"Spring" Break

Saturday marks the first day of our two week break! After the past three weeks of insanely trying to tackle all of my assignments(why am I taking almost the maximum amount of credits, why??) am I definitely ready for a break. My friend Katelyn and I decided to travel all across the South Island. I thought I would let you have a peek of all we are planning, just so no body panics when they don't hear from me for two weeks. 

Katelyn and I have been planning this for the past month. We've had people drop out of our group, and add too it, then decide they only want to do part of it. We've poured over bus companies, and schedules, hostel recommendation, things to do, and predicted weather. We've completely redone the entire trip twice. And finally, finally I think we are ready for this. 

Saturday we start our adventure by heading down to Oamaru. We spend the night there then head down to Dunedin to visit some friends at Otago University. We stay two nights with friends before heading back up to Christchurch. I'll be back in Christchurch Wednesday night, so hopefully I can give a quick update, and maybe wash some laundry? Then it's back on the road, well actually the train(!!) for an day/night in Kaikoura. Then we head up to wine country, it's another train(!!) ride to Blenheim where we shall spend a day biking to different wineries for wine tastings.We leave Blenheim Friday night in order to get to Nelson by noon Saturday. At Nelson we meet up with some of the other Arcadia students for a weekend in Abel Tasman National Park. Where we shall hike, kayak and have a wonderful time! 

We finish at Abel Tasman Monday afternoon. This completely messes up any sort of bus schedule, so we'll have to spend another night at Nelson before taking one hugely long bus trip all the way down to Franz Josef. However, Franz Josef is one of the things I've been looking forward too the most- we're doing an all day glacier hike! We'll  be at Franz Josef for two nights before heading down to Wanaka for the last two days of our trip.

There's our trip mapped out, each color is a different journey, black dots are the towns we are stopping at, and the star is Christchurch.

August 21: Oamaru

August 22: Oamaru/Dunedin

August 23: Dunedin

August 24: Dunedin/ChCh

August 25: ChCh/ Kaikoura

August 26: Kaikoura/ Blenheim

August 27: Blenheim/Nelson

August 28-30: Abel Tasmen

August 31: Nelson/Franz Josef

Sept. 1: Franz Josef

Sept. 2 Franz Josef/Wanaka

Sept. 3 Wanaka

Sept. 4 Wanaka/ChCh

Yes, I deliberately left most of the juicy details out of this itinerary. Think of it as a surprise! I won't have my computer with me so I won't be able to update. However, I will be keeping a journal, and taking more pictures then necessary-per usual. I will be updating asap once I get back. 

Kia Ora! Have a wonderful two weeks! 

I feel like these posts should come with warnings

Over-due for a nap, and hiccuping mercilessly, I ran in to the office to quickly check my mail after class. Even through Derek, my Mom, and Kristal had all said they sent me something last week, I really wasn't expecting anything quite yet. Quickly turned out to not be an option this time, as the tiny office was packed full of other students wanting mail. So I patiently waiting, and provided the rest of the line with entertainment from my near constant hiccups. When I finally got to the front it turned out I did have a package! Not just any package however, a package from Derek! Grinning insanely, I skipped/sprinted/ galloped back to my room to open it.

For the past month I've been hearing little, unhelpful hints of what Derek has been planning on putting in this box. It's been slowly driving me mad, I've been literally bouncing off the walls with excitement when he finally said he was sending it. And now, now I finally had it in my hands! All thoughts of napping went out of my head as I cut open my box. The first thing I saw was a bouquet of purple duct tape roses-guaranteed to last forever unlike real ones. Hand-made by the one and only Derek-with help from his stunningly creative sister, Alexa. The roses were quickly followed by multitudes of different items; all picked out from little comments I had made here and there over the past couple months

 As much as I love every single item put in the box, it was the cards and notes that really hit me hardest and made me realize just how much I miss him. Thank you Derek, for the roses, the box of wonders, the giant flower balloon that greets me every morning, our near constant conversations, and skype dates, but mostly, for just being your amazing self.  I can scarcely believe that this, you, us, is real. 

