This week was punctuated for me by very early mornings – the switch back into the NZ timezone would have worked really well, if I was a morning person. Which, for those of you who haven’t known me very long, I am not.

My mode of transportation for the week was my bike and I was pleasantly surprised to find that I’m not nearly as unfit as I thought I was! During the course of the week, I went with Mum out to the Warehouse to get a couple of plastic bins to use as substitute drawers for my clothes – there wasn’t enough space in the room to live out of my suitcases. I had dinner with Grandma and Grandad, and spent some more time with Dace (including a pizza session for lunch). Dace was also kind enough to drive me and my laptop out to Dove to get it fixed. After the power supply blew while I was in Seattle, I’ve been living off of the technological kindness of others. ^^;

Rach and I also spent some time together, having lunch, talking smack and so on. She showed me around her Linguistics office and introduced me to her “Ling posse”. We also watched The Princess Bride, quoting it incessantly. Lots of backgammon and I got to meet her flatmate Kristin (also a part of the Ling posse) and her boyfriend Boris.

I tried to fix some things on Mum’s computer, spent a fair thwack of time online emailing people, trying to organise to see them, that kind of thing. I also took a trip to Dad’s (it’s weird him not being here) and found my cellphone, which still works – just needed to put some money on it. That was pretty entertaining, as there were a few funny text messages that I had saved on there that I had completely forgotten about.

During the week I also went in to the Japanese Consulate for my interview and exams for the Monbukagakusho graduate scholarship. Both the interview and exams went really well, although the Japanese exam was frustrating – lots of questions that I could read and understand what they were asking me, but I couldn’t recall the specific grammatical response. In any case, I’m sure I’ll get my preliminary endorsement from the Consulate.

I had coffee and catch-up with Jemma and Serah, spent some more time over at Rach’s talking smack with her and Cam… we also watch The Boondock Saints again. Love that movie. Talking with Jemma yielded a heck of a lot of goss about the StAC crew, as well as a potential flat to move into if I’m going to be sticking around in New Zealand for longer. Serah also lined me up with some potential work with her aunt, who runs a software company with a Christchurch office.

I spent some time over at Dan’s and watched some anime, then a few days later went over to stay and have a good marathon. We had fish and chips for dinner (not exactly something I missed, but nice to have nonetheless) and finally watched some of the anime that Dan had demanded I not watch until I was back in NZ with him. Nik also put in an appearance, as he was over for a couple of days from Aussie. It was great to see him as well – he’s been one of the people that I’ve kept in touch with the most since I’ve been overseas and I know we’ll be hooking up in the future for something, probably when I’m off in Japan. The only bad thing about going to Dan’s was the assault on my lungs – after having been in a no-pets zone for such a long time, the 16 cats at the house made my lungs seize up a bit, and I didn’t really recover properly until I got back and Mum’s flatmate (Chris, very decent guy although not the chattiest sort) gave me an inhaler breath of Ventalin. Mum spoke at me fairly sternly about not going back over there. Looks like I’ll be having to spend less time in his house until I’m used to the cats again. I slept for about 12 hours after that and spent today just chilling out.