Tim Tams, Tramping and Totally Nothing Tuesdays (a.k.a work avoidance)

Hello, hello chums.

I'm back in Hamilton this weekend. JJ is (finally) sleeping soundly and Rachel and Nick are off watching Harry Potter and the Poorly Edited Script. I should do that work I put aside for tonight, because now term is really under way and I actually have stuff to do, with deadlines and everything.

So... I think it's probably best that I write this blog instead. (I've already unloaded the dishwasher, reloaded the dishwasher, washed the pots from Rachel's fantastically delicious lamb and prune tagine [better than Morocco], wiped down various surfaces and tidied JJ's toys away. And people say I'm OCD! Ha!)

Anyway, I think the last time we spoke I was about to go off tramping? As it turned out, the tramping weekend was - brace yourselves - actually a lot of fun. I travelled up on Friday night with Jamie (who provided an excellent soundtrack), Amanda, Jessie, an American girl with whom I do Polynesian Comparative Linguistics, and Steifan, a bearded Dutch medical student. We arrived a little after most of the group due to a few wrong turns and consequently were directed towards a separate series of rooms. This transpired to be massively in our favour, as we got a room with just six bunks in it, rather than having to sleep in a line in one long room, like concentration camp prisoners/everyone else. There was also a heater and powerpoint outside the room, which we 'borrowed', thus enabling us to keep our room like a sauna the rest of the weekend.

The walk on Saturday was pretty enjoyable too. Not wanting to appear pathetic, nor wishing to push myself too much, I chose to do a 'medium' walk. I joined a group led by a kiwi girl, Jen, along with a Danish girl named Lykke and a few tramping club committee members, including captain Rion, who told me a lot about civil engineering and ferns, his girlfriend Lizzie, who was very nice and to whom I chatted to a lot about civil engineering and AUTC socials, and treasurer Richard, who instructed us a lot on civil engineering and tramping do's and dont's. It turns out a lot of people who do tramping also do civil engineering.

The walk itself involved us racing through bush (what they call forest out here, snigger) and then retracing our steps after a member of the party took a wrong turn. We also admired kauri trees (second biggest in the world after great redwoods in the US) and crossed a couple of rivers (wet feet! How upsetting!) In the morning I felt we went too fast, so you couldn't look at your surroundings as you had to focus on your feet. But after lunch - eaten perched on boulders by a river - we slowed up a bit and I could take in the sparkling blue rivers and the thin, leafless trees in the cold afternoon sunshine. We also paused to test Jen and Richard's waterproofs under a waterfall (they worked exceptionally well) and to laugh at me as I repeatedly slipped going down hill, resulting in a very muddy arse. I also learnt about scroggin - an excellent, energy-restoring combination of nuts, raisins, dried fruit, seeds, chocolate, sweets ('lollies') and whatever else takes your fancy, really.

In the evening there was a massive group meal of questionable quality, an impossible quiz (unless you were an expert in NZ history, tramping and plant diseases) and a disco in a small school-esque hall, which was decorated not unlike something you might be excited to attend if you were 12 and didn't know any members of the opposite sex. For some reason, the whole time we had to be dressed in outfits we'd fashioned out of 'rubbish' materials. Admittedly, the man wearing shorts and a t-shirt made of sacking was pretty cool, as was the girl who had unzipped her rucksack and managed to get in to it. On a different scale, my gang had spent a very enjoyable hour constructing skirts, dresses, waistcoats and accessories out of newspaper and bin liners. Jamie wore a fetching box with shoe-lace braces and a paper tie, and Amanda was a dab hand at making us all newspaper hats. That was probably the best part of the evening! Plus we all looked well hot. Obv.

On Sunday we took part in a massive tidy up of the kitchen/dining area and our rooms, before the group (probably about 60 people in total) went their separate ways. Jamie, Amanda, Jessie, Steifan and I went to Waihi beach, not too far from where we'd been staying and where Amanda's family owned a beach house. The other four all decided to swim in the sea, and the beach house's shower proved useful after that, as they all emerged blue and shivery. I remained on shore, partly on pneumonia watch, but also enjoying the particularly compact nature of the sand (I hate sand) and taking faux-arty photos of the large number of beautiful and perfect shells spread across the beach. A few other of our tramping chums crossed our path whilst we were there and we sat and ate lunch together.

The next stop was Paeroa, where New Zealand's 'famous' drink, L+P (Lemon and Paeroa), is made. Paeroa is not something you can eat, being a town, so the name is odd. Anyway, the reason you might stop there - as we did - is because of an over-sized novelty bottle of L+P perched by the road. It now has a little car park next to it, after its popularity lead to several deaths, when people stopping to take pictures of it decided to pose in the middle of road, no doubt to the annoyance of Paeroa's permanent residents, who probably sped up in order to floor these lovers of giant, novelty containers of sweet, lemony carbonated drinks.

