Hey all,

So since last week there isn’t a huge amount of news to tell so this will be a short post. I did have a “midwinter” fake christmas though! 😀 Slow roast pork and all the trimmings followed by christmas pudding (and an incredible cheesecake thanks to Wendy 😀 ). We had a tree up (and I still haven’t put it down, it’s in my bedroom, making me feel all festive in the evenings), lights and stockings and (of course) board games! 😀 Consequences was the clear winner of Best Game Ever Invented By Mankind ^^

Since then I’ve been doing a lot of walking to try and off set the obscene amounts of christmas pudding and custard I’ve been eating. It’s spring here and so all the trees are in blossom and all the birds are singing which makes it a really lovely time to be outside.  The wonderful thing about NZ is that you really don’t have to go very far at all to find some absolutely spectacular places!

The other thing I did this week was submit myself to the Stupidest Injury Of The Year awards. In the words of my doctors slip:

Details of Injury:

Patient went to jump on their bed, missed bed and hit head on bedside table. Open wound on face.

Yup, there we have it. I split my head open getting in to bed. Of all the daft things I have done, I never expected getting in to bed to be on the list of dangerous activities. Who knew sleeping could be an extreme sport?

Anyway, I’ll post again when I have more news to tell.

Look after yourselves and beware of your bedside tables! They’re coming for you 😉

Love,

Annabelle

Hey guys,

It’s been a while since I last updated. I’ve written three posts since then, and each one I’ve then forgotten to post. To be honest this probably would have remained unwritten if I hadn’t had quite a few people ask me to update / why I hadn’t updated in the last year. So here we go:

I’m not going to update you on everything that’s happened since last year, no one has time for that! The main highlights as it were are that I got authorised to take part in fencing tournaments (Oh hell yeah! >:D), mum and dad visited me at christmas and we had the most amazing 3 weeks ever exploring the south island of New Zealand (I’ve peppered this post with random pictures from that), I spent Easter with my Australian family (who are the best people ever!) and got to have the first ever easter egg hunt that I organised and ran (I got to buy and then hide all the eggs like a proper grown up, never been so proud) and then end of May I had a bump in the car and gave myself concussion.

Wait … what?

Yup, to those of you who don’t know (which let’s face it, are probably not those of you who are reading the blog 😉 ), I had a bit of a knock. I’ll write it out fully below. Please don’t feel you have to read it but a lot of people have asked me and honestly it’s a bit easier to just write it in one lump for whoever wants to know to read, rather than telling the same story thirty times! 🙂

So, on the day of the accident I went out to tutor a kid in chemistry. When I left the house it was nice and sunny so I took a gamble on a thin jumper and thought that was good. But of course by the time I left after tutoring it was dark, with black skies and spits of rain. The storm didn’t actually hit until I was on the motor way, but then it hit in earnest. It was one of those autumn storms that just suddenly goes for it, all at once. Bit of hail but mostly just the kind of rain that would probably get Noah to bring out his boat building manual again. Lots of thunder, lots of lightning.

Long story short, the dude two cars ahead did an emergency stop, dude in front did one, I did one and then hit a patch of water and aquaplaned into the back of him, making my head snap forwards like a mouse trap. Guy behind me skidded to a stop less than a fingers breadth from my bumper. We then had to drive across three lanes of motorway (because of course this happened in the fourth lane) and then park up on the side of the road to exchange details. Happily no one was hurt and his car was working so he drove off pretty quickly and I was left waiting on the side of the road in my thin jumper and the thunder and rain for two and a half hours (two and a half hours!) for a tow truck. The bit of motorway was right next to the sea and with the storm swell the waves and spray were lashing up to the side of the hard shoulder, perfectly positioned next to me to get any little patches of dryness the rain had missed.

I like to think there were sad violins as I stood there waiting, but it was probably just the ringing in my ears. I always say, if you’re going to do something, you might as well do it properly. Let it be dramatic, with thunder and lightning!

That night I slept seventeen hours. O.o Got up for about four then slept for another fourteen. Bit weird but probably just the shock. Kept getting nose bleeds for no reason. Bit weird, but maybe I hit my nose without realising it or something. (I like to think I would have spotted this wasn’t right if I was thinking normally). I had a blinding headache and felt really dizzy for Sunday but it was probably just the stress.

