Sweet treats

There are so many places i would like to go, things to see and idea to try

Gelato Messina in Kings cross, Sydney. It has been voted the best Gelato in Australia. the little shop looks so cute and the piles of Italian goodness are so thick and creamy. Unlucky i live in New Zealand then...

From  http://fellt.com/garypepper/2012/07/sweet-treats,
 in one of the most delicious posts ever made by Nicole Warne,
It's full of beautiful food, my favourite to look at xx

This year i have made a friend who has never in her life tasted Gelato, something i intend to change over summer in December. My place of choice to do this will of course be Cafe Eis, the Gelato and coffee place by the sea to go in Wellington. By the end of my life i hope to have slowly but surely tried all the different flavours you can make in Gelato, luckily i have a long way to go <3 It's so much more refreshing than ice cream...

Of course there's so much more food to look forwards to in Summer, like the berries, melons, Christmas tiramisu and being at home and baking.. Only 6 months to wait, student life-style till then

another photo from Gary pepper vintage of beautiful food

Till then i can wrap up warm, study and drink hot drinks after chilly outdoor walks

Mum came and visited me during the week, it was wonderful to see her... we did everything

She flew down while i was in a laboratory for biochemistry and waited for me in my room, then we went out for lunch at the Captain Cook with my friends. It's Dunedin's classic cheap student bar with good food. We had wedges with sour cream and sweet chili sauce while we all talked about finding flats.. one of my favourite unhealthy lunch foods down here. 

After lectures for the day she took a few of us out to dinner and we went to Etrusco which is an Italian restaurant that makes amazing pasta and pizza. You can always tell an Italian place is good if the have correct Italian spelling on the menu and use buffalo mozzarella on the margarita, but I had -

PENNE AL NONNO 

Diced Pancetta (cured ham) flamed in vodka with cream, chilli, tomato, parmesan and

fresh parsley

It was amazing, i loved the Italian place.. It had a warm, comfortable candlelit environment with the fire burning and fantastic food. Mums looked really nice too -

PENNE AL VERDE 
Penne pasta tossed in spinach and toasted pinenuts with a dash of cream and fresh Parmesan

I feel i'll be trying to home-make both at home over the end of year holidays, both have become favourites 

On Friday after we walked around and I showed her the view from up the steep streets, then we went to Everyday Gourmet, where we had gingerbread hot chocolate and i tried my very first macaroon; it was earl grey. It was slightly citrus because of the bergamot oil in earl grey which i didn't expect but was quite nice. 

Tale of fireworks underwater

It was Guy Fawkes and we had these tiny traffic-light coloured fire works that spun in multicoloured circles, we sat on the beach and were deafened with the crackle of the main show and after it was over we lit them and threw them on the sand and bounced them off the waves... then they kept going. A flare of red and orange and yellow from under the waves as the firework exploded under the sea. The boys smoked their cigars and drank beer as we lit sparklers and i ran around with it outside, staring into it and laughing.

We tried it again later in a bucket to prove to parents it was true

Love

With the upcoming exhibition, i have begun painting again
One little thing at a time

60% off on canvas has me trying my hand at painting on mounted canvas
Biggest pieces I've ever tried

Now

Trying to grow up is hard, when we came here at the beginning of the year i was firm in my resolve to take the health sciences course and battle my way into physiotherapy and do that for the rest of my life, but why should i do that? I like having a hold on something constant, it makes me feel safe. 
Right now i feel very unsafe, i have no idea how to make the transfer from doing things i love to being out there still doing them. I want to paint, but i do not wish life to be a struggle or turn painting into a chore so I've told myself i can paint in my spare time (what spare time?). I used my enjoyment for the small details of biology to convince myself to take the health sciences. The first year health science course is one of the hardest courses you can take as a first year making the transition from school to university; it requires hard work, time management and skill in all areas of science (that i do not have as much in chemistry and physics). 
I am now completely lost

Deciding what to do for the rest of your life is ridiculous, if the world were good and uni fees weren't so high i would have taken so, so many interest papers. I still wish i could do a year of interest and then go back to trying for physiotherapy.  Or take a gap year and go do something and be someone overseas, rather than someone whose life is in a little box.

