Paikea's View

I did say regular updating, didn't I? Oops. The past two days have been full of sleeping, organizing, catching up on the discovery and history channels, figuring out the next step in my life, and shrieking every time I ride in a car and think I'm on the wrong side of the road. I know you wanted to know all of that. I plan on putting together a book of my photos, but it has been slower going than I thought the process would be because of the high volume of photographs that I now have to conquer. For the post today, I asked my mom to name a place and/or activity of which to post a photo because it would have taken me another two days to go through and finally pick a photo to show y'all (and we wouldn't want that, would we?). I took this while on a whale watching tour in Kaikoura. What you see is the view from our boat, Paikea (name may sound familiar if you have seen Whale Rider), as a sperm whale is about to dive deep into the ocean.

No Worries

Continuing with the animal theme... these are some pretty chill seals outside of Kaikoura. If I had a wall of water coming at me I don't think I'd be scratching me ear (maybe that's just me). At any rate, I was delightfully and gently woken up today by the WSA fire alarm (sarcasm heavily intended). Note to whoever: when a fire alarm goes off, "fire alarm activated, stand by for further assistance," is probably not the best automated advice to give over the intercom. Something along the lines of, "fire alarm activated, get your butt outside," might do the trick.

Oh well, these made me feel better for having to wake up so early: Graphs of Favourite Songs

Model Pose

On our way from Nelson to Christchurch, Ben and I stopped to spend a night in Kaikoura. I instantly fell in love with it (you'll read that statement a lot in the coming posts). Once we got there, we met up with two other friends, Lauren and Jill, and went to a seal colony to hang out and take photos. Then, Lauren, Jill, and I decided that we wanted to wake up to see the sunrise - one of the best decisions made during my break. We woke up the next morning - not so bright, but very early - and went back to the seal colony. I'm a skier in Colorado, which means I get to see my fair share of sunrises in the rocky mountains on winter mornings that I didn't think could compare with anything else. However, I was wrong. Not only did I get to see snow capped mountains turn to gold, I also got to expierence the waves crashing at their bases while seagulls and seals wondered why we were disturbing their peace. It sounds like a scene from some Disney princess movie, but it was ten times better than that. On our way out of the parking lot, we noticed a group of very large (to say the least) seals and had to stop to capture them on our cameras. This was one of them...

Click Here to read an inspirational blog. It is written by Lisa Ray, who has been one of my favorite actresses ever since I saw Water (you may remember my blog post about it: here). Most people who know me, know that I love actors and actresses that haven't quite made it big; because when an actor or actress's high-profile personality gets bigger than his or her talent, it's time for me to tune out. I no longer see the character, I just see whoever is playing them. However, Lisa Ray is different. I have now seen five of her films and I never notice her, the actress, I notice and connect to her characters - that is what I consider great acting. However, now I am paying attention to her for another reason: because she's not afraid to talk about what the rest of us are afraid bout: cancer. Every single person I know has been effected by it, one way or another, which is probably what makes it so difficult to talk about it. However, if you still can't talk about it, at least you can read about it on Lisa Ray's incredible blog.