Yeah, so I’ve been neglecting this blog thing for a while, but you know, blogging and traveling is hard, whine whine whine whine.  But you two readers (hi mom! hi dad!) are in luck, because tonight I am taking a break from being utterly trashy (see above photograph) to recap my last few months in the middle of nowhere.

Avid readers will note that this blog last left off as I was packing to leave my home in Melbourne, whining about the 90 degree heat.  As of late I have become a professional flee-er of summer, so should not surprise anybody that I landed in Auckland just in time to experience its famed 60s-and-raining weather.  After a couple days in NZ sprawl, I caught a Stray bus north to Paihia in the Bay of Islands.  I spent a week up there, hiking, sand-boarding, boating, eating pies, and brushing up on my beer pong skills.   I saw whales, waterfalls, cows, and best of all, an east coast sorority girl try to explain the concept of rush week to the English.  It was great.

The weather started getting too warm (UPPER 60s!), so after my week in Paihia I packed my bags and headed for Seoul, S. Korea to visit Our Lady of Catface for Thanksgiving.  My friend Amy, who some of you may know as 1/3 of Facedowns, has been teaching English out there for the last year.  This was our second expat Thanksgiving – previously, we taught the Irish about green bean casserole and garlic mashed potatoes and gluttony despite the Great Chip Pan Fire Incident of ’06.  Fortunately, this time we didn’t lose our intended kitchen three days before the feast.  And we’re quite proud of our massive achievement – the upstairs neighbor called the cops on our party at 7pm on a Saturday!  Result!

Disinterested in any further run-ins with the law, I fled back to New Zealand and commenced a bus tour of the North Island’s tourist hotspots.  Highlights included boogie boarding and flying fox-ing in Raglan, blackwater rafting in the caves of Waitomo, rafting down a 7m waterfall in Rotorua, walking around White Island (an active marine volcano) in a gas mask and hard hat, and the ultimate NZ tourist activity, skydiving at Lake Taupo.  I had a fantastic time, and met some great people, but NZ is hard on the pocketbook, so a week before Christmas I headed down to Wellington to resume working.  And in typical me fashion I’ve been funemployed ever since!  Actually, that’s not true – I’ve been doing a bit of temping, but (don’t tell my agencies) I don’t consider that real work (or fun!).

The upshot to being underemployed is that I have been doing a bunch of cooking.  In the last few months I’ve successfully made fresh pasta & ravioli, peanut butter, jam, dill pickles, pulled pork, barbecue sauce, scones, muffins, applesauce, roasted chicken & stock, tomato sauce, and all kinds of other delicious things.  I am going to try to blog a bit more often, and hopefully share some recipes as I try them.

More updates soon (so I promise) about what I’ve been up to in Wellington and etc…

Departures (2008, Japan) – The best way I can think to describe this one is that at it was a very, very good film being slowly strangled by a really stupid melodrama.  Apparently it won the Oscar this year for best foreign film – no idea how or why.  But it was a worthwhile film to see, for those occasional moments of brilliance.

The Yes Men Fix The World (2009, USA) – Two things made this hilarious documentary work: its willingness to stick around when things got awkward, and its use of comedy outside the corporate pranks it was perpetrating.  What would have otherwise been a political documentary starring funny people became instead a hybrid docu-comedy.  And I learned a new text messaging technique!

The Beaches of Agnès (2008, France) – I’d never seen a film by Agnès Varda.  Watching this autobiographical doc made me want to.

Favela on Blast (2008, Brazil) – As a documentary, this one wasn’t that great.  It attempted to tell the story of baile funk and Rio’s favelas through the lyrics of and occasional interviews with its MCs, but didn’t really succeed.  However, the music was awesome, and it was pretty cool to have its hilariously filthy lyrics spelled out in the subtitles.

Rembrandt’s J’accuse (2008, Netherlands) – A film as much about our lack of visual fluency as it was about Rembrandt’s Nightwatch.  Very, very dense (it’s Greenaway!), and something I’ll definitely be catching again once it’s on DVD.  Easily one of the best of the fest so far.

Bluebeard (2009, France) – Pretty terrible adaptation of the Bluebeard fairytale.  After the film, Michael and I came up with two genius ideas – Bluebeard’s Castle would make a great Halloween costume (think dead, blue barbies) and Advent calendar (one of the prizes could be Visine!).  So thanks for that, Bluebeard!

The Maid (2009, Chile) – I have always been kinda weirded out by the idea of live-in maids.  This film did nothing to help that!  An amazing performance by Catalina Saavedra made this intimate portrait of a maid just about perfect.

Sounds Like Teen Spirit (2008, UK) – I was introduced to Eurovision when I was living in London and despite its effects on my liver, I find the whole thing hilariously compelling.  This doc covered the 2007 Eurovision Juniors competition, but not strictly from the “holy shit this is creepy” angle I was expecting.  Probably because it’s harder to make fun of kids… but I was really curious to discover the “why” behind Ukraine’s winning “librarian stripper” entry and instead got a look into the experiences of a few of the less ostentatious acts.