Update

Yo!

Lauren told me I don't update enough so here you go :

Last night I went out for my friend Julia's birthday. A group of us went to an Italian cafe down Franklin St (main st of Chapel Hill). Although I only had gelato because Simone and I had been at the Agora (the dining room at Granville) at the seafood night. It happens once a year and the entire dining room was full of seafood .. I felt like such a man with my crab legs.. you literally have a crab that you break apart and suck the meat out of like crayfish. It was so good.

Tonight I am going to my friend Ashley's house with Tal, Amanda and Camille to cook a homecooked meal! We are so excited haha.

Today I booked tickets with Knic to go to NYC in November and spent the afternoon doing homework.... boo.

I am also looking into going to Jersey to go to Six Flags theme park with Talia and Knicole... look up kingdaka on youtube.... it looks insaaaaaane. Mum you probably shouldn't look at it haha.

I am still having lots of fun :) update me on what's going on at home!

Love Pip xx

Where I Live

I thought you may be interested to know where I am living at the moment.

First off, I am in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.. which is probably most famous for the movies Dirty Dancing, the Notebook and the series One Tree Hill. Mostly, it is famous for NASCAR. I have a sweet NASCAR lanyard for my keys... lanyards are cool here.


This is my room

My side of the room

Amanda's side

Of course, Amanda and I are the tidiest people you know so the room is always spotless. I actually couldn't ask for a better room mate - we get on so well and have the same habits!

I went through Uni the other day and took some photos for you - unfortunately it was the first cloudy day in a long time so it doesn't look as nice as it usually does - it was 16deg celsius and everyone was shivering! I laughed when I logged onto facebook and saw updates from Invercargill from people saying how excited they were that it was going to get to 14deg!

Walking through Frat Court - the frats were "pre-gaming" as there was a football game on

Looking back into Frat Court - the big building at the very back behind the trees is my tower at Granville towers

Carolina Inn

Some of Campus - I walk down here to get to class usually.

The military building - it's not uncommon to see the army training around here. At every football game we have to stand up and honour the army as well.

The mascot at UNC is a ram - this is outside the football museum

Waiting for the football game to start against Virginia - we won! Tar...Heels!!!

Your standard dress code at UNC

Nicole alone in "the pit". This is usually packed full of students during the school week, libraries, stores and dining halls surround it.

This is one of the buildings I have lectures in - Hanes Hall. The buildings are all named after slaves that built them - their graves are behind my friend Claire's dorm... slightly creepy.

Flagpole in the middle of campus

SQUIRREL!

A fancy building.. I think it's a library

The Old Well

A cool looking church on Franklin St (the main st)

Looking down the main street

Rameses the Ram pops up everywhere on Game Day - You also have to wear a game day tshirt or else you're shunned haha

Our friend Eryk got into the media pit with his camera at the game and shot some really cool photos like this one

Our tower at Granville - we are on the bottom floor

And so that's my life here in NC summed up in a few photos - I'm off to Miami for fall break and looking into a trip to Cancun in Mexico with the girls from my floor sometime in November. Time is going so fast!!!!

Hope you are well

x

I'm Alive!

Hey Everyone!

I survived Hurricane Irene (as you may have seen in the Southland Times hahah) and have been having so much fun here in Chapel Hill.

So what has been going on?

A lot of drinking to say the least... it's just like being back at Arana in first year all over again haha there is a continual flow of alcohol all the time because everything is so cheap here.

 

 

 

 

All for $80

 Our nights have been hilarious I've met some of the coolest people from all over the world.

I had to go to the local farmers market for an assignment the other day - it was really nice to be able to see some fresh veggies and eat some bread that wasn't full of sugar! Here is proof that I actually got up early enough to attend....

We had our first football game the other day, it was so much fun! We played some cornhaul and stuff at Granville then made our merry way down to the stadium! The stadium is huge!!! Bigger than the Roaring Pen or whatever it is called now. Everyone's families and friends come to watch the game - they are so patriotic about their home teams here. There are shops everywhere and you can buy tar heel anything! - salt and pepper shakers, undies, socks, toothbrushes - you name it and it's probably in carolina blue.

I'm not too sure if these photos are going to work or not but let's hope you can see what I have put up.

