Monday, October 13, 2008
Thursday, October 2, 2008
outsider
I feel like an outsider. Especially here in
While I was on the bus back to
I also don’t know where the line is drawn between having a main friend group and wanting to branch out. I want to have a go-to group—one where I’m always welcome or thought of…always invited to everything. But I want to spread myself out at the same time. I don’t want to be entirely limited to one friend group. I don’t want to ONLY spend my time with that one group. And I feel bad for saying this, but I don’t want to feel obligated to a group? Maybe that’s not the right word for it. But when I have a main group I hang out with and get invited to do things with another group, I feel that if I want to invite someone from the main group, I have to invite everyone else. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but if it’s someone’s party or something where the size of the overall group should be considered, I would feel like I’m imposing. I don’t know.
I need to find that happy middle ground. Is it possible? I’m afraid that I’ll always feel this way. I’ve felt this way since high school. Before that I didn’t because I only ever really had one main friend group. Maybe it also has to do with me wanting to experience the excitement of everything. I want to go to everything that I’m invited to, and as a result, I “shaft” the people from other friend groups. I want attention from everyone. It’s horrible.
Is there a way to reconcile this? Do I try to combine/incorporate groups together. I really don’t think that that would work even if it were possible. I’m currently running off of a “whoever-invites-first” mentality. It’s all I see as the “fair” way to go. But wouldn’t me attending events result in more invitations from that group, which would thus mean that I’d be hanging out with this group more, further perpetuating my path of dissociation from other groups. Ugh. I think I’m over-analyzing all of this. Bottom line: I wish I felt like I truly belonged, and I don’t know how to resolve this.
Spring break continued...
Thursday
Moving on from Lake Tekapo, we made our way to Queenstown. Queenstown is sort of like a small village, but it’s pretty bumpin’ to say the least. It’s a prime spot for the thrill-seeking, adrenaline-rush addict. Among the various activities that you can do here are riding a shotover jet (massive jet boating?), bungy jumping, skydiving, and water rafting, just to name a few. In addition to all these awesome attractions, Queenstown is adjacent to a lake and just surrounded by mountains. It’s absolutely gorgeous here. It’s definitely a place that I could imagine myself wanting to retire in.
We’re staying at place called Black Sheep Hostel, and it’s probably my favorite hostel out of all of the ones I’ve stayed at so far. I’m pretty sure it’s the cheapest I’ve stayed at, the staff’s super friendly, it has a hot tub outside, a pool table, and a decent-sized movie selection for us to entertain ourselves with, and probably one of my favorite parts was FREE breakfast. Hostels don’t really get any better than that in my humble opinion. =P The internet’s a rip off though, but we found an amazingly delicious chocolate/dessert/ice cream place, Patagonia Chocolates, that has free Wi-Fi.
On our first day in Queenstown, Epack, Whitney, and I pretty much just wandered the city and chilled for the rest of the time. We also quasi finalized the rest of our plans for Queenstown and ended the night by watching Cruel Intentions haha. I’ve seen parts of it before, but I don’t think I ever finished the entire moving in one sitting. It’s so crazy to think that it was such a monumental movie in terms of having same sex kissing. I also thought that the ending was kind of messed up, especially since the last shot is of the girl smiling while she’s driving his car. It’s as if screwing the antagonist over makes everything else better. (Kind of vague, but don’t want to ruin it for anyone who hasn’t seen the movie.)
Friday
Friday kicked off our list of exciting activities we had planned for New Zealand. More so for Whitney and Epack though. Bungy jumping was on the agenda. I chose not to do it because sometimes, having new experiences can be pricey to say the least. So my death-defying activity of choice? Skydiving. Skydiving was originally planned for Saturday so I was just going to go souvenir shopping for the family and possibly be productive. But the next thing I know, Whitney comes barging into our room declaring a team meeting. I run down, sort of confused because they left a decent while ago to go bungy jumping. It turns out that the forecast said that it would be raining buckets on Saturday, so we were faced with the impulse decision of moving skydiving to today. Faced with this dilemma, it was obvious that we had to jump today or else we wouldn’t have another chance to, right?
So basically Whitney and Epack were to go bungy jumping at 10:30am and then come back and go skydiving at 2:30pm. What adrenaline junkies. =P Unfortunately, when we met up at 2, the skydiving people said that it was too windy to go. Lame. So we basically rescheduled for 8:30am on Saturday and crossed our fingers that the forecast was wrong. I mean they said that you can never really tell by forecasts because in Queenstown, sometimes it’s the exact opposite. (Reminds me of Melbourne haha.) Anyway, we were left with an entire day explore or do whatever our hearts desired. Whitney and Epack ended up being faced with yet another impulse decision and got something to help them forever remember their holiday and true experience of independence in New Zealand. Out of respect for them though, I’m not going to disclose what they got. But I will say that I’m jealous. =P It’s kind of pricey, but I’m considering splurging because when am I going to be in New Zealand (and/or Australia) again?
