I don’t really know where to start since my last post; so much has happened. I’ve been to Berlin, I’ve moved into my apartment, I’ve started uni, I’ve cut my foot open on a glass I smashed on the ground (Cheap sparkling wine was not involved), I’ve meet super cool people, I almost got arrested at a bank, and finally I became Karl Lagerfeld’s toy boy for a week before being dumped for eating too much cheese and chocolate and for maxing out his credit card on Lindauer imports.

Again, I don’t really have photos to document such events since: a) I’m lazy, and b) my banking skills are totally shocking and I’ve only just managed to put together all the things I need to do an international money transfer and buy a phone with a flashy camera – although in some ways this has been fortuitous given that the new iphone is now due to be released in nine days. Exciting!

Uuuuum, so as a quick rundown of my classes, all so far have been very intense, and I’ve understood about ten percent of all but one class, in which the teacher is German and speaks with an accent, therefore rendering her more comprehensible in some strange sort of way. She is also one of the several people who have mistaken me for a German now. First of all there was the director of the philosophy department at the Sorbonne, who asked if I was German after inviting me into his private office, closing the door behind me, telling me he was supposed to have finished for the day but didn’t mind helping me out, asking if I was feeling okay given that I was on exchange, and giving me his email address in case I needed any help. I’m not making assumptions at all. Then there was of course my German lecturer whose French I can actually understand, and finally an assistant in a tea shop who addressed my friend and me in German - even though we were in Paris! But anyway, my classes; by all accounts it takes a few weeks to get used to, so I’m not giving up or emailing the director of philosophy just yet to see if I can get him to do me any favours.

Oh yes. So there is the story of my almost being arrested in a bank. So that didn’t actually happen. What did happen however were some very awkward moments when I tried to open my account before I was actually living in my apartment, which apparently you can’t do in France. I have a ‘personal advisor’, who managed to sign me up to insurance for my mobile phone, which is seriously worth like, 50 centimes and that not even the Romanian gypsy children would bother pick pocketing. Anyway, Fabienne asked for my passport and university acceptance letter, and of course, silly me, thinking I wouldn’t need every piece of personal documentation ever, I didn’t actually have them. So she was like, oh it’s okay you can walk to your apartment and get them, which of course I couldn’t do because at the time I was staying in a hotel on the other side of town, and wasn’t actually living in my apartment yet like I had told them. So I had to create plans out of thin air, even though I had said five minutes previously that I didn’t have any obligations. Ahem. So I didn’t really get arrested, but Fabienne Moreau is a seriously intimidating women. She’s like four foot tall but I wouldn’t want to wrestle with her. So lying to her gave me the impression that I was about to be arrested – that or signed up to insurance for my insurance. Seriously, I don’t doubt that women could do it.

Anyway, I guess you all probably figured that I haven’t actually been in contact with Karl Lagerfeld, but that if I had I would have been ditched for reasons similar to those outlined previously. Anyhoo, let me say that Karl’s definitely on my horizons - him or a French Derek Warburton. I’ll settle for either. Also, the cutting my foot open incident wasn’t really that serious, however the blood gushing from my foot did mix with the water that had been in the glass, so it looked a lot worse than it actually was, and I had been crying just beforehand (seriously, the things exchanges do to you) so my eyes were completely red. As you can imagine it wasn’t exactly a good look and it was with relief that I wasn’t put on suicide watch after calling Géraldine in to help.

Actually, continuing the theme of successes from my first post, Géraldine (my flatmate) most certainly counts. She’s always making yummy food, which she always shares with me (Josh you’ve been replaced), and she’s the most relaxed thing ever. Plus she worked as a dentist for seven years, so when she saw my foot she promptly pulled out antiseptic and plasters and even offered to do stitches if I needed them! I should have said yes just to test her!

Anyway, apart from that everything is pretty much the same, and I’m looking forward to a weekend with my main man Liam! Woooo! Who’s coming to stay for a few days and who will probably cringe even more than the rest of you if he reads this.

For now though people, all I can say is SKYPE ME because I still miss you all. Although beware of the crappy connection on my computer and the waiting list you’ll have to join if you’d like to chat with me =)

Love and peace and glitter y’all.

Your main man J-dawg.                                  

