Packed Week

Saint Patrick’s Day! For St Patty’s day we decided to do it big! We started our morning kind of early… around 9, and went directly into town and got $6 breakfasts at J.J. Murphy’s, an Irish Pub on Cuba Street. From there we walked around town a bit, went to another Irish pub called Molly Malone’s, saw some Irish Dancers and headed to the water front. It was an unbelievably beautiful day and we  made the most of it by the water. Then we headed home for lunch and watched a movie. By the time the night rolled around we were getting pretty tired and ended up only being down town for a little while, but when we got down there it was UNBELIEVABLE. I have never seen that many people in one place in New Zealand at one time. I think people from other cities came in for the special night and crowded every bar and club, so getting in anywhere was a challenge and there were fights breaking out everywhere, girls crying on the street… basically it was CHAOS. So we called it a pretty early night. But overall I was proud of our spirited and enthusiastic day! 

Dani, Tess, Molly, Molly’s boyfriend Philip, Tess’s flat-mate Adam and My flat-mate Gerard all went to see the Hunger Games movie at midnight! We had a great time and all thought the movie was pretty awesome, though there were quite a few squealing pre-teen fan girls there.  It was quite an event with girls dressing up by carrying around bow and arrows like the main character in the book. The midnight premiere was on Wednesday, by Friday we had another fun thing to do. Friday morning Dani, Molly, Dani’s flat mate Zach and I woke up at the crack of dawn and walked down in to town to stand in line for Flight of the Conchord’s tickets! They are one of New Zealands biggest claims to fame, maybe behind Lord of the Rings. But Flight of the Conchords is a comedy group that does shows and also had a TV show on HBO, made up of Bret Mckenzie and Gemaine Clement and they are HILARIOUS. So we stood in line for about 2 hours and got a bunch of tickets. We were allowed two tickets a person and ended up getting as many as possible. 8 tickets total, one for each of us, then one for Molly’s boyfriend, one for Dani’s other flat mate Fin, one for Tess and one for Tess’s flat mate Matt. The draw for tickets was so big that a radio station came to the line and had competitions, like judging who could throw a paper “concord” or airplane the furthest and giving them two free tickets. They also gave out free coffees (AWESOME) and a few other things. Then some news crews showed up and we were on the NZ news! WE’RE FAMOUS ALREADY!! Here’s the link to the news clip. We’re standing in line right at the beginning and the camera scans by us at about 1:16. Pretty exciting!

http://www.3news.co.nz/Business-time-for-diehard-Flight-of-the-Conchords-fans/tabid/312/articleID/247745/Default.aspx

The next night, on Saturday, Tess, Dani and I went to The Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra concert at the San Francisco Bathhouse downtown. The group is comprised of about five or six men and four women all who play ukulele and one man who plays the upright bass. They mostly cover songs, but do so very creatively and adorably. They’re just a cooky bunch of people and they have such a great time doing what they do. Here’s a couple pictures and songs from the concert! ALSO: we saw Bret Mckenzie from Flight of the Conchords at the concert! He used to be a part of the band and so he came to support them and they invited him on stage for the encore. He was probably three feet from Dani, and needless to say, we all FREAKED OUT. And in case any of you were wondering… he’s just as amazing and cute in person as he is on the show.

 Here's a music video of one of my favorites of theirs: (i've been to many of these places in the video!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqynAAYdLW8&feature=related

On a less exciting note, I turned in my first essay that week too. Sometimes it’s hard to remember that I’m here for school… mostly. =)