Mondays + happiness = hardly a Monday at all

Happiness on Mondays

My favourite tea, but i have no way to find more. Mum even looked at trying to ship a box here from England which is where i picked it up in the first place. It's called bright mood, and it does just that with cinnamon, hops and orange peel. It's tag even comes with a little saying for your day, often confusing

Other ways to cheer myself up on a Monday are to spin around on a chair, actually do a little bit of study which makes any movie watching feel more deserved and myself less stressed for future exams. Have a long hot shower, wear thick woolen socks, drink gingerbread hot chocolate, go outside and just walk (between trees is best).

The secret garden

We had a ball, in both ways. It looked charming, everyone was pretty and the live music wasn't bad.
Theme was the secret garden. I used to dream i had a secret garden and buried myself in the bushes around my house for a few hours every time i read that book, except then i encountered weta and spiders as i live in NZ so everything wasn't so fun after that.
                         

These two were lovely ball hairstyles my friends had: 

Finders Sharers

I've found an interesting artist; i usually do not like sculpture at all and yet i like these. Combined with painting as Shintaro Ohata has done it is actually rather beautiful, in a style that is fresh to my eyes.

Now

I have three days till my epidemiology exam and it seems more and more to me like it is a nothing subject with very little you can study for it.
Finding friends birthday present is extremely difficult sometimes, boys are so much harder than girls. With two weeks to go i'm thinking about this: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0070QMUFA/?tag=047-20 for kicks, though i have no idea how to order off amazon i still feel a unicorn mask would go down quite well.

Door121 - Wild Runaway

Super 8 film magic from Door 121.   

Photographer: Zachary Handley

Model: Kendall Walters

Stylists: Elena Antoniou and  Sarah Leung

Filmography/DOP: Andrew Kaineder Graphics: Studio Alté

Music: 1976 Studios/Planet Love Sound - "We'll Be Alright (Outro)"

Crowned in trouble

Now

Everyone has their motives for the way they are, sometimes they forget that other people care
Life is troubling at the moment, everyone is extremely opinionated when i just want to float on through with a happy face on painting the world and learning the health sciences for interest. Well, interest and a battle of learning, physiotherapy sounds interesting but very one way as you can't branch out so easily as with a bachelor of science.
I met a girl who painted cherries on my fingertips last night
I drank fluorescent green drinks that tasted of Malibu and pink grapefruit and weren't too sweet for me, then shots came out as is the Dunedin way. Myself and Judge found bright yellow cowboy hats and purple lays and leaned back on chairs as we waited for everyone to come back in and smile at our outfits.
We gathered in the courtyard and called up at people through windows, people being someone named Blackbeard as that was his last name, i like his name.
Then we went to dinner and all the calm and fun went out the window, it was so loud in my ears and people would listen or not listen and not everyone knew everyone else and so passed meaningful glances along the table about these 'other people'. I was the only person at the table who knew every single person.. the way that they then dealt with each other was both interesting and i-don't-want-to-be-here. Some people really are territorial over the strangest things it seems, that and there was a crazily high number of girls present.

Health sciences

It's not too bad and not too wonderful at the moment being a first year health science.. our numbers at my residential hall have more than halved since the beginning of the year and still i am on my way toward this goal I've had since year 10. I'm feeling far more shaky than before about such a dead-set straight course of this to this to this. Our human body systems (HUBS) terms test on the cardiovascular and respiratory systems was on Friday and i found it fine, which surprised me as i had seen the averages for the test from the last two years were 50% and 56% average marks. Which are pretty low considering that so many have dropped out already, so i would have thought the average might increase after the mid-semester break at home. It is true that the work load has decreased with only three papers this semester and i feel like i have far more time. With a 15% epidemiology test in 5 days i may need that time for more studious reasons now and leave my gym sessions at Unipol until late in the evenings. Also reading notes at the gym while cycling or on the cross-trainer is a great idea!