‘Course I’m English. ‘Stiff upper lip’ and all that, so Monday I went to work as normal. By the time I arrived I was exhausted but I just thought I was being a bit lazy. It wasn’t until I went to read something at my desk and realised that I couldn’t that I realised I should probably go to a doctor. They decided that it was a Mild Traumatic Brain Injury and then sent me to all the specialists ever.

Unfortunately I’d been chosen to present at the research showcase which was the next week.

Never mind! I thought, Presentations don’t really require reading anyway, I’m sure it will be fine!

Well, my speech was also kind of screwy and I was struggling to concentrate on anything so the first few times I practised it I was truly terrible. It’s very hard to give a presentation on the synthesis of antibiotics when you keep forgetting what the word “bacteria” means. I’m nothing if not stubborn though and I worked out that if I practised the presentation 3 times an hour, eight hours a day for the next ten days I could do it 240 times before the Research Showcase. That would probably bring me up to speed ^^

I’ve since been told that as I was meant to be resting and recovering, practising a presentation 240 times for a week was not the wisest thing I’ve ever done and probably contributed to my sudden influx of migraines 😛  Still, I won a prize and $300 so I guess it was worth it.

After that things only got worse. Apparently I’d strained my half-broken brain (yes, Mum, yes Dad, yes everyone who told me I was overdoing it, you were right! 😉 ) and so it had a wee bit of a dip. I won’t go too into it because nothing is more boring than hearing about other peoples illnesses but suffice to say that most of the things I was used to doing as a normal part of life (walking down the street, holding conversations, watching TV) became a bit of an uphill struggle.

Most of who I am, what I like or dislike, my hobbies, my friends, my work, how I deal with people and situations, is all controlled by my brain. It’s kind of a weird feeling to have a large portion of who you are suddenly broken. I was told it would take months to a year to come back (But it will be coming back which is the main thing! 😀 ) and so I had to kind of get used to living with not quite being myself for a while.

That went about as well as you might expect 😉

I kinda figured if I acted like I didn’t have a brain injury (or at least that it wasn’t that bad) that it would eventually just give up and go away. Turns out that’s not the case and it took me a good two months to admit that that strategy was not going to work xD

So I suspended my PhD for a few months and went home. Since I’ve started the whole rest and recuperation and stopping when my brain reaches it’s limits, things are waaaaaay better. I was at home for a month in August which was amazing, spending time with family and being able to do whatever I like without having to pay rent 😉 (shame PhD students don’t get sick pay).

Now, I’ve just come back to NZ, just in time for spring. It’ll be a good few months before I’m fully back to normal but god damn I’m so much better than I was! 😀 I’m reading and writing again, and a good deal happier ^^ I’m not going to pretend everything is perfect, but until I am able to return to work I’m going to be making the most of the beautiful country I’m living in! Expect lots of pictures of flowers and out-of-focus birds coming up!

I’ll be making more of an effort to update the blog weekly, so you guys back home can see what I’ve been doing (if anything 😉 ), and those who are wondering how my recovery is going but don’t want to ask can keep up to date if they wish.

So until next time, look after yourselves and remember to check your breaks! 😉

Love, Annabelle

Ok, so I know that I’ve been a lazy poo and uploaded the next post late. Sorry about that. In my defence the internet is super slow so it takes aaaaaages to upload all the pictures (we’re talking hours here). I’m going to do two weekends in one post so it may be a little bit longer (but then if you’re not interested you can always click off, right?).

So since the last post where me and dad went on our little road trip, life has gone back to normal. It’s funny, I hadn’t really been particularly homesick until dad came and then left – I think it reminded me of the family-ness I don’t have so much here. But that said, I only moped for a day or two!

Sooo, last weekend I went to a medieval picnic (SO AWESOME!). The thing I love so much about Ildhafn (the medieval guild I’ve joined) is how into it everyone gets! So people were turning up in full dress (yeah, I got some funny looks on the train) and were doing some really cool stuff, playing instruments from the time period or making knife sheaths… One of the guys had made his own bread to a proper recipe and had the proper leather and wood shoes from the time! I was very jealous!

