The Wonderful Land of Oz

Brisbane, Australia

A few days after my last exam and after going to bed at seven in the evening, I woke up at two a.m. to catch the bus to the airport.

Here's a bit I journaled in the airport:
It's 3:45 a.m. and I'm at the airport; I'm waiting to be checked in. I would be line, but I'm sitting in front of the check-in area. My ticket said to get there 90 minutes ahead of time, but the airport's website said three hours. I settled for 2.5. Guess it was too many. Better than missing my flight, I suppose.

Once the ticket counter finally opened, I went to check in. The woman behind the counter says to me: "Do you have a visa to go to Australia?" I didn't know I needed a visa and told her so. With my heart beating extremely fast (I had spent a lot of money on these tickets and didn't know what I would do if I couldn't go) she called someone to make sure I didn't have one and then told me what to do next. Luckily, the U.S. is one of the half dozen countries or so that you can apply and get a visa instantly online. She had me go to a computer, apply for the visa and pay for it online. Thank goodness for credit cards. Once that was completed, I came back, finished checking in, did some duty free shopping and eventually boarded the airplane. Three and a half hours later I arrived.

Once I cleared customs and picked up my baggage, I boarded the "air train" and took the train into Brisbane Central. I was given a free yogurt sample (my breakfast) and found the hostel, which was across the street from the station. I tried to check in, but it was only 9:30 in the morning so I couldn't. I dropped off my bags in the luggage room and decided I would be bold and explore Brisbane. After a while, I ended up in the shopping area, where I found myself in Witchery, Fossil, Nine West and similar stores. I thought my mother would be proud. I must come equipped with shop-dar. Eventually I was able to check in. I brought my stuff up to my room and was reunited with Claire and Amy, my two friends from Dublin, Ireland that I spent the week with. Eventually, we ended up making our way down to an area known as South Bank.

The day I arrived in Australia, was the day Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows (Part One) opened in theaters. Being the fans that we were, we thought it was only proper for us to see the movie on opening day... in Australia! Amy declared that sentences sounds better when "in Australia" comes at the end (I know, very reminiscent of the 'in bed' that most of us place at the end of fortune cookie fortunes). So, we purchased our tickets ahead of time and ended up at a wonderful chocolate restaurant to kill time. It was called Max Brennen: Chocolate by the Bald Guy. I ordered the chocolate brownie sundae. Here is a picture of me and my little treat:

And here is a picture of Amy and Claire (from right to left) excited to see Harry Potter:


We came back to the hostel, surprisingly exhausted (they had a long night drinking the night before and I had gotten up extremely early) for a nap and burgers and reading and bed. We would need our rest. The next day we were going to Surfer's Paradise.

Final Dinners

Final Dinner with Friends
Throughout the semester, there had been a group of us that often went places, did things, and went to the bars together. Who came varied on the night and occasion, but everyone (who was anyone) made sure to come to our dinner on the waterfront, at a restaurant called "The Waterfront." Heare are some pictures from the occasion:

Emma, Amy and Me at dinner

The whole group of us

The meal was a great time. I had a magnificent white chocolate raspberry martini to drink and a really yummy steak. It was still early enough that none of us were thinking goodbyes yet, but it was the last time that all of us were still around to do something together.

Final Program Dinner
On November 7, Lauren and Tommy (if you recall, they were the program organizers who was with us for orientation) met with the seven of us studying in Auckland for a nice, fancy dinner at White, another waterfront restaurant, but this time in the Hilton hotel. It was nice to see the other girls from my program, whom I hadn't seen in a while.


