dictionary
new words i've learned
pash = make out
stroppy = fiesty
rooted = fucked, as in the act
gutted = sad, let down
bugger = an expletive, kind of like crap
crikey = see above
nicked/pinched = stolen
"numpty" = dumbasses
sweet as = an expression, like "sweet!"; can be used in many ways, such as "dumb as", "drunk as", etc.
reckon = think, believe
PIES = what's making me fat
...
and 14,000 different ways to say "fuck"

divecon
we're almost done with the fourth to last week of our course. Dive Control Specialist. after this cert, i'll be able to work as a professional diver. whoopdeedoo. the classroom/academic stuff isn't too challenging, but i have to admit that the practical stuff i'm not too stellar with. which isn't so bad really when you consider that at the start of diving, just getting underwater made me ill. now i can actually imagine myself working as a "dive professional". so kudos to me. in other news, andrew is back teaching our class after a four-week holiday. but i'm SO over him. as you may know. oh drama. drama drama drama.

still, i'm quite ready to come home. i'm not quitting my wanderlust, but at some point, you just want the familiar, you know? and i can't freaking wait to sit down to a proper meal with my mom. god i miss her cooking. god i miss food that has taste.

in other news, my dad has been in china for a few weeks. thankfully, he's returned home with no symptoms of a flu. it was really good when i got that early morning phone call from him b/c the night before i started having an anxiety attack about him for no reason. this damn sars. that may be one of the few reasons i wouldn't want to come home. nz is a sars-free country, touch wood.

i know i still have a few stories to tell. i'll work on those.

also, b/c it's after easter, i have started to look for jobs. it's a bit slow b/c a lot of the jobs i'm looking at in nyc and stuff are available immediately and i wouldn't be able to start until the fall. but i've applied for a job here with a local paper. if it's meant to be, it's meant to be, eh? but i'm just going to apply for a lot of jobs at a lot of places.

i've also totally started to slack on my tkd training b/c i'm not going to nz nationals, i don't think. i've also started to eat a lot of sweets. i'll hate myself if i come home fatter than when i left. jeez louise.

that's all for now. love yous.

back to basics
just rafted the wairoa river today. it's only operational on sundays in the summer, and then every other sunday through may. it's a good fun grade five river. it felt good to be back on the river, just enjoying it and using my body, and not worrying so much about alcohol and other crap.

for the second weekend in a row, i've started drinking before the sun went down, the day after a long night out. i've become quite a loose woman.

four weeks left to my course. on the one hand, i can't believe it and don't know what to do. on the other, i'm really looking forward to coming home.

i'm not ignoring you
for a girl with no life, i sure can't find the time/patience/energy to sit down and let you, my demanding public, know what the hell is going on. so much and yet so little that is different.

my birthday is officially over and i am well enough into 26 for it no longer to be a novelty. besides, my habit is to actually claim my new age a month before it officially occurs, so i've been 26 for a while now. the kegs have been returned, the deposit is in my wallet, and the house and my car are basically clean.

monday night i went and watch a late showing of the pianist. boy what a sad movie. but you know that's what you're going to get when you watch a movie about the holocaust. i'm not saying this to minimize the tragedy of the holocaust. rather, i say it because the holocaust was such a tragedy through and through in every way. but this is getting too serious. my point in mentioning this is that i overslept on tuesday and missed a day of diving on the boat. oops. i have 16 dives and i need 60 to be officially certified a dive con. 50 are included with my tuition. looks like i'll be doing a lot of diving over the next month.

i've been a bit "stroppy", i've been told. i'm not sure what the word really means, but i think it's kind of like fiesty. so says judith. and my instructor today got in the way of my stroppiness. i yelled at him, used the word fuck a lot, and basically ignored him the rest of the day, as necessary. he was being a dick. it was cold today and i was getting cold and i haven't been feeling well and we're sitting in 18 degree water just bobbing about not doing anything and yeah it's true i don't wear a top to my wetsuit, but i in fact do "know how to choose my proper exposure protection". asshole. everyone got cold in the end. showed him. the asshole.