I met some super nice people and one of the ladies offered to give me a lift to archery the next day (It’s pretty much impossible to get to some places round Auckland without a car). So last Sunday I did archery practice! Bearing in mind that the last time I tried archery I managed to hit a pushchair BEHIND me, I was not very confident that I would even go anywhere near the target but … *drum roll* … I hit the milk bottle in the middle, not once but twice! (I’m very excited about this). I have to say though that it came at a price and I could barely move my neck and shoulders the next day! I think I’m going to have to build up some of those muscles 😉

This Tuesday we had a crazy powerful storm. Well, *I* thought it was crazy powerful – not sure everyone else was so impressed. Apparently it was a category two cyclone and it tore up huge trees (which kinda sucks) and left a lot of people without power (luckily not me!) – some people are still without. Most unfortunately I came home knackered that day and crawled into bed completely forgetting I’d left my washing on the line. Some of it was still there when I woke up the next morning but most of it was strewn about like an Easter egg hunt in the garden. I got most of it back except for a pair of my knickers that I saw was hanging from the next door neighbours apple tree like a Christmas tree angel. I didn’t go ask for them back and consoled myself that they can’t *know* they were mine! (well, the union jack love hearts on them might have given it away but I can’t be the only British person round here, right?). I don’t know where they are now but the next day they were gone. We had some more pretty strong winds so I like to think that whatever tree they are adorning now is far enough away that their origins can’t be traced back.

Then this Saturday the same super awesome lady who took me to archery invited me to go fabric shopping with her to find stuff to make a late 14th century gown. You can imagine how much I enjoyed that! I spent my birthday money on some super cheap brocade, green cotton and some pale cream silk/linen offcuts. They were all end-of-line surplus things so I got them super cheap ($27 or £14 for enough material to make an over dress and 2 different pairs of sleeves). I also got some leather offcuts which I am now using to make my own pair of medieval overshoes. The idea is that I can put them over the top of some normal shoes so I still have comfortable feet but don’t have to look too 21st century at the next picnic / feast etc.

The other exciting news is … *drumroll again* … that I may be getting a car later this week! I might not of course, but hopefully if it isn’t sold before I go check it out (with an AA dude who actually knows about cars) Thursday, then I might be getting a 1998 Mazda Demio for $2500 (£1300). It’s twenty years old, so only a few years my junior and a little scratched and dented and dated but I have hopes that we’ll go on lots of adventures together!

Well, that about covers the last two weeks and hopefully next time I won’t be so woefully behind on my posting!

Speak to you guys soon!
Annabelle

It’s so weird! When I’m traveling here I’m so busy having so much fun and everything seems so normal but then I realise “I’m on holiday in New Zealand!” And I have to kick myself to believe it.

Rotorua was awesome! Bubbling pools of thick mud and boiling pools of clear water stained blue with cobalt surrounded by skeletal branches of trees bleached white with the silica. Rocks stained Canary yellow with sulphur and bridges over boiling rivers. It was seriously cool, and definitely felt like something out of a fantasy novel (although some of the mud pools definitely looked prehistoric). It’s hard not to feel like a badass when you feel yourself emerging from the mists into a landscape like the front doorstep to hell.

It’s so strange to just see steam rising from the forest, filling the valley floor with billowing smoke. And I know this is gonna sound daft but it’s really cool to see such pointy hills! We don’t get hills this pointy at home!

In the evening we walked through the redwood forest on these little walkways suspended from the trees. At night they lit up parts of the forest but even so it was only when we came back to walk the forest floor during the day that I could appreciate JUST HOW HUGE those trees are!
If anyone is coming to NZ any time soon I totally recommend here! Any holiday pictures you take will look totally awesome! 😉

The cool thing is that when driving between Rotorua and Taupo we were on a winding road through steep green hills that could be the downs of the shire, then through a thick, dark forest that really could be Fangorn and for just a moment I’m in Middle Earth. Damn, I wish I’d remembered to bring my cloak! Also, as I wrote this, just driving along I’ve seen that one of the hills is smoking! Like thick white smoke coming out of the top of a hill … casual … 
So … just on the way forwards from Taupo now. That was awesome! One of the coolest bits was when we went to where part of the barrel-rapids scene was filmed in the Hobbit. It’s a river going into the lake and normally it’s just a small, relatively slow moving streamlet with clear pools. But then twice a day they open the dam gates a little and all this water comes rushing through and the river swells up a good four meters to become a huge, roaring stretch of rapids. And you can stand on the bridge over it which is kinda awesome.

We also took a nice boat trip on the lake to see the Maori carvings at sunset. I looked at them and thought “wow, they must be ancient, I wonder when they were carved” … the seventies! Not quite as ancient as I thought!

It’s my birthday today as we drive over to Waitomo. This morning I got the most fantastic long blue Merino wool cloak from mum and dad. And it is so thick and warm, I think I could be walking in a full hurricane and the wind won’t be getting through. I can’t wait to wear it tomorrow to Hobbiton (with the elf ears I bought of course)! I think it’s the most majestic cloak I have!