We had a full course meal, with wine, appetizers, entrees and then we almost ordered desserts. We were going to get two mixed platters of desserts, but then we decided that it would be much cheaper and possibly tastier if we just went next door to the gelatto place. We retracted the order for the dessert, but the chef was insulted that we didn't want it anymore. As a result he himself made a few platter with mini espresso brownies and mini blueberry muffins. They were absolutely delicious. Then the group of us went over for gelatto. It was so good! I had a really nice chat with Tommy's girlfriend who was there. Tommy and his girlfriend had been together since high school, but went to different universities. They both came to University of Auckland however to do their semester abroad. Whereas she went back to her university back home, Tommy decided to stay in Auckland and they did two years of a really long distance relationship. With my time in New Zealand coming to a close and uncertainty setting in, this conversation with Tommy's girlfriend was just what I needed to be certain that I wanted to commit to staying with Matt.

Final Dinner with Matt
The second to last night before I left New Zealand, Matt decided to make me a special dinner. There's not much to write about, he made venison and blue cheese stuffed ravioli with a blue cheese sauce he made from scratch. We had both (ironically) been saving up tea lights for a candle lit dinner. I had the table lit up with tons of tea lights and Matt came in with more. He had even bought a lighter for the meal. It was tasty and special.

DInners

So in case anyone doesn't know, I'm back at home in Illinois now. I still have so much I want to blog about though, so I'm going to continue making posts despite the fact that my adventure has ended. Throughout the course of the semester I had many important dinners, I thought I'd lump them in an entry together. Here it goes:

Alumni Dinner
One program the University of Auckland offers to international students is the alumni dinner. Alum of the university sign up to host international students for dinner and international students sign up to eat for free and make small talk. Being the self-respecting college student that I am, I would never turn down a free meal and alas, signed up for the program. I hadn't heard anything by my midsemester break so I assumed that I wasn't going to be invited to dinner. Sometime in September, however, I received an email and was told I, along with two other girls would have dinner at Jennie and David's house. On September 26, the three of us met up and tried to find Jennie's apartment. We had the hardest time! The numbering was confusing and we buzzed the building and apartment we thought was hers, but we had no luck. We tried calling them, but we had no answer. About 20 minutes after when we were supposed to have been there, Jennie called Ida's cell phone and they came down and brought us up to their flat.

The couple reminded me of grandparents. Jennie consistently called us "darlings" and gave me a giant hug (especially considering how tiny she was). Before dinner we sat in their family room (I have an urge to call it a parlor though) and ate cheese and crackers and fruit and drank white wine.

During the time before the meal Jennie and David made an effort to get to know us. I talked about my background, both family and education and explained why I chose to study in Auckland, New Zealand. Ida (pronounced ee-duh, not Ida like Idaho) was from Denmark and told us about what it was like coming from a drug-ridden country, but one that also pays for one's college education. Ida also told us about how distinct the dialects of Danish are in Denmark. Depending on what part of the country one was from, there would be different words for the same things and demonstrated the difference for us. She said that people would adjust their accent depending on whom they were talking to. Her parents came from a different part of the country than where they raised her and from where she studied. That means she had three different dialects mastered. The third girl, whose name I can't remember, was a first generation American, whose parents came from Vietnam. She told us about growing up as both Vietnamese and American, it was pretty interesting.

Dinner was really nice. She made some kind of a curry, rice, salad and shredded carrots with coconut and raisins. I didn't think the carrot dish would be very tasty, but it was delicious! There we had more philosophical and ethical discussions about life in New Zealand among other topics. I learned about Jennie and David. They had been a part of the program for many years and their niche in life seemed to be to give foreigners a home. They consistently were host parents for Uni students and had a few "adopted daughters" that lived around the world. Jennie herself went back to school a few years ago (she's in her 60s or 70s) to get a masters just for the sake of loving learning. She works at the Short Loan (reserve) library on campus.



After a long, but enjoyable dinner, Jennie served us baked apples with ice cream for dessert and sent us on our merry way. David didn't want us to walk back in the dark (though they really weren't that far from campus) and dropped the two girls off at Parnell (an area of Auckland where another student accommodation is) and dropped me at Whitaker. David and I had a nice conversation about his adopted daughters on the drive home. It was quite lovely.

I visited Jennie a few times at Short Loan before leaving Auckland. She's so sweet! It was a great experience.

