nordic skiing, girlfriends, and chocolate cake

This past week I've done some rather routine work on my dissertation and made a substantial dent in my med school applications. We won't even get into how insane it is that I'm voluntarily submitting myself to further punishment in the guise of formal education. Apart from that, though, three of us (Pauline, Maureen, and Christine) were busy emailing back and forth trying to organise a casual trip out to the skifields. Somehow it all managed to come together...
 

I am woman, hear me roar! (I am also a Leo...)
 

Had a hectic day, then came home to cook dinner for my flatmates as I always do on Thursdays, except that night was special since it was Steve's 27th birthday and since we had also cajolled Jake into coming over for supper. Jake is the President of the tramping club and lives a few doors down with his girlfriend Rebekah, who is currently in Europe at a public health conference. We thought it would be neighborly to have him over some time, and it happened to coincide with Steve's birthday. Their Siamese cat Juno followed Jake over. Made some grilled eggplant, tricolore spiral pasta, and a Mediterranean-style pasta sauce. Served up the compost bucket with candles on top for dessert...inside joke for those who get it...followed by a yummy vegan chocolate cake, and some vegan custard with fruit that Jake brought along. Afterwards, I really should have been locked up in my bedroom quietly working on my dissertation and my Maori health paper (the terms "rueful neglect" and "imminent string of all-nighters" come to mind), but as is tradition on a Thursday night I was at the Robbie instead. And as is tradition I have to wear shoes with big heels so that I am tall enough to speak with people face to face. Two weeks ago I found myself standing on the middle rungs of two bar stools surveying the entire bar just so that Adrian and I could be at the same height. Simon came with me tonight...on the way we met Anna who suggested that Simon ride my bicycle and I sit on the handlebars...after we'd gotten into position and started cycling I reminded Simon that my brakes were shot...oops...fortunately no mishaps and definitely a good ride! I had a fairly ordinary night out, although I can't say the same for Maureen...As always, I pushed my bicycle home in the dark.

Around 4:00 met up at Clubs and Socs as per the usual OUTC trip. Turned out to be a chick trip...Pauline, Christine, and Aimee from Canada, and Maureen, Lia, Monica, and Katie from the States. Left Dunners in the Critic van with Maureen at the helm since she's the only one who can drive standard (called "manual" in NZ). Sat up front with Mo keeping her company and awake. Pauline and I donned our flash red (her) and blue (me) headbands with tinsel pigtails dangling from long metal springs.
 
 

Me and Pauline with sparklers on our heads

Stopped in Lawrence for tea (a few funny looks from people when they saw our headgear). Gave Pauline a slice of bertday cake for her 22nd birthday in the darkness of the van. Pauline gave me my pressie - a hat she knitted herself! Sadly no CD player so the tunes were limited to the radio and Maureen's tapes (which we heard over, and over, and over again on our trip around the North Island). Stayed at a cool backpackers in Queenstown called the Hippo. Went for a walk and some of the girls got a bite to eat.

Wahoo! Christine officially turns 26 years of age. Mo gave me a flash card and a necklace she made herself - a real treat since I lost the paua shell pendant (from the necklace I bought in February) while the two of us were tramping in Tongariro.
 
 

Sunrise on the mountains in Queenstown, view from the hostel window

Drove to Waiorau Snow Farm along a *really* winding road up the Crown Range mountains. Picked up two Japanese students hitching a ride up the road. Arrived at Waiorau, got our gear, and spent some time skiing some of the smaller trails. Around noon I quickly scarfed down my lunch and got back on the trails while the other girls had a leisurely lunch. When I returned to the lodge and was waiting for the girls, I noticed three people ski by me with jackets that said "Canada" across the back, so naturally I asked them what they were doing there. I was incredibly thrilled to discover that it was the Canadian Olympic Nordic Ski Team!!! A few other highlights. Met Jens from the tramping club who was working up there for the semester. Bumped into Pam Quin and Frank (Rotary Cultural Scholar who stayed with the Quins six years ago) who were there for the weekend with some of Pam's paddling friends. Also bumped into Andred and his two mates.
 
 

Group shot on the trail

In the afternoon we skied the Loop, a great track that takes you out to Bob Lee Hut and back. A few of the girls had no or minimal experience skiing but did incredibly well. All of us fell down a few times or crashed into snowbanks for lack of any better method of stopping. Gorgeous light on the surrounding mountains. Not too cold so skiing all day didn't result in frozen fingers and toesies. Exhilarated we headed back to Dunners, saw the infamous bra fence on Cardrona Road, and finally got a shot of the Cromwell fruit statue!
 
