Salsa Lessons

Oct. 24: What I did today was I went to the grocery store. Between going there and back I managed to run across all of the Grange flat. Then I cooked dinner in Amy's flat (we shared a dinner of beans-only chilli and potatoes). We did some planning of our Northland trip. We have decided to take the Magic Bus because it will be probably less expensive due to the price of gas and just easier since neither of us have done much driving here and don't really want to start in the biggest city in the country.

After that I went to a salsa lesson with Amy, Michelle, Hannah, Austin, Laura (a Canadian who's friends with Michelle), and Liam (a Kiwi I met the night before my big trip and who apparently has a thing for Amy). It was really cool. The lesson was just the basic steps in a line and then you add a partner. I was dancing with a guy named Nathan who knew what he was doing, so that made it easier. Then they just have dancing, and first I was dancing with Liam. Then for a while no one asked me to dance but then I danced with Michelle, and then this really awesomely good guy who is also really nice whose name I forgot, then Austin, then a guy named Shaun who was also good. So I know some salsa moves now. The instructor was dancing with his girlfriend and they are both really good and they were pretty much having sex on the dance floor. At first Amy was like 'I can imagine them having really great sex tonight' then as we were watching it was like 'well, no need to imagine'!

Then we went to Laura's flat which is on Leith Street North and played Catchphrase until some people decided to go to Jenn's to play beer pong. Then Michelle and I went home.

Oct. 26: I studied pretty much all day until 10 pm when I watched Cabin Fever which is about flesh eating bacteria and is terrible. Then to get our minds off that we tried to watch Love Actually but it turned out Jenn didn't have it on her comp. We went to McDonald's and talked for a while.

Oct. 27: I studied, and then at 11 met Amy to do karaoke. Went to Stock Exchange but no one was there so we went to the Bowler instead. Two guys stripped naked during their song, it was hilarious and wow, everyone there was so drunk. Amy and I sang 'I Believe in a Thing Called Love', and Amy sang 'Put Your Records On.' I tried again to sing 'Throw it all away' but they never let me. Maybe they don't actually have it? The announcer guy remembers us as 'those American girls' and he was staring at us a lot... yeah cause we're so hot. Then I got mini muffins at the 24! Yum.

Class Registration; Monkey Bar

Today was course registration/approval. I finally decided what I'm taking: MAOR 102: Maori Society, GEND 102: Bodies, Sexualities, and Selves, and ANTH 323: Anthropology of Health. Hopefully those will be good classes, and will leave me room to take classes through Unipol and OUSA, which I want to do. I want to take OUSA's Beginner Maori Language course, and Bone Carving through Unipol, at the very least. I'm also interested in taking Basic Bar Skills (for those who don't know, ever since I was a barista for a summer, I've been interested in learning to bartend, since I know making drinks is not too tough and fun.

I also took a campus tour today - it wasn't really that informative. The tour guide really just walked around and pointed at various buildings, saying 'that's that building.' The only thing I really gained out of it was that there are several 24 hour computer labs that you can access with your door code, which I got today. So that's cool. I sat in the library for a while with Karin, Becky, Helen, and Kate. We were debating whether or not to go to the book store, but we didn't. Then we decided to go out to dinner, and we went to Hell Pizza which is a couple blocks north on Great King Street. We took the pizzas to Helen's flat, which is on Castle. It was quite good, and Helen had orange juice. Always delicious.

We all split up and took showers and then met at about 7:30-ish to go to the Monkey Bar for the International Student Party. The Monkey Bar is a really cool converted church on the corner of Great King and Hanover Streets. We danced for a long time. It was a lot of fun. That place has $3 drinks every Thursday from 8-12, so it could be a cool place to go on Thursdays, if one wanted to go out on that night.

Tomorrow I'm going on the Taieri Gorge Train, which is free tomorrow for new international students! More on that later.