We drove in Emma’s car to the nearby suburb of Remuera to pick up her friends Bryce and Brian from their place. After she parked the car in the driveway, I opened the door to get out, and proceeded to immediately step into a ridiculously deep mud puddle that completely engulfed my foot. Just as I was removing my mud-soaked foot and pants from the puddle, Bryce, who was unaware of my blunder, yelled down from the front balcony, “Oh, watch out for that puddle, honey.” Haha…priceless. We all spent a few minutes at their place before heading out to get some Pizza Hut pizza, quickly stopping at the store, then making our way back to our flat. The evening at the flat consisted of seriously tasty pizza, tons of laughs, great conversations, random hats, SingStar, and a couple of random games. The four of us spent a lot of time chilling out on our balcony, sitting, chatting and taking in the gorgeous views of the city. Bryce and Brian are magnificent—two people that you just immediately love.
After a few hours at the flat, we all went to one of the dance clubs on K Road, about a 10-minute walk away. An epic night of dancing and way too much fun ensued from there. It was such a great evening, with such wonderful people…and I needed it! That weekend was actually an extended weekend in New Zealand, with Monday, June 6th being a holiday in observance of The Queen’s birthday. As far as I can tell, Kiwis have no idea why it's a holiday either. Nonetheless, on Sunday, Emma drove a couple hours south to Hamilton to visit her family for a couple of days. In contrast, my flatmate Daiana unfortunately did not get to enjoy her extended weekend. She had already gone to the emergency room a day or two earlier not feeling so well. After beginning to feel even worse on Sunday though, she decided to go back to the hospital again. Daiana’s friend Luciana came to the flat to pick her up and I went with them to the emergency room. We stayed there for a number of hours, but luckily nothing major was wrong and she was released late that evening. A bit nerve-racking though!
The following week, I had the pleasure of spending time with mine and
Sontsa’s German friend Marie whom we had recently run into in Kaikoura. Marie had to catch a flight from Auckland to Brisbane for a short 5-day trip, then it was back home to Germany. Luckily, she had decided to come to Auckland a few days before her flight. I must say, besides everything else that living in Auckland already has to offer, I love the fact that it is New Zealand’s major airport hub. Living here has given me the opportunity to reunite with many of the people I met along my travels that I may not have otherwise seen again while in New Zealand. Marie texted me shortly after her arrival in Auckland around June 6th, letting me know she was in town. She proposed either going to see a movie at the IMAX or grabbing a coffee. As I couldn’t really justify paying over $20 for a movie in my current situation, I responded by saying coffee would be great. Happy to take a little break from job searching, I met her at the Starbucks by one of Auckland’s major intersections, Queen Street & Victoria Street. It was to become our go-to spot during the 3 or 4 days she was here. After greeting each other with a big hug, we bought some coffee drinks, got a table outside overlooking Queen Street, and sat there catching up for quite a while.
One of our topics of conversation was of course our dolphin swim in Kaikoura, an experience which Marie, Sontsa and I all shared together. Awesome memory! One thing Sontsa & I did not get the opportunity to do while we were in Kaikoura was visit the nearby seal colonies, which the locals had informed us had tons of baby seals too. Unfortunately for us, you needed a car to get there, and since we didn't have access to one, we didn’t go. Marie, on the other hand, was lucky enough to be staying at a different hostel in Kaikoura in which the owners let the guests take the hostel van to go see the seal pups! Yes, it was at that point I realized Sontsa & I obviously stayed at the wrong hostel...for shame! Marie showed me a video she had taken on her camera of all of the seal pups frolicking around a waterfall—sooo cute! One of them even licked her hand! The pups apparently came from a fur seal colony called Ohau Point, about a 20-minute drive north of Kaikoura. The colony has expanded over the past 15 years, growing from about 50 pups being born each year to 1500. In this particular location, it is not unusual to see up to 50 pups frolicking in the pool or basking on its shores, with another 50 playing in the stream. I so wish I had been able to see them in person, but it was still really great to see the video Marie had taken =)
At one point while she & I were talking, a guy who was probably in his mid-to-late 20s approached us and asked if he could observe (from a distance) our conversational interaction. He was studying at one of the universities in Auckland, and a class assignment of his was to observe different subjects conversing in their natural environment. Marie and I were keen for it, so we just signed a piece of paper basically authorizing him to watch us. We carried on with our conversation, catching each other up on everything we had been doing since we saw one another. I asked Marie where she was staying, and she answered, “At friends.” Accordingly, I responded, “Oh, awesome. Are they at work or something?” She looked at me with a confused expression and asked, “Who?” After a few moments of further conversation and baffled questioning, I realized she was staying in a hostel called Frienz haha. It reminded me of a specific incident when I worked at Ridge Air Conditioning in Panama City, Florida: I was talking to my boss about scheduling a new installation job and needed to know the customer’s name in order to put it on the schedule. No matter how many times I asked him the name, my boss just kept saying that the new unit was to be installed at his best friend’s kitchen. Finally, and admittedly with a wee bit of frustration in my voice, I sternly said, “Joe, I don’t know who your best friend is.” He chuckled and responded, “Honey, the restaurant is called My Best Friend’s Kitchen.” Haha! Oh, the joys of miscommunication. =)
After about 20 minutes of the university student observing us, he came back over, thanked us, and told us more about the premise of his study. Its focus was recording the differences between conversations had by women versus conversations between men. According to his findings thus far, women were more involved with one another during conversational interactions, maintaining more eye contact, interrupting one another less often, and maintaining more of an interest when the other person was speaking. Surprising? Of course not =) Still, it was interesting nonetheless. After Starbucks, Marie really wanted to go to the IMAX down the road and watch the new Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. I apologetically told her that I couldn’t, not without a job lined up. Since she wanted to see it so much and didn’t want to go alone, she insisted on me going with her & paying for my ticket. I tried to talk her out of it, but she wouldn’t take no for an answer. Such a sweetheart! So, we watched the lovely Johnny Depp in IMAX 3D…quite enjoyable. It was a really nice break from the stressful week I’d had before.
After the movie, we walked back down the road and sat down on a bench in front of the Starbucks. We stayed there for hours talking about how much of an amazing experience it has been to live in New Zealand. Marie arrived in New Zealand a week before I did, the same time as Sontsa. Unfortunately like Sontsa though, she too was reluctantly having to leave the country earlier than she wanted to due to prior commitments back home. We talked late into the night until most of the people in the city had already scattered back to their homes. The streets still had some traffic, but the sidewalks were virtually empty. One particular skateboarder apparently decided that the wide-open sidewalks provided ample opportunity for some night-time fun. As Marie and I were sitting on the bench, we suddenly heard the sound of running behind us, and the next thing we knew, this guy came dashing past, jolted himself down onto his skateboard belly first and went zooming down the sidewalk. Auckland, including Queen Street, is quite hilly, so he barreled downhill for ages until completely out of sight haha. Must have been fun! That was just one of many random moments we had whilst sitting on that bench in front of Starbucks.
Cheers,
Ash
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