 

Pauline and I with the Cromwell fruit statue

Mo was a legend for driving us the entire way there and back. Cooked dinner with Simon. Petra and Steve came in for the birthday cake. Asked Simon to massage the muscles on my head which for some reason were sore. He threw in a foot rub free of charge...mmmm...thanks Psi-Duck! Noted 10:41 (the hour of my birth). Got some dessert at Tull with the Rotary girls plus Cate's sister and Jo. Got some cards from the girls, and a birthday pressie from Jo and Bexs...a beautiful wooden NZ keychain, and official Possum-fur nipple warmers... As for dessert I ordered the Chocolate Massacre...you win a prize if you can finish it all yourself...ended up being three pieces of decadent chocolate cake, and having already eaten two pieces of cake at my flat, I just BARELY finished it...thanks to a few mouthfuls scarfed down covertly by Bexs and Jo (do I have to eat the fruit too??? sigh)! Needless to say I felt incredibly ill afterwards. Anyway, I got a certificate for finishing it...and this is now hanging on my wall at home. Thanks to everyone, especially Mo and Pauline, for such a wonderful birthday.

Got a phone call from my parents. Tried to do some work on my dissertation and Maori health paper. For once went to bed at a reasonable hour.

Worked all day on my dissertation. Went to the tramping club meeting at 1:00 as usual, and picked up mountaineering gear for the weekend. Felt pretty hard-core walking down the street in a skirt, nylons, and chunky shoes - carrying a climbing helmet, ice axe, crampons, harness, and miscellaneous hardware. Met my supervisor as I walked into the department...she laughed wide-eyed...I guess it's not every day you see that kind of hardware in our foyer. Russ picked me up around 5:30 and we headed to the Quin's for tea. Frank was staying with them, and they had also invivted Jan, Stu and his two kids, and Mary. Got a pressie from them...a book on tramps around Dunedin...I've had my eye on this for a while so was thrilled to get it! Had some yummy broccoli soup, veggie quiche, and potato salad for dinner. Shared photos of our various tramping trips. Frank showed us some clothes he bought for his daughter...who is due to be born four weeks from now...in Germany. A cute little fleece jumpsuit with attached hood, mitts, and booties. But cuter than that was a tiny, brightly striped polyprop shirt - can't get more Kiwi than that. Afterwards...birthday cake! Carrot cake with white cream cheese icing (snow), a little ski-dude on top (plastic, Christine, don't eat it), big purple grapes (boulders), and a double line of sunflower seeds (ski trail). Served it up, took the leftovers home, then realised that my vegan flatmates couldn't eat any...so more for me!

I now have three more months of school and will hopefully be finished my Maori health paper and my dissertation by the end of October. Plan on doing some tramping on weekends, and maybe doing the Heapy Track in Kahurangi National Park (northern tip of the South Island) over mid-semester break with Pauline, Maureen, and maybe one more person. Once school is officially over I have two months to do some tramping and make revisions to my dissertation. If anyone is keen on heading out into the wilds of NZ, please let me know. I am keen to get down to Stewart Island, doing some alpine stuff, exploring some of the areas around Dunedin (like the Silver Peaks), seeing more of Fiordland and the West Coast, heading up to Lake Tekapo, and doing some mountaineering in the Aoraki / Mt Cook region. Come December I will head back home to Ontario to spend Christmas with the folks. Not sure what my plans are for New Year, but am open to suggestions if anyone will be remotely close to southern Ontario (or perhaps even Halifax?) at the time. In January it's off to Halifax to finish my MSc hopefully by the end of April. Fortunately my supervisor has just hired a study coordinator so the dataset should be cleaned up by the time I get back. Taking the summer off to relax up at the cottage and spend some time outdoors, hopefully including some canoe tripping up north in Temagami and Algonquin. Come September it will either be an MD or PhD, or failing my acceptance into either programme, working at a flash coffee shop in Vancouver : ) Wherever I am, I would like to settle down for a few years...never thought you'd hear that coming out of my mouth, eh? If it weren't for my parents providing some sort of constant base for my life, I'd be a mess. Where would I go when I felt beat by the world? Disenchanted and in need of a sanctuary or just a quiet moment down by the creek, basking in the late afternoon sunshine and listening to the comforting trickle of water across rocks that have been there since before I was born? In need of a warm, comfortable bed and a home-cooked meal? In need of a permanent mailing address? As it is I've been itinerant since about 1995, never living in one place for more than 8 months, with the exception of my flat on Florence Street where I lived a whopping 20 months. Since 1995 I've lived in four different countries on four separate continents, including two provinces within Canada. I am looking forward to gathering all my stuff together and just settling in for a while. Wherever I end up next fall (the possibilities are Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Toronto, Hamilton, London, Kingston, Ottawa, Halifax, and St. John's) I will probably be in search of a flatmate since the prospect of living alone is acceptable but not ideal. If anyone is looking to create a little refuge from the harsh world where we can have friends over, pick up some comfy old couches and fill them with blankets and pillows, play lots of good music, strum a little guitar, cook some yummy vegetarian cuisine with heaps of garlic and cilantro, discuss literature and philosophy, clean the house once in a while, burn candles and incense, keep each other sane and happy, build a compost heap out back, celebrate the brilliance of IKEA furniture, paint the walls, maintain a reasonably cheap and healthy lifestyle, and hang up funky pieces of cloth and travel souvenirs around the flat...and think you would be capable of putting up with me...please drop me a line! Ideal if you're in school too so that we both have things to do outside of business hours and the flat doesn't turn into a time-suckage place. Yeah. I'd be keen. Kind of depends where I am, though, eh?

