my nite at the hostel etc

I end my day yesterday nicely with some sushi and head back to Base hostel. It's around 8:30 and I'm planning on reading and drifting off to bed around 10ish. But this is the thing with hostels when your sharing a "dorm" room...other people can influence/dictate how your evening/sleep actually goes. I slide my card into the lock, get the green light and go in. ! Someone is already asleep! in their cot. Fuck. I don't have a flashlight so it looks like I'm turnin in super early as well. I decide this is fine really because the sooner I wake, the sooner to my rental car etc. I quietly shift around and do all the pre-bed necessities and get in. Pretty soon another dorm-mate comes in. I open my eyes just for a few seconds, enough time to see its a guy. I hadn't even thought to ask if this place was co-ed or not and apparently it is. If I had know that, I wouldn't have left my yellow lacey piece of a bra laying out near my luggage. Oh well. Time to sleep. Over the next few hours the rest of the sleeping compatriots come in...and they're all Dudes, every single one of them--a total of 4 I've spotted. Now my mind is really starting to work around this situation. Did my overall vibe of "please Jesus throw me into a den of dashing and muscley men from NZ" put some sort of tech-spell over the booking guy and he accidentally put me in men's dorm room? It sure beginning to look like it.
I begin to feel like an interloper in the space. I shouldn't be here, I think. I should be in the in room with rose wallpaper and lavendar towels and lots of estrogen. All of my nineteenth century sensibilities start to surface, like how they would never put men and women into the same dorm room etc. But really what am I going to do, go complain? No, I'm going to sleep and have a hearty early morning laugh with the 5 men whose dorm room I have infiltrated. As I gaze up at the boards of the bunk above and read the scrawled words "I need sex and weed" in black sharpie, I come to the conclusion that I have crossed over and am now way too old for this. I don't fit into this scene anymore. The real hilarity of this whole "hostel" situation is that the luggage I have is a Fendi knock off monster of a roller I borrowed for the trip, which, when I got onto my flight, weighed a whopping 69 pounds (i packed food etc) So picture this if you will. All the other tenants in this place move around lithely with all their goods placed firmly on their backs, going up and down the stairs at will, the true representation of the globe trotting back packing hostel granola citizen. Then I come in...wheeling this HUGE suitcase..this fancypants knockoff - I wish I was Beyonce and had my own suite- freaking suitcase that i have to lug onto the hardly ever used cobwebbed elevator....well you get the picture. Its pretty hilarious.
I hardly sleep this night. My above bunk mate is a tooth grinder and a sleep talker. French paragraphs emit paroxysmally from his mouth. I spend much of the night thinking thoughts in English but attempting to forget what the words mean and only focus on the succession of vowels and consonants. Does english sound even remotely pretty by ears that don't understand the words? In my mental midnite review, I would have to say no.
The next morning comes and the dorm-mate that was already asleep when i came is up early, gearing up to go. Its a girl. Of course. Now, in the light of day all of my anxieties that came up during the night seem silly. Sigh.

Oh and guess what else...the guy above me who was speaking french in his sleep, loudly and fluently, addressed me in a full on kiwi accent as he leaves to check out. "Cheers" he says.--total twilight zone moment for me.
I should also point out of course that through this event i am having the best time of my life. There is basically nothing, zero, that can spoil my mood.
Next installment will be entitled "Dara gets her car, the El Cheapo, and drives for 6 hours on the left side of the road to a town called Dunedin"

christchurchy

So I decided just to do it and now I have a bloggo. ..

My third day into NZ and I'm in Christchurch staying at the Base Hostel. Pretty much run of the mill hostel action full of road ragged back packers. For one night, its totally perfect but beyond that i think it might get a slight bit claustrophobic for the older traveler in me. Gone are the days of sleeping in train stations and living by the seat of my naive youthful ideals.
Christchurch reminds of Switzerland, Zurich specifically. Its clean and open, relatively small and easy to navigate. I walk and walk today, dip into a costume/cloth show of a woman who has made costume after costume hell bent on turning humans into flowers, fruits and vegetables. I wish to God I had been able to take photos of the sometimes amazing, sometimes embarrassing adornments the mannequins were dolled up in. Whimsical almost to nausea (Wizard of Oz munchkin stylings), there were some that held up to high fashion spectacle and i fantasized about getting hitched in one these get ups. here's the link to the artists runway show...Jenny Gillies--http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V61pFbcw8Xk.
Where i am staying, near Cathedral park, is the tourist mecca so you can imagine its full of all the Kiwi bling and NZ authenticity is can peddle and i can't wait to get out of its urban shadow.I have to admit, I am slightly terrified of commencing my driving portion of the trip tomorrow. My host at the beginning of the trip, Roger, fully inundated me with the fear of native kiwi drivers who he says are insane and then of course other tourists like me who often drift back onto the right (meaning wrong) side of the road. My sister in law talked big about the danger and confusion of the "turnabout" of which there are many. My taxi driver, Barry,also laid down the perils noting the frequency of accidents. I of course wonder if I was a dude if i would be bringing in such caution--even if i was a blonde dude. Regardless, I will now be traveling at the overly cautious speed of 20 mph (or 35 klm per hour as it here), and will arrive in Curio Bay in 2 weeks. (Sarah and Rushie, this is for you because i know you think I need 20 warnings to the usual one).

thats all for now..