Alright, back to non-sappy subjects; Tonight My roommates and I finally cashed in our pizza gift certificate-from winning The Amazing Race! Mmm, finally a meal I don't have to cook myself! Everyone enjoyed the nice, stress-free evening away from our homework and assignments. We ate far too much, even managing dessert after our pizza. Before we, waddling slightly, headed back to our responsibilities. 

Hardly a Mistake

Saturday, August 14th
Kasey, Katelyn and I were supposed to go skiing this weekend. But due to lack of funds, and the stress of trying to get our assignments done we opted to go another weekend. Instead we took the 3 bus all the way out to Sumner Beach and hiked Taylor's Mistake.

The weather couldn't decide if it wanted to be cloudy and grey or sunny and blue. One moment we rejoicing in the sun and then next hoping it wasn't going to start raining. Despite the bipolar weather we headed out anyway. While Kasey and Katelyn both had been to the beach before, it was my first time. Sometimes you get so caught up in how breathtaking the land is here, that you forget you're actually on a island. Seeing the waves crash against the sand was a a sharp reminder that there really was a rather large ocean separating us from home. It's very humbling to lookout over the blue-grey water, past the tiny surfers patiently waiting for the best waves, hearing the roar those waves make again the shore and know you are just one person in a huge world.

As much as I could have spent hours just watching the ocean, we bypassed the beach to follow a road that, almost literally, went STRAIGHT up the hill. Calves were screaming, breathing was ragged and we hadn't even begun our hike yet! After the road we had to climb far too many stairs to reach the top before we were even officially on the Taylor's Mistake hike. Brutal, yes, but we have definitely tackled much worse inclines in previous hikes and, as always, the view from the top was by far worth it.

Just a reminder; it is winter here, though you certainly can't tell it by looking at the vegetation!

                                               

                                                
Clearly they don't know their seasons, or at least what a real winter is supposed to look like.

We followed the path on, enjoying the cry of the seagulls, crash of the waves, so very far down  the cliff, and just enjoying the feeling of not being stuck inside pouring over text books. Eventually the path turned downhill, to far too many switch backs, at the top you could look out and see the corresponding switchbacks  on the hill next too it. While being able to see what we had to tackle next wasn't exactly a good motivator. The scenery was certainly pretty enough to make up for it.

Whoever lives along the path must have realized hikers would need some kind of reward for their climb for we found a treat at the very top.

After a little swing time, we were off again! This time passing through a gate the warned of livestock enclosed within-oh boy! Fairly certain the sign meant sheep, we were extremely surprised and pleased to see it was a donkey pasture instead!

After leaving the adorable donkeys to eat their grass, we needed our own snack break. Veering off the trail we followed a side path down on to some lava rocks that were right next to the water. 

After my granola bar I got a touch fidgety and had to climb down too the rocks right next too the water. After all most falling in, I made it to the very tip, only to have to jump back 10 seconds later because a massive wave crashed against the rock spraying everything with water. 

Can you find Kasey and Katelyn?

Lava rocks- many of them had these strange veins running through them

Finally done with the track we walk down to another beach and town. The town is pretty much entirely composed of little bitty surf shacks all along the coast.

I can totally move my llama and horses here, right?

Thus officially ends the Taylor's Mistake's track. Not wanting to tackle the switch backs again, we walked back to Sumner along the road. Which wasn't nearly as pretty, but was much easier on the body.

"The most wasted of all days is one without laughter." ~E.E. Cummings

I once again apologize for not updating regularly. Weekdays are busy, but filled with mundane school work. Which makes it hard to keep a blog full of exciting things. I start a two week break in just a week's time, and then I should have plenty of things to write about! 

Friday August 13^th

I turned in my first essay today! I also (hopefully) conquered my psychology exam last Wednesday.  It was such a relief to be done with them, though sometimes I think it is more stressful waiting to hear results then the actual completion of an assignment. 

