My Flatmates!

Well, here's my flatmates after Carlos and I cooked mexican night. We have from the left Kiwi Tom trying to figure out my blood sign, myself, JJ from Korea, Shihab from Oman and Prateek from India. I Like to call H74 in Ilam Villages "The United Nations Flat"

I've been slacking on my posts!

I can see that on my first week, I posted 4 times. Now, its been almost two weeks and I haven't posted anything! Well nothing major has happened between Snow-crafting and present time.

I dyed my hair though! Julie came over and we had a fun time trying different hair gel styles and then dying my hair! Julie then taught Julianna and I to make sushi! Fairly successful for first time making sushi. Then Julianna and I had a competition for best sushi roll. Still undecided... Turns out Julianna is known for her Guacamole. NOT gonna make a debate about it... just gonna keep it cool and try to never make a guacamole competition, to not hurt peoples feelings from MY world renown guacamole.

I've been really itching for a motorcycle here, but family be proud. I have been turning down offers and waiting for the right time. Visited a motorcycle at a neighboring town which turned out to be an adventure. To get to Diamond Harbor I took the bus to the Port Hills of Canterbury, went in the Lytlleton tunnel and ended up on the cute-small town of Lyttleton near the harbor. From the harbor I took a 15 minute ferry to Diamond harbor where the pictures of the sailboats were taken. Diamond harbor has maybe 100 residents surrounded by sea-side cliffs and lush gardens. Windy, up-and-down hills had me thinking of buying the motorcycle just for the ride back!

Returning to Christchurch I went straight to SEAL Club's International Beer Pong Tournament! I represented south africa, and the julie, ivana,sophie and julianna decided rather than painting the actual colors of the south african flag, it was more fun to just use my face as an abstract finger-painting canvas for a 2 year old. Anyway, we won 3rd or 4th place out of 20 teams.

Another competition i competed in was aspicy food eating contest! I came about 5 seconds behind 3rd place. I WOULD'VE won , but it was who could eat it the fastest, not who could handle the heat. All the kiwis were crying from the heat afterwards, in fact one got a nosebleed! I felt pretty good from all that practice with mexican food back in the states. (Two of my kiwi friends didnt know what salsa was! :-0

Kiwis are in season, and thus its about 1.50 USD for 12 kiwis. Gotta love it!

Created a great mix drink, heat up green ginger wine, add lemon juice and honey. very good!

I'm off to cook Carne Guisada with Carlos for some friends, I'll try to keep you updated soon!



-"Lukey" Stover We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. -- T.S. Eliot

snow craft!!

Well, I'll make this post real quick because I have some work to catch up, because I was away all weekend. What was I doing, Snow crafting! We headed up to Temple Basin in Arthur's Pass (The same place I went 2 weekends ago) and carried our packs up 1000m difference in elevation through over a foot of snow! I have enough exercise from that weekend for the next two weeks I'm pretty sure. Anyway, Julie, Tom and I slept in out crappy 25 $NZD tent we bought last week, and surprisingly held up against the freezing temperatures. I took the orion constellation photo about 5:00am, and got some other great long-exposure shots.




We proceeded up the rest of the mountain, practicing self-arresting with our snow-axes in case we were to ever slip down a mountain face. Lots of fun, and pretty useful training i'd say! On the way down after our self-arresting training we slid down the mountain on our butts. A lot quicker than going up. Soon ill post the helmet cam video I took.

you can view more pictures from the trip on my facebook page:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2045137&id=1090560130&l=34de07876b

and heres some photos from the first week:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2043531&id=1090560130&l=a911658a71


-"Lukey" Stover

We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. -- T.S. Eliot