Karina's Party And The Rest Of The Weekend

On Friday evening at 7pm, Karina's eighteenth birthday party commenced. She had put clever signs up everywhere saying things like "This Door Leads To Hell" and "If Shit Happens, Call My Mum On This Number." She had a massive vase filled with glowsticks for everyone to use. She had rented a black light and a mini strobe. It was quite exciting.

So at first it was just me and Karina and Eva, and we were actually quite content that way, but soon people started arriving. As tends to happen at parties. Thrills were had at the way white clothing lit up under the UV light. Leo wore his Ghostbusters jumpsuit. Nandita had fantastic fluorescent orange tights.

Fast forward a couple of hours. Alex, Jennecca and myself were celebrating the conclusion of our media ordeal in Karina's brother's bedroom. The door was closed, as we were having a "serious talk", while everyone else banged on the door and clamoured at the window on the other side of the room, and yelled about coming in, basically acting like a pack of zombies. That's when we realised that the door was mysteriously stuck... and that none of us could open it. I tried, and then the door handle came off. Alex was hysterical. She cried. (Let me just add that she wasn't in her usual frame of mind!) Then Leo came tumbling through the window, which was an incredible feat -- okay, I've climbed through that window before, but I was completely sober... so he staggered to his feet and despite our belief that he had come to help us, he was also shocked to learn that we were locked in. Which begs the question, why did he climb through the window? Did he feel left out?

So anyway, then Bridget climbed through the window. I don't think she knew we were locked in either, I reckon she just went to where the commotion was. I vaguely remember Jennecca shouting, "GET OUT, YOU'RE STEALING ALL OUR OXYGEN!" It truly was like a zombie invasion.

Apparently Renee or Carl came to the rescue by jiggling something in the hole where the handle used to be, and we poured out like prisoners being released. And that concludes the story of The Time We Got Stuck In A Room.

The rest of the party went really well, and when everyone had ditched and gone to Zac's or something, Karina and I ate all the leftover sausage rolls, brushed our teeth, and went to bed. The next morning we surfaced earlyish and began the cleanup/breakfast process. There was a slight problem with a lack of eggs -- due to an incident the night before in which Jono opened the fridge too vigorously and broke all of them -- so that was resolved by Renee, Laurielle and Alex going to Foodtown in their bedraggled morning-after states, complete with onesies and mugs of coffee. Oh, and there was also a mysterious stain on the ceiling, which caused Karina's mother much distress! We still don't know what it was.

So then at 12 I met Alex and Jennecca at BurgerFuel in town for a dissection of the night's events and an awesome lunch, and that's all that really happened on Saturday...

Sunday was my cousin Roy's 16th family birthday party so I helped out all day preparing for that. I made this double-layered dark chocolate cake with chocolate ganache, and set out the lollies and chips in the bowls, (I love doing that!), and basically acted as kitchen assistant to my folks. The food was a-ma-zing that night, including crème caramel made by my auntie Suzie, a pot roast made by my father, and of course my cake. A select few at school can testify to the tastiness of the latter!

Then as we were sitting around talking, the subject of careers came up, and the question came up, "if you could start over, what job would you want to do?" Obviously this was aimed at all the adults.

My uncle Chris said he would have been a musician. "Probably playing the keyboard, synth... back in the 70s, that prog rock scene..." It makes perfect sense as he's always been passionate about collecting and listening to music. He has hundreds of LPs, CDs and mp3s.

Julie only had one thing to say, "Not teaching!" Whereas my mum said she would have done just the same (bless her, I knew she would say that), though probably getting into specialist classroom teaching earlier.

Suzie said she would have been a vet. I'm not at all surprised. She has always been an animal lover. Currently they have two golden retrievers and two cats, and there have been many other animals before. She would have been an excellent vet.

My dad's answer was the one that surprised me and interested me the most. He said he would have liked to do something with his hands, like being a cabinetmaker or doing restoration or something. I never would have thought. It's such a far cry from teaching geography.

It really made me think about my own future. I realised that my ambitions are so huge but I must pursue them, because I don't want to go down a path that diverges so far from my original passions. I don't mean to say that I think my parents and aunties and uncle have wasted their lives or chosen the "wrong" careers, at all. I just don't want to reach that stage of my life and be able to say I wished I could have done something else. I suppose I mean I'd like to have the same feeling about my career as my mum does for hers. That would surely be an accomplishment.

Champing At The Bit

Roll on Friday, when I will be deadline and exam-free.