Friday night ended with our trip to several Queenstown bars. The first stop was Minus 5, probably one of the coolest bars I’ve ever been to. Absolutely EVERYTHING in the bar is made out of ice. The seats, sculptures, bar, and glasses—all ice. When we went in it was -8.5 degrees Celsius. They gave us jackets, boots, and gloves before entering, but my hands were still on the brink of becoming numb. The room itself was smaller than I expected, and we were only allowed to be in there for 30 minutes. Regardless, I still had an awesome time. It was just the three of us in the bar along with one bartender, George, who turned out to be a really cool and nice guy. All the drinks had Absolut Vodka in them, and were delicious. My poisons of choice: frozen kiwi and shots of absolut apeach and absolut pear. The latter two I actually got for free because the three of us worked our “charm” with George haha. First time I got free shots from a bar hehe.
Both of my shots were administered via a tube going through a giant ice sculpted gun. It was a little messier than I thought it would be. Some of the shots took a while to trickle down the tube so I had a bit of drippage with the peach. I learned my lesson with the pear one though and didn’t waste a drop. =)
After Minus 5, we checked out another bar, Dux de Lux, and a club, Subculture. Unfortunately, but both places were disappointments. I wanted to dance and still do for that matter. I don’t even remember when the last time I danced was. So sad. We ended up just heading back to Black Sheep and going to bed since we had to wake up early for skydiving anyway.
Saturday
Despite how much I like Black Sheep, I’ve noticed a trend of not being able to get a solid night of sleep. It’s more so that when it gets around maybe 6ish am I wake up for some reason and have trouble falling back asleep. Part of me thinks that maybe it’s because I’m excited for the day’s adventure. Who knows. Anyway, I get up out of bed around 7am and go outside. To my dismay it’s pouring rain. Why?! Why do we have such bad luck. We arrange for another weather check at 12pm with, nzone, the skydiving place, with the hopes that the weather will clear up later.
Whitney, Epack, and I decide to watch X-Men: The Last Stand to occupy us since we’re up so early. While we’re watching, does the weather clear up? No. Instead probably the exact opposite happens. It starts SNOWING. We’re in disbelief. I mean SERIOUSLY, what the heck?! We finish the movie around 10am, and are shocked at how early it is. We basically just muck around until 12 and are excited to see that it’s stopped snowing! FINALLY. Our luck’s turning around…or so we think. We call nzone and they tell us to check again at 1pm. Ugh. Lame. Then when we check in, nzone tells us that they’ve cancelled all jumps for the day. BITCHES!
Today had to be the day because we were scheduled to leave Queenstown on Sunday. I’m really upset because I basically saw this as my only opportunity to skydive because I won’t really get the chance to on any of the other trips I have planned. Our brains start going to work, and we came up with the brilliant idea of staying an extra night in Queenstown, skipping out on the stop in Haast that was originally planned, and crossing our fingers for Sunday to work out for us.
The rest of our day was spent wandering around Queenstown or just chilling at Black Sheep. Whitney and Epack have been reading voraciously. Both have finished books while in New Zealand, granted Whitney was reading hers since before coming to Australia I think haha. But Epack even bought a new book while in New Zealand and finished it already. She keeps saying how it was a kid’s book though so it was an easy read. Regardless, she reads a lot, and I’m impressed. How much she reads actually makes me want to get into reading because she seems to get a lot of joy out of it. I mean, I used to like to read for fun when I was younger. It is very well possible that books other than Harry Potter can bring back that past joy.
Anyway, most of my time has been doing pointless things like playing minesweeper or blogging in Word (since the Internet isn’t a super available commodity). Although, I was able to beat my old times in minesweeper for all three difficulty levels haha. So maybe I can twist that as being quasi-productive? I mean, I was proud of myself. =P It’s tough playing minesweeper on a laptop mouse pad.
Sunday
Again, I woke up super early and failed at trying to fall back asleep. When I got out of bed I was super excited to see that I was embraced with a completely clear and beautiful sky. YES. There was no way the skydiving could be cancelled today. I proceeded to eat breakfast and get ready for the big experience I had to look forward to.
When Whitney, Epack, and I arrived at nzone we were finally graced with good news that our jump was ON. We sorted out all the logistics and headed to the jump zone. We were the first jump of the day! The 10-15 minute drive out to the jump zone was kind of a blur. As we were driving towards the Remarkables, a mountain range, my mind wasn’t even in it. I don’t think it fully hit me that in the very near future I would be falling from 12,000ft in the air. We got to the jump zone and everything went by so fast. Normally they tell you to set aside 3.5 hours from your scheduled jump time, so I thought that we’d be done at around 12pm. But no. We were the first jump of the day so it took not even 10 minutes to get us suited up, debriefed on what to do, and into the plane.
What was going on in my mind at this point was “Holy shit! This is happening NOW!?” Not only that, but as soon as I get into the plane I fine out that I’m the first one out of the three of us to be jumping out of the plane! The plane was really small, so the 9 of us, jumpers, tandem masters, and camera people, all got to get close and personal haha. ;) My tandem master was Ralph, and Caleb was my camera person. The plane ride to 12,000ft was about 10 minutes, which was actually longer than I would have liked it to be. Shoot, if it were any longer, I would’ve had more opportunity to psych myself out before the jump.
I look around at Whitney, Epack, the tandem masters, and camera people. Epack looks completely chill, as if we weren’t even about to jump out of a plane in the next few minutes. At least Whitney doesn’t leave me alone in having a half-excited-half-“We’re actually doing this!” look on her face. As we approach 12,000ft our tandem masters start tightening our harnesses (thank goodness…I was really concerned with the looseness of it while we were on the ground) and attaching us to them.
