sorry old again-(Mar. 19th) ~accept the offer form albi

Sorry that I've taken so long to write this email- you see I have started to write it several times,but I have generally been just too busy to get to things- I'll explain further down~ Its all out of order too so sorry.

Self-pity party of a few days ago
It is an amazingly beautiful St. Patrick’s day in Dunedin, and I’m outside the library in the sun, just allowing myself to wallow a bit in my own self-stupidity. In a moment I’ll let it just be funny and not feel so bad about it, but I need a moment to feel ridiculous. So, I’ve not had a phone for about a month here because I figured that I had one that could be sent here and that would save me some money. Horrible planning on my part, I pestered my mom a bit to send me the phone and she was finally was able to, it cost a little bit, but still worth it I figured. I go to the phone store today and ask for a sim card and he takes my phone to make sure it fits, opens the back of it and lifts the sim holder and takes out the Italy card. In one moment the truth washes over me. I am an idiot. I was supposed to send the sim card back to the company I rented it from when I was in the states, instead I sent them the battery for the phone. I have no phone battery but I do have one Italian sim card. Ahh. The company said that they got the rented items back and were done with it, no one seemed to notice that I sent a battery instead of the sim card. So now, what to do. It will take awhile and be pretty expensive to get a new battery plus the sim card, it would be less just to buy the phone I was avoiding buying in the first place. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it today. Maybe tomorrow. On the other hand I guess its been nice to feel like I am a bit unreachable, though my friends wouldn’t agree. So yah, feeling pretty dumb about now. But I’ll deal with it.

Rest of the Day
So at that point two days ago I was feeling pretty crappy. Not only the phone situation but I was quite bogged down with fast approaching deadlines particularly on my honors applications. You see I generally get my school mail forwarded to my gmail account. Well when the password for my school mail was updated I failed to update that info in google, so my school mail wasn't forwarding for 3 weeks. I was suspicious and tested it by emailing myself which worked. Anyway I figured it out eventually and fixed it then ended up with about 300 emails to go through, some of which are very important and required attention asap. Ewww. All of this coinciding with me realizing that I've done no work the past three weeks at school here and I should go ahead and do all of it now. So I was going through emails and who should contact me, but Sarah Abboud (one of my friends form UR that played Ultimate with me and was a senior when I was a 1st year)! She was here! She's in a masters program for marine biology that was doing some field stuff in the south pacific so she and one of her friends in the program were traveling around New Zealand for their break. So it made the day much better and I went and met her and her friend and we went to the botanical gardens and down town and then the next day they went to Cadbury and a beer factory while I did work, then we all met back up again later and went to see Penguins and Seals at a wild life reserve! They were so cute. We went out to see them on this amazing four wheeler thing. We got pretty close too. The seal pups were playing and the penguins were pretty low key. They are this rare species of yellow eyed penguin and this place does a great job of preserving their habitat. The penguins live 18-22 years and they choose a mate/partner at about 2 or 3 then stick with them for life if the first time mating is successful. Nice. It was really fun reminiscing with Sarah and relating our Frisbee team's soap opera drama to her friend and having someone to share Dunedin with.

Other important things I forgot to tell you about- back step a bit to last week

Women's Self Defense Class
A really good class I think. He's great at being very practical about it. If you're being attacked you aren't going to remember some amazing complex moves. He's all about least amount of force, simplest things that will do the most damage. He works on making it more about muscle memory as well so that things can become more of a reflex. I missed it this week b/c I was seeing penguins, but I'll go again next week. I think more than anything its nice to give people confidence that they can do Something in a situation like that.

Improv Class- Accept the Offer!
So this is going really well so far, I do have a bit of reading but its mostly really fun so far. Even the book I read. I always feel so playful and willing to try things after class. I think next week we might do something with contact improv as well. So one of the basic teachings in improv in order to keep things going and help your partner is to say yes to any offer. So your partner says "Oh I see you got a new sweater", you don't say, "no i didn't", or "its pants not a sweater". You say, "yah my grandma gave it to me. I just love all the hand stitched kittens on the front." or whatever. So if some says, "oh John how are you doing since you lost your leg in that horrible snake charming accident?" - you now only have one leg- so go with it, don't avoid it. Another big one, which I may have mentioned before is to play! Its like we once knew how to do this spontaneous stuff, but now we've forgotten, so we have to go back to how we were when we were little. Which is funny because that coincides with lots of things that I am learning in child development about the significance of play and social understanding in people. Oh yah today I also learned that there is research supporting that generally the only child, or then the oldest has the highest IQ and so forth on down, possibly because the later you are in line, the less attention from parents you get. So a lot of a person's intelligence has to do with early learning and stimulation. Plus genetics and whatnot. That is also a cool class, I tend to simultaneously relate to things in there by remembering being a child and thinking ahead to when I will be a parent some day. Everyone should be required to take child development if they are going to be a parent. Hopefully I'll remember it i guess. I do have a book. haha

The PARADISE TRIP!!!!!
So now we come to last weekend. I had an amazing trip with the tramping club. We were about an hour and a half north of Queenstown, if you watch the bachelor evidently they went there. It is a place really called Paradise. We went up Friday night it was about a 6 hour drive with a stop for dinner in there. Then we camped and got up early for our tramp. I went on the "easier" tramp which I think just meant it was shorter. We started at 9:30 and got back at 4:30. We went up the mountain to a pass then up a little higher for a better view, it was like walking up stairs with the occasional climb for several hours. Then we ate lunch up there and headed down which was actually much more mentally challenging as opposed to physically challenging going up. Sometimes you had to turn around and go backwards. Anyway it was great and it was challenging but I did well I think. I am not in awesome shape, but i think there is something to be said for endurance being ingrained in me I think. I don't know if its a mental thing or I know how to breath correctly, but I handled it really well I think. SO yay I am a tramper, and not the kind that's bad! Then we hung out that night and cooked and the next day played at a lake!

THE BEST THING EVER-WE HAVE TO DO THIS!!!!!
So we NEED to do this with ultimate. Take two old crappy sleeping bags and get in them, lay a tarp down. Then WORM WRESTLE without using your hands, it is thoroughly entertaining. IT MUST BE DONE! Refer to pictures... picasa- i will add the seals later. http://picasaweb.google.com/melaniebeth.martin have a lovely day everyone, i will get back on top of sending things once this work clears up!