Happiness is Directly Proportional to Making Friends, Staying up Late, and Finding a Piano

Hey everyone! Happy New Year! It is now 2009, the start of the year, time for new beginnings. I'm in Greymouth right now and am heading to Hokitika in two hours time. Anyways, we were in Nelson for a while. It was good for the most part, but one day I went to find a piano, usually not a hard thing. There are so many churches, so I just set off in search of steeples. I looked at every church in Nelson I think, and every music store. There are also a lot of old houses with high roofs that kind of look like steeples, so I went to those too. It took two hours, and I finally found an electric piano at the Salvation Army Church. I practiced for a bit, but it was not very satisfying. I felt kind of sad for the rest of the day. But that night, Bretton found me a piano- at the hostel! It was in a separate building, but I felt so much better after I found it. Not having your own instrument while traveling can be tough, but I have learned to appreciate even the worst pianos. That piano was very out of tune, with sticky keys, and constant sustaining, yet I still got satisfaction from playing it. I feel as though I am growing as a musician and a person in some way. The next day, we walked to the centre of New Zealand, played frisbee in the park, saw a few movies. We also went bush whacking. It was awesome, we went on this Maitai Valley trail and got kind-of lost. So we went off the track for a bit, then found some other tracks. We ran into a cyclist who said that we should take a lower track that was coming up. But at the lower track, there were three possibilities. We decided to take the track that had a sign about being a project. By project, they meant not finished. But it took twenty minutes of walking to realize that, and by that time, we were a while away from the main track. Ready to head back, we cut through the trees and came upon a farmer's road. We could see Nelson from where we were, but not really a way of getting there. So we climbed over a fence into a field full of sheep and tried to make our way down. But the hill was so steep, it was to dangerous to walk straight down. So we walked down in a very round-about kind of way. Then, when we had finally made it down, we had to walk through these winding residential roads to make it back to our hostel. Winding roads constitute a short cut, don't you think? I have been told that "A shortcut is the longest distance between two points.". That is a very true statement. We tried to slide down a very gravelly hill, which resulted in dirty clothes and a few prickles in my legs. When we finally got back, we inhaled some food and then ran off to the movie theatre, to watch "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button". I also popped a bag of popcorn and snuck it into the theater- something I've always wanted to do. I don't know how I got it in though, you could smell it quite well. It was good, but it didn't really make me feel anything, is that not the purpose of a movie? It ended up where it started, so I might as well not have even watched it. Anyways, then we went to this concert, because it was New Years. The first band was terrible! When the lead singer (male) started singing "Let's Get Physical" and doing a body wave thing, I knew I had to go on a walk for a bit. But the next band was really awesome. We also met some Dutch people and talked to them until midnight. Then we, out of custom, went to the bar. It was okay, but it closed, so we went to this bar/club. We just sat outside and talked to some people for a bit. After a while, some people from our hostel started drifting by. I have come to believe that how early you stay up affects how many pictures you feel like taking. Around 2:00 AM is when people get very photo happy. At about 3:30, we headed back to our hostel, leading back three others who were too drunk to find it. One guy, an American was rambling about New Zealand phrases. I remember him saying, "Sweet as. I'm never saying that again. I mean, sweet as what?" It was pretty funny. The next day, we all slept in and really did nothing. It was quite pleasant. On January 2nd, there was a jazz festival in Nelson. The field was totally full of people. It started off with this flutist, she played the alto flute and then the soprano. But it was truly impressive, I spent the whole hour she performed gaping at her in amazement. I don't remember what it is called, but you can hum and play the flute at the same time, harmonizing with yourself. It is really cool, and she was doing it for a good part of her performance. Then she flutter tongued and hummed at the same time! I didn't know that was possible, but it was amazing! Then there were some other bands. Before they went on stage, we met a drummer (Richard) from a band called "The Wellington Heads". That was pretty cool, they were awesome. Then the next band, "Brilleaux" played. Sydney and I got up and danced like fools, but had an amazing time. Then we listened to the next band, "Shaken Not Stirred" and it was awesome. I love music fests! Then we met up with, guess who? Olli again. We ate supper and then went to the bar. Olli had barely slept the night before, but was staying up because it was the last time we would ever see each other again. He looked terrible, so we went to Burger King where he promptly ate a meal for two people. When we headed back to the bar, we looked for Sydney and Bretton. We found them outside sitting with Richard and the sax player from the band. I think I have some sort of talent at making conversations go deep very quickly. I asked him, "How are things going for you, are you happy with your job?" (I really wanted to know how making a living as a musician is.) But then he went way into depth about everything and Buddhism and such. Then he asked me the same question and I had to respond in depth as well. We talked like this for an hour at least. It was nice, but not exactly a light topic. Bretton decided to head back to the hostel and so us four just walked around Nelson, talking until 3:00 AM. That was all fine and good, but I had to be up by 6:00 AM for a bus the next day. At the end of the night, we said good-bye to Richard. And we said a definitely final (although I don't really ever know) good-bye to Olli. That was pretty sad, I think we had gotten to be pretty good friends, and now we were saying good-bye. Facebook is nice, but it's not person to person. But anyways, we said our good-byes, then I went to bed, and promptly woke up at 6:00 AM. I was pretty tired, but we had a four hour bus ride to look forward to. I listened to music and stared at the guy's hair who was sitting in front of me. One method of dreadlocking is neglect. Well... he had this really gross and disgusting little dreadlock forming by his neck. It was really disgusting to stare at, but the kind of thing that you just have to keep looking at. Then we were in Punakaiki, home of the Pancake Rocks. It took about twenty minutes to realize that there was nothing there but the Pancake Rocks and a cave. So we spent one night there and went caving on our own after the sunset. It was very cool, we saw lots of glowworms after shouting for a bit (apparently the louder you are, the brighter they glow). Then we caught a ride out the next day with a couple we met at the hostel. There is not much in Greymouth either. Bretton and I went mini-golfing and did extraordinarily bad. Par was 38. I got 83 and Bretton got 99. Ouch. Our hostel was super cool though. It had all of these masks and paintings everywhere. There is also a piano and guitar, so I practiced for a bit last night. Now we're headed for Hokitika. We're going to take a bone carving class tomorrow. Apparently a lot of jade will turn up on the beach here, so we'll go looking tonight I think. But that's how things are right now. I'm loving the weather, still disliking the bus drivers, and not missing home yet. Why settle for white when you could have green?