Whitaker Place Formal Dinner
On October 8, my student accommodation hosted a Formal Dinner. It was toward the end of classes, but before people started studying for exams. The meal was completely paid for and all we had to do was show up looking nice and with the optional bottle of wine. The day before the dinner, I went shopping with my friend Katie and her friend Laura. Laura is an Aucklander so she helped me find a dress shop that I liked. And she did a wonderful job! I fell in love with a dress and it was super on sale.

The evening of the dinner I got all dressed up, bought a couple of bottles of sparkling wine for myself and my flatmate Helen and made my way over to International House (another student accommodation just up the street with an actual dining hall). The room looked amazing. The theme was Casino Royale. There were candles and tiny cards on the tables. The food was fabulous and there was so much of it. It was a lot, a lot of fun. Here are some pictures from the evening:

Myself and three of my four flatmates.
This is my current background on my laptop.

Me and Claire, one of my friends and RAs.

Me and Innes. She's one of my friends from
Germany. She helped me with my homework
and practiced speaking with me.

Matthew and I after the dinner. He
lent me his coat like a gentleman.

Dinner at the Sky Tower
My favorite meal during my time in New Zealand took place exactly a week after the formal dinner. Originally it was supposed to take place on my birthday, but I thought the group dinner I will discuss later was going to happen at the sky tower and I wanted to make sure Matt took me there first. It was my birthday present and a delicious one indeed. Matt's philosophy about the sky tower is that it costs $25 to get up to the viewing deck anyway, so you might as well get a meal out of it, as he told me on the fourth day I knew him.

Here's a picture of Matt and I all dressed up for our dinner:

We arrived early so we went up to the observation deck first. It was okay, but after the Eiffel Tower, no view of the city quite looks so good.

The view from the observation deck

Then we went upstairs to "Orbit." The restaurant rotates, hence the name. Matt ordered us a really nice bottle of Savignon Blanc (a sweet white wine that New Zealand is known for) as we decided on our mains.

Fun Fact about New Zealand: In NZ, an entree is a smaller main course, whereas a 'main' is what we would consider an entree, basically a meal sized dish.

Matt got some kind of steak (can't remember) and I got the seafood risotto. My dish was okay, it was a bit bland for my liking. The steamed vege we got was tasty and Matt's dish was also delicious. To be honest though, my favorite part of the meal was the next two courses. Next was the dessert. I got the chocolate and caramel mousse, which came with a scoop of hokey pokey ice cream. Matt got just the ice cream and some wafers that came with it. My dessert was tasty. Just when I thought our meal was about to end, Matt decided to go all out and ordered us a magnificent cheese board. It had cheddar, brie and bleu (our favorite). It came with wafers, grapes and strawberries and these tiny, little jam-esque things in a few flavors. It was really fun because this was the only dish we shared and the cheeseboard had an exponential amount of possibilities. I would try the grape with the brie and would suggest it to Matt, then he would try the cheddar with one of the jam things and would suggest it to me. Between the board and the nice wine, it felt like we were cheese connoisseurs or something.

The whole affair took about two and a half hours, we saw the entire city of Auckland two and a half times, from sunlight to sunset. It was absolutely lovely. After our meal, we stopped at a convenience store, picked up some specialty soda (pink grapefruit flavor for him and blood orange for me) and a bag of gummy snakes and headed back to his flat. We watched the first Star Wars and called it a wonderful night.

Well folks, I have a few more dinners to write about, but speaking of dinner, Mom wants to go to Olive Garden. Take care all.

Queenstown at Last

So I'm going to admit it, I didn't write about Queenstown in my journal. I always thought I'd get around to it, but I just never did. This means unfortunately this blog entry won't be quite as comprehensive as the past ones. I'll try my best to remember... we'll see how this goes.

For the entirety of our South Island trip, the other girls were looking forward to Queenstown, but it was kind of sad once we finally arrived because it meant the end of the trip. Literally as soon as we hopped off the bus in front of our hostel we ran into four American boys who live in our apartment complex. It was pretty funny. That was a Sunday night and I left Queenstown Thursday morning.

