Sissyboytoyz FC - LSU Champions!

Last night Sissyboytoyz Football Club became champions of the intramural 8-a-side soccer league at LSU with a 2-1 victory in a tightly contested final. We've been playing together all semester (and some of us last semester as well) in the "purple" social soccer league which has been a lot of fun. The team is truly international with players from Iran, France, Spain, England, New Zealand, Serbia, Switzerland, United States, Norway, and China. You can have fun guessing which is which!

I'm still awful at football (or soccer as it's called here) but definitely improved as the season went on, and even almost scored in the semi-final. It's definitely strange playing in the defense after being a striker all these years in hockey!

Jakob - Controle

By far the best live band I have ever witnessed, makes it even better they're from New Zealand:

Spring Break 2012 - Panama City Beach

Spring break for American universities is known for its wild parties and days spent dozing on the beach in the sun. Although LSU's spring break is a couple of weeks behind all other universities I took my car on the six hour drive to Panama City Beach in Florida along with seven other friends in search of some much needed rest and relaxation.

Between the eight of us we had rented a beachfront condo on the 15th floor and we had an awesome time over the week we spent there. The beach was great, the water was warm enough to stay in for hours (but there were jellyfish the last couple of days which made it a bit more uncomfortable), and we were truly lucky with the weather because we barely saw a cloud all week with the sun shining hot every day. I even almost got a tan! Highlights of the week included riding a banana boat, watching a pod of dolphins, seeing my first wild alligator, go-karting, the "wild thang" and "vertical accelerator" rides, and visiting the "biggest nightclub in the US" - Club La Vela.

Like my trip to San Francisco there's just too many good photos to truly describe how good this place was, so I put together a little slideshow to describe what I got up to.

More Hammock

Yet another video featuring some work by my favourite band, Hammock. This is becoming a bit of a habit, but it's probably because they keep putting out awesome material. The video is made by David Altobelli, the same guy as who made their Breathturn video. I think it's pretty visually stunning.

Home

I found this really cool video of Christchurch the other day. It was taken before the earthquakes and shows just how awesome the city is!

2005 Ford Crown Victoria

Seven months after making it to the States I've finally bought a car! It's a former Texas police car and seems to go pretty good. I'm lucky petrol is so cheap here cos it's got a v8 engine. I can't wait to go on a few road trips in the weekend to see what else this country has to offer. Fingers crossed it doesn't give me too many problems...

Life in Louisiana is going pretty well, it keeps me pretty busy juggling coursework, teaching, and research, with trying to keep fit, have a social life and still get some sleep. But I'm having a lot of fun and have made some great friends here. The photo below shows some of them after a good win by our international (Iran, England, New Zealand, Finland, France, Spain, Serbia, USA, Switzerland, Norway, and China) soccer team, the Sissyboytoyz. Maybe this semester we will win the title because sadly our beach volleyball team (the Ponyloverz) doesn't have a chance!

Mardis Gras

My Mardi Gras weekend in New Orleans, or NOLA as it's known, was one hell of a good time. In most of Louisiana, Mardi Gras is a five day long celebration ending from Friday until midnight on "Fat Tuesday", although there is a Mardi Gras season which lasts much longer. LSU even has a holiday to coincide with it, because if they didn't I'm sure class attendance would drop to virtually zero. People flock to New Orleans from all over the world to experience the legendary party atmosphere and the city was totally packed the whole time I was there.

The basic premise of Mardi Gras is that there are parades every day and evening consisting of giant, colourfully decorated floats interspersed with high school marching bands, dancers, and other performers. People ride on the floats and throw plastic beads and other trinkets (plastic coins, spears, cups, hula hoops, face masks, soft toys, and toilet paper...?) to the crowds lining the street where is everyone is screaming for beads with their hands in the air. Often so many beads and other stuff are being thrown you are lucky if some don't hit you in the face at some point. Some of the beads are large and heavy and I even saw one guy get hit in the head hard enough to draw blood.

For my Mardi Gras experience, a bunch of international students had decided to rent a house for three nights (Friday, Saturday, Sunday) about 15 minutes from downtown NOLA. The house was designed to sleep 15 people, but we got a little carried away with lowering the cost ($4000 to rent it for three nights) and ended up with 40+ people staying there each night. Friends from last semester came back to party from as far and wide as North Carolina and Belgium! The result was pure chaos at times with bodies sprawled all over the place on couches and air mattresses each morning. Plenty of fun but very little sleep was had by all as we checked out different parades, ate traditional southern food, and enjoyed ourselves at the many bars of downtown New Orleans.

Check out a few photos which sum up my experience - I'd definitely recommend a trip to Mardi Gras sometime in your life!

A local parade participant jumped into my photo out of nowhere!

New Orleans Superdome all lit up

Bourbon Street

The sweet house we stayed in

The locals really get into it

Krewe of Tucks parade

Throw us some beads!

Reggae and fireworks - a nice combo

Krewe of Proteus parade

Krewe of Orpheus parade - the floats were great

Orpheus again

You end up with a lot of beads...