South Island Adventure, P. I

So far the south island has been awesome. We flew into Christchurch (ChCh), found a bunch of cool nature stuff and drove around. The next day we headed to Akaroa, a quaint waterside town, with super hilly driving that killed the brake pads on the car. After some interesting navigating to the airport, we collected the rest of the travel crew (there are six of us) and spent another night in ChCh. Next stop was Greymouth, where we stayed at a luxury (but budget!) hostel and ventured out to see the pancake rocks and a very dark cavern. Yesterday we walked ('hiked', but hardly) on Franz Josef glacier and drove another three hours to Wanaka. The six of us are getting along great, I couldn't ask for a nicer group of people to hang out with! Only down side is I'm a bit sick and consequently cough through the night. Pictures and a much more elaborate, entertaining description in a couple of weeks.

Rain rain rain

To say Auckland is rainy would be a gross understatement. At least winter's starting to wrap up and my heater's working.

My class selection this semester has proven quite random, especially because two of the courses are broad topics (psych something and pharmacy). A lot of the time I feel like the reading for my philsophy class is ridiculous; the authors will ramble on and on, change their minds halfway through, then reach no actual conclusion. I still like some of the existentialist ideas, but a lot of the literature is nauseatingly (hahaha) dull. Besides that, I'm a couple of chpater into The Picture of Dorian Gray and a few pages into On the Road and Nausea. Recently I've been wanting to revisit some books from high school, but am reluctant to buy them again, so will wait until I'm back in the vine. German has been going well; my first grammar test felt okay, but writing sentences was frustrating because my knowledge of sentence structure is so rudimentary. Every sentence basically reads "He likes whatever. She wears whatever. They are clean(ing) the house apartment." Learning the implied spelling patterns has been interesting. I now have so much more respect for people who are fluent in more than one language, it's more difficult than I had assumed!

In other news, semester break is on FRIDAY!! Couldn't be more excited to head back to the South Island. All the rain has kept me around Auckland much more than I would have liked; more exploring will be great. Also, my flatmate Eric takes fancy pictures so now the photos of places I go will look as amazing as the places themselves. I'm probably most excited for Milford Sound and Franz Josef Glacier (couldn't go on it last time because of the weather :( ). Six of us are flying into Christchurch; from there, we're going to Akaroa, Queenstown, Milford Sound, Franz Josef Glacier, Greymouth, and several other places. The habitats on the south island are strikingly diverse, although lacking in cute mammals (missing the roos of Australia!)

Our flat is in a state of constant disaster. For a while I was overcompensating by cleaning all the time, but there's no point. I'm trying to not care anymore. It's much more frustrating than it should be. That being said, it's much dirtier than it should be. Besides that, we're getting on quite nicely here and have many great visitors. I do get a tad jealous that my friends and family aren't the ones on the couch. My wave of homesickness has subsided and I'm sure going on vacation again (yes, again!) will put me in a great mood. By then I reckon the homesickness will have transformed into missing NZ whilst still here. Moving back to California will be bizarre. In other news, I'm so excited that my brother got a job at UCSF, so he won't be in Mass anymore! Great news, especially considering I'll be an aunt in a couple of months now!

Should get back to studying German. In retrospect, I should've signed up for more language courses this semester instead of psych and philosophy, but I didn't realize I would like it so much.