miscallaneous ramblings about nz!

[Tash]

Hello hello! Got back from the lovely island of new zealand yesterday and it’s so funny how having my own bathroom and bedroom is like the ultimate luxery! Haha go hostels. So I feel like having a ramble- btw I highly recommend nz to all of you it’s absolutely lovely, especially the south of the south, SO nice I want to go live around the otago area!! It was also cool, I managed to play two pianos in one day! Agh which reminds me that I haven’t practiced in like 24 days and am now waiting for my dad to get up so I can play! But it was cool- we were in Dunedin being old ladies and on this tour around some old house- half the furniture was closed off by a rope so you couldn’t touch it, and of course there was a grand piano- and normally they won’t let you touch it, but this time the woman’s like does anyone here play the piano? And despite the fact that I was completely out of practice and had nothing at a remotely performable level I was like sweet yes I’m going to play- it was a 1906 steinway! Very nice, wish I’d been able to take more advantage of it playing something I could actually remember…then the hostel also had a piano, and I was like WOW, and then discovered that it had apparently never been tuned in its life thus was quite awful!
Mmm also thought of some of you doing a 20km bike treck around fox glacier region (omg the glacier is SO COOL!!) and can see why there’s an obsession with cycling all over the place, I was like man I want a bike!!

Anyway there’s some useless rambling, just to say hello to you all, I might post up a random pic when I get some- haha maybe the one where we’re in a mud bath (Rotorua my god me entire suitcase REEKS of sulphur!!) thus are completely covered in mud! Quite attractive I must say….

[pianistimo]

sounds like you had a great time.  i had no idea that nz had glaciers.  let alone, bike trails around them.  i think i'd like to try that sometime (when the leg is able to whir around)...though now i'm really fearful of falling.  i never used to be - because i've fallen three times and never got anything but scratches.  this time, i'll be trying to break the fall and end up 24 miles away and needing an ambulance again.  maybe i won't go so fast.

anyway, glad to hear about your brave trekking.  you are very interesting and self-motivated.

[mycrabface]

VVhy don't you go stay at shangri-la?

[gilad]

i loved nz when i was there and oz too.

[ada]

NZ is great isn't it? Isn't Rotorua the wildest place?

Last time I was there I skied on Mt Whakapapa, which is pronounced f***apapa (serious, for all you non-Kiwis). And then I picked up a hitch hiker who had the gall to tell me that we had strange place names in Australia, like "wollongong". Yeah right. Big ha ha.

Did you swim in any thermal springs? They are "the bomb", as you would say

BTW, what did you play on the Steinway?

[Tash]

woo yeah nz has glaciers apparently thanks to australia's climate- we get no rain and hot weather which supposedly gives them glacier weather!! there was even some red dirt that had managed to travel its way to nz from central oz via the wind! we were like cool...
oh the bike track wasn't really near the glacier- kind of in the other direction, but we could see it from a distance!!

yeah rotorua was excellent- best bakery in the world haha!! we swam in the polynesian spas one night which was lovely and then the mud pool and sulphur pool at hell's gate- so cool! except my swimmers STILL smell like sulphur i'm like GROSS!!
played some of the beethoven op.27 no.1 cos that's the only thing i could remember more than 4 bars of the beginning ha! and then i abruptly stopped and announced that i wasn't going to play any more cos it was sounding terrible!!