Homeless and Abroad

…Ends up on this blog!

The time was 7am. My alarm was baring at me as I arose from my slumber. My roommate continued its snoring; noise is ineffectual at waking it. My final exam was at 8am, my prep was all done by 2230 the night before. I wandered into the exam which started 23 minutes late, and an hour and 10 minutes later I was done. My longest ‘meaningful’ exam of the semester. I say meaningful because I had an exam that lasted slightly longer, but the class doesn’t count towards my degree. Anywho back to this class. The first midterm took me 30 minutes, and the second midterm took me 40 minutes, both of which were designed to last 2 hours. That sounds bad towards me however when combined my midterm results add up to an A. So don’t judge.

Afterwards I went Olympic figure ice skating with Kate and Fiona at the local ice rink. When we turned up there were only 3 other skaters. If anyone fell (looking at you Kate) it would be less humiliating. Within 20 minutes, however, a bus full of young kids, maybe 10 years old, turned up. In general they spent more time picking themselves off the ice rather than skating.

After an hour and a half we left for the mall. We scouted out last minute purchases before heading home for the night.

Last week was a week, no joke. It even had 7 days just in case you think I’m lying.

Anywho last week marked the passing of my final lectures in Montana. All that I have left are exams on Mondy and Wednesday, then I’m done with uni for the year. On Saturday I leave Missoula for San Francisco for a few days before heading home, to a new home. In just over a weeks time I will no longer be homeless!

Until that time comes there was still next week as well as the week that was. More on last week later on.

Last Week:

Monday was your typical Monday. Classes from 9-3, watch YouTube, and working towards submitting final assignments.  1 class on Tuesday, 9-3 again on Wednesday and so on..

On Thursday evening an end of semester party was held for one of my classes. About a quarter of the class attended and it was great being able to mingle with them. I demonstrated how to eat Marmite properly. Sadly there was only the evil Vegemite and the fake British ‘Marmite’ so I had to settle with Vegemite, purely because its consistancy is closest to real, Kiwi Marmite.

With 2 exams to study for, including one tomorrow I am doing the honourable thing and adding random photos that I haven’t deemed relevant, or just forgot to post.

So this morning at 0730 my roommate’s alarm went off. It was the Mario theme I think. Fair enough, I use my alarm when I need to get up early. No biggie. It was though a little slow at turning the damn thing off. After 2 minutes I contemplated throwing something at it so it might wake up, or just turning off the alarm by any means.

However its lack of common sense, courtesy and just plain decency has at times kept me up, or even woken me up in the wee hours of the morining for over an hour, costing me grades in my exam the next day, you know the mistakes only a sleep deprived brain makes, yup those are what I’ve done. So I decided to leave it, let it wake up to its alarm bleating at him. A couple of nightmares later it was 0830 and the alarm was still going. It was at this point I went on Snapchat and let the masses know what was going on.

So around 15 minutes later it finally wakes up, looks at the time after making some weird noises akin to saying “oh sh….”, sent a text and went back to sleep. It is now 1200 and it is still fast asleep.

I can’t wait to have my own room, void of this crap.

Thursday was Thanksgiving Day and due to work timing and financial considerations the regular crew stayed behind. The halls were void of any American life, and many of the internationals travelled. We decided to make our own traditional dinner. Turkey, mashed potatoes, tater tots (potato), actual veges, 2 kinds of stuffing including a potato based one, and Yorkshire pudding. Preceeded by a fantastic fruit bowl of melon, grapes, watermelon, and pineapple. Chased by a caramel slice. We all chipped in and contributed to the cooking with our signiture dishes. Dave and Elliot cooked the fruit salad, Shannen and Fiona did the turkey, veges, stuffing and tater tots. Eoghan did the mash, Kate the Yorkshire pudding and I did my famous caramel slice.

It was brilliant to finally, for the first time since I left New Zealand back in July, that I had a proper full cooked dinner. It was incredible, scrumptious and delightful. Amazing effort by all the folks to whip up  casual, traditional Thanksgiving dinner with limited bench, fridge, kitchen and stove space, and limited time.

On Saturday I was finally offered the chance to go see the National Bison Range. Having never, ever seen bison in my entire life how could I pass up the opportunity. I mean come one, we are sure to see at least one. Bison is one third of the name of the place.

So we set off, and by ‘we’ I’m referring to Shannen, Fiona, Kate and myself. We had high hopes of a world of magic and wonder! Twas a sunny day in lil ole Missoula-o. Not 15 minutes after we set off we had a setback. Snow was up ahead. The good news was it wasn’t settling so we plowed forward! When we arrived we saw the extent of the snow. The roads were covered and it was snowing cats and dogs (or whatever snow equivalent there is). So we took a couple of snaps and ran away as slow as possible. While the roads hadn’t yet fully iced, they were saturated with compacted snow. The road was slippery as am elusive criminal.

The poll has slammed shut. The winner is me. As stated in my rules there must be 13 unique voters. There were only 10 voters. 10 voters in the space of 2 months. You guys are really quiet and unwilling to win a prize. Anyway your loss, not mine. In case you were wondering I have put on a grand total of 0kgs since leaving New Zealand. Given I have only had 1 good meal (to be discussed during the week) with the rest consisting of food tht was fatty, oily, lard filled tasteless crap. Many people have had ‘problems’ with the diet here. So to all of you who voted for no change, you seem to have guessed correctly. Well done and better luck next time.

So it does actually snow in Missoula. It actually snows every year. My bad, but I’m still not changing my exclusive story.

Anywho our trusty sleep deprived (2.5 hours, he won’t stop whinging about it) photographer was in on the action at sunrise on the 27th of November. Thanksgiving Day (to be discussed later) was the backdrop and it had snowed 2 nights prior.

See if you match up the location from the autumn shots. As always click image to enlarge

Let me take you on a magical tour of my campus. The day is a Sunday. The month is October. The season? Fall AUTUMN!!!

Anywho lets begin with a look at the campus. If you got this far and haven’t worked it out for yourself, you can enlarge the photos by clicking them

Let us begin with looking at the area close to my living quarters.