School? Snow? Labour?

So school work has really come down on me hard lately. My math test that I was worried about a few week back I think went okay. I haven't gotten it back yet but I do think I did okay. However, my eng. class has been really terrible. I had another test last week and I though I would do well because I have improved my homework grade. No luck, I along with the rest of the class did poorly. I will be going into talk to the teacher to see whats up and figure something out to make sure I get the grades I need. That class has also consumed me lately. I had a lab report due last thurs. which I put many library hours into. I have spent the majority of the week days these past 2 weeks in the library. And the libs are only open till 9. It crazy though. Go to the eng. library in the afternoon and its packed! All the kids go to class in the morning. Then work on school work in the afternoon. Then around 5 just head home and finish whatever the next day. The run it like a job instead of back home where everyone just waits until night before to do stuff. I've fallen into the afternoon working sessions which is good. And anyways, only 3 more weeks of classes!!!!

So 2 weekends ago I went skiing at mt. hutt. My aprtment complex company put on a bus for us on sat. Free bus and bbq at lunch so that was pretty sweet. It was a beatiful spring day. I just had a flanal and spandex with stubbies on which was pretty sweet. The seasons winding down so no fresh gnar to be had, pretty much just played in the half pipe and terrian park all day. Tons of fun though. Actually I saw a kid in the park rocking 80's skis and still thowing nice jumps. I started talking to him cause, well, that's super legit. Anyways turns out he is a 2nd pro mech. eng. just like me, he is even in my math class. So thats pretty sweet and what not. Good to finally know some peoples in my class. Like i said last week was just school school.

About mid week last week big things were happening. A big snow storm was moving into the mountains. Its pretty uncommon for this time of year but it was looking like it was gonna dump up to 2 feet of fresh pow pow all over the place on thurs. fri. making it perfect for this weekend. Well unfortunately I had already signed up through australearn to go on a volunteer weekend to quail island. And australearn is crazy so if I was a no show they were going to charge me 200 bucks. So anyways not going skiing fresh pow pow, and with my eng. class I was in a pretty bad mood end of the week.

I just got back from quail island and things arn't all so bad. I just kind of got over the not skiing thing, even though I am bummed I have already had some great days. There were 11 of us australearns and 2 DOC workers at quail island. (quail island is a small island only about 40 min from school in Lyttleton harbour) We got on the island at about 10am sat. morning. After we put our packs down the first thing they did was feed us. Then we were unfortunately scrapping paint of an old lighthouse persons cabin to try to fix it up. Everyone got pretty upset at doing such crap work. Anyways we did that in quick time and then it was lunch time. After lunch we painted the light house for a bit. Then we went down to the beach. At 3:30 it was low tide so we where picking up as rocks from the beach, loading them into the tractor, and then dumping them to make a wall. The rocks were all part of wall but the water had washed them away. We did that for about 2 hours, then went and had soup. After soup we had free time. We went out exploring all over the island (only like a kilometer long at most). There is an old ship graveyard in the back of the island. Plus, back in the early 1900's the island was where lepers were isolated. There is a grave and an reconstructed house. It was pretty cool, and the stem of a billions zombie leper jokes. It got dark around 7:30 and that's when it was feed time. They grilled up all sorts of sweet meats for us. A real feast. After the feast we just hung out around the fire. I provided plenty of jokes for the whole gang. I also, had to defend jimmy buffet for being as cool as he is. We went out and did some sweet stargazing as well. It was to bed pretty early because we got up earlish, plus it was daylight savings on sat. night so we lost an hour.

Sunday we did more of the same. Finished the painting the primer on the cabin. Cleaning out the gutters and general maintenance. Then we went and did some trail work by grading out a trail so its easier to walk on. Again not without 2 fantastic meals and plenty of snacks. We only worked till about 2 because we needed to be ready to catch the ferry back at 3:30. All in all, the quail island trip wasn't nearly as bad as I though it would be (plus they feed us heaps!). I really enjoyed myself and showing off my super manly attitude and manually labour that goes with my beard. Plus the mountains only got about a foot of fresh so I've skied better this season. Probably the last weekend of skiing coming up. Then I'll have to find other things to do. Fishing season opens ovt. 1st!

(check fresh quail island pics.)