Xx              

I’ve been sitting here for the last fifteen minutes attempting to find a way to start my next post, in which I hope to sum up the last three and a half weeks, and also to give a feel for my previous eight days in Paris. I thought I could start with complaining about my hotel, but I didn’t want to seem ungrateful or precious, because bar the occasional domestics between the angry Iranian owner and his wife, the hotel really is what you would expect for 40 Euro a night. However, I do avoid a sinister dip in the landing outside my room that groans every time the slightest amount of weight is placed on it. But anyway, I instead decided to open this post with a reflectional type of feel about how I couldn’t figure out how to open this post.

Ahem. So we did a lot of shit in Italy, London and France. And I didn’t really bother taking photos because: a) I don’t have a camera yet, and b) my brother, sister and dad all had cameras, and c) you’ve probably already seen better photos of 90% of the things we visited, and d) I’m incredibly lazy. However, I did have the presence of mind to take pictures at a few opportune moments like:

Mum sleeping on the train. Isn’t she cute?

Mum asleep, again…

Mum being a dork. I swear, at just about every tourist attraction in Europe, you get multiple groups of tourists taking pictures from a distance, trying to make it look like they are holding the monument, or in the case of mother dearest pictured below; the leaning tower of Pisa. I would say this picture is more ‘what’s mum doing’, than ‘oh chortle chortle that Elizabeth is so clever’. In mum’s defence though, EVERYBODY was doing it.

This was dad trying to figure out the camera. Nuf said.

And finally, awwwwww. Actually a nice photo of us all in Venice (except for dad who was taking the photo).

On a side-note, I must admit that three weeks with my family was a lot more pleasant than I had expected, since I don’t think we’ve ever spent three weeks together in confined quarters. I mean, it did involve a three hour drive around Florence trying to find our hotel, and it did involve a serious domestic every time it came to packing our rental car, (due mainly to my suitcase I will admit) and it did involve three hours of sitting at a 45 degree angle because the back seat of our car had to be tilted forward to make space for our baggage (ahem), and it did involve a serious need on more than one occasion for inflatable batons. Nonetheless, it culminated in mum and I both bursting into tears when we first saw each other on the morning of they left, and even more tears that evening at the airport.

Anyway, I haven’t spoken about the last week in Paris, but so far it’s been a mixture of amazing and homesickness, for which retail therapy is a very good antidote. Although I do find that my mood swings correlate strongly with alcohol and coffee consumption. So it is with relief that I await the upcoming coffee tour offered to me by an Australian (whose name is Paris!) who also understands the ‘problem’, shared by pretentious latté connoisseurs in a land of scalding hot, milky, caffeine void beverages. So for now I’m going to wait until I have a slightly less skewed disposition, before I talk about my adventures in Paris.

Until then,

I miss you ALL.

Xx

So here’s me being Sampson. I used to love hearing the ‘Samson’ biblical story at my primary school (yes I’m techincally a catcholic. Ha!) because the story of a man with a similar name to me, who was renowned for his strength, made me feel less like the chubby child that I was.

Random middle aged stranger walking alongside me exclaims at a cute dog walking towards us.

For some reason I turn.

Then he looks at me and says, “Oh sorry I meant the dog!”

I reply, “Oh, it’s fine, I assumed as much”. All whilst he is staring in such a manner that I wonder if he was simply clever enough to use the dog as a ploy.

I turn back and keep walking, and to my back he says, “British?”

Ugh. So I stop and turn once again to reply, “No I’m from New Zealand”. “Oh!” He replies, “I’ve been to one of your states - Auckland”. I was like, you’re American and annoying. To myself.

And then he sees the hairspray I had bought, and looks at me coyly saying, “It’s not easy looking good, is it?” “Haha, no…” This silence is awkward I have to fill the space with something, so I ask, “Do you know anywhere around here where I could get a simcard?” - My original intention for wondering the streets aimlessly. But it gives him the perfect opening, “No, but I know where you can get a blowjob”.

dklfsdlkfjsdlkfjalkkjalkfja. First day on the streets of London and this is what happens. It was a little flattering I suppose, and the man had guts (literally) so I didn’t want to say yes, but part of my felt like I should have just to reward him for his effort.

