We visited NASA and got to see some real shuttles, the training area for astronauts and the ground control room for all the Apollo missions.  It was a pretty cool tour and I found out some interesting stuff like that the computers that helped them get to their moon had only like 400kb ram combined or something ridiculous like that.  Pretty impressive really.

After NASA we went out to a bar in Houston that had the best 80′s cover band.  The band (The Spazmatics) dressed up sort of like ‘Revenge of the nerds’ with neck braces and old school helmets etc.  From what I remember of the night, they were awesome anyway.

So we are now in Austin, Texas about to go out, get some steak, and start drinking…again.  I think my liver is going to regret this trip…

The swamps around the city are pretty interesting to drive through and a change from the normal highways we’ve been on.  These ones are all raised up on huge concrete piles with some random houses scattered around the place in the swamps.  The people can’t drive to their houses so they get there by boat apparently.  Each to their own.

We saw a bit of the damage that Katrina left behind but we are lucky to be staying in an awesome house, which we have pretty much to ourselves, just outside the french quarter (the touristy, still nice part).  We’re walking over to the famous Bourbon street to drink and listen to some live jazz tonight so it should be fun.  Beale street and Bourbon street in 2 nights is pretty sweet – I’m being spoilt for places to drink and music to listen to at the moment.

We have a Mississippi river cruise tomorrow then some local cuisine and a ghost tour at night after we look around the place.  Great fun with a hangover eh, so I’m going to go get working on that.

There are a lot of cliches about southern/country people here but it turns out that most of them could be true.  People actually line dance in these places and get really in to it too.  I thought there’d be a few people doing it and then everyone would just dance like normal but no, they all just join in with the line dancing and do all these complicated routines even.  No idea how they choreograph it but meh, it’s funny to watch anyway.

We left Nashville for Memphis yesterday and went straight to Graceland and all the Elvis museums that they have there.  I’m not a massive fan or anything but it was pretty cool looking through the Graceland mansion and his flash customized planes anyway.  I would definitely be happy living in his house even if it is a little old school now.

For dinner, we went out to the Blues city cafe on Beale street and had a change from country music to Blues.  The place had a band playing Johnny Cash covers and they did them pretty well so it was a nice change from the nonstop country music in Nashville.  The last band played more classic blues and it was really good music to hear live as well.  We are staying at a hostel which is kind of in a church so we couldn’t go too wild or anything but it was a good night out for sure considering it was a sunday too.

Today we got to be a part of all the parades and stuff for Martin Luther King because it’s his remembrance day today.  I studied a bit about the civil rights movement at UCSD so it was cool to see how much the guy is still remembered.  We were the only white people at the Civil Rights Museum (which is also the place where he got shot) but other than getting a few weird looks it wasn’t too bad.  Maybe they were just giving us weird looks because we were the only ones taking photos…

We also did a tour of the Gibson guitar factory and had the whole process of guitar making explained to us.   I had no idea how they did any of that stuff so it was cool to see it all actually happening.  They take you through the whole process step-by-step and you see the workers in action right in front of you so it was a cool tour to go on.  The only problem is now I really want to take up guitar which I can definitely not afford at the moment. 

The Rock and Soul museum was right over the street so we went round that as well and saw more of elvis, Johnny Cash and everyone else.  I found out a lot of interesting stuff about the eras that these types of music were in but my boyhood hero was kind of ruined.  I loved Jerry Lee Lewis when I was little, especially “Great Balls of Fire” but little did I know the guy is infamous for marrying his thirteen year old cousin.  At least marry your sixteen year old, legal cousin for god’s sake. 

To cap the day off we went to a NBA game between the Memphis Grizzlies and the Chicago Bulls so I ticked off yet another thing I wanted to do while I was here.  Both teams aren’t exactly top teams at the moment but it was still cool to experience the atmosphere and all the showy stuff they put on.  By the way, the home team won in case anyone is interested.

