So lets try to catch you guys up….

Installment 1

WELL…Internet has taken longer than expected to reach 32 Clifton Tce…. but it has arrived…FINALLY!!! No lie I have been going INSANE without it…the 10 minute walk to the library has taken its toll…. my legs are sore, (its up hill both ways…. for real not fake!) and I am glad I can tap into civilization from the comforts of my own home.

 

But don’t you worry; I have been diligently writing down my adventures…all docs waiting patiently to be revealed to the world!! So for a while the posts will be all about what I have been up to these pasts few weeks, and hopefully within a few days you all will be caught up and the posts will become real time J

 

So, my last post was the cliff notes version of my trip thus far…so now for the sans-sparknotes what-your-teacher-ACTUALY-assigned-to-read version of my first day in NZ.

 

After a too early wake up alarm (3:15^am to be precise), I arrived at the airport only to find a VERY long line at the check in desk. One might think that leaving the house by 4^am would have gotten me to the airport in time for a comfortable, no stress, arrival and plane boarding, but you would be WRONG! It was 4:30 in the morning, why there were so many people at Logan Airport International is beyond me….but the boarding pass line was at least 45 minutes long, and then it was another 30 minutes through security. The flight out of Boston left at 6:30. After being stopped for a routine security check of my person and personal belongings (no Logan Airport….I am not a terrorist) I was allowed to SPRINT to my gate (at the VERY end of the terminal of course) and boarded my plane with 10 minutes to spare. Thank god for the nice woman behind me in security, she told the stewardess that I was coming and they held the door for me.

 

The flight to LAX was very normal…not a lot of turbulence, a nice ride actually. Until about 11am EST when one of the flight attendants came on board and said, “if there is a doctor on board could you please come to the back of the plane.” We didn’t make any emergency landing or anything, which was nice, but when we landed in LAX a young girl was carted off the plane in the skinny stretcher made specifically for airplane aisles. I couldn’t tell what was wrong from the quick glimpse I had from the window seat. I just hope she was on her way home and not going on vacation.

 

The people sitting next to me were very nice. They were going to LA for a short vacation in Santa Monica before heading to a family vacation with their 2 daughters and newborn grandson. I told them they MUST stop at the Lobster for dinner, I wonder if they ever did. They of course asked why I was going to LA and I said it was a “short” stopover on my way to New Zealand.  As I told them my study abroad plans, the kid across the aisle leaned over and said, “Through Butler?” I said yes and, instead of talking over the nice people next to me, mentioned to wait for me when we landed and we could grab lunch.

 

By the time we had landed in LAX, a small group of four study abroad students had emerged. Since we had a wonderful 10 hour layover to enjoy, we decided to wander around the terminals for a while. We ate lunch in the international terminal (surprisingly enough NOT the terminal we were leaving from), sunned ourselves in the parking lot for a while, and had a drink at the sky bar in the middle of the airport [side note: ever since I was little I’ve wanted to go up in the building that’s in the middle of the parking lots. We always drove past it whenever we went to LA, so needless to say I was very excited to go up…and it didn’t disappoint either…if you are ever at LAX with some time to kill and have yet to grab a drink there…do it, its definitely an experience lol].

 

With 3 hours left to wait, we decided it was probably time to mosey on into the terminal and see if we could find any other lost Butler soles. We succeeded. Loud mouth me got the attention of anyone we saw with a sleeping bag for carry on (yes we had to bring a sleeping bag with us for orientation... everyone agreed that it was stupid and they should just give us bedding at orientation. But after the fact, the sleeping bag has come in VERY handy throughout the trip and has been used multiple times, so good job Butler).

 

So after a while, (and me shouting, “Hey [insert anything unique on their person here]! Butler?”) we had about 20 Butler kids in the back end of the terminal getting to know each other and being very loud obnoxious 20 something’s (I of course was not one of the loud and obnoxious ones….that was mostly the boys).

 

So the time came to board the plane, and sitting next to me was a Yankee fan from Jersey-- also a Butler student. The only good thing about the seating arrangement was that the middle seat was empty ( I only tease…the Yankee fan isn’t too bad and we are now friends, we just never talk about sports lol). HOWEVER, about 45 minutes into the flight, one of the attendants came over and asked said Yankee fan if he wouldn’t mind switching seats with a couple a few rows back, because ONE of the two TV screens (there was one in every seat) was not working and the couple wanted to stay together. Well, he had to be the hero…so good-bye empty middle seat. It would have been nice if the seat next to me had been empty for the entirety of the THIRTEEN-HOUR flight. But it was fine, I didn’t really end up caring too much because I fell asleep sometime around 10:30 PST (is that the right abbreviation for whatever time it would be if I had still been on the ground in California? Whatever, moving on…).