I didn’t. Nor did I sassily shut him down. Instead I blushed and walked away.

Anyway, the Italian I kissed that night was a lot hotter. 

Hey y’all.

I keep meaning to sit down and to do another update, but things have been extremely rushed so far, and we keep having internet issues wherever we stay, aaaaand as much as I love you all, I would rather be out enjoying the sun than cooped up in my hotel room trying to wittily and humurously represent our holiday thus far.

So what I will say is that Italy is beautiful, but extremely hot. And I have bought some very cool clothes. Also, alcohol is extremely cheap. We’re in Venice at the moment and will be taking a boat out to an island to watch Murano Glass (which Dad pronounces Merino) being made.Tomorrow we head to London where Belinda and I will be hitting up the gay bars!

When I have a little more time I’ll post some silly photos that I took for your enjoyment - some of mum sleeping, some of me being a dick, and I’ll also tell you all about some more fails - there are a lot to choose from.

For now though, enjoy the cold!

Ciao.

Xx

Okay so here’s my first post.

I’m still trying to get used to the idea of blogging about my life. It’s seems almost superfluous given that my next six months will probably be nothing more than wine, cheese and Lindauer withdrawals. Nonetheless, I suppose Paris is a pretty cool place and a lot of you did seem quite jealous, so I guess it’s only fair that I keep you updated.

So I thought I’d sum up the last few days as a series of successes and fails.

Let’s start with the fails.

1. Family. Seriously, this trip has done nothing good for Mum and Dad’s marriage. They literally are incapable of making a decision together. It’s rather frustrating. All they’ve done so far is bicker and I’m pretty sure when we drive to Florence on Tuesday, I know – DRIVE – to Florence, shit’s going to get real. Also, Mum didn’t think it inappropriate or even embarrassing, while en route to the Pantheon, to turn around on a busy street and shriek at Dad and Andrew to hurry up. They were at least fifty metres behind us, so this was some scream. You should have seen the look on my face. It was something akin to the time my brother let off three stink bombs in my car when I was driving.  

2. Jonathan. I am a fail. I left my expensive green coat in our hotel in Korea, and all calls so far have been met with broken English and suspicious claims that it was not there. Hmmmm.

3. Combover Barry/Jonathan. So yes, I hadn’t signed my passport. But it only said to do so in the ‘Important information’ section, which clearly nobody reads, Barry.  He was all like, ‘this isn’t a valid passport, I smell like mothballs, you shouldn’t even have a boarding pass’. I was all like, ‘Sort out that shit on yo head!’

4. Train dramas. So my family and I caught the train out to Pompei today. We had allocated seating in the second class coach (one up from standing and one down from having our own little carriage). Anyhoo, what seems to be custom is that all the cheeky Italians take seats knowing they’ve been allocated, in the hope that they won’t be claimed. So since we were running a little late, surprise surprise, our seats had been taken. And thankfully four out the five people in our seats were happy to move for us. But this blonde bitch, when I told her very politely that I thought she was in our seat, was all like, ‘pasta ravioli cinquenta sono bitcho’, and wouldn’t move. And then the guy opposite her defended her saying she was supposed to be sitting there, even though she had moved from another of our seats that she was originally in. And then the guy next to him started saying something that seemed like, ‘bitches that’s their seat’. Anyhoo, she didn’t move and figuring there was nothing we could do, she had our seat for about half an hour until she ran away when she saw the train conductor. Seriously, what a dumb bitch. Oh yes, and then we missed our stop and had to wait an hour at the next station for a train back – if you think I’m a flake you should see what happens when you put a whole family of flakes in a foreign country.     

Successes!

1. Unfortunately I have no strolls of success to report so far. My only defence is that I’ve been with my family and last night – Saturday – I was too jetlagged to go out. What I can report though is that after Barry, customs quickly made up for itself at the security checks, where a hot hispterish guy manning the metal detector (random, right?) told me he liked my shoes whilst eye raping me. Despite his sounding like a bro, I was like, ‘WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ALL MY LIFE’. And then I was like, oh yes, living in South Auckland.

2. I’m struggling to think of other successes other than the obvious, but of course Rome and Italian men both qualify and are both wonderful! This post is probably long enough anyway so I’ll leave it at that.

Ciao everybody!