I then drove us back to Auckland, which was a lot of fun and not as scary as expected - of course, everything's on the same side of the road here, tho the automatic nature of the car was initially a little unnerving. Back in the Big Smoke the gang and I went to see a film (it was the last day of the film festival) about a Spanish guy living in an East London squat. We then had some very tasty Japanese dinner and a few beers. It was all excellent excellent excellent - we were a great team, who had (partly) come together by coincidence but who all got on really well. Woo!

Right. Before this gets too much longer, here's a quick(-ish) summary of the rest of the week:

Monday - in an attempt to 'see' more of Auckland I spent the three hours between my lectures going round on the Link bus, which essentially travels in a circle through the main parts of town. It was quite interesting and I feel better acquainted with the city's geography. In the evening I met a band consisting of a 20 year old guy, a 30 year old woman and a 50 year old man (her dad). They were nice people but the music was a little middle-of-the-road and their cross-section of ages wasn't really what I was after.

Tuesday - I went to my first Pragmatics lecture was which was hell. I hate pragmatics as it is, and the lecturer was pretty annoying, so I left half way through (in a break, mind) to research other options. In the evening Cheery Canadian Mark and I went to a talk from Miriam Meyerhoff, sociolinguistics lecturer in Edinburgh, which was pretty interesting. Then we went to an Irish pub, where I had a massive steak, and where we joined Mark's friends for a pub quiz. We didn't win, but we're going back for more this week, I hope.

Wednesday - I was quite pleased with myself in the morning, having done a fair bit of work. I then had lunch with Steifan, which was nice (both the food and the company) and in the evening I met with another band, which I've subsequently joined. Called 'Breakdown' (what a shame the name's so emo!) they consist of three guys in their 20s playing original funky rock type stuff. They're all really good musicians and one of the guys has his own recording gear and an electric drum kit (much excitement). I played with them again yesterday and we're probably going to practice twice a week, in the hope of doing some gigs over the summer (by which I mean your winter). It's exciting. Plus it means I've met some more kiwis - yay!

Thursday - I remember Polynesian Comparative Linguistics being particularly fun. The class is a good group, even if it's mostly just Jolly Canadian Mark (he's been mocking me for referring to him as 'cheery' so I'm going to have to come up with other things) and I bantering away at each other. In the evening Jessie and I joined a bunch of tramping people for a dessert night at one of their houses. I have never eaten so much sugar. It was gooooood.

Friday - I had my first Film Studies class, which was pretty awesome, so good call me. Worth sacrificing Free Fridays for, I think (and I now have Totally Nothing Tuesdays instead.) We're doing the history of film, so were looking at the origin of films and silent films this week. I thought it was all fascinating, and I learnt a lot about how films are made too. In the afternoon I watched a Charlie Chaplin film, 'Modern Times', which was surprisingly funny and then went with Jamie, Happy Chappy Mark and his girlfriend, Lindsay, freshly arrived from Cheery Canada that morning, to see Bruno (not so good as Borat, I thought). After that we went on to a bar, where we danced to an Afro-Reggae band for a while, and Jamie and I indulged in that Scottish classic, cheesey chips.

Saturday - I hired a car and went with Jessie, Lindsay and Bouncy Boy Mark to a food show. We undoubtedly ate our weight in samples - mostly bread with a variety of sauces and dips, washed down with a selection of coffees and indeterminate wines (although we weren't exactly concerned with working out why they tasted different, it was obviously important to try everything on offer...) There was a lack of chocolate, we felt, but we did enjoy watching a cooking demonstration from a crazy kiwi chef lady, who's bright red boots matched her bright red hair. In the afternoon I went to Hamilton, which is where I started this blog...

Except now it's actually Monday, so I'll just quickly say that not a lot happened on Sunday; I did a bit more work, JJ and I spent a happy hour or two playing with clothes pegs and bubbles and reading the Gruffalo (tho only the first half seemed to be of interest) and Rachel was an excellent surrogate mother, providing washing facilities and care packages of leek and potato soup. I also met in town with Jamie and Amanda, and we had coffee and cake, as you do, at the feet of the statue of Riff Raff (we shared our cake with him too). A brief rainstorm resulted in a fantastic rainbow just before I headed back to Auckland for band practice.

So, there it is. You get the idea. Meanwhile, I'm starving. There's only so many Tim Tams (NZ's Penguin biscuit, which you can use as a straw through which to drink your tea) you can eat before you crave real food. And I know there's some soup-er soup waiting for me...

Speak soon, A x