Throughout the plane ride Ralph recaps everything that’s going to happen: what to expect and what to do. It’s a 45 second freefall followed by a 4-5 minute parachute ride down. At this point Whitney and I are really wishing we didn’t have breakfast earlier haha. Thinking of Ralph, and I suppose my, well-being, I ask Ralph if people have ever puked before. He says they have, but it’s usually after the parachute has been deployed. Nevertheless, he has a sick bag, and all I need to do is let him know if I’m not feeling well.
Finally, the moment of truth; what I’ve been waiting for throughout my entire trip in Queenstown has come. I’m literally dangling outside of the airplane door. My life is in the hands of Ralph at this point. My legs are together and curled behind me, almost hugging the airplane skid. Head back. Hands holding on to my harness. The “banana” position is what they call it. I choose to look down before we jump. Face the fear head-on. Looking down at the ground, the firs thought that comes into my head is “Oh shit. No turning back. Oh shiiiiii!” (I’m pretty sure that at some point my thoughts became actual vocalizations…at least the pictures support this idea haha.)
It’s such a rush. Originally I thought that I’d have that feeling you get in your gut when you go down a drop of a roller coaster, but I didn’t feel that at all. I was overwhelmed by the wind against my body and face. My eyes start watering, and I feel like my mind’s all over the place. I’m trying to take in the sights, keep my eyes open despite the fact that they’re watering like crazy, and smile for the camera…all while my mind keeps straying about how I’m FREEZING right now.
Forty-five seconds go by in two. The jerk of the parachute pulls me back to the realization of what I’m doing. I collect myself and absorb all I can. The scenery is breathtaking. My view of the earth below is completely unobstructed. The mountains are freshly covered in snow from yesterday. I’m no longer bitter that skydiving didn’t work out on Friday or Saturday because if it hadn’t, this moment wouldn’t have been as perfect as it was. Okay, so maybe I could have done without the runny nose from the chilly air. But when I look back on this experience, I doubt that’s the first memory that will pop into my head. =P
The 4-5 minutes of gliding down to the ground went by quickly as well. I liked having Ralph as a tandem master. He checked on how I was doing and would point out things around and below us. The fields of grass were specked with sheep that looked like grains of rice from above. Even in midair it hadn’t hit me that I was skydiving. To make the parachute ride a little more interesting Ralph pulled on the cords so that we went into a counterclockwise spin then back clockwise, simulating a trackless roller coaster with dips and all. Alas, we approach the ground, and I bring my knees into my chest as we slide along the damp grass. Safe and sound back on solid ground.
To sum up the experience, the words that come to mind are amazing and surreal. Even as I’m writing this I don’t think it’s fully registered that I skydived. Even my overpriced skydiving pictures of disappointing quality reveal an expression of disbelief and awe on my face as I’m in the actual moment. Despite feeling like “no way did I really do that,” the rest of my activities for the day seemed bland to say the least.
All we did was visit our favorite Queenstown shop, Patagonia Chocolates, ate dinner, and watched a ridiculous movie called Shoot ‘Em Up. If you haven’t seen the movie I have to mention that that it’s the kind of film where you’d laugh at what happens and think/say “only in movies.”
Monday
Our extra night in Queenstown meant that Monday’s bus ride would go all the way to Franz Josef, which was a 7+ hour drive. SOOO much fun to look forward to. So my brilliant plan on Sunday night was to pull an all-nighter. That way I could sleep throughout the entire trip. Unfortunately, the Black Sheep lounge closed at midnight and the kitchen closed at 11pm. So I tried to read outside since I didn’t want to disturb Whitney and Epack while they were sleeping. Yup! That’s right. I started reading. Aren’t you proud of me? Whitney leant me her Bill Bryson book, In a Sunburned Country. So now the three of us can have reading parties together on the trip. Weee! Unfortunately I was only able to last about an hour-ish until the crisp cold air got to me. Regardless though, I was still exhausted when I got onto the bus.
Unfortunately, my sleeping situation turned out to be less than ideal. Although I will say that at some points I wanted to stay awake so that I could read. But other than that I had a rough time trying to fall asleep. Behind me was a (I’m guessing Middle Eastern) family of 3; the child was probably about 3 years old. Adorable? I think not. I mean he was cute I guess. But how quickly the cute turns into annoying. He was SO loud and kept whining to his parents in their native tongue, all while hitting my chair throughout the trip.
Then misfortune struck again as the second bus driver we got at Haast decided that he would carry out a 3+ hour monologue. I swear his voice was just constantly droning on the overhead speaker. Some things he said were descriptions of the surroundings, which was okay, but random facts accumulated into an endless, and repeated list. He would also break into his theories on what would happen 5 years from now and would add useless anecdotes of his life. He was seriously too much to handle consciously.
Surprisingly though, the trip went faster than I thought it would. I mean despite the disturbances I somehow managed to sleep for a few scattered hours. Our Franz Josef hostel is the Rainforest hostel, and ended up being a slight disappointment. I mean, the Black Sheep will probably be THE hostel that I compare all others to, and that’s a tough standard. I mean it’s technically cheaper, the room’s a bit more spacious, and we have our own bathroom. But no free breakfast, no spoons as far as I can tell lol, and the hot tub is closed for repairs or whatever. How lame. That and it just doesn’t have as cozy of an atmosphere. Oh well, we’re only here for one night anyway.