Tales

Making daisy-chains is just something that should be done when ever possible. In winter here there are no flowers, unsurprisingly.. but there are just a few more months until spring. 

This was in high summer when we made butter-cup chains and wore them on our heads until we felt silly (no longer in the hills) and i rescued a tiny rabbit from a grey cat who was determined for me not to have it. 

It seems like forever when i first discovered oil paints and was painting little pictures on my friends skin on our Easter camp in the middle of no where. That was the camp where i wore a home-made onesie and awoke with morning hair that was interesting and huge. I had my hot air balloon obsession at that point, there is something very charming about them that exceeds the beauty a plane can have. I still wish i could take a ride in one. 

All just for fun of course

Photo diary

There a quite a number of reasons i have made this blog
I feel the need to be honest, free and happy.. this makes me feel so
I love to share my pictures and paintings and experiences, pieces of my life that make me so happy
Here are photos from my life for the last two years, the year it snowed for the very first time (global warming uh oh?), the year of my final year of school before i could 'escape' of sorts, the year i fell out of love and have been lost to it ever since and the year i began to feel a little lost and wished to travel places with a feeling so strong i still feel its power. The photos are my own and occasionally others:

This year is my first year away from home and I miss it (my cats, family, food, friends, comfort and sitting by the fireplace with a hot drink - I do love my hot drinks) This year has been the hardest year of my life with the course I am taking, now in my second semester and the mid-semester exams are a mere 8 days away.

My final portfolio, at the viewing evening 2011

My shared birthday with Kate - we camped, made rainbow jelly and swam in the sea in our underwear

paint party at Venture, it was huge and very cold afterwards

The strangest art project for school of my life

Floorball, we played this for a while. We were the only non-adult team

Sweet treats

There are so many places i would like to go, things to see and idea to try

Gelato Messina in Kings cross, Sydney. It has been voted the best Gelato in Australia. the little shop looks so cute and the piles of Italian goodness are so thick and creamy. Unlucky i live in New Zealand then...

From  http://fellt.com/garypepper/2012/07/sweet-treats,
 in one of the most delicious posts ever made by Nicole Warne,
It's full of beautiful food, my favourite to look at xx

This year i have made a friend who has never in her life tasted Gelato, something i intend to change over summer in December. My place of choice to do this will of course be Cafe Eis, the Gelato and coffee place by the sea to go in Wellington. By the end of my life i hope to have slowly but surely tried all the different flavours you can make in Gelato, luckily i have a long way to go <3 It's so much more refreshing than ice cream...

Of course there's so much more food to look forwards to in Summer, like the berries, melons, Christmas tiramisu and being at home and baking.. Only 6 months to wait, student life-style till then

another photo from Gary pepper vintage of beautiful food

Till then i can wrap up warm, study and drink hot drinks after chilly outdoor walks

Mum came and visited me during the week, it was wonderful to see her... we did everything

She flew down while i was in a laboratory for biochemistry and waited for me in my room, then we went out for lunch at the Captain Cook with my friends. It's Dunedin's classic cheap student bar with good food. We had wedges with sour cream and sweet chili sauce while we all talked about finding flats.. one of my favourite unhealthy lunch foods down here. 

After lectures for the day she took a few of us out to dinner and we went to Etrusco which is an Italian restaurant that makes amazing pasta and pizza. You can always tell an Italian place is good if the have correct Italian spelling on the menu and use buffalo mozzarella on the margarita, but I had -

PENNE AL NONNO 

Diced Pancetta (cured ham) flamed in vodka with cream, chilli, tomato, parmesan and

fresh parsley

It was amazing, i loved the Italian place.. It had a warm, comfortable candlelit environment with the fire burning and fantastic food. Mums looked really nice too -

PENNE AL VERDE 
Penne pasta tossed in spinach and toasted pinenuts with a dash of cream and fresh Parmesan

I feel i'll be trying to home-make both at home over the end of year holidays, both have become favourites 

On Friday after we walked around and I showed her the view from up the steep streets, then we went to Everyday Gourmet, where we had gingerbread hot chocolate and i tried my very first macaroon; it was earl grey. It was slightly citrus because of the bergamot oil in earl grey which i didn't expect but was quite nice. 