Queenstown is known as the adventure/excitement capital of New Zealand. It's a huge tourist attraction with the (first or second) highest bungy in the world, skydiving, jet boating, wine tasting, horse riding, luges, and of course plenty of snowboarding. Unfortunately I can't do a lot of those things so my time in Queenstown wasn't quite action packed. We checked into our hostel Sunday night, had dinner and then went out to meet the rest of the Stray people for drinks (we were staying at a different hostel, long story, totally not worth telling). That was somewhat fun/somewhat boring. We came back moderately early, nothing too exciting from memory.

Monday, a few of the girls went bungy jumping. I spent the day exploring the town (mostly shops although I got to the park another day) with Katie. We also met the two girls sharing our room with us in the hostel. They were very sweet and very British. I really enjoyed the random people we met during our travels. These girls had been living in the hostel for months and working to afford to live, drink and shop. Sounds like quite the fun life to me. We had a chill evening on Monday because we were going to Milford Sound. It's legitimately supposed to be one of the most beautiful places in the world. We were worried that we wouldn't be able to go because the road to the Sound had been closed for the past three days due to the flooding. We boarded the bus for the five hour drive (each way) not knowing if the road we needed to take would be open by the time we got there. We needed to board the bus that morning in case the road did open so we could get there on time. Luckily, the road did open and five hours later, we arrived! There's no way my pictures could ever fully show you the beauty, but I'll try anyway:



And finally, one of the best part of my South Island trip available to you in video form:


When we arrived at the Sound we quickly boarded a ship for our two and a half hour cruise. It included commentary, a free muffin, and the opportunity to go underneath a waterfall. It was a really neat experience and worth the ten hour round trip. When we returned we got the world (or at least New Zealand) famous Fergburger. It was THE BEST BURGER OF MY LIFE. It was huge and amazing and delicious. Served with bacon, lettuce, tomato and avocado, it was totally worth the wait and $11. Look at Steph and her burger in all its glory:
The next day was fabulous. Some of the girls went snowboarding, but I had no desire and Katie decided she didn't want to either. While all the girls were spending the day cold, getting bruised, we decided we'd go to the spa and get relaxed. Katie and I decided to get exfoliating body rubs, it was so wonderful. We spent the rest of the afternoon shopping. It was a really nice girl's day after a tiring but incredibly enjoyable vacation. At some point during the trip we went to Patagonia, an amazing chocolate shop with expensive, delicious gelato. I also bought Matt and myself a wasabi truffle each. That night we also went out again. It was a strange night, some random, 30-something woman kept trying to get me to dance with her in a deserted bar amongst other things. By the end of the night though, I managed to have a nice time on my last night on the South Island. Thursday, I left for the airport. Unfortunately they made me check my bag... and charged me $80 for it. I was really upset and had budgeted for my trip perfectly and ended up having to pay money ($2 for 15 minutes mind you) to use the internet at the airport in order to transfer money to my eftpos (debit card) and pay for my bag. BUT, the good news is that they had a Patagonia in the airport and I was able to try the legendary hot chocolate before I arrived in Auckland.

Well that's about it for my South Island trip. I hope you enjoyed reading about it. Now I can actually start writing about what I want to talk about. Topics for the future include: Formal Dinner, shopping trips, dates with Matt, school, Kiwi-isms and more!

En Route to Queenstown

Continuing from Franz Josef...

On the Way to Queenstown
The goal of the next two days, essentially, was to get to Queenstown. We stopped a few places, but Queenstown was firmly in everyone's mind.

