Important travel tips

So, today is my second day being wallet free. In case you haven't heard or I haven't told you, my wallet was stolen on Sunday night at derby practice. Currently, I have $24 to my name and I think it should last until my credit card comes from across the ocean. Tips to all those who are travelling abroad:
- always keep photocopies of all your credit cards and IDs, hide these
- always have a stash of emergency money hidden somewhere safe
- keep some of your IDs separated out so that if something does happen to one of them, you do still have some method of identifying yourself
- retain your plane ticket out of the US and a photocopy of whatever visa you currently have
- know where your nearest US consulate is
- know where you can get emergency food supplies if necessary
- always keep money on your cell phone so you can call the necessary agencies in the case of a situation
Everything is working out alright here and all my friends have already offered to help out if I should need anything. I think this may be the best money saving strategy I have yet to encounter! I have only spent $4 in 2 days which I believe is a new record for me! Haha! I dont know who would knowingly choose to steal from a bunch of roller derby girls; to me, that just seems like a really bad idea!

Wellington

A view of harbour

Yay! I just got back from my week long adventure in Wellington. It was a really amazing trip, and I have to say that travelling alone is actually kinda really fun! I ended up meeting tons of really cool people who are doing working vacations in New Zealand and several people who seem to live the truly nomadic lifestyle.
I stayed at a hostel in downtown Wellington called Nomads in an 8 bed dorm. It was really clean (except for my duvet, which smelled like a homeless person) and the people there were awesome (except for the jerk who stole my guide book). But hey, it only cost $127 for seven nights. Over the course of my time there, I got to:
- chill out in the Botanic Gardens on a gorgeous day
- tramp around a gorgeous wildlife sanctuary
- kayak for several hours in the gorgeous bays
- explore all of the old buildings of the city
- hang out in the friggin sweet public library
- check out this amazing vegan cafe ... daily
- and many other things I cant think of right now!
As per usual, check out the sweet pics below! There are probably quite a few, so I will try to edit and keep this entry to a moderate length!

In a park on the harbour

A view from the top of the city (I took an old school trolley to get up there!)


One of the parliamentary buildings

Ahh! Flying metal fern ball of death!

One of the street performers swallowing a gigantic sword


In the botanic gardens; birds of paradise grow here lots of the parks!



At Karori Wildlife sanctuary, they have literally fenced off a huge piece of land so no predators can get in.


More of Karori

More of Karori

Pedal-strewn path... paradise, no?

*Pardon the underlining and random hyperlinks... Im having troubles formatting this entry for some reason*

Anger, rising...

So I am in a little bit of a tiff with my administration of my building currently. You see, a while ago, Allison (who runs the building) caught me with my bike and told me I had to keep it in the shed in the undergarage. So she gave my key access to the undergarage, the bike shed. and the elevator to get back into the building. I have been using this access to bring my bike into the undergarage and up the elevator to my floor so it can stay in my room. This one lovely RA, Gabriel, caught me recently as I was walking through the main hall and told me it couldnt be there. So I pretended to go downstairs and then brought my bike up to my room. Yesterday, he heard my bike, stopped what he was doing, and chased me to catch me; this time he asked for my room number. So now, my bike is the "shed" where it is easily the most valuable bike by over $1500 and Gabriel removed my access to the undergarage so that way they can "catch " me every time I use my bike and am therefore forced to bring it up through the main hall. Talk about bureaucracy at its finest!
The hall director is conveniently never available and right now, nobody can answer my one simple question. If my bike is damaged/stolen/stripped, who is liable? If they cannot answer this or will not allow me to bring my bike into my room, I am going to demand my money back and look for housing elsewhere. You cannot say that you support environmentalism and then hate the bike commuters, it just doesnt work.

Waitakere Ranges

This was the first weekend of break and definitely was spent well! I went out with the tramping club to the hut's 63 birthday. They have a hut up in the Waitakere Ranges which are only about an hour west of Auckland. The weather was perfect the whole time and we got see some really beautiful rainforest! Each way was about 4 hours of tramping plus a few little extra site seeing loops. Enjoy the photos!

The train on the way out (3 of them broke down before we finally got going!)

At the top of a very very long and steep hill.

Old rail tracks that ran to the dam.

Though it is a man made structure in the middle of the bush, it still was beautiful.

Jeorg was trying to be a tree hugger, but i think this tree needs a five man hug...

Look closely and you can see all the fern trees.

Ugg..

This is the last week before semester break, so to say the least, it is horrible! I actually have tests and assignments due! Thats not the point of studying abroad, haha! Well, at any rate, there isnt much interesting to report here due to the fact that I have holed myself up to study and study some more. I guess the good new is that semester is already half way over. I still can't believe that.
The next two weeks are spring break and this is how they are shaping up:
First Weekend: Tramping club hut birthday party
Monday: Volunteer at the Human Nutrition Unit
Tues: Write a huge paper, study, and head out to tramp across Rangitoto Island, roller derby practice
Friday: Train down to Wellington
Saturday-Thursday: Work on an organic apple farm and hang out with some awesome hippies
Friday: Train back to Auckland
Saturday-Sunday: was supposed to go to a wilderness first aid course but it got cancelled!! :(
So with the light at the end of the tunnel, its all not so bad. Currently, at the Human Nutrition Unit I am being trained in for centrifuging and organising blood samples, taking blood from cannulas, and soon, I will become a phlebotemist! Yay! I get to steal your blood!
Also, for news, I have figured out my derby name. I am going to go by L'exi-cuter and I am part of the team Coastal Carnage. Our first bout is the 29th of September and so far I know about 30 people who want to come watch (including some folks who are makin t-shirts!).
Thats all for now! Wish me luck on my exams.

Mt Pirongia

This last weekend I went out with the tramping club to Mt Pirongia. We summited the mountain on the first day and came down on the second. It was raining and really quite miserable towards the end of the first day because the top of the mountain was stuck in a cloud. The peak of the mountain is 974 meters tall. The next day we hiked out down, rather ran down, and got to do a little exploring. We got to go check out a sweet little cave and then spent some time getting lost and hiking through a river (we were already soaked so it didnt matter that we were getting wetter!). 17 people came it total, which is a huge group to go tramping with! Unfortunately, my camera ran out of battery power after the first day so I have limited photos. Here they are!

Inside Scott's van as we are getting ready to go!

Everybody getting ready to head out

Walking to the trailhead

About half way up, its a little misty because we already in the cloud.

The group that hiked with for the first day (aka. the super awesome fast group)

This is were we stopped to eat lunch on both days

Scott and Klemens just a little bit further up the trail. Doesnt it look like a rainforest?!

Back to Rotorua

This weekend I went back to Rotorua again with my flatmate Jo, Maya, and Sandra. We rented a car and drove up on Saturday morning.

Maya and Sandra rockin the backseat!

Jo getting ready to drive our sweet car! Look, drivers side is on the right, Ahh!!

Then we got to Rotorua and we all went to the Polynesian Spa... It was $17 for two hours of sitting in natural hot spring pools that looked over lake Rotorua. There are 3 acidic pools, where we spent most of our time, and four alkaline pools which were slightly cooler. It was a very nice way to kick off the weekend!


Pardon the bluriness of some of the photos.. The light was so low that each picture took 1 second to shoot and it was hard to keep the camera steady!

That night we went out to town and found a nice pub with a good cover band playing. The next morning, we went out and wandered around town and then went home. I think I may have found the best shop ever while in Rotorua; Ill let you decide how awesome this shop is though.