I messed up my knee(again) last night at dance. I started to do a basic turn during Salsa and felt my knee pop, and the oh-so-wonderful feeling like someone stabbed a knife into it.  But it wasn't swollen afterwards and it’s just stiff today, well, unless I attempt to conquer stairs. Which just makes living on the third floor of one of few buildings that doesn’t have an elevator a little more painful. (Yes Mom, I am taking care of it as best as I can. No, I will not slow down and do less stuff, life is much too short for that. )

Unlike most Uni students who spend Friday night partying, my friend Elliott and I watched Robin Hood: Men in Tights. All the while trying to ignore the music that was drifting up from the ground floor party, of which the bass alone is enough to threaten the building with collapse.  After the spectacular film it was still too early to sleep(not that I could anyway, thank you first floor), yet too late to start another movie. So Elliott and I went for a walk through the woods. Being blind as a bat at night I let him follow, which seems silly in retrospect since I’m pretty sure he couldn’t see anymore then I could. However we had a grand adventure; the couple trails I thought occupied the woods during daylight turned out to be far too numerous to count at night! We wandered for a while, enjoying the quiet of the night until we got to one of the most massive trees I have ever encountered! It was huge! 5 people could not have hugged this beast! It was in the middle of a little clearing just sitting there, all by its self.  We then walked out the other side of the clearing and out on to the Rugby fields.  As we stepped out of the woods I heard a very distinguished “Squish!” as my foot encountered the wet, muddy field. Struck with sudden inspiration and a love of most things muddy, I rolled up my jeans, pulled off my flip flops and sprinted out into the field. The cold, wet, slimy mud squishing joyfully between my toes as I ran laughing and giggling to the middle of the deserted field.  After Elliott caught up with me we just stood there, taking in the view of the dark sky and the glaringly bright lights of the city-and the exhilarating sensation of feeling like a kid again.  It was a gorgeous sight, and a moment I hope never to forget. However, the one thing that would have made it even more perfect would have been stars. Sadly, the lights from the city reflect into the sky just too brightly, as hard as I looked I could only find a single tiny star. 

Would you like a Pepper?

Today was the mighty All Blacks vs. Australia rugby game! Jane had managed to get us tickets a few weeks ago and all of us had been majorly looking forward to it!

But let's start this at the beginning. A whole bunch of Arcadia students came up from Otago University for the game, and well they needed places to stay. My friend, Arely, and her flatmate, Nicole, ended up spending the night at my flat. But first we had to pick them up from where their bus dropped them off. Not a big deal, except that traffic was so bad from the upcoming game that the city buses were running extremely slow so we ended up being late. Then it was a mad dash across the city so Arely could get her ticket from the Stadium, and then a even madder dash back to city center to get Nicole her ticket. We made it, but didn't get back to the University until three hours later, which left us only an hour to eat and get dressed for the game(All Blacks game= all black clothing!). At one point we had to wait at the bus exchange for the bus to take us back to the Uni, and Arely pulls our a yellow pepper from her backpack and starts eating it like an apple. I'm going to guess that Kiwi's don't see this very often, for Arely got A LOT of stares.

Supper took a little longer then it should have, and we were running very late for the 6:10 bus. Thankfully the bus was running late too. When we got to the bus stop there had to be over a hundred Uni students waiting too go to the game. It was packed! Which,as you can guess, made getting on the bus very interesting. The entire crowd moved forward and swept any non-moving people along with it. It took well over half an hour to fill the bus, and my group just barely got on. Conditions only got worse for those on board, the majority of the crowd was completely wasted at this point and you were basically standing on top of each other. It was.. uhm.. an adventure to say the least. The poor girls in the rest of my group couldn't get away from a creeper who kept groping them,the surrounding people were either too drunk to care, or were unsuccessfully trying to help (I was too far away, and didn't know what was going on, otherwise I WOULD have given him a piece of my mind). So as soon as we got to city center we fled the bus- except the creeper followed. Thankfully, 5 sober girls can out walk 1 wasted creep in a couple seconds.

Once out of the bus we quickly realize that almost all of the city center roads are blocked off. We still had a good 20 minute walk to the stadium, but walking was the only way to get there, since the blocked off roads meant cars/buses etc couldn't get anywhere near it. Walking, however turned out to be the best build up possible. Everyone was turned out in their All Blacks gear, talking in high spirits and just having a great time. At one point I looked up to see a little girl waving a cow bell out the window chanting "All Blacks, All Blacks!". 