Well, I’m back now! The glow worm caves were amazing but even better than the caves was a walk me and dad did afterwards. It took us on a wooden walkway on the side of a gorge with the water rushing below us and through natural stone tunnels, eventually ending in a platform reaching out into a huge cavern with a river at the bottom, dotted with stalegtites.

We stood there as the sun set and the glow worms came out like greeny blue stars on the roof of the cave. It was seriously awesome! 😀 Then we walked back in the dark (I wouldn’t let dad use his torch), and found that all the stone walls and trees that we’d passed earlier were in fact full of constellations of glowworms! And the best thing was that it was free! I tried to take so many pictures and not one really came out as any good!

Hobbiton was … well, Hobbiton was Hobbiton. I didn’t expect it to be as amazing as the film set. I expected it to be kinda small and gimmicky. In fact it was neither of those things, it was big and it was really brilliant! There were really huge pumpkins (apparently the guardeners were having a competition) and so many Hobbit holes and flowers and vegetables and the old mill… I even got to have a pint of (surprisingly delicious) ale in the Green Dragon! It was really a dream come true!

With dad having left today there’s a bit of the whole end-of-the-holidays-gloom in the air but it’s only two more days until the weekend!

Hi all,

This week I have company! Dad’s flown over to see me (it’s my birthday on the second) and so I met him in Australia last weekend (along with a whole new branch of my family). And since they were having a Marvel exhibition in Melbourne it would have been rude not to go, so I got to pose on Black Widow’s motorbike! 😀

It’s kind of awesome meeting distant family on the other side of the world because it can feel a little bit isolated sometimes and you miss having that familiarity and easy-going companionship that comes with your family. But then last weekend we had a whale of a time going for meals and bird watching at the local park, visiting beaches etc. but I think the real highlight was playing pool in the garage with two of my new cousins and uncle (well … sort of, he’s my nannys sisters granddaughters husband, that counts as an uncle right?) then lounging on the sofa together watching Jessica Jones. It’s the whole eating meals together and watching TV as a family atmosphere that I love and I don’t think I ever really appreciate how important it is to me until I go where I can’t get it every now and then! Plus it totally helps that all the Australian branch of my family are really nice people 😉

Plus (and I’m sure you’ll all know how important this was for me), I got to see a real wild possum! And a beach just full of starfish! And wild cockatoos! And wild parrots! I’m so totally going to go back … just as soon as I save up enough money again 😉

With dad here this week I decided to take him to my figure drawing session and I’m sure if you ask him nicely he’ll show you the picture he did of the nude lady 😉 He also came to the pub with my friends after work Friday so I feel I can safely say that I am introducing him to true Auckland life.

Today we had a hire car and just drove up the beach for as long as we were interested and got to see a lot of cool kite surfers and even a wild penguin! (YES, a WILD penguin!!!) Unfortunately it was dead on the beach but it is still my first wild penguin that I’ve seen so I’m going to count it.

Tomorrow we’re going on a half-price boat cruise (which totally was NOT chosen just because it was half price *looks shiftily*) to yet another one of the islands, hopefully to do some swimming and exploring of the forests!

Next week, what with the long weekend, we’ve decided to go on our own little road trip and we’re going to go to Rotorua with the thermal hotsprings and awesome volcanic park and geysers and tree walk in the redwood forest, followed by Taupo (think the lake surrounding Erebor) – crystal clear waters ringed with mountains, then Waitomo to trek through the glow worm caves followed by (last but NOT least) the one, the only, HOBBITON!!!!! I absolutely can NOT wait so expect a slightly later posting next week but one full of pictures!

I hope I’ve given you guys enough incentive to come visit me! What more could you want? Dead penguins and Lord of the Rings!

Speak to you all next week,

Annabelle

Ok guys, this is my first unreserved recommendation! If you come to Auckland, you HAVE to go to Tiritiri Matangi! The ferry is 1h30 each way and return costs the equivalent of £35. The whole island is a bird reserve (again with no pests, vermin etc.) and is just bursting with birds! There are little wooden walkways that wind through the trees and forests, arching over the little streams. Amazingly, there were no mosquitoes! I suppose there’s too many birds eating them.