in other news, now that it's post-easter/birthday, it's time to start thinking about my future. one of my goals for tonight, which i don't think i'm going to achieve, was to send my application out for a job at the bay of plenty times, the local paper. they are looking for an "experienced reporter". i hope they'll be satisifed with one straight out of graduate school. but since i'm American, i'm sure it'll be okay. (kidding.) i'm going to apply for some other jobs in LA and NY, but i think that's it. i've decided i want to be where friends are, or where the nature is so overwhelmingly beautiful. that basically leaves baltimore out. i'm tired of being lonely. i'm tired of having to make new friends all the time. i've put enough effort into making the friends in my life now, i don't want to have to put too much more effort. and i'm tired of "losing" people. that's something i realized today. i'm tired of making friends and leaving them somewhere, so i think i'm going to stick to my live-in-one-place-for-a-few-years resolution. i think. i don't know if i can make a strict commitment sitting here in front of this computer in this here internet cafe. but it's something to think about, eh?

sidebar: you know it's a small town here when you keep seeing the very large man who opened your car for you that rainy day, when you locked the keys in the car with the engine running. i keep seeing the same large man driving the same large truck all over town. sheesh.

that's it for now. i think i'm going to go stir some shit. a shit-stirrer. that's what i've been called. i prefer drama queen.

beer beer and more beer
my birthday party was pretty awesome, i guess. i got four kegs and from 7pm to 6:30am, 3 of them were drunk. the fourth was tapped at 9:30am. there were fireworks, only one kerfuffle (apparently a record low for a kiwi party), i dragged a girl away by the neck and nearly punched her, herbal remedies, and general frivolity and also depressing shit.

i think i'm getting too old for this shit.

didn't stop me from going with the crew to the beach with the last keg when we were kicked out of my house. the last few days i've been very tired and confused and slowly emerging from an alcoholic fog. the long weekend hasn't helped. happy easter everyone. i want to come home.

but maybe that would be running away.

funny stories
dan's wallet
firewood hunting

to be told in detail at a later date...

global thank yous
i know not all of my friends read this, but i just want to say a very heartfelt and deep thank you to everyone who tried to make me feel loved on my birthday. i decided yesterday to celebrate it for as long as it was april 15 anywhere on this earth, so no wishes were late. it has been great, my friends. thank you all very much. you sure do know how to make me feel homesick.

i wish you could all be here for my 4-keg birthday party tomorrow night, under the full moon. hopefully the weather will keep and it won't rain on our heads or on our campfire.

far from home
the only advantage of celebrating my birthday in this land of strangers is that I can take advantage of the international date line and celebrate it for two days. for when it wraps up here, it should just be picking up in the american time zones. the older i get, the harder it gets, and the bigger of a deal i make of birthdays, it seems. YES IT'S MY BIRTHDAY! i hope you've filed your taxes.

things here are interesting. drama continues to unfold, but it's being received very well. surprisingly well. which makes life both nice and hard.

today we started the stress & rescue section of our dive course. it involved a 1.5 km swim/snorkel. i kicked everyone's asses. it seems that no one is really in the habit of swimming laps, as i once was. it was nice to, once again, establish american dominance over this piddly nation. ;)

it's getting late and i'd really like to go to bed before i turn 26. i love you guys and miss you. knock one back for me, eh?

a funny story
one day a few weeks ago, we were sitting in the smoking area of the school, shooting the shit before we left for murupara. as people were passing their roll-your-own cigarette kits around, one of them mentioned a story of how tobacco was going to be at a premium for a few days because all of it had been taken off the shelves. it seemed that one guy bought a pack and found a packet of a mysterious white substance inside. it was believed the substance was cyanide, and related to some threats made domestically concerning bioterror. letters were sent to the newspaper and the government threatning that cyanide would be dispersed in food and in public places, such as restaurants.

about a week or so after, i was reading the newspaper and it seems that the substance in the tobacco package was flour. some doofus bought the tobacco, used most of it, and then refilled it with flour to make it appear full. he then used a heat sealer to make the package look like it was never opened and brought it back to the supermarket from whence it was purchased for a full refund of $16. the packet was put back on the shelves and purchased again a few days later, setting off the aforementioned alarms. the doofus is now charged with hundreds of thousands of dollars to cover the cost to the supermarket -- for lost profits -- the police and fire departments, and some other public services for their duties rendered during this "crisis".

heh heh.