I've never considered myself a music afficionado. I never went out and bought the latest CD the minute it was on the shelf. I can't tell you the personal history of each member of some obscure band that came together in Manchester in the 1960s. God knows my performing talent doesn't extend beyond a classic piano education, and a little singing and guitar strumming in the safety of a dimly lit flat late at night. But nonetheless music has an incredible power over me, and for some reason I feel the need to write about it. Maybe it'll give you some insight into how I've turned into the crazy person I am (my guess is that it was listening to Neil Diamond at an early age). Or maybe it'll just bring back a few memories of your own.

My formative years were filled with songs by ABBA, my favorite still being "Super Trooper". Easy listening on the penultimate cottage radio station in Orillia (CHAY FM 93.1 "good music all the time") with the likes of Neil Diamond, Gordon Lightfoot, Anne Murray, and the Eagles. Jazz and big bands also on CHAY FM but restricted to Big Band Saturday Night, which also involved sitting in the living room at the cottage with warm lights, a good book, and a bowl of popcorn. Swedish folk songs for Midsummer and Lucia - the same old cassette tape being played over and over, year after year. The hit parade of German tunes on the radio Sunday mornings, and my father's classical music selections on Sunday afternoons. And religious hymns at school and church. These were all genres which I did not consciously choose to listen to, but which were nevertheless part of my life.

Then came the 80s with forays into developing some kind of "personal taste" in music, although being the 80s it was admittedly a tough mission... I recall the cost of a cassette tape being much greater than what I was capable of or willing to spend, so most of my exposure to pop music came from my little grey "ghettoblaster" which has since been relegated to a dusty corner of the basement. Vague recollections of Casey Casem's countdown on Sundays. Making my own mix tapes from the radio trying desperately to catch as much of the music as possible without getting the voice of the radio announcer [record, stop, rewind, erase, stop, rewind, fast forward]. Classic bands like U2, Depeche Mode, The Police, The Pet Shop Boys, Bon Jovi, Guns n Roses, and REM. Painful memories of artists like Tiffany, New Kids on the Block, Debbie Gibson, Michael Jackson, and other random people wearing string ties, neon clothing, and playing synthesizer music.

The summer of 1992 I started working at summer camp and was suddenly exposed to all sorts of music that wasn't played on the radio. Lazy days of summer riding in the camp van, cicadas humming in the fields, feet propped up on the dashboard. Sitting on the back steps of the staff house. Hanging out in QM. All the while soaking up music by Spirit of the West, The Men They Couldn't Hang, Simon and Garfunkel, The Proclaimers, Moxy Fruvous, Violent Femmes, Queen, and The Housemartins.

Then came undergrad and my music tastes expanded to include more political folksy (Arkell would say communist...) artists like Indigo Girls and Ani DiFranco. Getting interested in the likes of international artists such as Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Johnny Clegg, and Ali Farka Toure. Listening to bands like The Rheostatics simply because I had a crush on some guy who happened to like them at the moment. Then realising that they were actually quite good. And of course being cool-as and hanging out in bars listening to local artists, wearing my long skirts, woollen sweaters, and Birkenstock sandals and sipping either an espresso or a pint of Guinness.

Then grad school with tastes expanding into jazz. Relief at finally having an income so I could start some semblance of a music collection.

The wild thing is that none of these genres has really been eliminated from my music collection (with the obvious exception of Tiffany and New Kids on the Block). They all just kind of melded together. So a random sample of my collection would include things like a bootlegged 15-year old cassette tape with the faded word Roxette scrawled across one side. Some smooth John Coltrane. A vast collection of classical CDs inherited from my uncle. A tape of Swedish polka music dubbed from a scratchy record. A box set of classic Canadian artists. Some standards like the best of The Eagles. And a much treasured, well-worn cassette tape with an impossible to find Spirit of the West album on one side, and an impossible to find Men They Couldn't Hang album on the other. None of which I'd ever give up.

Like I insinuated at the beginning of this letter, music brings back memories for me, both good and bad. Who can listen to "Stairway to Heaven" without a quiet chuckle about the first guy they ever danced awkwardly with in some sweaty high school gym (I always think of some guy I met while nordic skiing)? There's one song by The Proclaimers which I always associate with my mother being angry and disappointed with me one day almost ten years ago, and to this day I can't bear to listen to it. "River" always makes me think of Shawski, and anything by REM reminds me of Andre. Travis reminds me of the trip Maureen and I took up north. Tracy Chapman is a classic CD that reminds me of multiple trips and multiple people, and singing those songs with people is very comfortable and gives me some sense of continuity. More than that though, music moves me. You know that feeling you get when you hear the opening chords to "With or Without You"? You just want to crank up the bass and feel the beat reverberate through your body. Like the racing heartbeat of someone in love. Utter amazement when you listen to three incredibly talented guitarists playing off each other on the album Friday Night in San Francisco. That's what I love most of all about music. Words have a limited capacity for expression, and music gives us a second chance to communicate something. And so it is that sometimes instead of talking to someone, you just want to put on a record and listen to it together.

Enough said.

Love Christine