So we are now packing up again for tomorrow when we will leave on the long drive to New Orleans and Bourbon street.  Hopefully my liver and bank balance will survive…

We had to drive all the way to Nashville so we split up the drive by staying in Wytheville, Virginia.  Now, if you haven’t heard of Wytheville it’s probably because the place barely exists.  We had fun drinking in our cabin there surrounded by snow and ice anyway.  Our group is a pretty sociable bunch so it should be an entertaining trip – we have four Aussies, three Koreans, two girls from the UK and one from Holland so it is a pretty diverse bunch I guess.

We got up the next day at 5:30am to get to Nashville a bit quicker which was kind of painful due to drinking the night before but hey, we don’t have to actually drive the van ourselves.  So we now find ourselves in Nashville getting ready for a night out and some live country music which is actually starting to grow on me now.  The city is pretty cool too – nice locals and a real country feel even though it’s a city.

The south has been pretty amusing for all of us so far with cars and people both increasing in size the further south you go.  The pick up trucks here are ridiculously big as everyone says but what I wasn’t expecting is that nearly everyone here is driving these huge things.  The place is cool anyway and I could just walk around a Walmart here for entertainment - the accents and mullets alone are enough to get me laughing. 

After we spend a couple of nights here we’re heading to Memphis and Graceland and then on to New Orleans so it should be a cool few days ahead.  Right, time to brave the cold and go get beer so wish me luck (it is -10 degrees outside).

He was pretty chatty and funny to all the security people but seemed a bit annoyed at people harassing him for autographs so I pretty much left him alone with plans on asking him for a quick picture after we had got through immigration (I was going to say I had cancer or something like that). 

Unfortunately, he rushed off to the bathroom and I felt like too much of a stalker to wait outside so I settled for a far away, blurry photo that you can’t really tell is him.  Ah well,  I’m sure everyone will believe me anyway.   My “conversation” with him, by the way, was just him stopping to rummage through his bags in the line for immigration and me saying “excuse me”.  To his credit, he did say sorry and move which is polite for a superstar and also makes it a conversation by my standards.  My standards aren’t high I guess.

I left Wayne to his own devices in the bathroom – I’m sure he knew what to do in there – but was still kind of dazed when I nearly walked straight in to Dominic Monaghan (from LOTR and Lost).  I was completely tongue-tied and I’m pissed now because it would have been so easy to say I’m from NZ and he would of been all nostalgic about LOTR and I could of got a photo but too late now eh.

After all that excitement, the flight was  boring but the shuttle ride in to New York was pretty far from boring with a crazy driver who had his foot down and hand on the horn the whole time.  I survived anyway and got to the hostel at 2am and walked in to be greeted by a computer voice over a loud speaker 

“Are you Matthew Barker?”  (damn I hate it when people say barker)

I was tired so I thought this was some super modern check-in procedure and so I was frantically looking for a microphone to reply into when a guy came around the corner laughing and saying ” I think it actually is him”.  Turns out the guys were just bored and playing with announcement system and they figured it was me because I was the only one due to arrive at that stupid time.

I walked in to my four person bunk room to find that there was crap all over the place and two russian girls trying to sleep (one of them in my bed).  They were cheerful enough considering I just woke them up and they cleared of a bed for me (really uncomfortable by the way).  They were leaving at 5:30am so they got me back for waking them up and I am now working on only 2 hours sleep.  I’m going to catch up on it tonight though because my sightseeing plans are pretty ambitious so I need to get up early tomorrow.

In three days, I am planning on seeing/doing: a three hour cruise of manhattan, the statue of liberty, brooklyn bridge, empire state building, Ground zero, Rockefeller center, Museum of Modern art, Metropolitan museum of art, Guggenheim museum, American museum of natural history, times square, central park plus a whole lot of other random stores and places too.  Hard work but somebody has to do it eh?

My time in Canada has led to quite a few firsts for me. Before this trip I had never seen snow fall – now I’ve even had a snow fight on Christmas day. My introduction to snow continued when I had my first attempt at building a snow man but that didn’t last too long due to being lazy and enjoying sledding down steep hills much more than the hard work involved in bringing a snow person to life.

Sledding down a steep hill was a pretty intimidating prospect considering I’m scared of heights and all, but I managed to overcome my fears for a few minutes in the interests of having fun. When I went from the highest point, I didn’t time my breathing so well and ended up gasping for breathe the whole way down and filling my mouth with snow rather than air before (not so) gracefully dismounting prematurely and sliding down the final section without the sled. Meh, it was still fun anyway.

