Chaos Dish

Aright, lots has happened in a short time and now I'm going to have to pay for it by cramming it all into this post. First and foremost, new family, again. I didn't know it when I moved in, but the family that I'm staying with right now is temporary, which apparently nobody thought to tell me. It was "Well lets see how this works out, and if we like the situation, we'll be permanent." Turns out that around this time another family called up and asked if they could host me. They told them that they were still waiting on the family situation from my end and asked if the family wanted one of the many other exchange students they were looking for a home for. New family said no, they wanted me (which is either really sweet, or they really need an American with my unique skill set for some dastardly plan). As the story goes, right after that, the people that I've been staying with called up and said that they actually didn't like the whole being tied down to the house thing and were just starting to enjoy being empty nesters, so AFS called the new family back and said "Guess what? Ben just became available." So long story short, I'm moving in on Friday.
Monday's suck, this is because I miss piano lessons on Monday's, four weeks in a row in fact, and next Monday I won't be missing my lesson, and I can guarantee I'm going to be lectured on whether I'm serious about taking lessons and whether I should be there blah, blah, blah. I missed the Monday I was in Rotorua, the week after that we had the day off, the week after that I was sick, and this Monday I went to an electronics workshop at Victoria University. Pretty cool workshop, we were in the electronics room the whole day working on a circut that would turn a motor in different directions... theoretically. That's right, Mr. Going for my Masters in electronic engineering, Mr. in the process of making a security gaurd robot, but got sidetracked trying to give it freaking emotions, taught a full day workshop on a circut that he never bothered to test to see if it would work. On a completely unrelated note, the pictures are of a real live circut that I built in class that switches between red and green lights autonomously, it's called a bistable multi-vibrator. It may not have been the smallest in the class (only second or third smallest :p ) but it was definately the prettiest, most symmetrical, and cleanest. I got it working on my first try. In fact, at least three other students copied my design. Proud? Maybe a little.
Went to an AFS camp over the weekend. It was the end of stay camp for a few of the participants, so that was kind of sad, but it was a good camp otherwise. We played a game that kinda reminds me of senior assassins that charter plays, except instead of squirt guns it's words. I was sitting and talking to Nicole (Swiss), the only AFS student in Lower Hutt who doesn't go to Hutt High. They started passing the hat around for names. Nicole started saying that she didn't think she'd last long in this game as I pulled her name out of the hat, "No," I thought "no you won't." Then the word hat came around and I pulled out "USA". At that point Nicole asked what I got.
"Oh just the place that I'm from."
"What, the USA?"
"Gotcha!"
"Haha, what?"
"No I'm serious, I got you" I said, holding up the slips of paper.
Suddenly the name passing out was interupted by yelling, a couple of punches, then Nicole laughing literally to the point of tears. Pretty soon the whole room was laughing, and Hauke(Germany) was kind enough to point out that he didn't even think she lasted a minute.
Bloody hilarious.
Anyway, her person who I now had to get was Jean-Paul (Venezuela), who I didn't know for a while because he went by Jean and nobody pronounced it "Jean" they pronounced it "John" so I was confused for a while. Eventually I found out who he was, but it's hard to get someone to say "fish and chips", and in the meantime, Line (Greenland) got me with Beehive. Wouldn't have mattered though, it turned out the winner of the contest had got four or five people in total, and I had been taking so long with Jean I wouldn't have stood a chance.
The camp was really for the end of stay kids, so us mid stay kids got to spend a lot of time just talking with our group leader about how we felt about the exchange, what was good, what was bad. We pretty much came to a unanimous conclusion that Kiwi kids our age are immature, and Leo (French) and I spent a lot of time discussing how bad Kiwi food is and how they don't seem to understand the concept of blending ingredients, prefering to dump whatever they happen to like in a pot (or on a pizza crust as the case may be) and call it a meal.
At the end of the camp, a Hannah (Austria) decided to have a huge party at her beach house in Greece the summer after next to get all the European AFSers back together, but I got invited too, so I have that to look forward to in two years time.
I hate this weather. Today started out nice, and I was thinking it might actually be a continuation of the day before, which was the first sunny day Lower Hutt has seen in ages. Literally weeks come and go and I wonder if the sun even bothers going up in the sky if we're never going to see it. Any way started out nice, but around interval it started to get dark, and by lunch it was actually hailing. Well it let up with the percipitation for my walk home, but the wind was blowing something fierce. It was one of those chill winds that tear the heat from your body. I was okay going around the base of a bank that blocked some of the wind, but when I went over the bridge it really started up, pulling away what energy it could like some foul, airborn vampire. I struggled accross the bridge, my lips were dead and blue, splotches of frozed blood made purple lakes beneath my skin, I fell to my knees, vision fading, as a furious gust of wind carried away my final breath...
okay maybe it wasn't that bad, but still, it was a fucking nasty walk home.