Ok, this is actually one of the first posts I haven't pre written, and my computer is on 45% battery, so I'll have to hurry. Over the weekend I went to an AFS orientation camp. It's not fresh in my mind anymore, but there were a lot of cool people that I got to meet. People were from all over, we did an activity were we had to meet someone completely new and introduce them to the group. I introduced Greta from Wupita (Pronounced Vupita) Germany who's favorite color is green and who was in scouts.
She introduced me as Ben, who's favorite color is grey and who like video games. We both forgot where we were currently living during the introductions.
There was a trampoline there. As you can see, some people were really good, and some people were not, I fell somewhere in-between (no pun intended). We also did a scavenger hunt. One of the clues was "Tigers game", it was golf obviously, we asked one of the golfers to take our picture as the whole group had to be in it, we didn't notice untill later that apparently some of his friends joined in.
It was a really beautiful drive up there, if not a little scary, honestly, most newzealanders are maniacs behind the wheel of a vehicle, I think deep down they know that their driving on the wrong side of the road. It didn't help that most of the drive we were on the edge of a mountain side. Regardless I got some really nice pictures. If you have any questions about any of the photo's please post the question and I'll answer, I just really don't have time right not, my computer is litterally seconds away from a self shut down.

Of wishes and Bagels

A wish flew up my nose today.
That’s what they call them here anyway, whishes, their these white fluffy things that float around in the air, a lot like dandelion seeds, but a lot bigger and more buoyant.
Anyway, I was sitting there at lunch watching one of these things because I didn’t actually have any lunch to eat, I was so engrossed I wasn’t even paying attention to where it was headed, it hit my upper lip and I inhaled sharply with surprise, and there it was, a wish, up my nose.
The reason I didn’t have any lunch was that I had study hall (aka free period) right before interval (first break for those of you who haven’t been paying attention these last few weeks). So I went up to the mall to buy a folder for my upcoming piano lesson/class. I figured, since I usually got hungry at interval, I’d just buy a bagel from “Wholly Bagels” (See rant at the *). Anyway, the folder ended up costing a bit more than I thought it would, so my bagel money got spent. On the way back, lamenting the loss of my potential bagel, I consoled myself with an apple from my lunch, which I ate on the way back. I got back quite a while before the end of my free period, so I filled the time with a snack bar. As interval got started we all sat in the field and talked and snacked, and before I knew it I had downed my grapes, my “girl guide” cookies (can you guess what the American equivalent to that is?) and finally my sandwich, which I ate with regret, because I knew that meant no lunch for me, but Stephan (my host brother) made pancakes when I got home, so I’m good.
I’ve been staying well ahead on my homework. I have a 700-1000 word English paper due tomorrow, of which I only need to write the conclusion (although in all fairness it was only done early because I thought it was due a week ago today.) We have also been going through “common tests” at school, which I assume are like mini DSTP’s for each subject area administered nation wide, but all in all worth about as much as a teacher administered test would back home. This also caused my geography class to miss the assembly that was called to order to tell off a number of students who got drunk and pissed on electrical equipment during the school social (which, if you remember, I missed). Ironically enough, the worst offenders were actually in my geography class, so we get our own private telling off assembly sometime in the coming week, yay!
I went to scope out a martial arts class too, they wouldn't let me stay "stranger danger" and all that, but they said they'd call me back and set something up. It's pretty cheap though, especially compared to my class back at home, even combined with my dance lessons it still comes out to way less.

*Rant about Wholly Bagels*
So Wholly Bagels is just a massive vat of puns and irony, I’m pretty sure if the name/logo were edible, it would at the very least give you food poisoning, if not kill you outright. The logo is a little devil with a bagel as a halo. Wholly of course sounds like holy, which is not only a play on words, but also ironic, because of the devil, but it also makes a little sense because of the bagel halo. Wholly also sounds like holey, which is a pun on its own because bagels have holes. Finally we have the actual word Wholly, which implies fully, completely. This is ironic as well because there is actually also a Wholly Pizza, which is in the same shop, and of course neither of them are “Wholly” the business of the place, because the other is present. I don’t know, maybe its because all the analysis I’ve been doing in Art Design make all the little subliminal messages and innuendo’s in logos and ads glaringly obvious, but personally I think “Wholly Bagels” is just trying to be too clever all at once, and end up making my brain expl

Whoops

Well, I get my one and only chance to get on the internet this week, and I have absolutely no access to the numerous blogs and musings I've felt fit to spew out into microsoft word since. Although the internet situation is still pretty bad, my host uncle has a switch box that I can jack my laptop directly to, so for the brief time I am actually on the internet, I can finally get on skype (although I don't know how well I'll be able to video chat, the nearest broadband hub for Kiwi's is Australia, so the pings are horrendous.) But at least I'll finally be able to accept Matt and Kara's friend requests.