I saw two different types of parrot and so many birds that I have genuinely lost count. It was really magical – blue skies and topaz waters then thick forests teaming with all these bright birds. And it was just so much fun to walk through it spotting them all! I have to say that I didn’t spot that many – good job my friends were much better at it!

I think words really can’t say how awesome it is … you’ll have to come visit me and try it for yourself! 😉 You can also stay overnight and if you do that you may well see some wild Kiwis (this is now on my Bucket List).

In the afternoon we went snorkelling in the bay and there were fish two foot long with bright blue fins and spots. AND I saw a jelly fish that was the size of my hand! In the shallows, when you opened your eyes under water (and I can tell you right now that prescription goggles are an absolute game changer) you could see that the waves were full of all these tiny weeny jellyfish smaller than my little finger nail, settling on my arms and legs and swimming around me! (they don’t sting by the way). Sadly I don’t have any pictures of the underwater stuff and that is a real shame as there were some amazing things.

So, a lot has happened since last week. I set fire to my fume hood in a big way (that was yesterday so pretty big in my mind at the moment!), went to life drawing, did some volunteering and in general made the most of the change in weather for the better.

Since “The Incident Of The Fire” I’m now a bit less confident that I’m on the right career path! But I suppose that if A-level has told me anything it’s that I can not get put off from chemistry by a little fire (or big fire, as it turns out) and I’m sure that after a relaxing weekend I’ll be raring to go again! To answer the FAQ’s I am enjoying my PhD so far apart from that, my fellow PhD’s have been really supportive and nice (and real demons with the fire extinguishers!) and I am completely unscathed (apart from my pride). I am sure that I will have filled out more than one incident form by the end of my next three years.

The most exciting news since last week is that I have bought a  small tree for my room! Unfortunately for me I misjudge the times with the busses, so came out from the garden centre with a 2h wait for the next one. Luckily though, I had my back pack and the pot just about fitted inside so I was able to get back home with my tree and big bag of compost I bought for the hour and twenty hilly walk. I’m glad I did it as I now have a tree! I am never doing it again.

I went to the Drink n Draw that I mentioned before. For $20 I got free pizza, several glasses of cider and … a nude model! I had thought when I signed up for it that we would be doing landscapes, or maybe a bowl of fruit. Nope! It wasn’t really full of very serious artists which is lucky because part way through he did a lying down pose which reminded me of that bit in Titanic where she goes “Draw me like one of your French girls Jack”, after which I couldn’t stop giggling whenever I looked at the model. Who knows if I’ll be going back? Probably if I need a laugh!

Tomorrow I’m going to do some conservation work on some of the volcanic islands in the bay – tree planting and weeding etc. which I’m quite looking forward to. I’m hoping to see some great birds which I’ll hopefully take pictures of, although apparently it can get very hot with the sun reflecting off the lava fields so we’ll have to see how it goes . Also, I found out that they have wild possums in the parks here! Apparently they only come out at night so at some point this week I’m going to do a night time walk to go possum spotting! Hopefully I’ll have more pictures for next week!

*******

This is a Sunday-evening edit after coming back from the volunteering on the island.  We landed on the volcanic island of Rangitoto, which is an island reserve where no rats / stoats / mice etc. live, meaning that flightless birds such as the Kiwi still live and thrive in the wild! After all bundling into the back of a small truck we bumped and jolted our way along a dirt track across the island and causeway onto Motu tapu. The planting was hard work but enjoyable and I was really rewarded when one of the regulars beckoned me over to see a real wild Takahe! They’re native, flightless birds to New Zealand and a lot bigger than the photo does justice to. As you can bet I was really excited to see one in the wild in its natural habitat as the conservation work I was doing was all to help restore and protect its habitat which has been destroyed over the years. They were actually thought to be extinct in the early 20th century which somehow makes it even more exciting when you see one in real life now. It’s so awesome when you get to catch a glimpse at what your working to protect!

I was amazed at what these volunteers have managed to do. They started in 1994 planting trees and now a lot of the hills and valleys on the island are covered in forest. Imagine being able to look at a forest and say “Yeah, I made that.”.  I think I am a very small cog in a very big machine!

Hey all!

Ok, so it’s official – I love fencing! That’s now going to be my weekly Wednesday thing. It’s good because it’s not as strenuous exercise as I was fearing (not yet at least!), it’s mostly about foot work at the moment, being able to stretch and bend in the right way and keeping your sword in the right position. I felt fine during the lesson but the next day (and even the day after!) my arm was aching like crazy! I’m sure once it really gets started I’ll be struggling!

