7.20.06

Aye carumba. I woke up at 7: am and drove to Connecticut, where I had one interview at 11: am in S. Norwalk and another at 3: pm in Fairfield. Then there was traffic on my drive back and I am very tired. Alex had a meeting in the city and is now at ikea with the brother. Nap time.

7.17.06

This is my second to last Monday in Savannah. Alex and I drove to JAX and he went back to the north, where I will be come Wednesday. I booked a mover to come on August 3, and packed boxes. Sigh.

7.15.06

stuff.
i woke lauren up by singing amazing songs... like "wake up darlin". it was about 9am and we went to bed at 3:30.
we drove to sc to a flea market that had about four tables and 6 hillbillys.
we went to jacob's jewelry and i got fitted for a silver tooth... so hot.
we ate the best bbq i have ever had in my whole entire life. i would kill my mother for it. i'm addicted... we also had sex three times.
-a

Today was a good day.
-l.

7.7.06

Back to the future

I've taken four planes today to get back to Savannah. I left Auckland, NZ at 6:00 p.m. on July 7, and arrived in Los Angeles at 10:50 a.m. on July 7. I am officially a time traveller.

I got in at 11 p.m. to SAV and my lover got in at exactly the same time. My bag won't get here until tomorrow, but I am happy to be home and have Alex here.

7.6.06

Christchurch

We took a charter plane today from Queenstown to Christchurch, during which we flew next to (literally) Mount Cook. We got into town mid-afternoon.

Christchurch is called the most English city outside of England, and the weather certainly supported it. It was overcast, foggy, rainy and cold. We only had a couple of hours to explore the city, so we walked to the Contemporary Art Museum, and wandered around there for an hour or so.

Tonight was our farewell dinner, where we ate and drank our hearts out and bid adieu to the rest of our tour group.

7.5.06

Queenstown

Holy balls it’s cold out. First thing this morning, we went out to the Shotover River Valley and went on a Shotover Jet ride. Ok, what is a Shotover Jet? It’s a speed boat that goes about 50mph in 4-6” of water and does spins and crazy turns. It was about -1 C out, and with the windchill on the boat it was -5 C, which ends up being about 20 F. On top of it being below freezing, we were being splashed by water and in constant fear of smashing into giant, jagged rocks. It was awesome. At the end, my mom’s hair was frozen to her poncho and my eyelashes were frozen to my eyelids; good times.

The rest of the day mom and I went walking around town and shopped a bit, while dad lazed about in the room and Nate went snowboarding. It was very cold out, but I got pretty much exactly what I was looking for at the first shop we stopped at, and we found some other amazing things during the day.

Whenever I eat out of town with my parents, we happen upon the best Indian food place, and there’s some kind of best-of Bollywood montage playing on a large screen. Well, two times: here, and in Little Five in Atlanta. I tried to get online to post this, but it was too cold to walk to the internet café. Hopefully I’ll get to it tomorrow.

Tomorrow we are off to Christchurch, which is the last stop before I head home.

7.4.06

Queenstown

It snowed on our trip here from Te Anau. We stopped at Kingston on our way to Queenstown for coffee (there was no Princeton, though). After a quick lunch at a nice golf resort just outside of Queenstown, we went on a gondola ride to the top of a mountain overlooking the city (note: I learned that a gondola is both a slender boat used on canals in cities such as Venice and a contraption that floats up a hill on a cable).

Bungy jumping was invented in Queenstown, and we went by the first bungy bridge in the world. Queenstown is kind of the thrill-seeking capital of the Southern Hemisphere; there is bungy jumping, sky diving, canyon hanging, helicopter rides, snowboarding/skiing, and extreme boat rides, the last of which I am going on tomorrow.

I saw a funny car accident while on the phone with Alex this evening. Nobody got hurt, but it was a minor rear ending, and some bits and pieces of the behind car fell off, and both cars drove off. About two cars later, a guy hopped out of his car and picked up the random pieces of bumper; weird. We had a painfully long dinner (3 hours), but the food was good.

Only two days left!

7.3.06

Te Anau

I skipped out on an excursion and slept in. I walked around the small town, which was pretty vacant, and thought and wrote and feel better about life now. That’s it.

7.2.06

Te Anau

Instead of going to Mount Cook today, we went to Te Anau for an extra day. We flew here on a small propeller plane, and landed at an airport that was, literally, a landing strip with a shack at the end. It’s very pretty here, though; there are snow capped mountains and lots of trees and such. There is a lake in Te Anau, appropriately called Lake Te Anau, and in lieu of the Mount Cook expedition, we went to a cave across the lake to see Glowworms. Glowworms are tiny worms that live on the ceiling deep in certain caves in Australia and New Zealand, and yes, they really glow.

To get to the Glowworm cave, we took a treacherous half-hour boat ride across the lake, and then walked about a quarter of a mile into a small cave. Once deep enough into the cave, we got into a small boat and went into the pitch-black Glowworm caves. The bugs are very small, and look like little baby LEDs on the cave ceiling – like a relief of stars. It was very pretty, and quite eerie to be in a pitch black, water-filled cave with thousands of worms overhead. I’m glad we didn’t go to Mount Cook.