I figure that, of late, I have not been performing my duty and updating you, followers & readers, on the happenings of year 13. So basically, here we are, week something-rather of term two. It is one of what I deem to be the Three Great Bottlenecks which occur during the school year. The entire first term is basically quite breezy -- sure, they put a little bit of pressure on ya, just to keep you focused -- and the occasional internal assessment manages to provoke a little bit of customary school-related stress here and there -- but overall it's a walk in the park. Then you go on holiday for a couple of weeks, and forget to do any of that planned "preparatory work" that you decided would put you in a comfy position in time for exams. All is well and good when you return, except a slight nagging sense of impending doom. This nagging sensation grows and, by week six or... is it seven... exams are suddenly upon you. And by upon you, I mean straddling you, slamming your forehead into a computer screen (filled with various websites which are all quite unrelated to any of your subjects) and screaming "DEADLINES!"

Because, if you're a bleeding fool like me, this is also the time when all the art subjects decide to have major assignments due. As I am taking both painting AND design, I have 20 credits' worth of work due on Wednesday & Thursday... that's a third of the (minimum) amount of credits I have to get this year. Plus these stupid mock exams. And the thing is, I can't even cast them off as insignificant, because they may end up counting towards something.

So after I've handed in all my assignment work and done my three exams, (media, English, French) consisting of a total of five essays, we will enter Lull Number Two, a deceptive window between Bottleneck One and Bottleneck Two. For us media students, it will be filled with an ongoing, consistently vague panic over trying to finish our documentaries. In art, we will no doubt begin our end-of-year portfolios at a dangerously leisurely pace, misjudging the length of time until the final, massive deadline at the end of term three. For some reason, even though this is my third year of doing art, I know it will be the same... It always, always is.

I thought that I would dread the end of high-school but I don't feel that way anymore. I am ready to leave. That doesn't mean I won't feel nostalgic and cry heaps throughout that last week of term four! But it does mean that I'm "over it" in a sense, and I guess I am looking forward to some changes. Some.

My life plan has gone through a trial period of a few months' thinking and thus I have reached a conclusion (I think) which entails going Auckland University next year and doing a conjoint degree in arts and fine arts. I will do the first semester and then travel for the second. I think I have already mentioned this in several places throughout this blog, but you know. Changes come.

A Day In The Life

Year 13 camp was the best camp I've ever been on in my liiiife, and that's a lot of camps, including various Easter camps, Soul Survivor, Parachute (okay maybe not Parachute '08, that was actually freakin' amazing) and of course heaps of school camps over the years. At around 9am on Monday the 1st of March, 180 of us went to Half Moon Bay on the bus. When we arrived we discovered that our ferry was having engine problems, and that we would have to wait two hours for the Waiheke ferry to arrive. So we all hung around the rich peoples' lawns and looked out over the harbour, and put on sunscreen and ate. Finally we were able to board the ferry and about half an hour later we had arrived on Motutapu Island, which is really not that far away, but the fact that it's an island somehow lends it a sense of isolation and awesomeness.

So we loaded our luggage onto a truck, and then began a six kilometre walk on a gravel track that went up and down through the dry sunny hills. (We thought we had it rough, but on our returning walk before we went home, we passed Rangitoto College, with ALL of their luggage on their backs. Thank you, Roskill, for having mercy on us.)

When we finally got to the camp, an ex-military camp nestled down by one of the beaches, the head instructor or overseer (who calls himself Troll, which is a thoroughly appropriate name) proceeded to give us a sort of warning/introduction lecture regarding matters such as sun protection. Away from the smog of the city, the hole in the ozone is a bigger problem, and temperatures go into the 30s. Troll claimed to have spent time dealing to girls with blisters on their shoulders the size of his fist, thus it is a camp rule that no one is permitted to go around during daytime with exposed shoulders. The punishment for that offence as well as the usual alcohol/drugs ban was an even longer 10.5km walk, with luggage, in the hot sun, alone, to the ferry. Funnily enough, people were really well-behaved at this camp.

So then we just launched straight into activities - our first one was the Survivor Challenge, which was a kind of assault course with two forts on either side, and you challenge another team. One of the obstacles is a cargo net that you have to crawl under, and I sacrificed comfort for technique, resulting in bleeding knees within the first half hour of our activity. I must admit I actually felt pretty ruthless. =p

And then we did Waka Ama, which is a kind of long canoe that fits eight people, and you all paddle, and it has an arm out to the left which stabilises it. We had to race the other team and we won, because Mr. Cornes, who was the teacher on our boat, has actually represented New Zealand in that very sport. Strange what you learn.