My first attempt at ice skating (and probably my last for a long time) went a bit worse than the sledding really with me being a bit paranoid about injuring myself and thus spending the whole time hugging the wall of the ice rink. This worked fine until I somehow managed to split open the end of my finger and start bleeding all over the place. I have to admit the pinkie injury wasn’t nearly as embarrassing as having kids just out of diapers skate circles around me while I valiantly attempted to just stay verticle. So after one lap of the ice rink I think everybody concerned would agree that I would be best suited to solid dry ground from now on.

My failure as a skater is kind of disappointing given that I am now hockey’s new biggest fan. If I could only skate then I could have a go at playing but unfortunately that isn’t looking too likely. We went to see a Vancouver Giants game which was pretty sweet and had all the things a sports event should have with goals, big hits, fights and overpriced food. The fighting in hockey should definitely be exported to other sports – I could just imagine Wayne Rooney and Ronaldinho throwing punches at each other while the referee just watched and waited until one of them hit the ground to do anything.

It technically being Friday the 11th of January now means that tomorrow I will be leaving for New York and in a months time I will be back in New Zealand. It’s crazy how fast time goes sometimes. I’m pretty nervous about going to New York by myself but I’m pretty healthily paranoid so I should be fine. Plus, I’ve wanted to go to New York since I was a little kid so the excitement kind of outweighs the nervousness at the moment.

The only thing between me and New York is another deathtrap of a flight. My opinion of flying is even worse at the moment since a flight recently led to ten passengers being hospitalized after bad turbulence but I’m crossing my fingers and I’m sure that won’t happen to me.

I’ll be happy as long as I get to finish the whole of my in-flight movie unlike last time. The flight to Canada was interrupted by English and French announcements the whole way which meant I missed the last ten minutes of Die Hard 4. I currently have no idea whether Bruce Willis managed to save the day again and I’ve been worrying about it for the last month. How could they cut off the last ten minutes of a Die Hard movie? Seriously.

So I was having a bit of a poker chip fight with my roommate – as you do – and my “commando” roll to avoid getting hit with another poker chip kind of back-fired and I ended up in a heap on the floor. Apparently my thumb doesn’t like being bent the wrong way with all my body weight being pushed down on it. My roommate continued to throw poker chips at me for the next few minutes while I moaned in pain but, to his credit, he redeemed himself by taking me to the hospital and waiting a ridiculous amount of time with me.

I saw six different nurses/doctors (six!) and had some fun x-rays before finding out it’s a possible fracture (too much swelling to be certain) but probably just strained ligaments. They wrapped me up in an unnecessarily big temporary cast thing (it went down to my elbow) but at least it meant I got a bit of sympathy from random people and I don’t think I even have to pay anything for any of it(other than for my massive medical insurance bill that I have to pay regardless).

The timing of my accident wasn’t too flash since I have my first final in eight days and it is my right hand that I hurt. Due to finals being so close I was kind of forced in to taking off the bandages a bit early to see if I can write but turns out I can’t even really hold a pen yet. Hopefully the swelling goes down in the next few days and I’ll be set.

The last few weeks, other than for the thumb thing, have been pretty awesome with thanksgiving, Mexico and plenty of fun nights out partying. Admittedly, our thanksgiving was pretty weird, we kind of just had an “international” potluck dinner but the random assortment of food, alcohol and beer pong turned out to be pretty good in the end. My contribution from New Zealand was summer pudding with berries, marshmallows etc and some vodka jelly. I would call them vodka jello shots but they were kind of too big for that and we ended up eating them with spoons anyway.

The day after our crazy thanksgiving we left for Mexico with a random assortment of international students, of whom not one spoke Spanish. When you’re just going to Rosarito that’s not too much of problem though. As far as I can tell, the job description for everybody in this part of Mexico is “get money out of the crazy foreigners in any way possible”. This meant the trip was kind of a lesson for a few of us on some of the subtleties of getting by in Mexico – at least in this part of Mexico.

