Free Hugs!

Saturday July 10, 2010
So you know that feeling when you absolutely love life? I’ve come to really enjoy this feeling; it seems to haunt me this past week. Today’s adventure started with the Ilam Apartments “Amazing Race” competition. In teams of four we had to figure out clues that lead to other clues that were all across the city.

For our first clue we had to figure out sayings from a bunch of different images or words(like ppod for two peas in a pod) we were the second team done by a mere seconds! This entitled a mad sprint to the library for our second task- we either had to find a certain book, or sing the New Zealand anthem in the middle of the library. Lacking any sort of grace to be embarrassed we chose to sing. The NZ anthem is not just in English but also in Maori.. making us poor Americans and the one Taiwanese stumble over the lyrics as we loudly belted out the anthem. Sadly the other team finished at exactly the same time, so as we grabbed our next clue it was again a dash to the bus stop so that we could get to the mall. We arrived just in time to catch the bus; wheezing and about to die we boarded, swiped our metrocards and collapsed on to the nearest seat. This lasted 10 minutes until we all jumped off the bus and attempted to dash across the street- this lead to me almost being hit by a car when I looked the wrong way. Oops. But we all made it safely across in the end. Thanks to some careful car weaving and people weaving skills we were able to make it to the next clue before the other team. Which lead us to just barely catching the next bus to the city center, barely as in we were running up as it pulled up to the stop. By now we were all entirely out of breath, but gleefully enjoying the fact that the other team missed the bus and now had to wait 15 minutes for the next one.



With our slight lead we slowed to a mild power walk to the next clue.In the middle of a busy square we had a choice between two tasks- either everyone hug 5 people, or sing and dance to a song. Purely for time sake we agreed to hug. My first group was an older couple who had the biggest laugh over my hurried task, but they both agreed to a hug. I hit up a couple teenagers before running in to a road block when I mistakenly asking an Asian tourist for a hug-she didn’t understand English! She hurried away (clearly thinking I was completely bonkers) but I was able to get a hug from the next girl I spotted. Success!


Task completed we ran off to a museum for our next one. During our 20 minute walk over there we came across one of the RA’s walking down the street, he asked if we were doing the race, made some kind of grunt noise and speed up his walking. Perplexed we continued on, still walking slightly in front of him. When we reached the museum we started looking for the RA with the next clue, only to find it was the guy we had been walking in front of the entire time! We were so fast we beat the clue to the spot! After he divulged our next clue it was off to the Art Gallery for a pop quiz! Between the four of us we quickly answered enough questions to earn our next clue, but alas! We spotted one of the other teams only two clues behind us! We hurriedly walked(still out of breath from all of the sprinting at the beginning of the race) to the Remembrance Bridge to get our final clue!


From there it was only a short walk to a restaurant and the collection of our winnings! Thankfully having Rachel (who’s lived here for a semester already) on our team meant that we knew where we were going plus all of our awesome singing/hugging/knowledge skills meant we rocked it! For coming in first place out of eight teams we won a $60 gift certificate towards a pizza place at the mall!

At the finish line!