Happy New Year!

I hope everyone had a great New Years Eve and New Years Day! Eoin and I ventured into downtown Queenstown where there were supposedly 10,000 people in the CBD (Central Business District) along with live bands and whatnot. I think I counted 12 people. Okay, maybe I am being a little sarcastic, there was a crowd, but it was not 10,000 people. Maybe 5,000. Regardless, the live band, dDub, was pretty good. They were a reggae/ska band and they played music and then lead the crowd in a countdown to 2009. There were fireworks, which were awesome, and that is about it.

So it was a good NYE, nothing crazy or exciting.

The day after New Years Day (January 2nd) is also a public holiday here in NZ, so lots of shops/restaurants/attractions are closed. However, since I don't have a real job yet, I did some housekeeping on the 1st and 2nd and got paid time and a half (19.50/hour). Not too bad. But, I am never doing house keeping again. Some people are nice and strip the beds when they leave, and don't leave big piles of crumbs and dirt everywhere, but other people are plain old slobs.

I have a job interview on Monday with a place that supplies photographers to various attractions around QT. Hopefully, I get that job, and then I can be outside taking pictures of tourists rafting, horse back riding or whatever else they need me to take pictures of.

That's about it in terms of anything exciting happening right now. If you read Eoin's blog, you will have seen that he is doing this "101 things in 1001 days". Basically, you pick 101 things you would like to accomplish in 1001 days (2.5 years) and then you work on ticking those things off your list. I saw his list, and thought it looked like a good idea. So I made my own list, however, my list has only 56 things on it. You may call me a slacker, but I wanted my list to have things on it I'd really like to do and I didn't want a bunch of "fillers" in there just to make my list have 101 items on it.

Sooooo because I am sure you are really interested, here is my list!

Health:

Exercise at least 3 days a week for at least 10 minutes (0/143)

Go one week with no soda

Go one month with no soda

Vegan for a week

Go a week without products containing high fructose corn syrup

Enroll in a yoga class for at least one semester (four months)

Try one new food every other month (0/16)

See how much it will cost to get my moles removed

Have moles removed or start saving for it

Make one new recipe a month (0/32)

Go one month without eating at a restaurant or ordering take-out or frozen/pre-cooked dinners

Eat broccoli once a month(1/32)

Go one week without chocolate

Go one month without chocolate

First Monday of every month eat vegetarian all day (0/16)

Try eggs (fried, scrambled, omelet and hard boiled) (0/4)

Find out how much it will cost to fix my jaw

Save money to fix my jaw/get it fixed

Get Health Insurance

Daring:

Try a real roller-coaster with Eoin but not a scary one

Handle raw meat without gagging or making "guuuuuuuuuuh" sound

Do something that scares me once a year

Just for fun:

Watch 30 movies that are on the IMDB top 250 list (0/30)

Go a week without using the Internet except for essential emails

Spend my summers at Camp Micah

Get a really expensive/good massage

Eat seven egg rolls for dinner

Try ten new alcoholic drinks (0/10)

Try surfing

Go snorkeling

Eat dessert first

Get a dog

Go out on a date once a month with Eoin (0/16)

See a famous comedian live

Education:

Read 50 books (0/50)

Complete Pre-Reqs for grad program in physical therapy

Enroll in Grad-School

Become CPR certified

Double the money in my savings account

While in school, maintain at least a 2.9 GPA (would have been higher but science/math and I don't mix well)


Travel:

Visit two new continents (0/2)

Go back to Israel (or save for it)

Go on a romantic holiday with Eoin for at least 5 days at a nice hotel

Go to Universal Studios

Go on a road trip

Meet up with college friends

Go some place warm during the winter every year (0/3)

Community:

Donate $2 to charity for every item crossed off my "101 Things in 1001 Days"

Donate my time during the holidays for 30 hours (0/30)

Go through my clothes once in the winter and once in the summer and donate what I don't need to charity (0/5)

No Wal-Mart for 1001 days

Donate 500,000 grains of rice on freerice.org (0/500,000)

Recycle all my plastic bottles, even if I have to carry them home to recycle them( allow 12 exceptions 0/12)

What do you think? Hopefully I can do most of these! I will start a separate blog for keeping track of my progress. Anyway, here are some pictures :)

Look at the THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE in Queenstown for the New Years celebration! (ok so this was taken earlier in the evening, more people showed up as it got closer to midnight)

Queenstown from a jetboat. Sooo pretty!