I’ve also joined an archery society and will be starting lessons in the next few weeks. All I need is horse riding and then by the time I come back after 3 years I’ll be a medieval bad ass! Well, that’s if I actually get good at any of these things which I kinda doubt!

I’m gonna learn to dive too which should be pretty fun – I’m sure I’ll be kept busy!

My first week and a bit of work is done and I’m enjoying it a lot! The people I’m working with are great – really friendly and helpful. At the moment I’m spending my time trying to make a compound that will be used in some biological tests to test out a hypothesis one of the biologists has about how one of the enzymes I will be targeting works. It’s really handy for me as it means I get to find my way around the lab and do my reading in the first few weeks to prepare myself before really discussing with my supervisor the details of what I want to do for the next three years.

As ever there’s a few differences working in this lab compared to ones I’ve worked in before but the main one (at least for those of you reading that went to Southampton Uni) is that WE DON’T HAVE TO DO COSHH FORMS!!! (Basically, we used to have to fill out forms on the health and safety, what we’d do in the event of a fire or spill etc. for each toxic compound we’d use (which was practically every one)). Here we just have to read that stuff, but not copy it out into our books for each experiment. This might seem like a small thing but it saves HOURS and means I’ll be able to get a lot more done which I’m really happy about. On the down side, ordering chemicals can take ages. I didn’t really think about it before coming here but of course, it has to cross quite a lot of ocean and some of the things are too dangerous to come by plane. Apparently the longest wait has been over a year!

I had an impromptu introduction to Kiwi sweets last night. I was chatting with with my housemates at dinner and they mentioned some sweet that I hadn’t heard of that apparently struck them with horror. So we all walked down to the supermarket to buy their cookies, Squiggles, hokey-pokey, Groovy Gumdrop icecream, weird coconut squares whose names I’ve forgotten, TimTams etc. I gotta say, the Squiggles were pretty good.

Less photos in this post because it’s been raining a fair amount (and I’ve been at work rather than out exploring 😉 ) but hopefully next weeks post will be a bit more colourful.

So! Not only do I have a room, I have also got a bed! Rooms come pretty much universally unfurnished here so for the last week I’ve been buying furniture and putting it up (somehow I seem to have had at least one screw left over for every single item of furniture I’ve put up…). Their bed sizes are different over here (something I didn’t know), so I’ve bought a “King Single” which is longer than a double bed and much wider than a single in the uk. It’s the perfect blend between giving me loads of room, and not making my bedroom seem too small 😉

I haven’t quite finished decorating yet (you know how much I love plants!) and I have a trip planned to the garden centre this weekend to hopefully pick up a cheap indoor tree 😀 Unfortunately, as I lost my drivers license when I lost my wallet I can’t hire a car so I’ll be bringing it back by bus. For those of you that doubt me though, never forget that time in Belgium when I cycled a good forty minutes home uphill with a 4ft palm tree in my bicycle basket! When it comes to buying plants that I don’t really need I can become surprisingly determined and perform athletic feats I would never dream of doing normally!

In the spirit of exploring the local area I went to one of the beaches not far from my new home (30 mins by bus – 5 if I had a darn car!). I hadn’t realised that the beaches would have so much volcanic rock! All the cliffs are bubbled and pitted with holes like a sponge and beneath them the sand shimmers like black glitter. It’s a shame that it really doesn’t show up well on camera just how glittery it is! There were also weird things on the rocks and I can’t decide whether they are fossils or living sea creatures … what do you think?

I’ve had 2 days at work now. The other PhD students in my group seem awesome. We went for drinks after work on Friday and one of them brought the cutest dog ever – half poodle and half springer spaniel! A dumpling shop has also opened on campus selling some of the nicest dumplings ever so my lunches have been great for the last two days! Dumplings and sushi and other Asian food is really cheap over here which is awesome for me! Car insurance is also pretty cheap, but dry shampoo is mega expensive!

I think next week I’m going to start joining societies in earnest! Tomorrow I am going to go to a tree-climbing society meet up! I used to love climbing trees as a kid but then I was always great at going up and terrible at going back down. It’s going to be kind of epic to join a society where they teach you to climb trees properly, and you never know – it might come in handy if I’m ever chased by wolves! Then Wednesday I’m starting fencing (it’s $10 a night which seems pretty awesome) and Thursday there’s one for painting and having beers which seems pretty much right up my street.

I’ll let you guys know how it all went next week!