Firstly, when you are in a bar and some random Mexican grabs you from behind and starts pouring tequila down your throat, he will ask you to pay a stupid amount of money unless you manage to fight him off. This is a key strategy for getting money out of tourists here – give them something they don’t want without giving them the opportunity to refuse it and then ask them for a large amount of money in payment for said unwanted good.

Walking down the street at night – actually at anytime of the day, is quite a challenge. You have half the population of Rosarito all yelling at you “YOU LIKE TACOS?! WE GOT TACOS!!!! YOU LIKE MARGARITA?! WE GOT MARGARITA! OPEN BAR MAN, OPEN BAR! – LADIES COME IN FOR FREE!!!!…..hey man you want some coke man? etc etc” and they don’t care how many times you say no or even if you ignore them, they’ll keep coming. The secret is just to avoid the whole side of the street they are on and camouflage yourself with leaves so they’ll think you’re a bush.

When you are actually buying any product/service, you have to work out the price before hand which is pretty easy really. You just ask them how much will this cost? They will then answer with some large amount of money, then you divide whatever they asked for by two or three and offer that. Easy.

One of the examples of the weird idea some people have of what tourists want in Rosarito would be the way they deck out some of the taco places. There was one place where they had crazy loud music, flashing neon lights of every color and half the kitchen standing out front screaming at everyone to come in and eat – not really appealing. The out of the way places where the locals eat will inevitably be ten times tastier and more fun to eat at anyway. You will come away with your hearing and sight intact too unlike some of the touristy places.

Despite the place being slightly crazy, Rosarito was still a really fun place to party and there’s a heap of things to do and if all else fails, the beach is really nice too. There’s not too many places where you can watch a drunk Irish guy and a guy from Hong Kong ride horses around the beach in the middle of the night while dodging bon fires and trying not to fall off. Pretty priceless really.

 ”Random shit” included a camping trip organized by my roommate and his student org which was short but awesome nonetheless.  I didn’t think I was going to find time for camping on this trip so it was good to tick off another cool thing to do in the states.  

 We went to a camp site by this cool little town Julian north of San Diego.  The town had that small-town america feel complete with funny/frightening locals.  A few of us cheated and got dinner in town so it wasn’t really roughing it really but I did get to try a bit of buffalo meat – another thing to tick off I guess. 

 The camp site itself wasn’t exactly isolated (it was only five minutes drive to town) but it was pretty sweet anyway.  It had walks and everything to do if you were feeling woodsy and there was a funny sign giving advice on what to do when you see certain wildlife.  Apparently I was camping in the middle of mountain lions and rattlesnakes but no sightings to report unfortunately.

   If one does see a mountain lion there was a pretty long description of what you’re supposed to do but all I remember is to pretend that you are also a predator and that you are thinking of attacking the mountain lion.  There was something about not losing eye contact or not making eye contact too but I can’t remember which one.  Easier said than done anyway – I would of probably gone for the fetal position and got eaten.

  Anyway, we did the whole camping thing with campfire stories and S’Mores etc. with the added bonus of beer and whiskey.  Good times.  However, drunken wrestling in the dark is not a good idea as I found out the hard way.  After one bleeding nose and a whole lot of bruises and scratches I have learnt my lesson.

   Now we have a traditional thanksgiving in america to look forward to on thursday when we will hopefully be in Rosarito, Mexico.  Maybe not so traditional but it should be fun anyway…

Despite the higher standard needed I think I’ll be fine for two of my classes but I’m pretty sure I bombed my Descartes midterm. Two massive essay questions in one hour wasn’t really fair but ah well, it might mean that I’ll have to be back at Victoria next year to do one more first year paper. Yay.

We did have a sick night out at a Bob Sinclar gig downtown on friday despite being in the middle of midterms. It only cost $20 to see one of the best DJs in the world so I was pretty stoked. The bar was kind of swanky (compared to NZ bars anyway) and we were right at the front, about a meter away from Bob for the whole gig. “World hold on” was amazing, the whole packed crowd went crazy – it was the best atmosphere I’ve seen in a crowd since U2 for sure.