The Internet is really really great...

For those of you who know the next two words of the title, 100 points to you.

For the rest of you wondering about my internet situation, it's pretty grim. I did finally manage to get my computer wirelessly enabled, however all the wireless networks in my area are secured, which means I'm back to where I was before, no internet.
I may however be able to locate an internet cafe nearby that I could get online with my laptop, which means I could be on skype within the next few days, carrying my beohemith of a laptop 20 minutes down the road after school is well worth it in my book, so if all goes well, hopefully I'll see you guys soon.

Another Happy Day

I wrote before that it was probably the best I’ve ever felt since arriving in New Zealand, but I’d like to update that status. I managed to wiggle my way into a group of friends that I actually really like, not just people being nice to me and having a chat. It’s funny though, most of them are a lot like some of you guys back at home, In fact there are at least three of you who pretty much have mirror images over here, but I’m not going to name names for fear of people feeling left out. Regardless I feel absolutely elated, as tonight we all went to a ballroom dancing class, which is just as fun as it is confusing and embarrassing, although it wasn’t as embarrassing once you got the moves down. The group has two other exchange students in it, one from South Africa, who is (contrary to your first impression I know) about as Arian as it gets (light blonde, bright blue eyes) and has hardly any accent. The other is from Belgium, he takes a cooking class and he brought us some hot cross buns today at lunch that he had made himself. As we were eating them a seagull “shat” on him, needless to say, his reaction still makes me chuckle (it was rather higher pitched than his normal voice, and contained a lot of hiding his face behind his hands and saying “ewww, I can’t believe I just got shat on” then looking through his hands at the splotch on his knee, then covering his face again, rolling on to his back, and repeating the process about five times)Something else remarkable (at least to me) happened right before lunch. I had a study period, so I was just walking around as they were setting up another “hot dog” fundraiser. I happened to have some money on me at the time, so I heeded their peas to come over and buy something and receiver my slightly charred sausage on a slice of toast. As I was eating it a kid from my music class came up and asked me how my composition was going, we talked a little and then he asked “are you going to cheer?” (I think it was cheer, it started with “ch” I know, could have been chim, or char, or chimp, I don’t know) I intelligently inquired, “what?”“The Christian group meeting at lunch today.”“oh, um no I’m not”“why not?”“Well I’m not really keen, so I don’t think I’m allowed” I was referring to the notice that our form teacher had read to us that morning that actually said that if you weren’t keen on going (meaning if your not interested), don’t. He got the joke and chuckled, then replied, “ah but you are keen” (meaning I’m intelligent)I in turn gave his play on words a brief chuckle and replied “yeah, but I’m not keen to go”“why not?”“well, I’m not Christian”“I’ve only been a Christian for a few weeks, you can change too”“Yeah, but I don’t really want to”“why?”“Well, I’m an atheist”“what’s that?”“Um, I deny the existence of god?” I said tentatively, bracing myself.“oh, so you worship the devil?”“excuse me?” I thought this was going to be the part where I got told I was an evil person. But as it turns out, it was just a bit of not-meant-to-be-offensive skewed logic.“Well, if you don’t worship god, your helping the devil indirectly”“Yeah, but not believing in god and not believing in the devil kind of go hand in hand, so I don’t really care.”He stood there for a second silently, then the bell rang, signaling the beginning of his meeting. “Damn, I’m not going to be able to convince you am I?”I smiled at him.“All right, well see you later.”Personally I was stunned. “I’m not going to be able to convince you am I?” that was all he said. In America if I had pulled the atheist card (and trust me I have) on a Christian who was rather secure in their beliefs (you could tell be talking to this kid that he was very convinced he had found the light, and was just trying to help others down the same path) most of the time (not all of the time, but most) I’d get verbally abused, and told off for choosing a wayward path, sometimes people would be a little nicer and throw an unrelenting stream of arguments at me to try and convince me otherwise, but not once do I ever remember someone conceding, just dropping the subject when he realized he wasn’t going to convince me otherwise, and then “I’ll see you later” like it was just a normal conversation. It was pretty nice.And for those of you who were wondering how my composition was going, I’m not sure. My music teacher confuses me. There are aspects of her that I like (she’s nice enough, she’s not too strict, she knows her stuff, I think) but there are other parts of her that I just can’t stand. Example, when she’s talking to you one on one, and sometimes when she’s talking to the class, after every sentence she’ll pause for a second and wiggle her eyebrows like she’s just said something suggestive, except she hasn’t, she just say something like, “you need to go to the school shop to get your student ID” AND THEN SHE’D WIGGLE HER EYEBROWS!!! It’s so confusing, and needless to say, more than a little creepy. Anyway, she gave me a bunch of suggestions on my song, that I did not like at all, like “you have a really nice beat going here, why don’t you try changing it from 6/8 time to 8/8 for a measure” which makes absolutely no sense to me. But then went on to demonstrate by flailing around on the piano behind me to the general tune of my song, which was embarrassing to me because it made it look to the other students in the room like I had just written an absolutely abysmal piece of music. Any way, I don’t really know what to do, because I hate all her ideas, but I don’t want it to look like I was completely ignoring everything she was saying. Plus my piece is getting to the level of complication that I actually need to practice it (even though I wrote it) and the Gardiners don’t have a piano. But at least the computer program can play it correctly, so they’ll know I wrote it right, even if I can’t play it.

