Pad Thai, George, Destiny & Cocaine

The people I'm meeting, Kiwi & otherwise are really making my trip. However just because of the way we all meet each other the interactions can widely vary. My roommates in Queenstown soon felt like friends... But meeting doesn't always go so smoothly. For instance, I was woken up by two girls in my room at 6 am having this moment of blossoming friendship:

"Good morning."

"Yes, morning."

"I forgot to tell you-- I love Pad Thai. I eat it every week."

"I don't."

"Oh, okay."

 

Luckily so far my luck with striking up conversation was going a bit better than that. I talked to two of my roommates for hours-- one from London and one from China (who loves pad Thai apparently.) They're both policy students so we had plenty about which to talk even after swapping details about who we were, what we were doing, and our favorite foods. I told them all about the stars but unfortunately, the stars didn't make an appearance the second night due to the clouds. Thankful I had seen them the night before I curled up by the fire after having spent the entire day hiking.

The girl from London was on my bus the next day-- but we didn't speak much as I think our bus driver might not have taken a single breathe in four hours. At times it was great-- we heard the entire story of James Mackenzie (why a Gaelic speaking thief is honored so highly I don't know) all about the sheep and various tidbits. However, we also heard some long drawn out stories. I could be quizzed on George's life and feel confident I'd do pretty well.

After getting to Christchurch I started my hour long journey to my hostel. Christchurch is still very much recovering... in parts it looks as if the earthquake happened in the last week. The hostel where I am staying is really interesting. It's a renovated jailhouse built in 1874. All the rooms are still in their olden state which was great until after I went to sleep and kept hearing the old metal doors slamming shut. Once there I went to make dinner & I sat by myself with a book (book #7 which is "Vanity Fair" as it was long and free.) I was joined by 8 students soon after. I found out they were from Melboure so felt sure I could keep this conversation going. I've really been meshing with the people I meet here. However, that was just not the case last night.

I got from them that coffee and Greek food are both good there-- and nothing much else. I hadn't seen the movie Philadelphia and didn't understand the cream cheese joke until too late. So, after finishing up I wandered into the front room where the activities were being held. There was American themed trivia at the hostel in honor of the Fourth of July. First of all I was widely impressed by the knowledge displayed by the non-Americans-- they knew things like the year coca-cola was invented. Things that would have taken me significantly longer to come up with were on the tip of their tongues. My team dominated on the first few rounds but I faltered on questions such as Jay Z's real name. My team ended up first with another team in second. We had a sudden death round with obscure state capitals and celebrities' real names. Miley Cyrus was my downfall and therefore we didn't win the beer (not that good of an incentive for me.) I laughed it off, but my German and Italian teammates were none too pleased. They sulked off within seconds and all gave me looks of disgust. Honestly, I'm rather glad I didn't know that... I think I would have had to go the mirror to give myself my own look of disgust if I had. For the record, it's Destiny Hope Cyrus-- we'll see how long it's takes me to forget that.

And so my bad luck with conversation continued. Back in my room the conversation turned to how expensive things like medicine and soda were in New Zealand. I seized the opportunity to talk about my milk and my $70 turkey (the fact that I've mentioned both here already is a bit sad and is certainly correlated to my conversation problems.) I ran with it for a while until one mentioned it had cost him $300. It occurred to me the other 7 people in my room (including my Germans, an Italian, and a few people from Melbourne) were discussing the price of cocaine. From then on out I was unable to contribute... But once again that's certainly for the best.