Fun Space Facts and Sightings

Here are a few interesting facts that I learned (and still remember today) from our Astronomy tour last night.

• Earth is 8 light years from the brightest star in our sky, Sirius. The second brightest star in the sky, Canopus, is 309 light years away. That's crazy, isn't it! I can't even imagine how bright that star must be up close.
• The closest star to our Sun is over 4 light years away.
• There is a black whole in the middle of the Milky Way. Earth is located about 1/3 of the way into the middle of the milky way - but I was happy to learn that we are not traveling in towards the middle, towards the black hole, but will rather stay at our current distance away from the black hole.
• It takes the International Space Station just 90 minutes to orbit earth. It is traveling at 8km/second (just under 5 miles/second).
• When a star is dying it first turns into a red giant and then a white dwarf. A white dwarf is so dense with gas and dust that a cubic centimeter of matter of a white dwarf star would weight 2,000 lbs. It would essentially be like compacting all the matter in the sun into an area the size of the earth. Currently, about 1,300,000 Earths could fit inside the Sun!

Okay I'm starting to run out of facts that I can both remember and communicate to you in a way that makes sense.

For what we go to see, last night we got to see the Moon, Jupiter, and a globular cluster through the big telescope inside the observatory. We also looked as various constellations including Orion, the Seven Sisters, and the Southern Cross. We got to see Jupiter rise into the night sky and see the moon set. We got to see the International Space Station travel across the night sky - that was really cool. I waved but I'm not sure if they saw me. It's really cool to think there are humans up there that could be looking back down at us. Weird!

For those of you conspiracy theory believers, our guide, Alastair, walked us through all the reasons why we did actually land on the moon and it wasn't a video made in hollywood. If you want more information here, please let me know!

That's all for now.

Today I've jsut been lounging around reading and relaxing and catching up on sleep from our busy week and still from NYE! I finished HP Book 5 today and have started book 4. I had to read them out of order because that was the only order I could get the books in. It might not work to my advantage as far as the plot goes but it did as far as my personally enjoyment and entertainment goes.

Okay, that's actually all for now. 

Also - there will be a big reveal on my blog Thursday night. Hope you are all getting excited!

Best!

Star Gazing

Tonight we all went stargazing with Stargazers Bed & Breakfast near Whitianga. Here are some photos from our night:

The Moon

The telescope

Alanna

Phoebe

Lasma

Me

The Observatory

Phoebe and I with some meteors

Lasma next to some strange thing.

Okay, it's almost 1 am here and I'm very tired. Chat more tomorrow.

Best!

High Tides and Hedgehogs

Today I had the day - my first since New Years Day, and I went to the beach, Tucks Bay to be exact - a local beach. I was very tired so I decided not to try and head across the peninsula but stay somewhere close to home. When we got there it was high tide and there was almost no beach. By the time we left 3 hours later the tide had gone out quite a bit, see the photo below.

The tide went out but the boat stayed behind....

On the walk home we came across a hedgehog on the sidewalk. So cute! Here's a video of it.

Tonight we are going out for pizza at Luke's Kitchen and then star gazing. I think it'll be really cool. I'm not sure how easy it will be to take videos or photos at the star gazing event but I'll try. That's all for now.

Best!

Review of the Mussel Kitchen

Here's another quick video from yesterday night of myself, Phoebe, Lasma, and Alanna.

Nothing too much from today. We had another busy day at the cafe, I've been working a bit on the lyrics to our music video, and then just hanging out reading Harry Potter tonight. I have the next two days off but I'm just so tired from working I haven't really planned them out yet. I'm sure something fun will happen but I really wouldn't mind just hanging out around town and relaxing.

That's all for today - sorry I don't have anything more exciting. I'm just super beat!

Best!

My New Hobby: Lyric Writing

Sunday, January 5, 2014 - 8:45 am

I think I've found my new hobby - lyric writing! I never knew I had such mad rap skillz. Well I actually can't guarantee you'll think I'm any good but I'm really enjoying trying to write a rap for our music video. I woke up during the night last night and couldn't get back to bed because I had lyrics flying around in my mind. Haha! I can't wait to get the song written and the video recorded so y'all can see what I've been up to down here.

On an unrelated note, I want to send out my sincere sympathies to those of you who are stuck in MN right now. I cannot believe how cold it is going to be there this coming week. It appears you still have a day to get out before the bitter cold wind chills of Monday set in. New Zealand is not a bad option but anywhere in the Southern Hemisphere would be really nice right now. If I were you, I'd leave. If you decide to escape to NZ let me know - I'll save a table for you on the patio at the Driving Creek Cafe.

Best!

Mussels and Music Videos

Saturday, January 4, 2014 - 10:30 pm

Tonight we went to Coromandel Mussel Kitchen for dinner. They had live music and the food was delicious! I have two videos from tonight but I wasn't able to get them both on YouTube yet. Here's a link to one of them. Stay tuned, the other will be coming tomorrow. Photos to come as well!