The rest of the day out of Franz Josef was mostly spent in transit. We stopped at a place that had extremely blue water. It was pretty neat. See:

We eventually ended up in a small town called Makarora. On the bus, one of the deals that were offered to us was a nice meal that the bus driver valued at $25 for $10. I didn't really feel like cooking that night so I took him up on it. All of the girls I was traveling with decided to make their own meal so while they all made dinner, I hung out with one of the other groups of American exchange students. As much as I love those girls, it was pretty nice to get away from them as well. Dinner was tasty: we got lamb shank, carrots, peas and mash. We also were offered mull wine, but I thought it was horrible. Does anyone like mull wine? It's wine that is warm. To me it tasted sweet in your mouth, but when you went to swallow it, it turned harsh and ultimately hurt my throat. I'm not a fan. After the meal, I stayed around—it was a cafe/lodge place where we also paid for our accommodation—and a group of us played euchre. With nothing really to do and feeling tired after a day of traveling, I hit the hay early.

Wanaka
The next stop during our journey was Wanaka. A small town, reminiscent of my perception of Colorado, it was very nice. We stopped there for some down time and for lunch. We went into a variety of shops and I bought my mother yet another gift (that woman is going to be spoiled upon my arrival, I swear). For lunch we went to a place called The Ritual Cafe. It was one of those places where the atmosphere just kind of spoke to me and I knew instantly that's where I wanted to go. I got an amazing pasta salad with green pasta noodles, feta, red capsicum (bell pepper), pesto and a bunch of other vege (it's vege, not veggies in NZ). I had been craving pesto so it totally hit the spot! On the way out, I picked up a pumpkin and chocolate chunk muffin I had been eying throughout my meal. I just couldn't walk away. (I must have been really hungry when I wrote this entry!)

Onwards
The next stop we made was at a lookout point close to Queenstown. Here are some pictures from the site:

It was so windy up at that hill it was insane. I was afraid I would literally be knocked over. Next up was an amazing fruit and vege store. It had an awesome tasting table and I had the tastiest kiwifruit I've ever had in my life. One of the greatest things about fruit and vege shops is other than how tasty it is, it's so bloody cheap! I got two or three kiwis, about two perfectly ripe red capsicum and a large fruit leather for under $5. Shortly after that, we arrived at the AJ Hackett bungy.We watched a video about the making of the bungy. In case you didn't know, the bungy was invented in the 1980's by AJ Hackett and a business partner of his in New Zealand. The place where we watched the video was the site of the very first bungy. One of the girls from our bus decided she couldn't wait a moment longer and that she needed to bungy jump then and there. It was cool to watch her jump, but it was kind of annoying because then we had to wait for her. In the meantime I had to resist urges to buy things from the gift shop. I eventually bought myself a new pair of funky sunglasses because I sat on my other pair while sailing in Abel Tasman. Below is a picture of Milford Sound (which I will get to in my next post) reflected in my new schnazzy sunglasses. Photo credit goes to Ashley Chin.
Well the next and final stop of my south island trip is Queenstown. I'll tell you all about the thrill capital of New Zealand and stop at Milford Sound, a glimpse of which you got in my sunglasses above. Much love from NZ!

That One Time, When I Climbed a Glacier

Good news! This coming week is the last week of classes. That means that will have nothing to do other than study and hang out and write in my blog. So I give you permission to bother me about writing another entry. Now onto Franz Josef.

Franz Josef

A tour of Franz Josef Glacier in 1906


When we arrived in Franz Josef, we stopped at the Franz Josef Glacier Guide place. They showed us a video about the options and what we'd need for the next day. I double checked that I could do the hike with my back. They told me that it might be a bit tough for me since there were some tight spaces and low caves, but that we should be able to figure it out. I felt up to the challenge.

That evening we unpacked at our hostel, made dinner, enjoyed the giant hot tub (the size of a small pool), got ready and went into the bar by the hostel. It was a very nice bar, with a nice, chill atmosphere. We had a great evening and met people from the Kiwi Experience bus (another tour company) and some locals. The next morning, we woke up and got ready for our glacier hike. In New Zealand, one says gla-see-ur, rather than glay-sure like we do in the States.

