Life After a Studio Room

Hip hip hooray! I am thrilled to say that after a month of waiting, someone (a couple, actually) has finally agreed to sublet my room. It all happened so fast it's a little hard to believe. Last Wednesday I got a text from a young man asking to see the place, and by five o'clock that night he called me back saying he'd take it and could I be out by tomorrow. Rather short notice, but I was so thrilled someone with cash in hand wanted it how could I say no?

So I called up Graham, my super-awesome Rotary host counselor, and humbly requested the aid of he and his vehicle to move my hastily packed stuff, and by 1 p.m. the next day I was the newest resident of 15 Howe St. So far, I'm incredibly happy with the move. My 4 new flatmates are not only Kiwi (yay for more exposure to authentic Kiwi culture), but they actually TALK and INTERACT and hang out with each other (unlike the 8 people in my old flat where I could go a whole month without seeing anyone). that, and the two girls, Jess and Hannah are awesome cooks/bakers and have thus far kept me quite well-fed. So any future weight gain I wholly blame on them.

Other than that, things have been fairly low-key here. Naturally as soon as I got in the flat I developed a yucky cold/sinus infection that has been hanging on for about a week. It's pretty sweet how I get to be like "Hi, I'm your new flatmate. I come complete with tons of snot and germs, I'll be sure to share them equally with everyone." I'm doing my best to kick this bug, but so far it's been an uphill battle. Hopefully I'll prevail soon, as it's putting me waaaay behind in my marathon training.

I did have the chance to experience a classic NZ cultural experience, however. A couple weekends ago I attended the All Blacks rugby game played at the Dunedin stadium. It was definitely a bit more subdued than a USC football game--probably because the stadium only holds about a third the amount of spectators. But there was a streaker that attempted to give his boy goods their 3 minutes of fame by running onto the field. He didn't make it very far though, as he got clotheslined pretty quickly by security.

Another...hmm...interesting aspect of the rugby game was, well, just take a look at the video below. Supposedly this performance is a tradition, put on every year by the residents of one of the freshman dorms. Yes, these are ALL GUYS doing their interpretation of Swan Lake. Overall I must admit their sychronization is certainly on point, and what they lack in technique they make up for in dedication. Perhaps the streaker was inspired by the boys in booty shorts.

Other than the afore mentioned attention grabbers, I must confess the rest of my attention was hardly spent actually watching the rugby carnage. Call me unsport-y, but all in all I'd say I only watched about ten minutes of the actual game. I spent the rest of the time playing with 6-year-old Temika and 4-year-old Jayden, the niece and nephew of one of the crew--an activity I found to be infinitely more entertaining than watching the All Blacks lose to South Africa for the first time in 20 years or something.Anyways that's enough from me; as it's actually NOT raining for the first time in four days, I'm going to head outside and live it up while I still can. Cheers!