Out With the Old, In With the New

New and old bedrooms respectivly

Well, my first two days with my new temporary host family (just one temporary this time) have gone pretty well. Stefan (my new host brother) and I rented some movies my first night here. Stefan gleefully exploited my ability to take out R rated movies (he’s 14), but I don’t mind and neither does Deborah (my new host mom), so it all works out. I got to see Hannibal Rising, which I’ve wanted to see for a while, and Stefan got to see The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which was big on his “to see” list.The food here is a little sparser than at the Baxters, but there is at least a happy balance between snacks and cooked food, so I really like that. There are two cats, Nina, who is generally anti social, and Jake, who is very friendly, but also smelly. They both like to come and sleep on my bed, which is actually not mine, but Deborah’s. She insists on sleeping on the fold out couch bed, and couldn’t be persuaded otherwise, so I have the master bedroom.Deborah’s sister lives down the street, so both families end up doing a lot together. Yesterday we all went to the park with her sisters four soon to be five year old son Jontee, or John T (I’m not really sure which.) The park was amazing, not only was it huge, but it also had all kinds of playground toys that you don’t see in America, because idiots use them as trebuchets on their six-year-old brother, and then end up suing the park and forcing them to take it down. People aren’t allowed to sue in New Zealand, so there were sea-saws, those self propelled carousel things, a full sized zip line, bouldering walls, a ridiculously high slide, and other things that I don’t know the name of, but I’m sure wouldn’t be allowed on American playgrounds.We also went over later on in the day and had dinner with them and watched sports. I’ve determined that American football, or grid-iron as they call it over here, is a pansy sport compared to rugby. The best I can figure out the rules are this. Get the ball to the end zone. Other than that, there are no rules. It’s continuous play; if someone gets tackled they basically grapple the ball out of the pile and keep on running it. They also wear less protection then soccer players, and have metal spikes on the bottom of their shoes; people get stepped on a lot.So yeah, football is for pansies.

I say tomato, you say cranberry?

