28 July

I think I'm finally starting to get into rhythm here. I'm settled in and things are running acceptably smoothly. I get to class most of the time (when I don't decide that it's a waste of my time), I have what I consider to be a solid group of friends and my flatmates and I have a pretty good living relationship. I have a guitar and my calluses are back, I had spam "musubi" (quotations because I didn't have a molder so they were hideous) for dinner last night - also pointing out that I have finally worked out the kinks in my stovetop rice making abilities - and last friday I even got to play tennis.

I guess I should expand on this tennis thing because I know dad would like to hear about it and tennis is a fairly sizable chunk of my life. I got in contact with this guy who I guess is the President of an organization called Tennis Southern which seems to umbrella all the clubs on the south island. He wanted to see how good I was so he could hook me up with some people to play with, so I met him at this indoor sports facility called the Edgar Centre. The place is something over 2 miles from my house and not really a distance that's fun to walk, so I took a cab there and it costed me $16!! So next time, I'm either walking or getting someone with a car to drive me. It was literally a 7 minute drive...
ANYWAY, the courts at this indoor place are literally a poured concrete floor with a green carpet over it. Shittiest courts I have seen. Well, that's not true at all. But they were still a sad excuse for tennis courts. The carpet took any action you had on the ball right out. Kick serves do not exist in this place. I'll have to get a picture of the courts at some point. The court lines were painted in amid the basketball court lines, rugby lines and all kinds of sports. The Edgar Centre is not by any means a tennis center, it's an all purpose sports warehouse.
So I played this guy, who was probably closing in on 60 years old (but still smacked the shit out of the ball when he felt like it), and I won in straight sets. I think it was 6-0, 6-4. In the second set he stopped trying to win rallies against me and just pounded the ball at a corner hoping for a winner. It worked way too often and I found myself down a break in the second set. Eventually, I just played retriever and won the last 4 games of the second set. He told me there are some good juniors around that I would enjoy hitting with and that they would definitely benefit from hitting with me. Also, there's a coach that's always looking for help with teaching or maybe even stringing that he was going to hook me up with, so I might be able to make some under the table money while I'm here, which would be really nice since I'm spending so goddamn much of it.

But yeah so my life here is chilling out. We'll probably stay in town this weekend and hit up the walking distance attractions; Cadbury factory, Otago museum, other random stuff. Tonight I'm going to a dubstep concert. The guy calls himself Filth Collins...I checked him out on youtube and his stuff is pretty cool, and the tickets were only $12 so I figured, why not? I've never been to a dubstep concert before, but I'm sure it won't be as crazy as I've heard they are in the states (besides, I've heard ecstasy is really expensive here so there's no way this will be as crazy as a concert in the states).

I have some math homework to do I think so I better get moving on that. Peace out.