Tomorrow we’re going to do a half-day hike on the Franz Josef glacier, the fastest moving glacier in the world. It was raining today and super foggy so hopefully the weather clears up.
Tuesday
I woke up to a beautiful, clear, and sunny morning, which was really nice considering we’d be hiking a glacier for half of the day. Since we’d be surrounded by ice all day, I decided to wear two jackets and being the soft SoCal kid who’s used to warm weather, I also brought an extra thick jacket just to be on the safe side. I really wish I hadn’t though because the glacier hiking place provided us with gear and when they suggested what to wear, they even mentioned shorts. Way to not connect two and two together and see the hint that it wouldn’t be THAT cold. So I ended up being toasty throughout the hike, especially during the 2.2 km walk from the bottom of the valley to the terminal face of the glacier.
The glacier that we were hiking was a “warm” glacier meaning that it isn’t firmly fixed to the ground. Instead, it’s floating on rocks and water, which allows it to move a lot farther than a cold glacier. Warm glaciers can move about a meter a day whereas a cold glacier will move like 20 cm in a week (or possibly a year…I forget what the guide said). The specific glacier that we were hiking has been recorded to have traveled up to 7 meters in a day. Unfortunately, it’s been moving a lot slower these days. It both advances and retreats based on the temperature of the water, the temperature of the air, etc.
Hiking the glacier was tiring at times, but I’m definitely glad we did it. The thing that made it tiring was the steepness of some parts. Actually getting up the glacier was easier than I thought because the hiking company already had steps carved into the glacier, and when we would divert from trails, our guide, Cliff, would use his pickaxe and make some steps for us. Cliff with his pickaxe and beard was pretty much what you would imagine if you pictured a mountaineer, or at least a lankier version of one. =P
The sights of the glacier features and surrounding mountains and waterfalls were awesome! Getting a bit of exercise to boot was also a nice plus. Surprisingly there was a lot of water on the glacier, especially towards the end of our hike as it got hotter. There were some tiny pools bust mostly mini-streams flowing everywhere. By the end of our hike, walking down the glacier steps felt as if we were stepping on the surface of a giant slushee.
When we got back we barely caught the shuttle to take us to Greymouth. The hostel that we stayed at there, Global Village is a close runner to the Black Sheep Hostel in Queenstown. It’s a bit smaller, but decorated so exquisitely. It has a very native atmosphere with didgeridoos and Maori masks for sale. All of the decorations—paintings, hangings, furniture, etc.—had a native theme. It was awesome and really clean there too. They also had free kayaks and bikes to borrow, a hot spa, sauna, gym, and an even better DVD selection than the Black Sheep. But I don’t know, free breakfast is definitely one of my favorite pluses a hostel can have, and I think that might always win me over lol. =P I mean c’mon, I’m a full-time college student on a very tight budget. Can you blame me?
That night Whitney, Epack, and I made individual dinners for ourselves and watched Team America. I was the only one who had never seen the movie before, and it had its funny moments. The “amazingness” that other people always express when I hear them talk about it didn’t really hit me though. Oh well, I still had fun. The rest of our night concluded with a bit of drinking and just hanging out. We watched the ginger kids episode of South Park and played a bit of the question game, where a question is posed to the group and everyone answers honestly sometimes elaborating with anecdotes along the way. It was nice. It made me feel like I was part of the group more.
Anyway, yeah…the point is I was happy to be sharing stories that night. =)
Wednesday
So we didn’t really have anything on the agenda for today. Basically we would just be traveling from Greymouth back to Christchurch to finish off our “circle” around the South Island. Our shuttle wasn’t set to come until 1:15pm, but check-out time was 10am. Originally we wanted take the free kayaks out in the morning, but unfortunately it rained for the majority of the morning. So we just ended up hanging out at Global Village the whole time.
The drive to Christchurch was probably the most miserable road trip I’ve ever been on. We went through these mountains full of winding curves, and the driver wasn’t taking them on slowly either. That and my stomach wasn’t feeling too well in the morning so it made me feel even worse. I also get motion sickness slightly. I’ve never thrown up or anything and love roller coasters. It’s just that sometimes I’ll feel slightly nauseous in my stomach. I’ve learned to combat this feeling by just falling asleep during car rides, but I couldn’t on this trip. I had my contacts in and have learned (unfortunately later than is ideal) that sleeping with contacts in is bad for your eyes. So I had to just suck it up for 4.5 hours. Yeah, it wasn’t very pleasant.
At least for the first half of the trip I was distracted a bit by a game that Epack, Whitney, and I were playing. There are two teams and you go through each letter of the alphabet, taking turns naming movies whose titles start with that letter. When a team can’t think of a movie, you move on to the next letter, and the team that won that previous letter starts the next. It was Whitney and me vs. Epack. Epack didn’t want to have a person playing on both teams, and we felt that since she watches a lot of movies and has played before that this was the fairer division. We only made it up to T movies before Epack and Whitney got tired of the game. Lame. But Whitney and I won hehe. =)
When we finally made it to Christchurch we were all relieved to get off of the bus. Epack was starving and thought we were going to die with the driver we had haha. He was kind of pissy throughout the drive and yelled at some taxi that I guess was parked in the bus section.