Also, I started on the lyrics tonight for our forthcoming music video expected out early next week - exact release date still undetermined. Stay tuned for this as well. 

That's all for right now. I just don't have much time to blog tonight as I'm in the lyric writing mode. More later.

Best!

Smashing Roaches and Records.

Friday, January 3, 2014 - 7:15 pm

Last night before going to bed we found a cockroach in our bunkhouse. Well two actually. Alanna was the only one of us brave enough to kill them and she successfully smashed one and smeared its guts all over the wall. I have a photo, here: 

We never did manage to get the other one. I'm just happy it wasn't crawling on my face when I woke up this morning! 

Today, at the cafe, we served the most meals in one day ever. We did 143 meals, beating the last record day by 11. The cafe definitely felt busy and we were all running around but where it really was hard work was in the dish room. As you've seen in my videos, the dish room is rather small and today we had dishes piled everywhere all day. Tomorrow will likely be the same, or worse, being that it's Saturday. At least no body else threw up today - yet! 

Tonight we're having a pizza party and then maybe heading into town for a reggae concert at bottom pub. I'll let you know how it goes and/or take a video or two. 

That's all for now folks.

Best!

P.S. I've loved receiving all the emails from friends and family recently. Please keep them coming!!   

NYE Video - Ringing in 2014!

Here's a video of us from NYE - enjoy!

Pay Day and Puke Day

Thursday, January 2, 2014 - 8:15 pm

Today we got paid for the first time! Nice! Since last week we've been working extra hours (above the 25 we work for room & bored) in exchange for cash money and are earning about $150/week for an extra 10 hours of work. Although we may only be getting these "extra" hours for another week or two this money is going to be really nice to have. Good to have some money coming in instead of all my money going out. This should definitely help keep my total cost for NZ down. It's crazy to think I'm really happy to be earning $15/hour when I was making more than that before but everything is better when you're living in paradise! I bet living in Hawaii would be great even if you were just making minimum wage. Next stop, maybe?

Enough with the pay day, let's move onto the puke day. A girl threw up at the cafe today. It was really pretty funny since she had drank an entire smoothie and eaten her entire meal and then decided to throw it all up. There was a lot of vomit - but I guess that's better than the dry heaves. I'm just happy she was sitting at a table in the garden and we could just wash it away. If she had thrown up inside I probably would have made her parents clean it up and not helped at all. The girl, who was probably about 9 or 10, handled the situation very well. I feel like kids tend to cry when they throw up - or at least I always feel like crying when I throw up - but she seemed more or less unfazed by the whole incident. I'm sure if there hadn't been any adults around she would have gone on with her day as normal but the parents and grandparents were making sure she sat there for a few minutes to see if she would vomit again. She didn't puke again while at the cafe but I sent here with an empty ice cream tub for the road just in case. I hope this is my only vomit incident for the year but the chances are low being that's it's only the 2nd of January.

That's all for today - or all that I can think of now. Nothing big planned for tomorrow - just more work - but I'll let you know what fun things we get into!

Best!

Happy New Year!

Wednesday, January 1, 2014 5:55 pm

Happy New Year from 2014!

I meant to post last night and wish you all a Happy New Year from the first time zone in the world but I ended up being much to busy having fun to bother. Hope you all are enjoying New Years Eve in the states. As I'm writing this it is currently 3 minutes until the ball drops in NYC - it already feels like old news here. It's crazy being 19 hours ahead of CST.

For a recap of yesterday, I had the day off and went back to New Chums beach by myself. It was fairly crowded since it was New Years Eve day and everyone is on holiday here. I spent about 6 hours there listening to music, reading my book, getting some sun, and watching the people. It was a perfect beach as well. I hitched over there again, as I don't have a car, and it ended up taking me 4 rides in total there and back. My first ride was from a couple nice women. They took me to the turn off for Whangapoua where I caught a ride from Victor, a local Maori guy who drove me all the way to end of the beach where the walk to New Chums starts. He probably saved me about 30 minutes of walking, how nice. On the way back I got a ride from a couple in their early 60s to the turn off for Coromandel. The wife was from California so that's cool - it's always fun to meet Americans. Then my final ride I got form a man, his brother, and his daughter. The man who was driving had spent 3 years hitching around the world and said he owes rides to others and was thus happy to pick me up. He's been to 96 countries - I can't even imagine. What an experience that must've been!

Last night, for NYE, we hung at the cafe drinking and talking until about 11 when we headed to a party hosted by a local guy where there were DJ's and dancing and fireworks. It was very fun but I'm very tired today. We were up until probably 3 am and then I had to work at 11 today. I may elaborate on this post a bit tomorrow as I just don't have the energy to do it now.

Happy New Year everyone!

Best!