One week in...

Today is exactly a week since I arrive in New Zealand, and I am already horrible about posting blogs. I promise there will be great ones coming, I'm compiling a list of Kiwi slang translated into the American equivalents, and a list of interesting Kiwi food.

In this past week I flew into Auckland, went to Rotorua on a tour bus with heaps of American students from Australearn, had crazy adventures, and ended in Wellington where I will be living for the next 5 months.

Life. Is. Awesome.

I have the best flatmates every, one from New Zealand, one from Germany, and one from Colorado (who I don't know that well yet).

I promise I will post more in the next few days, I have alot to catch up on. I need to do my laundry, get my student ID, buy more groceries, write in my journal, buy my textbooks, put photos on Facebook, tour the campuses, find where my classes are, the list goes on and on.

I have been sick since Thursday, so I have needed to rest rest rest in order to get better. It's never fun meeting people for the first time when you are not feeling well. I feel and look like a tired zombie most of the time.

I promise I will detail everything I have been up to for the past week, just. not. tonight.

Super Bowl? No, Super EXCITED!

While watching the Super Bowl today, all I could think of was the fact that I leave for NZ two weeks from today.

LEAVE. THE. COUNTRY.

I will be on a plane ready to fly over the pacific exactly 2 weeks from today. Exactly 336 hours from right this moment.

I will be fulfilling a childhood dream when I board that airplane, and I definitely don't deserve it. In my short life I have already fulfilled some of my dreams, and completed things that are other people's childhood dreams I'm sure such as traveling to the continent of Africa, going on safari in Kenya, skydiving, graduating from high school and college, etc.

So why me? Why do I get to run off and do something that I have longed for? All I know is that I have this opportunity and I will make the absolute best of it.

The wise words of Bilbo: “It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.” ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

Revival...and onto adventure!!!

Yes I am just another person who starts a blog with lofty aspirations...and then doesn't write anything for months, but by necessity I have to revive this blog because I will be leaving for New Zealand in about a month.

I will try to update often to let all of you know what I am up to.

Until then...

Me in a nutshell

With visual means you can explain a whole wealth of words, therefore negating endless babble.

Via Mushaboom Movement

Ordered

In my architecture discussion section we have idealistic conversations about nature and the built environment. My fellow students try to wax poetically about how the world would be better if everyone did x, y, and z. "If only people knew about being environmentally friendly, if only people were informed..."

I'm not necessarily pessimistic, but I am a realist. People know smoking is bad for them...yet they do it anyway. People know driving gas guzzling cars is bad for the environment...but they continue to drive anyway. The fact of the matter is that we do not see immediate consequences for our actions, so therefore we continue in our set ways. /End rant/

My real reason to post was these images I found via one of my fav blogs Goodmorning & Goodnight. Which he took via here.

We idealize and romanticize nature all the time. Both of these pictures are 'nature' but with two very different patterns of organization. We (as in my fellow architecture discussion student collectively) love to say over and over again that we have to get back to 'nature' and be more balanced with 'nature', yet no one has defined exactly what nature and natural means. How can we have a discussion when we are not even defining what we are discussing in the first place?

A Closet Christian

Recently I’ve time and time again been presented with the choice of being authentic, or being liked. I’ve chosen the latter…all the time. It’s not something I’m proud of. What comes along with the desire to be liked is aiming for the middle ground, not too high or low, but just enough to blend in. In the end you sell out: you sell out your beliefs, your morals, your values, and everything that matters so deeply to you (secretly).

I find myself as a closet Christian on campus. I veer away from even mentioning the name of Jesus because of what I know may be coming to me. Just the other day in class Christians were mentioned in relation to the design field, as having a ‘Christian design practice’, and the class erupted in laughter. I know I should expect to be misunderstood as a Christian, for heaven’s sake the person we Christians take that name from (Jesus Christ) was misunderstood and mistreated. It’s just hard to be surrounded by people who are making a laughing stock about what you hold most dear to you. It cuts deep man, real deep.

I really don’t know where to go from here. Only that I know I want to hold onto truth whatever the cost, and it’s going to hurt. But I desire to live not just for my own personal happiness, goals, dreams, and aspirations, but for a higher purpose.

Revival.

I knew that over the summer this blog was not going to be a priority. Things like: relaxation, rest, and renewal were on the forefront. Also during the summer I'm vehemently opposed to anything that requires some sort of need to produce content. Now that I have replenished the well, I am now ready to haphazardly post again! Don't worry, I'm not going to go away anywhere anytime soon.

So to begin again! More ideas, thoughts, ramblings, design, creativity ahead....

By TakingITGlobal (http://www.sproutecourse.org/) [image], via Wikimedia Commons