We checked in, grabbed dinner, and just hung out and drank a little for the rest of the night. They had to wake up decently early the next morning for their Lord of the Rings tour so we went to bed pretty early. My plans for tomorrow would just be blogging, e-mails, possibly reading, and revisiting this awesome fish & chips place that gives you TONS of fries for like $1.60. Such a good deal. I’m excited for deliciousness. =)
Moving on from Lake Tekapo, we made our way to Queenstown. Queenstown is sort of like a small village, but it’s pretty bumpin’ to say the least. It’s a prime spot for the thrill-seeking, adrenaline-rush addict. Among the various activities that you can do here are riding a shotover jet (massive jet boating?), bungy jumping, skydiving, and water rafting, just to name a few. In addition to all these awesome attractions, Queenstown is adjacent to a lake and just surrounded by mountains. It’s absolutely gorgeous here. It’s definitely a place that I could imagine myself wanting to retire in.
We’re staying at place called Black Sheep Hostel, and it’s probably my favorite hostel out of all of the ones I’ve stayed at so far. I’m pretty sure it’s the cheapest I’ve stayed at, the staff’s super friendly, it has a hot tub outside, a pool table, and a decent-sized movie selection for us to entertain ourselves with, and probably one of my favorite parts was FREE breakfast. Hostels don’t really get any better than that in my humble opinion. =P The internet’s a rip off though, but we found an amazingly delicious chocolate/dessert/ice cream place, Patagonia Chocolates, that has free Wi-Fi.
On our first day in Queenstown, Epack, Whitney, and I pretty much just wandered the city and chilled for the rest of the time. We also quasi finalized the rest of our plans for Queenstown and ended the night by watching Cruel Intentions haha. I’ve seen parts of it before, but I don’t think I ever finished the entire moving in one sitting. It’s so crazy to think that it was such a monumental movie in terms of having same sex kissing. I also thought that the ending was kind of messed up, especially since the last shot is of the girl smiling while she’s driving his car. It’s as if screwing the antagonist over makes everything else better. (Kind of vague, but don’t want to ruin it for anyone who hasn’t seen the movie.)
Friday
Friday kicked off our list of exciting activities we had planned for New Zealand. More so for Whitney and Epack though. Bungy jumping was on the agenda. I chose not to do it because sometimes, having new experiences can be pricey to say the least. So my death-defying activity of choice? Skydiving. Skydiving was originally planned for Saturday so I was just going to go souvenir shopping for the family and possibly be productive. But the next thing I know, Whitney comes barging into our room declaring a team meeting. I run down, sort of confused because they left a decent while ago to go bungy jumping. It turns out that the forecast said that it would be raining buckets on Saturday, so we were faced with the impulse decision of moving skydiving to today. Faced with this dilemma, it was obvious that we had to jump today or else we wouldn’t have another chance to, right?
So basically Whitney and Epack were to go bungy jumping at 10:30am and then come back and go skydiving at 2:30pm. What adrenaline junkies. =P Unfortunately, when we met up at 2, the skydiving people said that it was too windy to go. Lame. So we basically rescheduled for 8:30am on Saturday and crossed our fingers that the forecast was wrong. I mean they said that you can never really tell by forecasts because in Queenstown, sometimes it’s the exact opposite. (Reminds me of Melbourne haha.) Anyway, we were left with an entire day explore or do whatever our hearts desired. Whitney and Epack ended up being faced with yet another impulse decision and got something to help them forever remember their holiday and true experience of independence in New Zealand. Out of respect for them though, I’m not going to disclose what they got. But I will say that I’m jealous. =P It’s kind of pricey, but I’m considering splurging because when am I going to be in New Zealand (and/or Australia) again?
Friday night ended with our trip to several Queenstown bars. The first stop was Minus 5, probably one of the coolest bars I’ve ever been to. Absolutely EVERYTHING in the bar is made out of ice. The seats, sculptures, bar, and glasses—all ice. When we went in it was -8.5 degrees Celsius. They gave us jackets, boots, and gloves before entering, but my hands were still on the brink of becoming numb. The room itself was smaller than I expected, and we were only allowed to be in there for 30 minutes. Regardless, I still had an awesome time. It was just the three of us in the bar along with one bartender, George, who turned out to be a really cool and nice guy. All the drinks had Absolut Vodka in them, and were delicious. My poisons of choice: frozen kiwi and shots of absolut apeach and absolut pear. The latter two I actually got for free because the three of us worked our “charm” with George haha. First time I got free shots from a bar hehe.
Both of my shots were administered via a tube going through a giant ice sculpted gun. It was a little messier than I thought it would be. Some of the shots took a while to trickle down the tube so I had a bit of drippage with the peach. I learned my lesson with the pear one though and didn’t waste a drop. =)
After Minus 5, we checked out another bar, Dux de Lux, and a club, Subculture. Unfortunately, but both places were disappointments. I wanted to dance and still do for that matter. I don’t even remember when the last time I danced was. So sad. We ended up just heading back to Black Sheep and going to bed since we had to wake up early for skydiving anyway.
Saturday
Despite how much I like Black Sheep, I’ve noticed a trend of not being able to get a solid night of sleep. It’s more so that when it gets around maybe 6ish am I wake up for some reason and have trouble falling back asleep. Part of me thinks that maybe it’s because I’m excited for the day’s adventure. Who knows. Anyway, I get up out of bed around 7am and go outside. To my dismay it’s pouring rain. Why?! Why do we have such bad luck. We arrange for another weather check at 12pm with, nzone, the skydiving place, with the hopes that the weather will clear up later.