I officially have a new number one “weirdest ass shit I have eaten in New Zealand thus far”(no it's not the dog, the relevance of that picture comes later). The other night for dinner we had pizza, except the only similarity it had to the pizza I know and love is that it was a crust with stuff on top of it, really it was the stuff on top, or the combination thereof that made it so “weird ass”. Lets start at the bottom, crust, no surprise there, okay next, tomato sauce, off to a good start. Next up, onions, okay, my dad has onions on his pizza. Pineapple, right, I’ve had pizza with pineapple before, I didn’t like it but enough people do that it’s still an option. On top of that we had chicken, meat on a pizza, that’s not surprising, but wait, it was barbeque chicken (complete with barbecue sauce), oh, ok. And one more thing to top it off… cranberry sauce! If you will notice there is no cheese.
Yesterday there was some kind of social at school for year 9 and year 13 students; the theme was “what I want to be when I grow up”. They were selling tickets and next to it they were selling hot dogs (I assume to help promote the sale of tickets), which are actually large sausages wrapped in bread. The social was apparently pretty fun, you were supposed to dress up as what you aspire to be, but that pretty much went out the window in favor of more silly stuff. I heard that somebody dressed up as pikachu, and I know at least one of my friends who was going was dressing up as a homicidal fairy with an axe.
Unfortunately I didn’t go, all the new AFS kids had to make up the gateway camp that we missed by not coming on time, so we did a mini one at our support coordinator Bev’s house. I had assumed that that would carry us through the social, but it turned out I would have been able to go. I have however resolved to go to the next one.
Luckily last night I at least had a chance to redeem my faith in pizza. One of the activities was to make one yourself; I guess to see how other cultures like their pizzas. I took the opportunity to layer mine up with cheese (grated cheese does in fact exist in New Zealand), pepperoni, ham, mushrooms, and more cheese.
Today is actually my last day at the Baxter’s. I’m moving in with my next (but not last) host family tomorrow. They don’t have any Internet, but the library is close by so I’ll still be able to post. Also that cheery young 12th year that I met on my first day has offered to help set me up with a really inexpensive (though I hope not cheap) Wifi card, so assuming someone in my neighborhood has an unsecured wireless network, I should be online within a few weeks. Sorry again for the delay to all you skypers out there, I’ll get there eventually, promise.

Happiness is...

So, I think for the first time since I got here, I’m genuinely happy. I mean, I haven’t been sad these last two weeks, I just haven’t really felt particularly cheery, sedated if you will. But today I noticed that I’m feeling more awake, people are being more sociable towards me, or I’m being more outgoing, or both. Generally I think I’m just getting better adjusted. Anyway, today started off normal enough, waking up a good hour before I actually had to get up, having a brisk walk across a very windy railway bridge, and getting my eardrums blown out by the inevitable train that has to blast past every time I’m right up against the tracks.
I also realized something today, when people say that New Zealanders are laid back, that’s kind of an understatement. My laid back and relaxed is my classmates focused, and their laid back and relaxed is my flat out lazy. As such, I’ve been tearing it up in my classes so to speak.
In English the teacher called me up to the front before class and handed me “The Death of a Salesman” (the book that they had been reading in class.) I told him that since he had mentioned that I could go to the uniform shop to borrow it, I already had it. He then said, “oh, good” then asked for my e-mail address so that he could mail me the pages that I needed to read by tomorrow to be caught up. I told him that since it was so short (only about small 100 pages with 12pt font) I had finished it already, at this he looked kind of surprised and said that in that case, he wouldn’t need my e-mail address. The class then went on to feature some presentations, one of which was three days late and obviously done on a sheet of loose-leaf ten minutes before class. Another one was quite obviously copy and pasted (the handout was written as a fluent and in-depth analysis of the book as a whole, while the two presenters were exchange students from India and Japan who spoke very limited English), and the teacher remarked only that they must have done “some research”.
In electronics we were given three graphs of the conducting patters of a diode, a transistor, and a MOSFET something-or-other. We were then asked to write a small arrow next to the graph, showing what direction the lines would shift if there was an increase in heat. I jotted down the arrows on our tables white board and waited for a while for the rest of the class to finish. The teacher came over to check our progress since we were talking about things other than diodes, and, upon looking at our white board (with the arrows on it) said “ookay, who looked in the book for the answers” like we had just played a practical joke on her. No one really said anything so I asked if we were supposed to check our answers with the book. She then asked who did the arrows, so I said that I did, she asked me to explain the answers so I did, and again, she looked genuinely surprised that I hadn’t just gotten some lucky guesses in, said “good job” and walked away to the rest of the table proclaiming “yeah, we knew that”.
In art design there isn’t really a class so much as time to work on your projects, but I surprised myself with how many subtleties and subliminal messages I picked up in a set of Swiss style posters I was analyzing. I think it was around that point I realized what a great position I was in; the standards I’ve set for myself are higher that the standards that the teachers set for the students, and higher still than the students set for themselves.
Plus I don’t have any homework tonight.

