Today feels like good-news day (apart from all the uni work I have to do tonight…) because I woke up to find a txt telling me that I’ve made the hockey team that I was trialling for, and now I’ve just gotten back from the gym where I’m on a personalised programme as of today, and I just feel great at the moment. I think that all the major decisions I’ve made about what I’m going to do this year and what direction I want to take myself in has been proving good for me. Doing the “final year” of my jazz performance degree part-time whilst embarking on the other degree I’ve always always aaalways wanted to do feels right and I’ve got no doubts about it thus far. Plus, I was right in thinking that giving myself a smaller music workload makes me more passionate and determined in it, because I’ve done a lot more practise and have tried a lot harder on the bass and in combo in general. Hopefully I can continue this and make it pay off… gah!

Since I’m in such a good mood, here are some more of the photos from the trip that the boy and I took to Hot Water Beach during the last week of our summer holidays, just over three weeks ago. There are more photos on another roll of film, but I haven’t finished it up yet, so haven’t gotten that developed. The highlight was definitely Cathedral Cove, and we didn’t actually end up digging a hole at Hot Water Beach because we couldn’t be bothered swarming around the area with tourists, so we ended up exploring the other end of the beach, and created our own form of athletics, as you shall see below… the memory of it still cracks me up, it was so much fun:

There was a black-beaked seagull that kept making a pitiful noise, so I decided to give it a bit of the crust off my sandwich. The boy had initially told me off for feeding it, but then he ended up feeding this particular seagull a lot more than I did, luring the cheeky bird closer and closer… until he was within touching distance, and the seagull kept squawking and talking to him, see! The magic thing was, when we retreated back to our cabin at the campsite that was 5 minutes down the road, we found the very same seagull waiting for us outside our cabin!!!

A good assortment of condiments, apple ale and wine.

The dorkiest I’ve ever seen him. But I didn’t put up an even dorkier photo… I must say it was mostly my fault, making him carry all our stuff in my old swimming bag. But it seemed justified – that bag’s a thick, waterproof and sturdy workhorse. Doesn’t the sea and its colours just look amazing?

Going to the deserted end of the beach.

Three guesses what I thought that was when I first spotted it. And so I saw my first blue bottle jellyfish, ever. It does look like a “bottle”. Ahem.

The game was… run on this ridiculously soft sand with no grip and resistance, and see if you can jump over that ridge. Our own beach version of the high jump, haha.

This looks silly, but not as silly as when I ended up with a mouthful of sand.

Reading with a rum and coke at the end of the day.

People on a kayak tour at one of the little beaches we walked to on the way to Cathedral Cove.

Cathedral Cove: where signs advise people not to enter due to falling rocks.

Urgh I have MAJOR hat hair after a long trek down to Cathedral Cove. And I knooow, this photo is hilarious. What happened was, I had asked the boy to get a picture of “me AND the cove”, but he heard “me IN the cove”… apparently he had initially lined the photo up to look like the one I had taken of him, but it ended up like this, haha. I literally burst out laughing with “WHAT THE!” when I saw this.

A German tourist took this for us.

It seems that animals really liked me on this trip because not only did the seagull greet us at our cabin, but this little cute dog, which looks like the one that belonged to a barbie doll that my sister and I used to have, followed me back to our cabin from the barbecue where we’d cooked sausages for dinner. I’m sure it just wanted some food, but it was sooo cute, following me everywhere! There’s a better photo of it on the other roll of film though, this was the 37th photo in a roll of film made for 36 exposures, so the camera ate it up just as the shutter went off, causing major blurring.

I really wished that we were back there again, lying on the beach with our books and swimming in the sea that was so beautifully clear. But I wonder where our next adventures will take us. And oh yeah, the day after our beautiful trip to Cathedral Cove, the weather turned awful and was pouring down with rain. For some reason we thought the best remedy was to climb Mt. Pauanui in the rain, and I’m glad it took us less than half of the prescribed 1.5hrs to get to the summit. The weather was so bad that we were up in the clouds and the view wasn’t the best, but hopefully I’ll get something out of it when I develop the other roll of film eventually!