Whitney, Epack, and I decide to watch X-Men: The Last Stand to occupy us since we’re up so early. While we’re watching, does the weather clear up? No. Instead probably the exact opposite happens. It starts SNOWING. We’re in disbelief. I mean SERIOUSLY, what the heck?! We finish the movie around 10am, and are shocked at how early it is. We basically just muck around until 12 and are excited to see that it’s stopped snowing! FINALLY. Our luck’s turning around…or so we think. We call nzone and they tell us to check again at 1pm. Ugh. Lame. Then when we check in, nzone tells us that they’ve cancelled all jumps for the day. BITCHES!
Today had to be the day because we were scheduled to leave Queenstown on Sunday. I’m really upset because I basically saw this as my only opportunity to skydive because I won’t really get the chance to on any of the other trips I have planned. Our brains start going to work, and we came up with the brilliant idea of staying an extra night in Queenstown, skipping out on the stop in Haast that was originally planned, and crossing our fingers for Sunday to work out for us.
The rest of our day was spent wandering around Queenstown or just chilling at Black Sheep. Whitney and Epack have been reading voraciously. Both have finished books while in New Zealand, granted Whitney was reading hers since before coming to Australia I think haha. But Epack even bought a new book while in New Zealand and finished it already. She keeps saying how it was a kid’s book though so it was an easy read. Regardless, she reads a lot, and I’m impressed. How much she reads actually makes me want to get into reading because she seems to get a lot of joy out of it. I mean, I used to like to read for fun when I was younger. It is very well possible that books other than Harry Potter can bring back that past joy.
Anyway, most of my time has been doing pointless things like playing minesweeper or blogging in Word (since the Internet isn’t a super available commodity). Although, I was able to beat my old times in minesweeper for all three difficulty levels haha. So maybe I can twist that as being quasi-productive? I mean, I was proud of myself. =P It’s tough playing minesweeper on a laptop mouse pad.
Sunday
Again, I woke up super early and failed at trying to fall back asleep. When I got out of bed I was super excited to see that I was embraced with a completely clear and beautiful sky. YES. There was no way the skydiving could be cancelled today. I proceeded to eat breakfast and get ready for the big experience I had to look forward to.
When Whitney, Epack, and I arrived at nzone we were finally graced with good news that our jump was ON. We sorted out all the logistics and headed to the jump zone. We were the first jump of the day! The 10-15 minute drive out to the jump zone was kind of a blur. As we were driving towards the Remarkables, a mountain range, my mind wasn’t even in it. I don’t think it fully hit me that in the very near future I would be falling from 12,000ft in the air. We got to the jump zone and everything went by so fast. Normally they tell you to set aside 3.5 hours from your scheduled jump time, so I thought that we’d be done at around 12pm. But no. We were the first jump of the day so it took not even 10 minutes to get us suited up, debriefed on what to do, and into the plane.
What was going on in my mind at this point was “Holy shit! This is happening NOW!?” Not only that, but as soon as I get into the plane I fine out that I’m the first one out of the three of us to be jumping out of the plane! The plane was really small, so the 9 of us, jumpers, tandem masters, and camera people, all got to get close and personal haha. ;) My tandem master was Ralph, and Caleb was my camera person. The plane ride to 12,000ft was about 10 minutes, which was actually longer than I would have liked it to be. Shoot, if it were any longer, I would’ve had more opportunity to psych myself out before the jump.
I look around at Whitney, Epack, the tandem masters, and camera people. Epack looks completely chill, as if we weren’t even about to jump out of a plane in the next few minutes. At least Whitney doesn’t leave me alone in having a half-excited-half-“We’re actually doing this!” look on her face. As we approach 12,000ft our tandem masters start tightening our harnesses (thank goodness…I was really concerned with the looseness of it while we were on the ground) and attaching us to them.
Throughout the plane ride Ralph recaps everything that’s going to happen: what to expect and what to do. It’s a 45 second freefall followed by a 4-5 minute parachute ride down. At this point Whitney and I are really wishing we didn’t have breakfast earlier haha. Thinking of Ralph, and I suppose my, well-being, I ask Ralph if people have ever puked before. He says they have, but it’s usually after the parachute has been deployed. Nevertheless, he has a sick bag, and all I need to do is let him know if I’m not feeling well.
Finally, the moment of truth; what I’ve been waiting for throughout my entire trip in Queenstown has come. I’m literally dangling outside of the airplane door. My life is in the hands of Ralph at this point. My legs are together and curled behind me, almost hugging the airplane skid. Head back. Hands holding on to my harness. The “banana” position is what they call it. I choose to look down before we jump. Face the fear head-on. Looking down at the ground, the firs thought that comes into my head is “Oh shit. No turning back. Oh shiiiiii!” (I’m pretty sure that at some point my thoughts became actual vocalizations…at least the pictures support this idea haha.)
It’s such a rush. Originally I thought that I’d have that feeling you get in your gut when you go down a drop of a roller coaster, but I didn’t feel that at all. I was overwhelmed by the wind against my body and face. My eyes start watering, and I feel like my mind’s all over the place. I’m trying to take in the sights, keep my eyes open despite the fact that they’re watering like crazy, and smile for the camera…all while my mind keeps straying about how I’m FREEZING right now.
