaustion. It was an amazing day, maybe just a little long, aye.

By now I think I have recovered from Big Day Out, two days later.

forget past indiscretions and stolen possessions..

I've been doing a whole lot of reminiscing in the past few weeks, most of which has been guided by different songs that are playing or smells that are wafting. It's been a sad experience but I have grown accustomed to sad, I can live with sad. The recent holidays and my upcoming birthday were/are chocker with distracted sadness. That's not to say I didn't enjoy my holidays, because I did, my mind simply drove through the past allocating memories to senses, pulling my attention away from those I was with.

I wholeheartedly intend to write about my fantastic adventures that took place on the South Island. I'm really excited to tell all and enthrall you with my antics, but I've been momentarily held up. You see, we wrote a Tour diary during the 3 weeks that I was away and I have been waiting for the legible version, haha. Please be patient and keep checking this page, because sooner or later you will be enlightened. ;)

Marae weekend

Wow so i'm ashamed to see how long it's been since i last posted. well a lot has happened since i moved to Scott's Landing.

First of all, i had the best weekend of my exchange so far when all the inbounds and outbounds went up north to the Bay of Islands College Marae and had a maori culture weekend. we arrived friday and lined up opposite the whanau (family) and sang songs and presented speeches. I was fortunate enough to speak on behalf of all the students and i did so first in french and then in english. i won't lie i threw in a few jokes in french that i didn't say in english :D. that night the maori boys taught us the Ka Mate Haka which is the video on Facebook. At the end of the night my thighs were bruised, my right are was covered in broken blood vessels and my voice was gone.
The next morning we did Waka (massive canoe) training. we learned the the sides and sections of the waka and different strokes. then we took the waka out to this lake and paddled around while singing songs like "pokarekare ana"... you know the usual stuff. that same day we went to Waitangi where the Treaty of Waitangi was signed. it's a document kinda like the US constitution [oh! props to Obama btw] after learning about it we went back to the Bay of Islands and hung out in the marae, and played touch rugby in the field with the maori boys. Rugby has actually become a huge part of my life here, loving it.
the next day we did Rotary stuff i.e. talked about the south island tour.. 2 weeks from now yikes! and then to cap things off we had a hangi. basically meat and veges and stuffing is all packed together and buried in the ground to cook. it was delicious but signified the end of the weekend..
before we left however the boys stripped down and did the haka opposite the maori boys as a kind of Haka-off. Doing the haka is an incredibly spiritual thing and it really gives you strength, confidence and just an overall feeling of being powerful, i was very humbled to have learned it and i am forever indebted to the boys at the Bay of Islands.

in short: words cannot describe the amazing weekend i had up north.

kia ora,
pete