#NYESYD: Cyclops Koala's invade the Empire of the Sun

Happy New Years everyone! We made it through 2013. This year I got to celebrate the new year before much of the rest of the world since Australia is second to get the switch after New Zealand.

In Sydney there is only one place to be on New Year's Eve and that is down by the harbor. There are millions of people that head there for music and food and fireworks!

We were extremely lucky because the lady we are staying with works for whoever puts on the show and she got us four tickets to a VIP viewing area right in between the Sydney Harbor Bridge and the Opera House (it's called Dawes Point).

This is what the day looked like. We woke up at 5:30am in Aukland to catch our 8am flight to Sydney. I stopped and got a stuffed sheep in the airport, because, New Zealand! The flight was about 4 hours but we lost 2 so we got in around 10am. We got a cab to our new stomping grounds in Glebe at these yoga students flat that they have been nice enough to let us take over.

When we got there we found out that we had these special tickets. At first we only had two, so Sami and I were going to take them but we ended up getting four and all being able to go.

We settled in, got some food at a place called Gourmet to Go that was actually the farthest away from that (it was a burger joint). Had a little picnic and we were off to the races. We left the apartment at 4pm and took a cab down to The Rocks, which is the downtown area that all this hubbub was happening at. There was already a crowd of people camped out to see the midnight firework display and we joined them.

After finding out that they did not open the gates for the Illuminate party until 7pm, we sat up on a grassy hill amongst the plebs who would spend their night watching from a still cool (but slightly less so) vantage point. Once 7 arrived we grabbed a spot in the massive line and made our way into the venue. We made the mistake of spending our time on the hill instead of in line and so we did not get chairs but it was nice sitting on the grass so it wasn't that much of a loss.

There were food vendors and a bar and a nice big stage. Turns out part of the pre-show included a concert by Empire of the Sun, which was pretty epic, especially since I wasn't expecting it at all! At one point when I was walking back from the bathroom the main singer jumped off the stage and walked right in front of me. I think I may have even accidentally cut him off...

However, the not so great part of the pre-show was my ever awesome brother having no shame, getting picked (pun!) for an air guitar contest, and turning it into a strip tease... Really not a pleasant experience for me.

Anyways, you get the picture, it was a grand party! Once the countdown happened, the fireworks went off and it was magic. These were seriously incredible. Hands down no fireworks display could beat this one, especially watching it from the best viewing place in the whole city!

The mob that followed would have been much more enjoyable had I not been extremely uncomfortable, awake since 3:30am (Aus time), and pretty lost. It was about an hour and a half walk back to our place and being that the streets were full of drunk humans they weren't allowing cars or busses into downtown. So we walked, and walked, and walked. Finally, after passing an apple store and hacking their internet to use google maps I discovered a way out.

We got back to the flat at 2am after jumping in a 10min cab for the last half hour of the would be walk. Being as exhausted as I was after being awake for almost 24 hours, I didn't actually get to sleep for a while, which is surprising. I successfully stayed up for exactly 24 hours from 2013-2014 so you know that's a good sign as to how the next will go.

It was quite a way to bring in the new year and I'm pretty sure I will never forget the start of 2014. 

There And Back Again: A New Zealand Tale By Yours Truly

It's been about two weeks since my last update and I am now back in Aukland. The last few weeks have been spent traipsing around the north island of NZ. Instead of doing a play by play description of what happened I thought I'd share the trip with you via my favorite to least favorite portions.

The first being only a day or so ago before our return to the big city. We spent two nights in a town called Waitomo which is inland but near the north-west of the island. It is an area that is known for its caves and specifically it's glowworm caves. I must preface this little description with an announcement. 'I absolutely love caves and pretty much everything about them!' They are beautiful and eery and spiritual and just dang cool!

So here we are on our last official stop in NZ amongst a giant network of caves. Let's just say pretty much everything we did rocked my socks. Even the simple tour where we just walked through an extremely groomed cave made me happy beyond measure. At one point I was able to find my own little cave that I crawled into and got quite dirty in the process. We floated through a cave on a boat and looked up at thousands of glowworms that made the ceiling look like the night sky. This would have been better had there not been a screaming baby on our boat (just our luck). But by far the best part and the highlight of my trip so far was black water rafting. It was essentially a three hour excursion through a semi-wild cave with floaty-tubes. We jumped off waterfalls and floated in the dark and scrambled over rocks, through crevices. I felt like such a badass explorer and I loved it!!

Moral of the story, caves are brilliant and I probably shoulda been a geologist since geology rocks! (Bazinga!)

The next best part of the tour of NZ's north island had to be this town called Rotarua which is a geo-thermal hot-spot (jeez, with all the puns in this post). It was pretty much a Pagosa Springs (for those of you who know what that is) on steroids. You couldn't throw a stone without it landing on a geyser or in a hot springs. We spent a good three days soaking in every different kind of hot water there was. We did a proper manicured spa type and a wilderness warm/cold river mixed pool.