The Italian musician and his fake Italian lunch

My god, I am absolutely exhausted. I was up a fair bit later than I usually am because I was visiting my next temporary host mother. Her house (although small) is much neater and more organized than the Baxters, it also has matching furniture and color coordination, so that was really nice. Luckily it was a fairly relaxing day of school today, what with me not being expected to turn anything in for a while. It was when I got back to the house that things started getting busy.
First was lunch, which is always an ordeal. I discovered some canned spaghetti in the back of the pantry, and after about ten minutes of trying to figure out how to work the can opener, I dumped it into a bowl and heated it up. After navigating my way through the kitchen holding a steaming hot bowl of spaghetti and being hobbled by an over-affectionate housecat named Pow, I finally sat down to enjoy my pasta. Except I forgot something, nobody enjoys canned pasta, the stuff is disgusting. The noodles were overly soft and bloated, and the tomato sauce had separated into its more basic byproducts, mainly tomato paste and water.
After that, the real fun begins. As it turns out, music class over here is more than just playing an instrument, there is a bunch of different things that they work on throughout the week, but right now I’m doing composition and performance, mainly because those are the only two choices which don’t require me to come in during my precious non-period period on Friday morning (i.e. If I didn’t do composition and performance, I wouldn’t get to sleep in until 10:00am on Friday’s). So anyway as a result, I have to compose a piece of music, and I just spent the last I don’t even know how many hours (though at the very least 3) working on this piece that could probably be picked up by beginner pianist in all of five minutes. At least I have something to work on during class now.
Next on the list (although I’m not going to do it right now, because I don’t think I could concentrate on an emaciated purple flying hippo at the moment, let alone homework) I have to read up on electronics. Basically before 10:00 tomorrow morning I have to know how a diode works and what “holes” are (they kept referring to them in class, but no one every explained what it actually was.)

Ben's Spiffy New Uniform, and Musings Completely Unrelated

I think I’ve finally figured out my host family’s method of doing dishes. They didn’t really know, it’s obviously something they do subconsciously, but I figured out how it works. When the dishwasher is empty, you can put dishes in it, and then the dishes are cleaned. From there you use the clean dishes straight out of the dishwasher, then hand wash them after you’re done with them, then put them away. Once the dishwasher is empty (i.e. It has all been used) then you are free to put dirty dishes in the dishwasher. This means that 98% of the time, the dishwasher is just a glorified kitchen cabinet.
I also discovered something else while attempting to put together another lunch for myself. They have no salt. Sorry, they have no table salt (I eventually ended up crushing some sea salt I found in the cupboard to suit my purpose.) Rather what they have is a small plastic grinder labeled “Salt and Pepper” that contains (you guessed it) large grains of salt and peppercorns. Just another one of the oddities I have found living with another family. I don’t know whether its because it’s in New Zealand, or if its just because it’s a different type of family, but it’s new.
While I’m on the subject of food, if anyone is interested, here are the list of dinners (“tea”) I’ve had so far.
· Ground chicken patties on salad topped with yogurt
· Corn chips mixed with chili and melted cheese (nachos I guess)
· Gorkha (at the Nepalese restaurant)
· Saturday lunch was notable. It was grilled cheese, but they were called “Toasties”
· Lasagna
· Sunday lunch was notable because it was at a restaurant in town, celebrating my host sister’s cousin (I think) going back to Germany. It was the first time I’ve ever tasted “ginger beer” which is quite different from “ginger ale” in taste, but similar in that both are non-alcoholic beverages with alcoholic names. It tasted like a stomachable version of air-borne (that tablet that you drop into your water before you go on a flight so you don’t get sick). I also had the house pasta, and I had a forkful of food that was somehow just mind-blowingly tasty it was… a penne noodle, a chunk of what I assume was cheddar cheese (I have yet to see any evidence that grated cheese exists in New Zealand), a piece of tomato, and a fried mushroom, all covered in marinara sauce. I don’t know why, but this combination of foods was quite possibly one of the tastiest bites I’ve ever had.
· Sunday dinner was not. It was tomatoes and eggs (as in the tomatoes were mixed in with the eggs) on bread. For some reason it kind of tasted like corn.
Today (Monday now) was also my very first real day of school. Nothing really interesting happened except for me being extremely confused, blowing a lot of money at the school shop buying books, being told I had to shave off my goatee :,(- ,and figuring out where the cantina was.
And finally. I know I’m putting up these posts in a rather sporadic manner, two at a time, with many days in-between. Worry not citizens of Delaware, I have not forsaken thee, rather I’ve had a lot of trouble getting access to the internet recently. All of these posts so far have been uploaded on someone else’s computer, though written prior to the actual posting on mine, so if things seem a little out of date, you now know why. As for all the friends and family back at home who are wondering where the hell I am on Skype after I made you all download it, assuming I move in with my temporary host family soon, I should be on within the next week. For those of you who had no idea I had a Skype account, my username is “Benjamin.Kegerise”, so look out for me.