another first
i am definitely suffering from my first ailment here in the southern hemisphere. i've totally got those body aches and pains that are synonymous with the flu. i'm also very run down from the rafting and kayaking. yesterday, we were in the pool for five hours drinking chlorine water. but it paid off because we all basically learned to do our rolls. a first. it usually takes students three or four sessions to learn it, but the four of us were totally onto it. it helped that we had a small group and a lot of one-on-one attention from the instructor. in a small twist of irony, brendan, who can barely swim and is really uncomfortable in the water, had the rolls down pat in under an hour. that was really cool to see.

next week we are back to diving for the final section of our course. i'm glad there will be little traveling and little movement for a while because i gotta beat this cold.

please stop sending mail to me at counter mail. they are not liking that i'm using it for long-term mail delivery and they're cutting me off. email me if you want my proper home address if you haven't received it already.

i guess that's it for now.

on the piss again
tuesday night i decided i wanted to go out for a few drinks, new york city style. it ended up being an all night affair. after going to the circus, i got totally annoyed and decided to throw caution to the wind and drink drink drink. so we drank in my car at school (totally not allowed) and then drank at the beach, and then went to my house and drank in my room. and i didn't go to sleep until 6:30amish, and woke up an hour later to go to school and go kayaking all day. i did suprisingly well, but crashed around 2pm. went home and slept at 7pm, got up at 3am for an hour, and then back to sleep and up for good at 7:15am. now, it's 6pm and i'm totally fucked. i think i'm coming down with the flu; my whole body aches, and i'm so tired. i don't even feel like eating, which is clearly a sign that something is wrong.

tomorrow is my last day of kayaking. thankfully, we are in the pool practicing rolls. i will feel SOO cool after i learn those.

my life, in typical diana fashion, two months before she leaves a place, also just got 10 times more complicated. i've obviously got a problem and should join a dramatists anonymous club or something.

and i'm so over my instructor andrew. he's also on four weeks holiday (one down three to go), which only makes things easier for me. so stop teasing me kevin.

continuing car saga
the other day, i was driving home and went over a speed bump and the next thing i knew, my car would barely move and there was this constant grating on my wheel. i was pretty sure it had something to do with my brakes. luckily, i was only a block from home because the thing would barely move. it turns out that an old brake pad had fallen loose and the person who had opened up my car at first didn't see it and it was left in there but then was dislodged when i went over the speed bump (at a speed faster than i should have, of course). for a day, i got to drive judith's lada. it's a russian car so i'm sure we don't have many of those in the states. it has a choke. it's full of character. and it was also the first time i drove a manual on public roads.

i'm never driving an old car again. every five years, a new car. ;) just kidding. i really like ladas and have decided, actually, that i really want an old car that's full of character. i'll just be super-vigilant with the service and tuneups and all that. cuz i know jack shit about cars. (although i'm learning a lot lately...)

search party canceled
it's okay, friends. i'm alive. i'm sorry it's taken me a while to post here, but these have been pretty hectic. my car is dying. well, it may have been temporarily resurrected. last week, i had to buy new front tires and brake pads. this weekend, the brakes full on gave out because the guy who was going to put the new pads in never got off his ass to do them even though he said he would. at one point, i stepped on the brake and after the screeching, metal on metal sound, it went clunk clunk and then the pedal went all the way to the ground and the car kept moving. i was driving with the handbrake and by putting the car in park for a while (like 20 minutes). nucking futs. anyhow, kiwis are turning out to be quite knowledgeable about cars. i mean, the country is full of jalopies. but this also means that i've gotten a lot of work done on my car for free. this guy put in my brake pads today, although i did help, in the pouring rain. i offered to buy him a box of beer, but it seems that he wants to go out for a few beers, to chat, and to play some pool. sheesh i hope he's not getting the wrong idea, but i'm inviting other people along as a safety barrier.

in other news, i went diving yesterday. my first deep and wreck dives in one. one of my friends ended up coming up too fast (10 meters in 10 seconds, oops) and the coast guard was called in and everything. he spent the evening in the hospital but he's totally ok, besides feeling a little stupid. random fact: kiwi hospital gowns have buttons on the side rather than the slit in the back.

also in other news, I'M FUCKING DONE WITH RAFTING AND FUCKING DONE WITH MURUPARA. i passed my assessment, and did pretty well if i do say so myself, and i'm now officially a grade 2/aspirant guide. whoo!

well, i have to go home and put on dry clothes and maybe eat something so i don't get totally drunk after one beer and say/do something i'm going to regret tonight.

cheers. i love you and can't wait to come home!!!!