We walked over to the place and it was unfortunately pissing (pouring) down with rain. We were trying to bet if the hike would be canceled. Luckily it wasn't. I wore many layers in order to stay warm: a tank top, polypro long underwear, my really warm knit sweater (from Gap, you know, before they changed their logo) and a raincoat of my own. They supplied us with a waterproof overcoat. On my legs I wore Matt's rainbow polypro pants and the waterproof overpants supplied to us. They also gve us wool socks, gloves and a hat. Unfortunately, I accidentally left my gloves at the place, so I didn't have them for my hike. At first my hands were freezing, but they generally got used to the cold/went numb so it was okay. The worst part for my hands was when we'd have to hold onto a rope and I'd be gripping the soaking wet rope cord.

The hike was a really amazing, once in a lifetime experience. We took a bus up to the carpark (parking lot) closest to the glacier. Believe it or not, but we had to walk through a rain forest to get to the glacier! New Zealand really is an incredible place. Once we were at the rocky ground in front of the glacier, they split us up into two groups: one that was more confident and wanted a more challenging hike and one that wanted a bit more leisure and perhaps some help. I knew that it would be best for me to go with the second group so I made sure to split myself off, regardless of what the rest of my friends were going to do. Luckily, four other girls joined me. Our guide was named Jack and was extremely handsome. EXTREMELY. Don't believe me? Below is a picture of myself, my four friends and beautiful Jack:


He taught us a bit about the Franz Josef glacier and its history. Over the years it has retreated and advanced, it seems unrelated to global warming. The night before, it snowed the most in three years. IT was the first time our guide had ever seen so much snow in his career at the company.


We climbed the part of the glacier that didn't have ice on it. That part was horrible because it was straight uphill. Once we got part to the snow and ice, it was time to put our crampons. We kept them on our bum bugs. They are called bum bags, NOT fanny packs because a fanny in New Zealand is well, a body part you just don't talk about with just anybody. Crampons are little spiky attachments to our shoes. They help your feet not to slide around on the ice and snow. They took a bit of getting used to to walk with, but it was quite easy once I got the hang of it. It was really important that we lifted our feet up straight and put them down facing forward so we wouldn't twist an ankle. Below is a view from the glacier looking down.

The climbing experience was really neat. There were steps carved out of the ice. Often times they needed to be re-carved a bit, which is where Phyllis, the guide's ice pick (see group picture above) came in. He would fix the steps or make new ones. We went through an iris, which is a wall of ice that's being separated, but essentially doesn't want to be yet. You can't quite tell in the picture below, but the ice is actually blue. There's nothing in it that's causing it to be blue, but rather its so dense that the ice just looks blue. Normal ice is 7% denser than water, but blue ice is around 97% denser than water.
This iris was one of the wider ones we went through. The walls were often so close together you'd have to actually face them, suck in and scrape by. I'm not a very claustrophobic person, but when your pinned up between two walls of ice and are exhausted, but have no room to breathe (pretty much literally) until you get yourself out of there, it kind of freaks you out.

Overall, the hike was an enjoyable, but challenging experience. We carved out a spot in some snow for our bums while we ate our sandwich. We had plenty of snowball fights against the other groups. Six hours later, we were tired and on the bus back into town.

That evening we had tim tam slams (which I will explain in my Kiwi Vocab chapter) and went back to Monsoon bar. It was an interesting night.

Onwards
The next morning, we woke up and were absolutely freezing. The space heater was off and we couldn't figure out why. Then, our phones didn't have any reception. We were quite confused. We hadn't had reception for much of our trip, but I had been texting Matt the night before so I know I had had service at one point. Soon enough, we found out there had been a 7.4 magnitude earthquake in Christchurch. It was the same magnitude as the one that killed thousands in Haiti earlier this year.

We got ready to go to the next place, but first we had to check out. I saw the ice cream freezer by the reception desk and I said to the woman, "So if the power is out... the ice cream is going to melt anyway, right? Would I possibly be able to get one?" She said that she really couldn't because they didn't know when the power was going to come back on and that it wasn't a good idea because of stock checks. She also said, "What do you want it for anyway? It's the morning." I looked at her, and said to her (in retrospect it was a very pathetic voice) "for breakfast..." She gave in and I had a delicious hokey pokey ice cream bar. It was awesome.