The downside was I had never sweat so much in my life and we all got to that dehydrated stage where fainting seemed more and more likely so we had to get to the bar to get water. Unfortunately, the bar staff were a bunch of weirdos and they said they couldn’t serve us water until 2am…riii-ght. I was sorry I had tipped them earlier.

So we ended up outside on the street in search of water with a couple of the guys taking their tops off since they were soaked with sweat. Now, call me old-fashioned, but a bunch of white guys walking around topless in downtown San Diego should be perfectly acceptable. However, at this point a massive flash car (I think it was a Rolls Royce) drives slowly by and a guy yells out “Fagets!” at which one of the group took offence, and decided to reply by flipping the bird. Bad move.

Turns out they were a bunch of gang bangers or whatever the hell they call them here and the guy jumped straight out of the car and started towards us. He looked like he was trying to pull a knife or something from by his ankle so I was shitting myself. I would like to say I bravely talked him out of stabbing us all but I saw a Subway (as in 6-inch sub Subway not dodgy underground train subway) and ran like a school girl. We all luckily made it inside while one dude kind of diffused the situation like a champion. I have no idea if we were actually in any real danger but that’s definitely close enough for me anyway.

We’re going to LA this weekend for a mate’s birthday so we’ll be safer there at least. Oh wait, LA actually has a higher crime rate and more gangs? hmmm…I’m going to take running shoes.

Everyone in I-House was evacuating to places that weren’t in danger of being burnt down so we followed suit and packed up for four days in Las Vegas. I was a little nervous that we might not be able to drive to Vegas due to the fires but it turned out fine and we got there with no problems. Well, other than killing an hour in Victorville waiting for the other car load of people to catch up only to discover that they were in fact ahead of us all along. At least I can tick off Victorville on my list of places to hang out in before I die.

The drive was actually pretty interesting for me since the desert road by Tongariro national park was my only experience with a desert up until now. It was pretty crazy coming out of thick smoke in to this massive open space with the road just going straight ahead for as far as you can see. After a whole lot of this seemingly endless desert we eventually made it to our destination – the Riviera, Las Vegas.

We booked this room on the internet then checked in automatically via a computer so this made it a bit easier for eight of us to stay in a room with only two beds and not have to pay any extra per person. It was pretty cozy with only the two beds and the floor wasn’t what I’d describe as “comfortable” to sleep on but it was cheapish and close to the strip and that was what mattered.

The strip itself was amazing. I’ve seen it in movies and heard a lot about it but seeing it all in person is completely different. Walking the strip is a pretty surreal experience. Seeing the Eiffel tower, the New York skyline, the Colosseum, Pyramids, Castles, ridiculous buildings, Massive fountains and everything in between all right next to each other is awesome. Then when you actually go in to the casinos it’s just as crazy.

You can walk around at 4am and have a sunny, slightly cloudy sky above your head and feel like it’s the middle of the day. You can walk for hours and never go outside. You can walk under the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel or go see some White Tigers, Dolphins or whatever you’re into. You can even go on roller coasters. Basically the whole place is just built to impress you and for people to have fun in.

I hadn’t played poker for a while so I was pretty happy that I got to play in a real Las Vegas Poker tournament. It went pretty well too, I won a whole lot of hands and I came 10th out of about 40 players so pretty respectable. It would have been nice to have finished 6th and got prize money but considering I had a good two hours of fun I can’t complain too much.

I got to see my first Cirque de Soleil show as well which was just as amazing as they’re made out to be. It was kind of expensive but definitely worth the money considering I won’t be in Las Vegas again until February. We saw ‘Ka’ which was sort of a martial arts, stunt show with some crazy plot that was hard to follow but the actual scenes were crazy cool. The best stage design I have ever seen too.

One of my favorite things about Vegas was the simple fact that you can walk around with a 40 Ounce beer in your hand and it is perfectly legal. You can even walk through casinos with open drinks and no one bats an eyelid. They don’t even arrest you if you’re a funny looking, mad, drunk, underage Irish fella. It’s like the opposite of San Diego laws where you can’t even legally move a bottle of vodka outside your house once the seals broken (it counts as an open drink).

Basically, Las Vegas is awesome.