Finally we made it too the AMI stadium, found our seats and sat down to enjoy one spectacular game!

Joe and Karl are definitely ready for this game

Katelyn, Kasey and I decked out in our war paint

Erik and I, thanks to this guy I actually knew what was going on!

AMI stadium is massive, but we had excellent seats!

Before every game the All Blacks preform a traditional war dance called the Haka. It's INTENSE! If I were the other team I'm pretty sure I wouldn't even bother playing the game after that. Check out the Haka  HERE

Getting ready to do the Haka

After the Haka, well then the fun starts! Rugby is amazing! Unlike American football's stop and go game play, Rugby is continual play until their one break at half time. It's so much more fun to watch, and looks super intense to play. I vote we ditch American football and all play rugby instead.

Yeah, they're lifting those guys STRAIGHT in to the air to catch that ball. My jaw dropped the first time I saw it.

The All Blacks won of course (20-10!)

Two rows in front of us were a group of obnoxious, drunk, Uni students. As obnoxious as they were, they were also highly entertaining. At one point they started the Wave and got it to go around the stadium FOUR times! However, as with most extremely drunk people, they were eventually kicked out.

Even though they were kicked out, even the policeman couldn't resist the high spirits the game put everyone in. Right before I took this picture he was mock strangling the purple-haired one, and laughing and joking with them as he walked them out. The rest of the game was much more mellow without those boys.

After the game we followed the mob of people back to City center where we went out to a pub to dance and eat- and drink more if that was your forte. The pub had a live band that night and Kasey, Katelyn, Arely and I spend the evening dancing too it. It was rather interesting to hear "Sweet Home Alabama" sung in New Zealand and with the New Zealand  accent!

The perks of being a uni student

The night started out innocently enough, after rewarding myself with a movie for getting most of my schoolwork done-plus waiting for the party below us to quiet down to a dull roar- I went to sleep around midnight. The party was still too loud for me to really be able to sleep, so I sort of dozed in and out for a while. Well, that is until it sounded like a spaceship landed in my room!

The sudden beeping-completely unlike any American alarm I have heard jolted me awake. I’m pretty sure “ARG!!” was my first thought, followed by “What is that racket!?!” I stumbled out of bed and into the hall to see Rachel, Brittany and Ruth all doing the exact same thing. At that moment the alarm switched from beeping to a polite (and therefore all the more aggravating to the freshly woken-up) voice telling us that “This building is being evacuated, Please leave by the nearest fire exit” before it went right back to its infernal beeping. So we stumbled to our rooms to grab jackets and shoes before making our way downstairs.

At the bottom we find the rest of I-block all bedecked in their PJ’s huddled together trying to stay warm. The source of the alarm is soon figured out to be one of the rooms that was hosting a party, turns out they accidentally left their stove on and it started smoking obscene amounts.

We all stood around, watching the inane actions of the drunks that were still out and about-one was wearing a cereal box on her head? Until the fire department showed up 15 minutes later and FINALLY shut off the spaceship noises, which meant we could all go back to bed.

In good news, the building actually wasn’t on fire. In bad news, we had been woken up for nothing. I’ll just chalk it up to another experience to add to the list, now if I could just have an experience that involved a full night of sleep I would be one happy girl.

See Mom, I'm not starving!

For all of you doubters out there(mostly my siblings and Father), here's proof that I can cook things other then mac n'cheese and mashed potatoes!
I give you Skillet Lasagna!


I found the recipe online and decided I should try it. Well, it turned out spectacularly! The lack of oven in our flat meant I couldn't make regular lasagna, but this turned out almost as good! It made so much that I should be set for about two weeks now. There's some in the fridge, some in the freezer, and a bunch in my stomach.

The one downside to any cooking we do here, is that we seem to be lacking lids for our pans. But never fear! It just takes a little creativity!


This week is going by really fast. I've conquered my first exam with mostly success, and am now frantically trying to finish my essays while keeping up with all of the normal class work. Ah, the day in the life of a student!