Tale of fireworks underwater

It was Guy Fawkes and we had these tiny traffic-light coloured fire works that spun in multicoloured circles, we sat on the beach and were deafened with the crackle of the main show and after it was over we lit them and threw them on the sand and bounced them off the waves... then they kept going. A flare of red and orange and yellow from under the waves as the firework exploded under the sea. The boys smoked their cigars and drank beer as we lit sparklers and i ran around with it outside, staring into it and laughing.

We tried it again later in a bucket to prove to parents it was true

Love

With the upcoming exhibition, i have begun painting again
One little thing at a time

60% off on canvas has me trying my hand at painting on mounted canvas
Biggest pieces I've ever tried

Now

Trying to grow up is hard, when we came here at the beginning of the year i was firm in my resolve to take the health sciences course and battle my way into physiotherapy and do that for the rest of my life, but why should i do that? I like having a hold on something constant, it makes me feel safe. 
Right now i feel very unsafe, i have no idea how to make the transfer from doing things i love to being out there still doing them. I want to paint, but i do not wish life to be a struggle or turn painting into a chore so I've told myself i can paint in my spare time (what spare time?). I used my enjoyment for the small details of biology to convince myself to take the health sciences. The first year health science course is one of the hardest courses you can take as a first year making the transition from school to university; it requires hard work, time management and skill in all areas of science (that i do not have as much in chemistry and physics). 
I am now completely lost

Deciding what to do for the rest of your life is ridiculous, if the world were good and uni fees weren't so high i would have taken so, so many interest papers. I still wish i could do a year of interest and then go back to trying for physiotherapy.  Or take a gap year and go do something and be someone overseas, rather than someone whose life is in a little box.

We have our UMAT test tomorrow which is worth a lot of our final grade for the year
We are given one online practice exam. I just completed section two which was 'understanding people' i got 41/44 correct, clearly understanding people is my thing <3
I'm interested in physio as it helps people, though not to the simply terrifying extent surgeons do, but I've never wanted to be a surgeon. The shock of having someone die on me would be too great. 

Memory shell

The shell i wore around my neck for a good six months
I put it on the day my granddad died,
it became stuck around my neck as the clasp wedged its way into the shell's curves.
The only way i could take it off was to snap the chain

He died of a heart attack, just after he had been to the post office sending a letter to Scotland with his condolences for his brothers death. Their funerals were on the same day, on opposite sides of the world.

This necklace was my way of mourning him, it was beautiful and aged, deaf to me but talked like the sea in strange ways. It hung over me constantly, hidden under my uniform, filling up with water in the shower that would suddenly tip out over me in bed if i leaned a certain way.

Granddad always had a hearing aid, but it was getting worse. We had to attract his attention and then shout at him simple sentences as if he were a small child who just wasn't listening, i couldn't bring myself to raise my voice at him. I just smiled and showed him things.
He used to tease me about the 'dinosaurs in Karori' though i told him many times there weren't any, and he called me tri-Sarah-tops. If it were his birthday and mum brought him chocolates, which were one of his favourite things, he would try to give me and my sister one - much to mum's extreme disapproval. He would set me up with pieces of paper from the cupboard and coloured pencils, and would let me take home as much paper as i wanted to. We would sit on the ground colouring as he watched from his black leather arm chair with the foot rest.
At the funeral many strangers turned up who we didn't know and sat in the back row, they went to church with him we think, and when it came time to sing the hymns they rose as sang loud and strong and then disappeared again.  Grandma told me I had a pretty voice
It's been two years since he left, i didn't see him all that much when he was here but it's strange that he is gone.

My first lecture in biochemistry led to this
I have the first part memorized now

With Kate
My favourite from the weekend
Found a wine glass that can hold an entire bottle of wine,
i imagine it would be hard to hold full