Today for You, Tomorrow for Me

I’m writing this today, about yesterday, which for you guys is today, except the events described took place yesterday for both of us. A little bit of my brain just fell out of my left ear.
Anyway, yesterday (today) was my very first day of school. I got there a little early, and got to my second spell (period) class, which was my first class of the day, except it wasn’t because they were having an all school assembly to introduce the class officers and have the music class play some songs, which lasted for the whole first period of the day, which was the second period of the day. Confused? Don’t worry, so was I.
After the assembly was interval, which I can best describe as recess/snack time, so, having not even had the chance to go to class, let alone meet anyone, I contented myself to walk around the vast campus until the end of interval.
Geography was next, which was my first and only real class of the day. It consisted mainly of busy work concerning the tourist patterns of Rotorua, and as I didn’t really get involved in the rambling conversations of my peers, I finished the class work and the weekend homework.
Electronics was next, I went to the correct room for normal class, but the teacher was out and had apparently booked a computer lab for them to work in. I didn’t know that obviously, but luckily for me, neither did the substitute teacher, so we figured it out together. The class new what they were supposed to be doing, but opted to play games instead. I, having no clue what we were supposed to be doing, was left with but one option, and played various flash games on miniclip for the remainder of the spell.
After class a cheery young twelfth year student named Jacob introduced himself to me. Generally I don’t really get along that well with cheery young anything’s, but since he made the effort to talk, I didn’t want to dismiss him outright. He introduced me to all his cheery young friends; so although I had been planning on going home for lunch since I didn’t really have a last spell class, I was kind of obligated to stay. One of his friends, Dom I think his name was, insisted on calling me “Vladimir”, or “Vlad”. I really don’t know why, and I don’t have any particular inclination to find out.
We played an interesting game, in which one person stood on the wall, and everybody else kicked a foot ball (soccer ball) at him. If you actually ended up hitting the person, you had to stand against the wall, so the goal was to get as close as possible, make them flinch, but not actually end up hitting them.
I left after lunch, the surly looking security guard at the edge of the field didn’t seem to mind, and I passed another year thirteen on his way in (I assume he went out for lunch), so I guess they don’t really care whether or not you stay on school property, just so long as you show up for class.
Mom, Dad, I want to apologize. I want to apologize for all the times I said we had nothing to eat at our house. The Baxters house is completely devoid of snacks. Every last edible substance in this home is an ingredient. They have sticks of salami and bags of raw bacon, but not a single piece of lunchmeat to be found. There are spreads and dips everywhere, but no chips. I eventually managed to put together a sandwich with two slices of fruit bread, some chunks of salami, butter, and cheese sliced off their respective bulk sized blocks, and some lettuce torn off one of the two heads that were sitting in the fridge. I kind of feel sorry for them though, because in these two short days that I have been here, I think I’ve eaten all of their pita bread.
That evening we went out to dinner for a meeting of some people from my temporary-temporary host sister’s school (obviously including my host sister) who are going on a trek in Nepal over spring break. It was a Nepalese restaurant (go figure) and the food was actually really good, I had lamb Gorkha, served with mountain style rice, which as far as I can tell is plain rice.
Today (tomorrow) is pretty uneventful. We were all going to go “tramping” (hiking) today, but it is raining pretty hard. I have to catch myself up on some of the material for Art design, which thus far is the only class that has given me any kind of idea of what I’ve missed so far. I also have some other stuff to do, so I should be keeping fairly busy. My temporary-temporary host mother might try to get a hold of my temporary host mother so that could be interesting. My one hope is that she has some food in her house that doesn’t require an hour of preparation.

PS. I took that picture on my walk to school.

La Pics

I finally got around to culling out all the crap pictures that I took in LA, so here are the good ones, edited for your enjoyment (and in some cases ability to observe at all)