Week 18- FriendsGiving

I could hear summer banging on my door but I had to stay focussed to get through my last two exams. I spent Monday and Tuesday trying to condense my courses into as few pages of notes as possible, though this was interrupted by a huge spring storm that came out of the blue. I had my design exam on Wednesday so I decided I could justify watching the Steve Jobs film the night before. I actually ended up using examples from the film in my exam and it went pretty well. As I finished with over an hour to go I got home early to do an extra hour of study which meant I could leave to go play the spring league frisbee game against the university second team. It was quite the thriller. We didn’t start very well and went 6-1 down with the other team playing some entertaining frisbee. We manged to pull it back to 7-6 before we again went 11-6 down, with some frustration about how the other team were getting the rub of the green. We worked to have the scores all tied at 13-13. They scored their offensive point and then we scored ours to bring it to 14-14. The game was to 15 and they were going to be starting the point on offense. Winner takes all. We ran down hard and I baited a floaty cross-field throw that sat up enough in the wind to give me a chance to get up and catch the disc, winning the turnover. We played the most patiently we played all game in that point and managed to slot it in for the win.

This didn’t do my last exam any favours but I managed to get through it and then I was free. Ready for just over three months of southern hemisphere summer. I ran a few errands in the afternoon before Harry, Charlotte and I drove back to Waitakere to do the Mokoroa Stream Track. We may have picked the worst time of day to do it as we sat in traffic for well over an hour but we were delighted once there. There is a path from the carpark that winds down to a river, downstream of a waterfall. We jogged down the path and then spent 45 minutes or so working our way back up along the river (sometimes on a small path and sometimes in the river) to get to the waterfall. It was the perfect way to start the summer.

On Friday one of my flat mates moved out which meant that I profited from the food that she left behind! I went to buy myself some books from a charity shop for some light reading (including a Lance Armstrong biography written before the drugs scandal which I’m quite excited to read) before Harry and I set off to watch the first two matches of the Women’s Hockey World League Finals. This is the culmination of two years of tournaments for the top 8 teams in the world and we had tickets to watch USA vs Korea and New Zealand vs Holland (number 1 ranked team). The event had organised free public transport to get to the stadium so Harry and I cycled down to the transport centre and got on the bus. On the way, I helped quiz Harry on some of the multiple-choice questions for his wine science exam the next day. We got off the bus and saw QBE stadium about a 20min walk away. We had 15 minutes before the first match was due to start so we ran, as the crow flies, to get to the stadium. When we arrived, we were a little suspicious that there were no people there and also the gates were locked. However, the big give away was that the sign said gate A but our tickets said gate 1 so we knew we were in the wrong place. As it turns out, there is a difference between North Harbour Stadium and North Harbour Hockey Stadium. We ran back to the bus stop and paid for a different bus to take us to the actual stadium. We missed the first quarter and about 5min of the second but just as we took our seats USA scored the first goal of the game. We timed it perfectly really.

The first game finished in a draw with Korea pulling their keep in search of an equaliser, scoring, and then putting the keeper back on to see out the last few minutes. There wasn’t a massive atmosphere for the first game but the crowds flocked in to support the black sticks against the Netherlands. The match was fairly evening to begin with but the Netherlands broke the deadlock after about 10minutes to take the lead. The sky was a brilliant orange-purple with the sun setting and it seemed like this was an omen for the match. The game stayed close for most of it but by the end the black sticks looked like they had been run ragged and Netherlands won comfortably 4-0.

To celebrate the friendships that had been made throughout the semester and the good times we had shared we had ‘FriendsGiving’ on Saturday evening. I was up early on Saturday morning to prep mashed potatoes for 14 people before heading to frisbee. Once home I set about making the mash. My pot wasn’t quite big enough so there was some spillage but in the end, I was happy with the overall consistency and I made crisps from the potato peel so as not to waste any food! The jobs were shared around the group so that when we sat down to eat we had potatoes, turkey, vegetable-squash mix, green beans, mulled wine, a hat each (I was a native American with Mary Berry on my headdress), a beautifully decorated room (if a little tight for 14 people) and cookies, pumpkin pie and apple pie for dessert.

Bobby gave a speech about Thanksgiving and we each raised our glasses in a toast to each other. Once we had eaten more than enough we played some games and danced around in the flat. As I mentioned in my last blog Mathias and I had a small bet going regarding the second leg of the world cup qualifying match between Ireland and Denmark. Unfortunately, despite scoring first, we lost 5-1 which meant that I had to have two Danish flags painted on my face for the evening. I was not overly pleased but it did make people laugh.

I got up to wish Harry luck on his summer travels as he tried to slip away unnoticed on Sunday morning. He was driving down to catch the ferry, to the South Island, that evening. He’ll be there for the summer but hopefully I’ll catch up with him in February. I had a chilled day otherwise, watching some tennis and rugby before playing frisbee and then some casual outdoor badminton with Charlotte. That evening Charlotte, Mathias, Bobby, Marlene, Eemelie and I sat down to watch the raw footage from our mid-semester trip on the Abel Tasman Trail before I said goodbye to Bobby who was flying home the next day.

You can see the photos from the Mokoroa Stream Track here, The photos from the Hockey World League Finals here and the photos from FriendsGiving here.