7.1.06

Rotorua

Today was a serious day. To avoid confusion and clutter, I’m going to break this one into sections.

Part I – The bus ride
We headed from Auckland to Rotorua on bus, which is about a 2 hour ride straight through. New Zealand consists of three islands:

+The North Island
+The South Island
+Stewart’s Island

The North Island is covered with grassy hills, and is where the Lord of the Rings movies were filmed (ooo, ahhh). Most of the countryside is used for sheep and cow farms, which I’ll talk more about in a minute. The North Island is where 90% of the Maori population lives, mostly due to the better weather. The Maoris are very unlike the Australian Aboriginees. The Maoris didn’t come to New Zealand until the 1300s, whereas the Aboriginees were in Australia for 30-40,000 years. The Maoris came from Polynesian Islands, and have similar customs and rituals to the Samoans and Hawaiians. There are extremely interesting social variations between the two groups that are directly related to the land and living conditions in their respective countries. …Footnotes available upon consultation.

We found out on the bus that we will not be visiting Mount Cook because the runway is snowed in, so we are spending an extra day in Te Anau. Tom the tour guide said it’s better that it snowed us out as opposed to snowing us in, and I couldn’t agree more.

Part II – The dairy farm
As I mentioned before, the North Island is covered with dairy and livestock farms. We went to one for lunch, and I had some of the tastiest cheese and ice cream of my life. In the warmer 9 months of the year, the 240 cows on the farm are milked twice a day. That’s a lot of dairy. Nathan and I spent most of our time playing with a dog and rolling around in the grass.

Part III – Agrodome
The Agrodome is this kind of hokey county fair type place where this big fat dude comes out and talks about sheep and sheep shearing and makes fun of the Asian tourists. I liked it because I was able to make friends with a few nice sheep, and my mom liked the dogs. My brother went “Zorbing,” which is this strange sport where you’re put in a giant bubble and rolled down a small hill. Being as we had eaten only a half-hour or so before the excursion, I passed and went with the crowd to the sheep show. My brother said it was fun for the first half (about 30 seconds), after which he got antsy and kind of claustrophobic. Apparently he did the “wet Zorb,” so he was put in the bubble without a harness accompanied by a large bucket of warm water. Interesting.


Part IV – Geothermal Areas and Maori dances

The last part of the day consisted of a trip to the Rotorua hot springs and some Maori cultural education. The hot springs/geysers were pretty neat but smelled like sulfur, and we were in and out of there pretty quick. By far the most amusing part of the hot springs were the mud pits, which look like something out of the Land Before Time and made flatulence noises non-stop.

We learned a little bit about (former) Maori daily life, such as how to turn the leaves of the flax plant into fiber for rope and clothing. Right before dinnertime, we had a small presentation of the Maori “Haka,” or war dance, which would definitely make me wave my white flag. If you ever see Maori carvings or images with wide eyes and protruding tongues – that is part of the Haka; it’s meant to intimidate the enemy, and it does a pretty good job. The New Zealand rugby team the All Blacks (I have plenty of stories about All Blacks merchandise and how hilarious the name is to my family and I) does the Haka dance before every match.

6.30.06

Auckland

We went to an acquarium/acquatic center today and saw some rad wildlife including dozens of penguins. New Zealand is the launch point for all excursions to Antartica, as it is the closest inhabited landmass to the South Pole. This museum had examples of the living situations in the Antarctic camps, and also exhibited some of the wildlife that is found there. There was an awesome aquatic display; unfortunately part of the museum had been flooded the previous week, so we were only able to see these monstrous stingrays, which alongside the penguins were enough arctic creatures for me. Oh, and I colored some penguins with crayons.

There are gorgeous houses on the hills here that look like houses in Beverly Hills. We went to the bougie neighborhoods and then to the Auckland museum, where there was an entire floor of Maori artifacts, and a floor of natural history which included exhibits on volcanoes, dinosaurs, and an amazing show room with specimens of all shapes and sizes.

Later this afternoon we went downtown to the Auckland tower. This tower is pretty rad, and I’ll tell you why –

+You don’t have to pay to go up and have a view of the city.
+There is a “controlled jump” that can be done from the tower that goes all the way to street level – a drop of about 1000 feet.
+The observation deck floor has glass panels, so you can get vertigo without all the danger of open space.

Since skinny jeans are so popular here with the teenies, I was able to get a few pairs for about 45$ NZ each, which ends up being around 32$ US; peace out Urban Outfitters.

We had Serota night fancy dinner tonight, so I had the chance to wear a pretty dress and sit up straight and all of that. Putting on a dress made me realize that maybe I should stop having dessert with every meal.

6.29.06

Auckland

Goodbye Australia, Hello New Zealand!

Today is our last day in AUS and our first day in NZ. We took a morning flight that served a proper lunch, I don’t think the US airlines ever fed us this much. Qantas is great – they always serve food, always have in-flight entertainment (even if it’s just 30 minutes of news or sports highlights), and they have double the amount of flight attendants most US flights have. Plus the headsets are free, not a stupid 2$. To top it off, their logo is a hopping kangaroo; it doesn’t get much better.