On top of the ever present hot water and steam that made me feel like we were fresh from a land before times movie, they had an epic museum. Speaking of, one thing I have decided about NZ in general is that they freaking know how to set up a museum. Every one that I have been to here is just great! Let me tell you, I know my way around all different types of museums but they are seriously special here. They make a point to really have an interactive experience that shows their topic on all levels from a bunch of perspectives.

The next place, (but remember I am doing these by enjoyment and not by a timeline) was our visit to the Shire. This one came on the way from Tairua, which I will tell you about, to Rotarua. We did not actually spend the night here but I think it must count.

The Hobbiton movie set is a huge tourist trap in a town called Matamata that is really only on the map because of the movie. Regardless of the bees to honey mentality of the people there it was quite pleasant. We went on a beautiful sunny day, got to stroll around a perfect looking Shire and even had a few free drinks at the Green Dragon Pub. It was pretty cool  to see the set still completely dressed and really feel like we were in the movie. Plus so many Sheeps!!! This was my first proper viewing of the famous NZ Sheeps. The set was built on a farm that had so many of the little guys Baaing around.

So now we come to the not so fantastic things...

Now let's keep this in perspective, they are not as great relative to some pretty awesome things that happened and yes, I am on vacation so even the parts that kinda suck are good compared to ten page papers or eight hour work days.

The issue is that traveling with family can simultaneously be super special and exceedingly exhausting. There were definitely times when I experienced the latter. Like driving for example. We rented a car for our trip, so my mother and I could switch off driving (on the left side). I picked it up quite quickly and she did too but also struggled a bit more than I did. This is not the frustrating thing, the frustrating thing was directions. I consider myself to be really good with directions (modest, I know) and by that I mean I actually know how to properly read a map. The trouble is when I am driving, which I often was, I cannot also read a map so I rely on someone to navigate for me. Only I seem to be the only one who can do that correctly and thus the frustration. Anyways, to make this all short and sweet, having to pull off every ten min to check the map for myself while the rents are arguing about the correct direction can really take it out of you.

There were a few moments (and by a few I mean too many) similar to this that soiled some of our activities but I won't get into that too much.

The next place I wanna talk to you about was a town called Tairua. We stayed there first after leaving Aukland and also right before Rotarua. This town is on the north-east coast in the Coromandel. It is home to Cathedral Cove (the entrance to Narnia) and the hot-water beach.

This beach would make an awesome anthropological study. People mob the it at low tide, dig out the sand near some hot water springs that are on the beach, and sit in their little wholes till the tide comes in. The issue is if you get there late (like we did) most of the good areas are taken, so you must either wait until someone vacates their nest, steal an already dug whole, jump in with someone else or try and make a stream from another tub to your own. (If you're curious, we ended up stealing someone's vacated nest).

This part was pretty cool and the baby goat at our hostel was adorable but overall I was not wild about our stay in Tairua also since I was sick the whole time and my birthday there was kinda awful it did not help their case. But again trying to keep some perspective.

Now we have come to the last place and also my least favorite since there was not really anything to do besides a few nature walks which were enjoyable but nothing to write home about. This place was Taupo, which is right on a lake, land locked in the center of the island. It is across the lake from Mt. Doom (lord of the rings movie site). We were also there on Christmas and Boxing Day (which is a big deal here) so it was dead the 25th and absolutely crazy the 26th. It was just all around my least favorite of our locations.

I know this was a long post (so thanks for barring with me) and I probably left a whole bunch of stuff out but I really did try and get all the highlights in here and it's really not easy to post when I can barely get internet.

Our next stop is Australia and I should be more frequent with these updates but anything could happen...

For now farewell land of silver ferns, all blacks, and kiwis, you were a blast and hopefully I shall visit again sometime soon!

It's My Birthday, I Will Rant If I Want To!

So apparently I'm going to be 22 in like 5min. Or am I? I am currently pretty much an entire day ahead of the time zone I was born in so technically it's not yet my birthday, or does it go by wherever you are in the world? Either way no one warned me that I was suddenly no longer going to be 10 and all of a sudden I would be a true adult without anymore excuses.

So I got past the extra-special 21 and there is not another big marker until 25 so basically the next few years are just filler birthdays. 22, it just sounds gross! But at least I don't have to spend it at some boring dinner or bar or however one would usually spend one of the most insignificant birthdays ever.

I get to be traipsing around New Zealand. I did a bit of that today, after one of the longest plane trips I have ever taken. I thought flying from New Mexico to India was long but I think the trip from there to New Zealand might be worse... I also unfortunately got sick, so that sucks. 

