Brujo

Welcome back, readers!  Many of you have contacted me demanding another post, which pleases me greatly.  Well friends, I am here to meet your needs with another chapter of my New Zealand story.

I wrote my previous post right before my quad-biking, wine-tasting adventure happened, so I need to start there.  This was an optional IFSA-Butler event two Sundays ago, and only 7 of us signed up for it.  (Everyone else missed out BIG TIME.) Five of us chose quad-biking (four-wheeling), and two chose the horseback riding alternative.  We bussed to Martinborough, which is a little town about an hour away from Wellington.  As far as I know, Martinborough is fairly well known for its wine.  It was drizzling and still wet from a week of rain, making it a perfect day to tear through the mud on ATVs.

Quad-biking was fantastic, but it was only the beginning of an amazing day.  After we stripped off our mud-spattered rain suits, we got cleaned up and went to the winery for a delicious lunch and wine tasting.  I had lamb and some wonderful apple juice.  Then we took a walk through the vineyard and went to the wine tasting room.  There, we tasted five wines, ranging from a sweet desert wine to Martinborough’s internationally acclaimed Pinot Noir, a heavy red wine that makes you feel sophisticated just saying the name.  We tasted the 2006 wine, which was a very good year for Martinborough, we were told.

After wine tasting, we went to a quaint little chocolate shop called Schoc Chocolates.  There, we were able to taste what seemed to be hundreds of different varieties of chocolate and pay ridiculous amounts of money to take some home.  I tasted 100% cocoa chocolate just to say I did, and it tasted like an eraser.  I spent $26 dollars at Schoc Chocolates, which bought me a bar of Lime Chili chocolate and about 9 assorted chocolates filled with various forms of goodness.

That Sunday was truly an awesome day.  I did not take any photographs that day (because of the weather), but fortunately for all of YOU, my friend and travel partner Cole Bingham has a waterproof, shock-resistant camera that he takes everywhere.  He took plenty of photos of our activities that day, and I encourage you to check them out here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/colebingham/RiverFordingWineTastingAndChocolatiering

The cool thing about Cole taking pictures is that I’m actually IN them.  Well, that’s cool if you want to see me, anyway.  I think many of you are satisfied with my shadow self-portraits, and for good reason!

I’ve been going to this church called Arise, and I’m starting to get more involved in it.  A few weeks ago, Cole told me about a gathering of young adult guys from the church who meet on Friday nights just to hang out and play poker and Xbox.  I went and played poker for a while, and then someone brought a couple of guitars, so I stayed late jamming.  It was a lot of fun.  I was winning poker too, but some of the guys were really serious about the game, and didn’t appreciate my light-hearted attitude toward betting.  I didn’t really know what I was doing.

OR DID I?!?!?!

My film class screened a French film called The Piano Teacher the other week.  If anyone ever says to you, “Hey, I just rented this avant-garde French film called The Piano Teacher.  Wanna watch it?”  YOU RUN THE OTHER WAY.  It was the worst film-watching experience I have ever had.  The movie wasn’t poorly made, but it depicted events that were so sexually violent and masochistic that I literally felt sick to my stomach and had to turn away from the screen.  I saw many other students looking away as well.  So trust me, skip The Piano Teacher.

Anyway…  Good news!  I recently found out that internet at University is FREE!  I thought money was being deducted from my account every time I used the wireless internet on campus, but it wasn’t.  So now I try to do my traffic-heavy surfing in class! woo hoo!

Those of you who have seen my facebook might have noticed my strange new profile picture.  In the photo, my hair has been straightened, and my face emerges out of complete darkness, lit by a single spotlight.  This is one of the many photos my flatmates and I took one night last week.  It all started when Hannah and Elise thought it would be fun to straighten my curly hair [Content removed by request].  So we did that and then took “emo” pictures in my room with a desk lamp.  Once I photoshopped the images, some of them actually didn’t look too bad…

This is what we do when it’s raining.

A few days ago I completed my newest composition, a piano piece inspired by my friend Chris Climo.  In case that seems weird to you, let me explain.  Several months ago, I began composing short orchestral scores about the personalities of people I know.  Each piece is supposed to somehow embody the personality traits of the person about whom it is written.  You can listen to some of them on my Facebook fan page.  If you don’t have facebook, I can email them to you if you’d like.  If you don’t use the internet at all, and the only way you can read this is because my dad prints out each of my blogs and mails them to you, then you are my grandparents, and I will make you a CD. 

In other news, I’m 21 now.  My birthday was Wednesday, which was Tuesday for most of you.  That made the flow of Facebook birthday wishes interesting… a small population of my friends were aware of the time difference in NZ, and the rest were all a day late!  haha
Well, my flatmates certainly made my birthday special.  When I walked out of my room in the morning, I was greeted by streamers, balloons, confetti, and other birthday decorations that had been set up during the night.  Each of my flatmates greeted me in the morning with birthday wishes, some in other languages, and my presents were already laid out on the confetti-covered kitchen table for me.  I was truly impressed.

Activity-wise, my birthday was a good, efficient day.  I worked out and went to a few classes.  That evening, Allie and Cole accompanied the Flat 33 Five to the Flying Burrito Brothers, which is the only Mexican restaurant in Wellington.  Dinner was fantastic, even though we Americans found it funny that Mexican food is expensive and exotic here.

“In America,” I explained to [my flatmate], “Not only do the servers speak Spanish… you’re lucky if they speak English.”

Even though the drinking age is 18 here, I celebrated my 21st by having a cocktail.  I actually have never done much drinking, so it was my first cocktail.  It was called the “Brujo”, which is Spanish for “sorcerer”.  When our Chilean server explained this, he almost whispered it, and his eyes got big for a second, as if I was about to order a forbidden magic potion.  Well, it wasn’t magic, but it was delicious.  It was basically an apple cocktail.

Allie gave me a bottle of the 2006 Pinot Noir from Martinborough that we tasted on quad-biking day.  We came back to the flat and shared the bottle of wine while we ate the incredible chocolate cake that Hannah and Elise picked out for me.

Other sweet presents:  Flat 33 gave me a cool picture frame, a greenstone (jade) necklace in a Maori shape that means “respect”, and nine Whittaker’s peanut bars.  The next day, I received a sweet pair of Oakleys in the mail from my family.

So, my birthday was awesome.  Thanks again for all of your birthday wishes.  If you gave me no birthday wishes, then I won’t count it against you for being late.  Apparently, wishes don’t expire.

Now, it is 1:30 AM, and I leave for my two-week South Island adventure in the morning with Allie and Cole.  You can expect my next blog (in two weeks) to be packed with photos and stories from the trip.  I’ll even throw in some of the “emo shoot” photos for good measure.  Our plans aren’t too extensive right now, but we plan on spending most of our time in Queenstown.

Glacier climbing, bungee jumping, Lord of the Rings sightseeing and MORE, here I come!