Bit of some scary news... Brad from my floor got beaten up at the ATM the other night - which is scary because it is 100m from Granville and in a well lit place. They took his wallet and he had to go to hospital and get stitches but the lovely Amanda and Talia went and picked him up and looked after him. He's a tough cookie and will be fine though. I'm definitely in America now....... sometimes I miss how chilled out NZ is but I'm not homesick at all :) .

I'll leave you with an epic picture of American Frat styles.....

No words. Just pure brilliance.

UNC!

Hi!

So today was my first day of classes - I am taking 4 papers or 'courses' as they call them here because a 'paper' is an essay. Two linguistics, one communications and one american studies. It was a very tiring day but good to get started. It seems like I will not be able to miss classes as they have an attendance roll and also laptops are banned from 3 of my 4 classes as they like people to be 'mentally prepared'.

My first class was communications - making and manipulating race in the USA. It is mostly about black culture and seems like it will be quite interesting - the workload doesn't seem much more than what I would do at home for that one.

American Studies was an American food culture class and this one seems pretty sweet too - an assignment is going to the Farmer's market and checking out the food there. I also have to cook a dish and present it to the class so I might cook the good old NZ pav - might need a recipe Mum!!

Linguistics was my last class of the day - this was by far the hardest.. I have an exam on Tuesday on basic phonetics.. I can't remember anything so I will have to do a bit of study.. lame. My other linguistics class is tomorrow and I have homework to do before it even starts!

So even though I have lots of work throughout the semester I don't have exams or my exams are worth 5% or something ridiculous!

I have spent my time at UNC by the pool mostly so I don't have tooooo much to update on.. except new tan lines.

I am off to dinner with my mentor and some of her friends tonight so that should be good fun.

Sorry for the boring post!! Holiday is now over for sure! :(

Here are some pics of the uni, it is a very pretty campus with lots of trees and old buildings.

 This is a group from my floor outside the library

 Walking to the "pit" which is where the student store and central part of campus is

 The wishing well where you drink out of for good luck on classes - we didn't do this today however as seniors abuse and waterbomb any freshman or transfers that try and do it - sounds familiar to dunedin!

 Lecture theatres are on the outside of the grass in this area

 Amanda and I

Real Life Role Play... no joke.

Disneyland!

We have left California and are now in Chapel Hill NC!

We spent our last day in Santa Monica with the other two kiwi girls that were in our room in the hostel. It was such a fun day! We hired trikes from this stall by the pier and then biked down the boardwalk to Venice beach. It was SO hot. I now have epic tan lines which are going to be very hard to get rid of! We watched some hard out people skateboarding at the skate park there and then biked our way back to Santa Monica where we had lunch and went our separate ways as Renee and Chrystal were heading back to NZ that day and we were carrying on to Anaheim. I am soo sick of burgers and fries!!

We took a shuttle to Anaheim and spent the afternoon in the hotel pool. It was so good - we were thinking of you all back home in the snow!!!!!

The next two days we spent at Disneyland. It was so much fun. We spent the first day in the original park and then went to California Adventure on the second day. The rollercoasters were so much fun! We went on nearly every ride that was open. My favourite was the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad  this is a video of it here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17o4fRQ5m0E&feature=pyv&ad=9344848075&kw=big%20thunder%20mountain%20railroad and ignore the screaming. It's way more fun actually being on the rollercoaster than watching that. Obviously.. haha.

The next day we went to California Adventure which is the second park at Disneyland. We went on the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror which was the most TERRIFYING ride of my life. You went up this creepy tower in an elevator and it was like the big dropping ride in Australia except this time you went up and down and up and down and it was all in the dark and windows would open and you would see how high you were and then it dropped you again. The photo of me and Knic is hilarious!! We are grabbing onto each other and screaming so bad. A little girl came up to Nicole and gave her a hug because she thought we looked so scared. There are lots of summer camps that go through Disneyland as well and we could hear all the little kids laughing at our photo haha. So shame. But it was sooo scary!!!

That night we had to catch the plane at 1.40am to get to North Carolina. We jumped on the Bus and a group of Italians were on there who were hilarious. We are beautiful ladies apparently and they wanted us to go stay at the Hilton with them but unfortunately we could not afford it!! We arrived at Chapel Hill at 11.34am local time so it was about a 6 hour trip across the country with a stop in Memphis for an hour where there was the most insane lightning storm. Alex, my mentor's friend picked me up who was really cool and we went out for lunch with Sarah, Knic's mentor and some other exchange students at a local Southern diner. We tried corn bread it was so cakey! Alex took me on a tour of the campus and then dropped me off at Granville which was really cool, she is so nice.