So I started doing drawings for the Flash animation of a hook turn in Illustrator (those of you actually following this blog know what I’m talking about), and about 3 hours in the application quit. Needless to say, it may be a while before I get up the motivation to start over.

Auckland is a lovely city. Our hotel is at the top of a hill downtown. To get to the main downtown area we had to walk down a very steep hill and then down another hill littered with Asian food establishments and Internet/Gaming cafes. Once downtown, we walked around a bit and crossed the street diagonal-ways a couple of times. I like New Zealand.

6.28.06

Brisbane

Our day started with a city tour by bus. We went to the botanic gardens of Brisbane, where our guide told us a hilarious story about Steve Irwin that I’ll share if you ask. Something I noticed in Cairns that I also see here is the electrical boxes for street/traffic lights are all painted with mini murals. Some of these little art pieces are pretty lame, like giant psychedelic mushrooms and stuff like that, but some are awesome (like this one), and I like the idea of public art over industrial drab.

We were also told today that XXXX is the Queensland “local” beer, meaning it is brewed in the state. Apparently, the number of X’s signifies the quality of the hops used to brew the beer, and 4 X’s is pretty top notch. I guess that means that Dos Equis is hardly a bragging right.

Mount Coot-tha provides a very nice view of Brisbane and its suburbs, and has a cute coffee shop on top where we drained the last of our Aussie cash. We were enjoying the view so much that we lost track of time and almost got left by the bus. At least they speak English here.

My brother and father went and took a train to Surfer’s Paradise this afternoon, so mom and I galavanted about the shopping arcade and went to Target. The Aussie Target has a period at the end, like so:

Target.

I thought this was cute. Also, all of the Target store brands are different here, and they don’t have any of the Luella Bartley or Isaac Misrahi stuff we have. They do have some decent clothes, though, so mom bought me a couple of pretty dresses and some rad gloves for New Zealand (brrrrr).

Mom and I enjoyed some boyfriend champagne then tried to go bowling, but it was league night ☹ . We also tried to catch a movie, but the movies weren’t very good and it costs 14$ for a matinee! What the heck is that about? So we went to a casino for a minute, lost a dollar, and my mom got hollered at by some drunk Aussie man.

6.27.06

Brisbane

We got up at 2:45 this morning to take off to Brisbane. Eating breakfast at 4 a.m. is pretty disorienting, but Nate and I were still able to make some fine food art at the breakfast table. Australia lost their advancing spot in the World Cup matches due to a crappy penalty kick given to Italy 30 seconds before the end of the match. Needless to say, the whole country is a little sad today, and I’m not Italian for another week or so.

Brisbane is a nice city. The Brisbane River snakes around in the city, making for a pretty landscape, but very difficult navigation. We are staying at the Hilton, which is located smack in the middle of the downtown retail district. The streets here are all name after kings and queens of England and they run similarly to the way avenues and streets normally do, which made it easy to get around on foot.

The best part of my day was coming back to my room to find chocolates and champagne (but you have to say champagne like The Continental or it’s no fun) from Alex, who is hands down the most awesome person alive. I won the manfriend lottery.

Another superb highlight of the day was the awesome dinner at the Hilton and our family excursion on the crazy streets of Brisbane afterwards. We saw many statues and funny water fountains.

6.26.06

Cairns

Today we went back to Cairns for the day, and on the way we stopped at the Tjakaputi Aboriginal Center to learn about the coastal Aboriginees. First thing we did was watch a documentary on how the Europeans ruined the natives’ lives, then we watched an acting out of the Aboriginal story of creation. The final thing we watched was a short Aboriginal dance demonstration, followed by the 4 performers singing “Proud to be an Aboriginee,” which was this horrible pop song with muzak accompaniment and all; the irony is that the performances started by making all the whites feel guilty for our ancestors’ careless invasion of Australia, and ended with a painfully awkward pop song about the Aboriginal pride, sung in English. Fortunately, after the performances, I learned how to throw a boomerang and a spear! Now I am fit to hunt kangaroo and such. My brother caught the boomerang when it came back to him, like the stud he is (which is really hard, because those things are going 500 mph spinning towards your cranium - I ran away from mine). So Cairns is awesome. Tom the tour guide said that real estate here is the most expensive in all of the country, and I believe it. It’s a pretty beach town with ample shopping and a nice downtown area. We had really good dinner at the hotel, then went to the Night Market, which is kind of the staple of Cairns. My mom and I found a bunch of fun things, and bought a couple of them, including a platapus puppet and a boulder opal. Also, I put some lotion on that allegedly contained sheep placenta – pretty gross, but man was my skin baby soft. I didn’t ask how they got the placenta.

Interesting Cairns Facts:

+The Aussie government wasn’t interested in building an airport here prior to the major resorts being built, so the city fundraised and accumulated the money to build the airport on its own. It is now the 4th busiest airport in Australia.
+There are zillions of Japanese people around.
+Almost every store is Duty Free.
+My mom can’t find Maybelline or L’Oreal cosmetics anywhere here.