 

The couple next to me was also nice, and after I woke up (7 hours later. I would just like to say to all of you who told me ‘get sleep where I can’, and ‘don’t try to stay up all day just so you can sleep on the plane to NZ’, I’m glad I didn’t listen and ended up staying up all day because I was the only one at orientation who was not completely exhausted by the end of the first day…so HA! Moving on…) we had a very nice chat. The couple was American and on their way to Australia and thought it was wonderful that I was taking such an amazing opportunity blah blah blah. I also learned the life stories of their 2 daughters (one who is just my age…). What is it with me and strangers? I always have people talking to me and they end up telling me their life stories, I must look like an approachable person…oh well for another time, can’t get too far off topic this post is becoming much longer than I originally expected.

 

Oh just a note on the couple who HAD to move seats because of a broken TV screen. The wife who was next to me occupying the once empty middle seat NEVER ONCE turned on her TV. Just the husband watched TV. So in fact, what they could have done is switched seats when they were a few rows back, both been happy, AND completely avoided disturbing the stewardess and me and my empty middle seat!!!!!!!! People…go figure.

 

So I slept for 7 hours on the plane and woke up with only a 6 hr flight left. That was a nice surprise since I am VERY used to a 6 hr plane ride, and it actually went by rather quickly. When we landed (2 days after I had left…I got to skip Friday the 13^th!! I have decided it was lucky), I was able to call home from the customs line ( I was amazed I was able to figure out the phone…thank god for one of Dad’s co-workers programming in Dad’s cell phone number previously so I was able to find out the country code….its 001 for anyone who cares….). 

 

There were some very nice people from Butler waiting for us outside of customs. They collected our stuff, shoved us onto a bus, and proceeded to not let us sleep at all on the hour long bus ride from the Auckland airport to our accommodations atShakespeare National Park YMCA camp. They were also sneaky about not letting us sleep too, because it was only ever so often that they would come over the loud speaker and give us some fun fact about NZ or whatever we happened to be passing. It was never a constant stream of talking, oh no, that we would have been able to tune out. No they were evil. They would wait just until the whole bus was about to conk out and BOOM—“AND IF YOU LOOK OUT THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE BUS YOU WILL SEE…” as the whole bus groaned.

 

We arrived at the park by 7:30 in a torrential down pour where there was an introductory briefing for about 30 minutes, a little time to grab our bags off the truck, put them in our room, and change for the morning tramp. They then served us some Kai( otherwise known as food) and then it was off to the mountain by 9^am! It was actually a very nice hike in the rain (we were all drenched). I was able to bring my camera (since it is waterproof) and take a few pictures.

 

The rain did subside by the time we got to the summit and it was a nice afternoon when we got back. More kai was in our future, and we were able to get out of some of our wet clothes and headed down to the rugby field where the “counselors” (I have no other word for them than that…they were not really our counselors, they did not care whether we participated or not…but they did work at the Y camp that had finished a week before we arrived…so thus for lack of a better word I call them counselors) proceeded to teach us the wonderful sport of touch rugby. They were a little more into it than the rest of the group was (maybe it was because they had not been up for 24s the day before). During the game, one of the counselors asked me why I could not understand the idea that I needed to be behind the ball to receive. I just laughed at him and said, “because in all other sports you rush the ball!!” He did not make a friend out of me with that comment.

 

After all the sports and tramping of the day, they gave us some free time before our trip into the little town of Manly (the signs to “Little Manly Beach” and “Manly Pub” made the whole bus laugh) to the natural hot springs. By this time it was 5^pm NZ time and all of us had decided that we must have been in NZ for at least a week. The hot springs were pretty commercialized (there were water rides and everything), but it was nice to relax in the sulfury hot waters and sooth our sore muscles from the plane and the day’s adventures. After about an hour at the springs, we then went across the street to the local pub and grabbed a casual drink before it was back to the lodge for more kai, free time, and some much-needed rest. By 9:30^pm the entire lodge was silent, not even a mouse dared to make noise.

 

Here ends my first day.

 

In the next installment, we will see what other adventures our heroine encounters at Orientation!

 

Sorry this became so long….I don’t know what got into me. I hope you actually get to this part and didn’t get so bored you peaced out somewhere in my description of my adventures at LAX and so are not even reading this. I will stop now.

 

~Marjorie

 

PS. I know I will have some wise ass comment later on about my grammar and the lack of it and the fact that I am a writing tutor and should know better blah blah blah. Just to nip that in the bud now –I have intentionally made these errors. They are for literary effect. I do, in fact, read over every one of my posts at least once before posting them. I want this blog to be more of a conversation with the reader (all 3 of you), not an academic essay, therefore errors in proper grammar will abound. Deal with it.