Okay, for for the none of you that read my blog on a regular basis, you’d know that back in November of 2007 I wrote my first blog post in over 2 years recapping the previous couple years of my life. In the post I promised a series of 9 following posts to give a bit more insight into what I had been up to. I made it to 6 posts, and then apathy set in and I took another break;) Actually, I just got a tad busier than I expected and I didn’t want to write as much as I had thought. So here’s the conclusion - a quick and dirty recap of what I’ve been up to in the past months.

I gotta say one of the best perks about studying abroad (especially for a student that can’t settle on one university) is all of the small trips you take when flying from one place to another. This past year has been no exception. After leaving Arizona in December, I hit San Diego, Los Angeles (where I met up with my mate Josie from NZ), San Francisco, Seattle, and Olympia, Washington with my good friend Paul from Arizona. You might be saying now “Those sound like really great places to go, but why in the hell did you spend any time in Olympia, Washington?” Well, it was a really great trip, but the time in Olympia was solely to deal with the fact that I don’t know ANYTHING about cars and I kinda sorta let the engine in my car fry to a crisp in the middle of a massive road trip. Who knew driving for hours, maybe days, with the temp gauge on “H” was such bad thing?

After wasting a day and selling the car for $1000, Paul and I headed up to Seattle and then on to Vancouver where we parted ways and I met up with Kai, my old friend from New Zealand. I spent a couple days with her and her friends in Vancouver and we also hit Whistler, Canada (the site of the 2010 Winter Olympics.) My God, that’s an impressive place! Imagine a small mountain village with ski slopes instead of roads. And something else I’m very happy to say now that I’ve had my Canadian cherry officially popped, I have been curling. Oh yes. Oh yes.

After hopping a jet plane back to Cincinnati, it was really nice to be home for a while and just chill. I didn’t do anything that grand in Cincinnati, but did have a good time with my friends and worked with my friend Tim at his bar on several occasions which was a new thing for me. I did manage to take a small trip up to Chicago over New Years where I met up with my friend Brian (who lives in Iowa but we met in Auckland) and my friend Rosa who I met at ASU. Let’s not get into the details of that trip, but let’s just say Brian and I had a *very* good time. And by the way, avoid Amtrak like it’s the plague.

Flying back to New Zealand I managed to add another country to this list of places I’ve been by spending 24 hours in Nadi, Fiji. The thing that made this most exciting is that it was only a few weeks after a government coup (which is like a regular event in Fiji.) There was much diversity in opinions on the coup amongst the locals, as you might expect, but people were still incredibly chilled out and friendly as.

So that all brings me back to Auckland where I just finished the first half of the first semester in classes. Only 18 more weeks of classes before graduating! I’m having a good time here and getting a lot of important work done, both academically and for my future plans.

Stay tuned.