Forty-five seconds go by in two. The jerk of the parachute pulls me back to the realization of what I’m doing. I collect myself and absorb all I can. The scenery is breathtaking. My view of the earth below is completely unobstructed. The mountains are freshly covered in snow from yesterday. I’m no longer bitter that skydiving didn’t work out on Friday or Saturday because if it hadn’t, this moment wouldn’t have been as perfect as it was. Okay, so maybe I could have done without the runny nose from the chilly air. But when I look back on this experience, I doubt that’s the first memory that will pop into my head. =P
The 4-5 minutes of gliding down to the ground went by quickly as well. I liked having Ralph as a tandem master. He checked on how I was doing and would point out things around and below us. The fields of grass were specked with sheep that looked like grains of rice from above. Even in midair it hadn’t hit me that I was skydiving. To make the parachute ride a little more interesting Ralph pulled on the cords so that we went into a counterclockwise spin then back clockwise, simulating a trackless roller coaster with dips and all. Alas, we approach the ground, and I bring my knees into my chest as we slide along the damp grass. Safe and sound back on solid ground.
To sum up the experience, the words that come to mind are amazing and surreal. Even as I’m writing this I don’t think it’s fully registered that I skydived. Even my overpriced skydiving pictures of disappointing quality reveal an expression of disbelief and awe on my face as I’m in the actual moment. Despite feeling like “no way did I really do that,” the rest of my activities for the day seemed bland to say the least.
All we did was visit our favorite Queenstown shop, Patagonia Chocolates, ate dinner, and watched a ridiculous movie called Shoot ‘Em Up. If you haven’t seen the movie I have to mention that that it’s the kind of film where you’d laugh at what happens and think/say “only in movies.”
Monday
Our extra night in Queenstown meant that Monday’s bus ride would go all the way to Franz Josef, which was a 7+ hour drive. SOOO much fun to look forward to. So my brilliant plan on Sunday night was to pull an all-nighter. That way I could sleep throughout the entire trip. Unfortunately, the Black Sheep lounge closed at midnight and the kitchen closed at 11pm. So I tried to read outside since I didn’t want to disturb Whitney and Epack while they were sleeping. Yup! That’s right. I started reading. Aren’t you proud of me? Whitney leant me her Bill Bryson book, In a Sunburned Country. So now the three of us can have reading parties together on the trip. Weee! Unfortunately I was only able to last about an hour-ish until the crisp cold air got to me. Regardless though, I was still exhausted when I got onto the bus.
Unfortunately, my sleeping situation turned out to be less than ideal. Although I will say that at some points I wanted to stay awake so that I could read. But other than that I had a rough time trying to fall asleep. Behind me was a (I’m guessing Middle Eastern) family of 3; the child was probably about 3 years old. Adorable? I think not. I mean he was cute I guess. But how quickly the cute turns into annoying. He was SO loud and kept whining to his parents in their native tongue, all while hitting my chair throughout the trip.
Then misfortune struck again as the second bus driver we got at Haast decided that he would carry out a 3+ hour monologue. I swear his voice was just constantly droning on the overhead speaker. Some things he said were descriptions of the surroundings, which was okay, but random facts accumulated into an endless, and repeated list. He would also break into his theories on what would happen 5 years from now and would add useless anecdotes of his life. He was seriously too much to handle consciously.
Surprisingly though, the trip went faster than I thought it would. I mean despite the disturbances I somehow managed to sleep for a few scattered hours. Our Franz Josef hostel is the Rainforest hostel, and ended up being a slight disappointment. I mean, the Black Sheep will probably be THE hostel that I compare all others to, and that’s a tough standard. I mean it’s technically cheaper, the room’s a bit more spacious, and we have our own bathroom. But no free breakfast, no spoons as far as I can tell lol, and the hot tub is closed for repairs or whatever. How lame. That and it just doesn’t have as cozy of an atmosphere. Oh well, we’re only here for one night anyway.
Tomorrow we’re going to do a half-day hike on the Franz Josef glacier, the fastest moving glacier in the world. It was raining today and super foggy so hopefully the weather clears up.
Tuesday
I woke up to a beautiful, clear, and sunny morning, which was really nice considering we’d be hiking a glacier for half of the day. Since we’d be surrounded by ice all day, I decided to wear two jackets and being the soft SoCal kid who’s used to warm weather, I also brought an extra thick jacket just to be on the safe side. I really wish I hadn’t though because the glacier hiking place provided us with gear and when they suggested what to wear, they even mentioned shorts. Way to not connect two and two together and see the hint that it wouldn’t be THAT cold. So I ended up being toasty throughout the hike, especially during the 2.2 km walk from the bottom of the valley to the terminal face of the glacier.
The glacier that we were hiking was a “warm” glacier meaning that it isn’t firmly fixed to the ground. Instead, it’s floating on rocks and water, which allows it to move a lot farther than a cold glacier. Warm glaciers can move about a meter a day whereas a cold glacier will move like 20 cm in a week (or possibly a year…I forget what the guide said). The specific glacier that we were hiking has been recorded to have traveled up to 7 meters in a day. Unfortunately, it’s been moving a lot slower these days. It both advances and retreats based on the temperature of the water, the temperature of the air, etc.