I'll just go through and list the other activities and give a short description.

Art - screenprinting t-shirts with designs to remind us of our camp.

Snorkelling - self-explanatory. We went down to a part of the beach called Stingray Alley but I saw no stingrays. Snorkelling out at Goat Island is far better... all we saw was a little group of snapper.

Kayaking - awesome fun. Paddled out to a little rocky island then played some games in the water. This was when the moment with Swanwick happened - if you've heard about the cicada incident, this is where it was at.

Sailing - omg. So fun and hilarious yet so frustrating. I would really really like to try it again with better instructions. MR. HORNE.

High ropes - let's not talk about this one. I climbed to the top of the centipede which is a sort of hanging pole with staples and footholds in it, and then I also climbed to the top of the wooden pole that connects up to the high beam. But there was no way I was walking over the top.

SEAL challenge - as in Navy Seals. Lol. A kayak was placed on the sand, we had to dig a hole underneath it to fit the entire group underneath the kayak and out the other side, without talking, without tools, and without touching the kayak. Every time someone slipped up, we had to run down to the water and do whatever the sadistic instructor requested - for example, lying down in the shallows (which were rocky, and covered in pointy razor-sharp oyster shells) and rolling three times to the left, three to the right... sit-ups, singing the national anthem... whole group going underwater... Then once we'd all climbed through we had to fill the hole under the kayak with water and all of us had to go through the water underneath. After all that, we had to play a game transporting pieces of a puzzle down a field without talking and without moving with the pieces. Then we had to carry our kayak through the swamp. Yes, so much fun.

Archery - again, it's obvious.

Confidence Course - destroys your confidence.

Beach Games - a failure of an activity. One game was "frisbee golf" in the grassy hills. Most of the time, me and Nic and Jono and Nandita were just looking for our damned frisbees. Then we played Invaders on the beach, which sort of petered out.

Pump - we had this last, on the last day. Hahaaaaa omg. The idea is light weights, loads of reps. We were flattened after that.

Raft-building - ours floated! We won.

Annnnd that's it I think. Ah wow. It was pretty amazing really. And all the good times at mealtimes when we sat out on the deck and just talked and joked, and then the skit night was great. I was relieved when it came to an end but also sad. It's one of the highlights of the year and now it's gone.

Except now I think I'm thoroughly at peace with the idea of leaving school. It has become tired - the routine is old and repetitive and nothing is new. That's not to say at all that I'm not going to absolutely make the most of this year - just that I will not feel a desire to stay at school.

In terms of changes to my future plans, I have been talking with my family and I think things will go as follows:

In December this year and January/February of next year I will work my butt off and earn lotsa money. Then in March I will go to Auckland Uni and start a conjoint BA/BfA degree. Then in June when the first semester ends, I will go to England as I have planned to for a long time, and spend a couple of months there - spending some time in Bristol and also having the Europe experience - visiting my exchange student friends whom I won't have seen for two years, and some family around France and Switzerland. It's nowhere near as long as I planned to go for, but with recent developments in my family, I know that there is all the time in the world for me to travel and "follow my dreams", whereas at this stage in my life I need to be here with/for my family as much as possible. After I come back I will work for the remainder of the year and into 2012, then resume my degree where I left off. Aaaaahh it's all so exciting and confusing and I really hope it all works out. I always knew my plans would have to change, thank God I'm such a flexible person. It has not yet put me into a tailspin. I think I'm okay with it all.

Does anyone even read this blog? Hahaha.

The Day Before I Depart

Tomorrow is Year 13 camp, wow. I hadn't thought about it at all really until this weekend. I'm all packed and everything, and excited. Nervous about the high-ropes course and the rock-climbing (aagh, heights!) but you know, it's all about conquering fears and everything. *looks unconvinced*

So I won't be contactable via text or internet until Friday, which is cool, some good old-fashioned socialising may occur. But we are also advised to leave behind our ipods, oh noeees, no music for five days! =0 Except we will make our own music, as I'm sure Jono and K and Nic will bring their guitars and I will take my newly-recovered voice (begone, niggling cough) and it'll be nice.

Some interesting changes to my future plans have taken place due to circumstances in the family... I think I will blog about them when I come back. Also, I no longer work at the Mad Butcher, partly due to being treated awfully and the fact that I couldn't justify the distance with the amount I was being paid. I hadn't even been given a contract so it was fairly simple to just up and leave. So some alternatives have come up and I'm okay with that.

Miss me ridiculously, folks.