Guess what is legal in North Carolina.. riding in the bed of a ute down the highways. Brad, one of the guys on my floor from Australia bought a ute and a whole group of us needed to get to Walmart to buy some stuff for our rooms. So off we went in the ute and it was totally legit and normal to everyone! This place is crazy! But so pretty as well - lots of trees and old beautiful buildings.

Last night Amanda, Talia, Knicole, Kim and I went to a local restaurant called Spanky's where we had some pasta and wine and played trivia! It was so funny. American guys love their pastel polo shirts and beige pants waaay too much. We spotted about 15 of them.

Off to our first frat party tonight! Not sure what to expect haha.

Hope all is well at home

xxx

They be grindin'

Hi everyone!

The past few days have been lots of fun. On Friday we went shopping (don't worry Mum I didn't spend too much) and then at night we went on a pub crawl with the hostel. We have had two other New Zealanders and an Australian in our room and we all went together with the other hostellers. We drank these massive ciders which pretty much came in mini yard glasses. Unfortunately my camera hadn't charged so I wasn't able to get any photos but they were insane!! SO MUCH GRINDING IN THE USA!!!! It's hilarious watching all the Americans dance to their hip hop music.

On Saturday we went to the Getty Museum which was designed by Richard Meier .. some dude who also designed architecture in Spain which I did a paper about so this was nerdily interesting to me. There was a Cuban photography exhibition and the original Che Guevara photograph was there - also nerdily interesting to me because of Spanish haha. The gardens are so pretty though - you look out over the entire LA city. Nicole and I managed to find our way through LA on the bus system to get to the Getty and then find our way back - luckily I had her or I would have ended up on the opposite side of town by getting on the wrong bus!! Such a small town girl haha.

Yesterday we went on a hike with another group from the hostel in the Santa Monica mountains. We were warned about rattlesnakes but unfortunately we didn't see any!! It was soooo hot. We were planning on going to the beach but when we got back to Santa Monica city it was actually quite cold there so we went looking through the shops again. Last night we met up with our hiking group from the hostel and went to a British pub for a drink then down to the pier to go on the rollercoaster and ferris wheel which was so much fun.

Today we are off to Anaheim for 2 days at Disneyland!!!!

Hope you are staying warm in the snow - I'm getting a good tan here ;)

Made it!!!!

Hi everyone!

We have arrived in Santa Monica! Bags were not on our side during the trip - my hand luggage broke in Chch and then our bags got put on the flight after us but it all worked out so all good!!! Spent the first day just checking out some of Santa Monica - the pier and the shops! Dresses are $12 at H&M! But I've been a good girl and not bought any clothes yet... got to make it to North Carolina within the luggage weight limit haha. There are heaps of sidewalk attractions - a man holding a snake down by the pier, a guy with bunnies and one with parrots. You can pay them $1 and get a photo or they're tricksters and come and place them in your hands so you have to give them something.


It is so hot and humid here!!!!! A nice change from cold Dunedin and Invercargill haha. We are staying in a hostel so today we did a tour through Hollywood. It was very cool. Started out at Venice beach which is the one up from Santa Monica so checked out all the stalls and stuff there - lots of medicinal marijuana shops everywhere haha. Ended up buying some rap dudes music off him because he was a tricky one and signed it for me so I had to pay. My name is "Pipe" apparently. Philippa and Pip seem to be difficult names to grasp here!! We got to see some celeb's houses like Lindsay Lohan, Whoopi Goldberg, Adam Sandler, the Fresh Prince of Bel Air house etc. and then on to Rodeo Drive where I will shop when I am extremely rich and then onto the Hollywood walk of fame. Sooo many people and LA just stretches out for miles! We ended up at the Hollywood sign and it's a bit over rated. Seems so small compared to what you see on the movies.


Going to check out Universal studios and the getty museum later on in the week and off to Disneyland on Monday before heading over to NC.


Hope you are all good at home, let me know what's been going on :)

Lots of love,

Pipe xx