Well it's 1 a.m. here and I'm tired. I'll continue this soon hopefully. We're finally getting to the end of my South Island trip. Guten Nacht!

The Town with 25 People In It

More on my South Island Trip:


Barrytown
Yesterday, we arrived in Barrytown. Our bus driver/guide, Trouble joked that he would give us a tiki tour (brief, tour, the highlights in Kiwi). Turns out the tour took all of five seconds. You see, the population of Barrytown is literally 25 people. We stayed in a 'hostel' behind a bar, which also doubled as our place for dinner. I had a tasty chicken burger for dinner, which came with a voucher for a free beer. We moved in our stuff and headed down to the beach to watch the sun set. The walk to the beach definitely looked shorter than it really was. On the way, we passed plenty of cows roaming the pasture on the left, as well as the Barrytown cemetery on the right. In the graveyard, in addition to the gravestones and graves, were more sheep! It was absolutely hysterical, one of those "only in New Zealand..." moments. After a second or two I realised they were attached to leads, like the ones we put my dogs out on in my backyard back home. Katie even went into the cemetery to try and pet the sheep, but they were quite skittish.



When we finally got to the beach, the clouds were in the way so the pictures didn't turn out the best. I got some pretty colours out of it nonetheless:

After the sun had set, we returned to the bar. Barrytown is known for its "fancy dress" nights at the bar. The walls in the bar are covered with the most ridiculous (and sometimes nude) pictures from these nights. Fancy dress, really just means dress up. For example, our night in Barrytown we were having a "P Party." Our outfits had to start with the letter. P. There was a semi-dodgy closet, which we could build the contents of our outfit with. I tried to be a prep. Katie was a pirate, Meg was Paco the construction worker, Ashley was a pimp and Melissa was her prostitute.

"Paco the Construction Worker"

"Katie-Pi-rate"

The P Party wasn't nearly as exciting as we hoped it would be, so we went to bed not-too-late. The next morning, we woke up early to carve a bone necklace. It was frustrating because we were told to be ready at 8 a.m., but no one came to get us. It was cold, rainy and windy and no one could be found. By 8:30 we were annoyed and woke up our bus driver. He showed us where the house where we'd be doing the carving was and we walked there (it was just down the street). The woman had a full blown shop in the back (think a wood shop) and apparently wasn't expecting us until 9. The first think we did was pick out the design we wanted. I chose one of the fish hooks. I thought it was pretty aesthetically pleasing and it stands for strength and safe travels over water. After that, the woman picked out a piece of bone that fit nicely with design and we traced the design onto the bone with a pencil. Then, she made the piece smaller and carved the intricate curves out of the center. The rest was up to us, though she of course guided us, showed us how to use the machines and what to do. We trimmed the piece of bone until it was at the line we had traced and was curved. The rest of the steps were all about perfecting the piece of bone. We used a drill to smooth and round out the edges and used several different types of sandpaper. I was literally sanding for hours. I also added a line as a detail. It was a meticulous process. The whole experience took about four hours, ending with her polishing the bone by rubbing it on a fine sandpaper machine.

Working so hard made me really appreciate and care about the necklace. I originally thought about giving it to a friend of mine (I wonder if he'll read this...), but I might just keep it for myself. The woman who helped me explained to me that if you're planning on giving it to someone you're actually supposed to wear it first. That's because the bone will absorb your oils and so by the time you give it to someone it has the oils in it. In a way, you're giving him/her a piece of yourself.

After the bone carving was done, I headed back, packed up, ate some random snacks that were laying around in my bag of food and boarded the bus for Franz Josef.

That's all for now. Franz Josef was an amazing time. I climbed a glacier! Keep your eyes peeled for the next blog entry. Sorry they're so scarce, but the semester is wrapping up here and so I don't have very much free time. Miss you all!