We have our UMAT test tomorrow which is worth a lot of our final grade for the year
We are given one online practice exam. I just completed section two which was 'understanding people' i got 41/44 correct, clearly understanding people is my thing <3
I'm interested in physio as it helps people, though not to the simply terrifying extent surgeons do, but I've never wanted to be a surgeon. The shock of having someone die on me would be too great. 

Memory shell

The shell i wore around my neck for a good six months
I put it on the day my granddad died,
it became stuck around my neck as the clasp wedged its way into the shell's curves.
The only way i could take it off was to snap the chain

He died of a heart attack, just after he had been to the post office sending a letter to Scotland with his condolences for his brothers death. Their funerals were on the same day, on opposite sides of the world.

This necklace was my way of mourning him, it was beautiful and aged, deaf to me but talked like the sea in strange ways. It hung over me constantly, hidden under my uniform, filling up with water in the shower that would suddenly tip out over me in bed if i leaned a certain way.

Granddad always had a hearing aid, but it was getting worse. We had to attract his attention and then shout at him simple sentences as if he were a small child who just wasn't listening, i couldn't bring myself to raise my voice at him. I just smiled and showed him things.
He used to tease me about the 'dinosaurs in Karori' though i told him many times there weren't any, and he called me tri-Sarah-tops. If it were his birthday and mum brought him chocolates, which were one of his favourite things, he would try to give me and my sister one - much to mum's extreme disapproval. He would set me up with pieces of paper from the cupboard and coloured pencils, and would let me take home as much paper as i wanted to. We would sit on the ground colouring as he watched from his black leather arm chair with the foot rest.
At the funeral many strangers turned up who we didn't know and sat in the back row, they went to church with him we think, and when it came time to sing the hymns they rose as sang loud and strong and then disappeared again.  Grandma told me I had a pretty voice
It's been two years since he left, i didn't see him all that much when he was here but it's strange that he is gone.

My first lecture in biochemistry led to this
I have the first part memorized now

With Kate
My favourite from the weekend
Found a wine glass that can hold an entire bottle of wine,
i imagine it would be hard to hold full

Hello

It's strange to finally begin this, something new... something honest and full of life.
I am Sarah.
I will tell stories, share loves and pieces of my life to give me a grip on myself in a hard year of change

It is the middle of winter at University of Otago i miss my time of being almost completely free;
We had picnics in the sun far up on the hills, our heads were crowned with buttercups as we played with swords that someone had found.
We walked along the skyline with cameras trained at the sky as the falling sunlight created plays of colour behind the windmills, then, as a storm gathered and a wall of rain could be seen moving in we ran down again as fast as we could, soaking wet, clothes clinging to our bodies, breathless in our attempt to to race the weather home.
It snowed for the first time in our lives last year and we escaped up to where it was untouched and thickest, almost catching hypothermia as I had raced straight from school, throwing snow at each other the boys ripped off their shirts and let the ice wind hit them to see how it felt. Purple skinned with black school shoes slipping on the iced rocks we hurried back off the ridge-line, a man with skis gave me barley sugars to keep my temperature out of danger - i'd never seen anyone up there ski before and laughed to see him slip away.

I long for summer though it is the middle of winter
At least i feel allowed to drink many, many hot chocolates
My favourite i have found was the gingerbread hot chocolate from Everyday Gourmet, it is perfect <3
Today it was Gusto Cioccolato's -The joy of chocolate- Original Espresso chocolate drink. Mum gave me a package of it for Christmas, it was rich, creamy and hot enough to warm my fingers.

It was such a rich deep colour

Gingerbread hot chocolate
Just the right amount of sweet, depth and spice
Been there more than once for this, even on a student budget

I try to be an artist in the spare time i can find
Working towards this at the moment: http://www.ousa.org.nz/events/calendar/event-details/303/
My very first art exhibition where i can show ten pieces, ten pieces i have not yet made..

The last project i did for myself was the sketchbook project, it was nice not to feel pressure to spend weeks on a piece like i usually do and i completed most pieces in about ten minutes just to see what happened. It was very laid back, watching my pencil drift across the paper with no care about the due date.
My theme was 'coffee and cigarettes' which was given to me and i then sent it off for the sketchbook tour around America.
I would have little ideas and just start drawing, 
like: The creation of coffee (top left) and, Second hand smoke (top right)
What was sweet of my friends was there there was an entry fee of  about $50 US, but they started a group that went around asking for donations to support me in my love for art. It was lovely how many people wanted to help out, it showed how many people cared and believed in me.