I was pretty ill my first whole day here and kinda just passed out in our hostel after taking a shuttle, walking aimlessly around downtown Aukland with a 13kg pack on my back, and than finally taking a really short cab ride to the hostel cuz I was sweating bullets and about to pass out on the street corner. Luckily that did not happen and I got to shower before I fell into a coma from a fit of coughing. I woke up briefly to eat some sushi (cuz a woman's gotta eat!) and than I slept through the night.

I got up this morning and felt loads better. I flushed even more gross India toxins out with massive amounts of liquid and vitamin C before we went to spend the day in one of the coolest museums I've ever been to. Like how cool is it that New Zealand is literally the last place on earth to be settled by humans who are also the first mammals (besides a stupid little bat that flew here from Australia and probably should not even count) to inhabit the land. I always thought New Zealand was all about the sheep but turns out there are no mammals that are even native here, just birds! 

After the lesson in all things Polynesia we went to feel powerful and behold the whole city from the massive skytower (quite like the Pearl tower in Shanghai or the space needle in Seattle). We had some tea up at the tippity top and watched the sunset (at like 8:30pm may I add, hell yeah summer! And Southern Hemisphere!). 

So yeah, after that birthday dinner (la la la, we get it Dharma it's your birthday and shit). Now I am in bed wrestling with my quarter-life crises but not really because 22 doesn't even get that I have to wait until I'm 25...

It feels like coming home... Kinda.

Our first full day in India falls on the tail of a two day, 48 hour trip. Starting in NM we  (Guru Amrit Hari, Siri Dharam, and myself) left, the night of the fourth. We had a red-eye flight to NY, spent a few hours there in the city and than we were off on a 14 hour flight straight to Delhi. After seeing some of the new MPA generation play soccer and basketball on a quick trip to the American embassy school, we had our last flight to Amritsar. I had a very introspective moment watching the kids play. I realized how much of a different place I am in now in my life. It has never been as apparent to me before as to how much time has actually past and how much growth I have gone through since high-school.

On the last flight we got bumped up to business class and I ended up sitting next to this incredible punjabi woman. She said she worked for the Indian gov. and helped me locate some lost jewelry. Turns out she is Bagal's (a very prominent and corrupt politician who is the one hosting the Kabaddi competition I was there for) wife. 

We arrived and picked up the other members of our USA Kabaddi team. We sat on the bus for another 4 hours with everyone with a short break at Haveli for some delicious grub. Finally we arrived at our hotel at 2am on the 7th. 

When we woke up after a slightly too short rest it was 6:30 am and breakfast time. I went downstairs with my roommates to a room full of Pakistani women in their green jackets, ready to play England. We were to play India in a match in which we are a rag-tag A team and they are a well oiled machine. Most of our team had not ever seen each other play before this and far from played together. Needless to say we lost pretty badly but we went down gracefully to a team that is far superior. 

Before the game I was a ball of nerves, which is a relatively new sensation for me. Since graduating from MHC, I have begun to get serious anxiety that I had never previously felt. While everyone else was on the bus catching some extra rest before the game I was simultaneously pumping myself up and quacking with nerves.

We finished all of our games. We won against Kenya in our 2nd game and lost to India and NZ. The India girls are so good! They have skill and technique like woah!! However, the New Zealand team played dirty. They fell back on old habits from rugby and it was real gnarly. Since we've now finished our games we've pretty much been cooped up, either in the hotel or on the bus. It's getting really annoying having security that just won't let us leave. We tried to make a break for it a few times, unsuccessfully. 

The finals were very interesting to watch. India kicked some kiwi bum! I ended up befriending some of the NZ girls and they're cool but also really intense. The Danish girls are really sweet and the Kenyan girls just rock! We never did get to have dance party with though. Every time we tried security made us stop. We really needed to burn off steam but instead during the closing ceremony on the 14th they literally had all the teams in a cage. 

We went to Amritsar, GT, and the school (MPA). It was so weird being back. I actually started to cry at GT when I was bowing but than security would not even let us have a moment so I just got pissed. It was like being captive in our own home. We freaking grew up in Amritsar, we know our way around! Siri Simran and I snuck away to get some Kulcha though and that was awesome! My stomach was smiling for hours! We got to go to the school for like two seconds and I did a quick tour, there is not that much that is new, but enough for it to be weird. 

Anyways, off to Delhi now and than onwards to Aukland! 

The First of Many

Hey all,

I know I said that I would start blogging again and than I didn't, but I really am going to. I've even been writing journal entries. I have had very limited internet access up until now and it will still be spotty from now on.

The way this will have to work is that I will be writing (by hand) about all the lovely things that are happening to me on my six month trip all over in a little journal and when I get internet I will type them out. You folks will get a few posts all together about various different things covering certain periods of time.

If I do get the chance to post more frequently I shall try to update more regularly with more relevant posts.

So stay tuned for a truly crazy, hopefully wonderful trip!

Cheerio yo!