Week 35- Potatoes, Turnips and Leprechauns

We decided that Monday would be our cooking day, where Harry joins the three of us for dinner. I spent the afternoon cooking meals for the week for myself and then went to the local Asian supermarket to get something for our group meal. I found a giant white vegetable that was only $2 so I decided to buy it, even though I didn’t know what it was or how to cook it. I believe it was a white turnip but I boiled up half of it with some potatoes and carrots and it was quite delicious. Sadly, Harry couldn’t make it on this particular Monday so we ate as a trio. I had lunch again after class on Tuesday with Marlene before going to have Tea with Charlotte’s old roommate, Minu. It was great to catch up with her and hear about her travels in Asia over the summer. It probably seems at this point that all of my day is taken up by food and tea drinking but I went to frisbee after. Admittedly, I still can’t do much at training on account of my leg.

I was back in the physio on Wednesday morning and we were able to look at the x-rays. It seemed like everything looked pretty normal which would suggest a general tightness of the muscles in that area so hopefully some stretching will ease that. I was the first to get to vegan lunch so I sat by a bench in the sun and waited for the others to arrive. While I waited one of the guys who runs the vegan lunch, Mike, came and sat next to me and we spoke for a little while. He is a German who has been here almost two years but is leaving in May to become a monk. I was then joined by Ben, a frisbee friend, and then Harry and suddenly it was a strange little party from different parts of my life. Soon Marlene came and left (forgetting her bottle) but not before I was given out to for sitting in a bad spot! I had a solids lab in the afternoon where we looked at the loading effects of compound and T shape beams. It reinforced the theory nicely. When the lab finished, I was saddened to read the news that Stephen Hawking had passed away. He truly was a spectacular human being.

I had a MATLAB clinic on Thursday morning for my control systems assignment. I went, hoping to be able to catch up some of the head start my classmates had in the software. Once again, the fire alarm went off. I seem to pick the wrong building at the wrong time. I had lunch with Harry and Marlene where we discussed going to a circus but ultimately decided against it and invited Harry over for dinner instead. After frisbee we cooked the remainder of my white turnip by roasting it in the oven with some squash. We also fried potato which we had cut into the first letters of our names.

Harry, Marlene and I all got on the kayaking trip to go to Aniwhenua so we were preparing to leave on Friday. I did a shop for the weekend and packed my bags so we could leave at 16:00. Just as we were leaving, the sleeping mat on Marlene’s bag caught on the food shelf (the rikety one we found outside) and pulled it down! Now we were even later and had food everywhere. We cleaned it up as best we could and set off, wondering if Ulysse would notice the mess. We were stuck in traffic trying to get out of Auckland but I made the drive bearable with my Disney and musicals playlist (at least until they were turned off by our driver after about three hours!). We arrived at about 21:30, pitched our tents and went to sleep.

We were up early, mostly rested as we were camping by a lake with a dam and a siren. Every time water was being released, a really loud alarm went off and it happened several times an hour. As it was St Patricks Day I brought green face paint with me and leprechaun hats for us to wear. It was amazing how many people wanted a terrible finger painting of a shamrock on their faces. There was a playground by the campsite and a little girl came up to me to ask if I was a leprechaun and if I had any gold. I told her I kept it at the end of the rainbow and then she told me I was rude! We were split into three groups, kayaking, morning rafting and afternoon rafting. I was in the afternoon rafting group and as they needed a shuttle driver for the morning who could drive a manual I was roped in. It was mad driving a manual again after 7 months but it came back to me pretty quickly. In the afternoon I was rafting with Harry and Marlene and a few others, being guided by Jonny and Jasmine. Jonny is the English P.E teacher who was guiding in Tongariro last semester and Jasmine is currently training to be a guide. She did pretty well, until we had a run in with a branch of a tree. I managed to duck, Marlene ducked but it put a small hole in her wetsuit but Jasmine was caught clean in the middle and pulled out of the raft. When we looked back she was hanging from the branch, thankfully above the water, as we floated away. She managed to unhook herself, catch up to us and I pulled her back into the raft. All’s well that ends well. (We did need to be pulled off a rock at one stage but otherwise a successful run). Back at camp we hung up our wet things, cooked food and then the party started. It’s was a weird atmosphere as we were in the dark and a bit spread out but one of the guys had a stick for fire twirling and that was pretty spectacular to watch. Unfortunately, Harry was feeling ill so he went to bed early.

I decided, once again, to get up to watch Ireland play in the six nations. Amazingly I had signal so I saw Ireland beat England to win the grandslam. Amazing. There was a bit of a slow start at camp as we packed everything up to leave. With the campsite cleared we headed to our activity. Marlene, Harry and I were kayaking. We had to walk our boats up past a road barrier and then lower them down a 30m drop to get to the get in on the river. This took a while but eventually we were underway. The others ended up together but I was in a different group. When I get on the water, I felt really unstable as it was my first time actually kayaking anything other than flat water. We headed off down the first rapid which as it happens was the biggest all day. I made it most of the way down before I flipped over and then as I was trying to roll my knee popped my skirt and I swam. Monty, another beginner, managed to help me to an eddy where we, while still in deep water, we managed to empty the boat and then I climbed back in. It was quite the achievement. I re-joined the rapid and finished it out strong. The rapids got progressively smaller as we went down and I didn’t even get my head wet after that incident but I did feel a little unwilling to try things.

After the trailer was successfully loaded we headed to the hot pools at Rotorua called Kerosene creek. It’s a pretty busy spot so we didn’t stay in for too long. We headed for home, stopping for food on the way. Most people got burger fuel but I decided to cook food on the back of our driver’s car in the carpark. We were home pretty late and then I had to get to work on an assignment which was due at 10am the next morning.