Hiking the glacier was tiring at times, but I’m definitely glad we did it. The thing that made it tiring was the steepness of some parts. Actually getting up the glacier was easier than I thought because the hiking company already had steps carved into the glacier, and when we would divert from trails, our guide, Cliff, would use his pickaxe and make some steps for us. Cliff with his pickaxe and beard was pretty much what you would imagine if you pictured a mountaineer, or at least a lankier version of one. =P
The sights of the glacier features and surrounding mountains and waterfalls were awesome! Getting a bit of exercise to boot was also a nice plus. Surprisingly there was a lot of water on the glacier, especially towards the end of our hike as it got hotter. There were some tiny pools bust mostly mini-streams flowing everywhere. By the end of our hike, walking down the glacier steps felt as if we were stepping on the surface of a giant slushee.
When we got back we barely caught the shuttle to take us to Greymouth. The hostel that we stayed at there, Global Village is a close runner to the Black Sheep Hostel in Queenstown. It’s a bit smaller, but decorated so exquisitely. It has a very native atmosphere with didgeridoos and Maori masks for sale. All of the decorations—paintings, hangings, furniture, etc.—had a native theme. It was awesome and really clean there too. They also had free kayaks and bikes to borrow, a hot spa, sauna, gym, and an even better DVD selection than the Black Sheep. But I don’t know, free breakfast is definitely one of my favorite pluses a hostel can have, and I think that might always win me over lol. =P I mean c’mon, I’m a full-time college student on a very tight budget. Can you blame me?
That night Whitney, Epack, and I made individual dinners for ourselves and watched Team America. I was the only one who had never seen the movie before, and it had its funny moments. The “amazingness” that other people always express when I hear them talk about it didn’t really hit me though. Oh well, I still had fun. The rest of our night concluded with a bit of drinking and just hanging out. We watched the ginger kids episode of South Park and played a bit of the question game, where a question is posed to the group and everyone answers honestly sometimes elaborating with anecdotes along the way. It was nice. It made me feel like I was part of the group more.
Okay, tangent confession time. Whitney and Epack (mostly Whitney though) were the ones who pretty much planned our entire trip. I mean Whitney handled all of the hostel stuff and figured out how we’d get from one place to another. She managed all of the time and figured out the order of cities we would travel to as we explored the South Island. When we would get together to discuss our New Zealand plans, I kind of felt out of the loop because I didn’t know what they were talking about. I mean I would hear like “We could go to this place and this place” but I didn’t know the significance of these places. I didn’t know why we’d want to go there, what we could do there, etc. Granted, we kind of put Whitney in charge of planning the New Zealand trip when Epack and I went to Sydney/the Blue Mountains. But it seemed like Epack and Whitney had discussed NZ stuff with each other a lot on AIM beforehand or something.
Oh well…It’s not a big deal. I just feel like I can’t/don’t relate to them as much. I think part of it has to do with the fact that I couldn’t really afford to do all the activities that they’re doing too (e.g. bungy jumping, a Lord of the Rings tour, etc.). They get to discuss their excitement over these events or bond with each other over them while I’m just a “spectator”…
Anyway, yeah…the point is I was happy to be sharing stories that night. =)
Wednesday
So we didn’t really have anything on the agenda for today. Basically we would just be traveling from Greymouth back to Christchurch to finish off our “circle” around the South Island. Our shuttle wasn’t set to come until 1:15pm, but check-out time was 10am. Originally we wanted take the free kayaks out in the morning, but unfortunately it rained for the majority of the morning. So we just ended up hanging out at Global Village the whole time.
The drive to Christchurch was probably the most miserable road trip I’ve ever been on. We went through these mountains full of winding curves, and the driver wasn’t taking them on slowly either. That and my stomach wasn’t feeling too well in the morning so it made me feel even worse. I also get motion sickness slightly. I’ve never thrown up or anything and love roller coasters. It’s just that sometimes I’ll feel slightly nauseous in my stomach. I’ve learned to combat this feeling by just falling asleep during car rides, but I couldn’t on this trip. I had my contacts in and have learned (unfortunately later than is ideal) that sleeping with contacts in is bad for your eyes. So I had to just suck it up for 4.5 hours. Yeah, it wasn’t very pleasant.
At least for the first half of the trip I was distracted a bit by a game that Epack, Whitney, and I were playing. There are two teams and you go through each letter of the alphabet, taking turns naming movies whose titles start with that letter. When a team can’t think of a movie, you move on to the next letter, and the team that won that previous letter starts the next. It was Whitney and me vs. Epack. Epack didn’t want to have a person playing on both teams, and we felt that since she watches a lot of movies and has played before that this was the fairer division. We only made it up to T movies before Epack and Whitney got tired of the game. Lame. But Whitney and I won hehe. =)
When we finally made it to Christchurch we were all relieved to get off of the bus. Epack was starving and thought we were going to die with the driver we had haha. He was kind of pissy throughout the drive and yelled at some taxi that I guess was parked in the bus section.
We checked in, grabbed dinner, and just hung out and drank a little for the rest of the night. They had to wake up decently early the next morning for their Lord of the Rings tour so we went to bed pretty early. My plans for tomorrow would just be blogging, e-mails, possibly reading, and revisiting this awesome fish & chips place that gives you TONS of fries for like $1.60. Such a good deal. I’m excited for deliciousness. =)
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