4 Day Weekend!!!

Well this was a very long but fun weekend. Thursday Taylor (my roommate) and I went into the city of Christchurch and witnessed some of the Earthquake damage and the new things that the city have done and are planning for the future of their city. One of these is the Re-Start Mall, otherwise known as "The Container Mall". The reason for the nickname is that all of the stores are made out of large shipping containers. It was an outdoor mall in the heart of the city. Before the quake it was one of the site to one of the main central hubs in the downtown area, all of which was destroyed.

Friday's main event was going to the rugby game that night. It was the local team, The Canterbury Crusaders, vs a team from the North Island, The Hurricanes. it was a real good game and came down to the final minutes. Unfortunately the right wing (my old position) of the Hurricanes scored a great try but made it a loss for the home team. I was able to get a free flag though!

Saturday was a long and fun day. I did something I've never done before and had a great time in the City of Chrustchurch. The Great Kiwi Beer Festival was going on and I went with a lot of the other international students to the event. There was a very wide variety of people there. Some seemed like old hippies, some were the rocker type, and others were just weird.  This one lady around 60ish was going strong on the dance floor area to all the bands all day long. It was quite a sight. There were quite a few college students or at least college aged as well. Even the occasional baby or child, I didn't really get why you would bring your kids there. I found quite a few beers that I really enjoyed.

After I returned to school with some of my friends and headed over to the international flats. I spent the night hanging out with people from all around the US, France, The Middle East, India, New Zealand, and Norway. It was a great night and I really enjoyed branching out and meeting people form all over the world.

Sunday we had a BBQ for our flat complex. I enjoyed lots of free food and spending time with everyone in the complex. We also had guests from other dorms and the international flats as well. Over all it was a long and great weekend. Got to do many new things, met new people, and still got class assignments done.

Akaroa

This past weekend was the first weekend I have had that didn't leave me exhausted for the upcoming week.  I went to a town called Akaroa with one of my flat mates and another girl from CSU. Akaroa was the only French settlement in New Zealand as the rest was claimed by the British. There is still lots of French influence in the city from the style of buildings to the street names. Akaroa is a town thats further south than Christchurch and along the ocean. It was a beautiful place with rolling hills leading to multiple peninsulas and the ports. It is a well known town for dolphin sightings. They have a smaller kind of dolphin than the bottle nose and we may have seen one while standing at the end of the dock; they are known to come in pretty close to the shore. Its movement was like a dolphin but we weren't able to see the whole thing so we were uncertain (lets just say that it was one to add to the experience). The original plan was to go ocean kayaking but we decided to save some money and avoid the cold and just explore the small port town. It was a very nice town with tons of souvenir shops. I was able to get some gifts for family members, postcards, and a few items for myself as well. We went to almost every shop, explored the coast, and went through the entire town. It only took about 45 mins to walk from one end to the other. We went to a nice cafe and I got a pie; which was delicious, and relaxed for the rest of the day until our shuttle came to pick us up. I had some amazing NZ fudge made in Akaroa as well.

Spelunking!!!

The adventure for this second weekend of school was Black Water Rafting. 7 of us rented a car and drove to the West Coast of New Zealand. The drive was about 4 hours long. I slept for about half it each each way. We arrived at our campsite Friday night, set up camp, and my roommate (Taylor) and I hung out in our tent for a little before going to bed. Saturday morning, we were woken up bright and early by a very annoying rooster. We went off to the cave tour company and our adventure began. They outfitted us in wet suits and we headed off to the cave. We had a short train ride to get there and once we arrived we got our tubes and went into the caves. It was a limestone cave that has the largest glow worm colony of about 1 million glow worms. We hiked throughout the cave for about a kilometer or so. The stalagmites and other formations were amazing. I got a cool rock but it unfortunately snapped in half.

Before we got into the river we went and got our first glimpse of the glow worms. They had cool web like strands hanging down which is how they catch food. I touched a really long one and a ton of dew droplets fell off. When we looked closer at them I saw a few moving around, that was cool. We also saw a pupae form and were lucky enough to see an adult one which is very rare. It had just transformed.

Afterwards we got into the river finally and the rafting (more like tubing) began. It started off like a lazy river and we saw the entire glow worm colony. It was amazing!! It looked like an entire galaxy in a cave. They glowed green and occasionally saw a few blink red. That part lasted for about 5-10 mins, it was all dark, with just the glow worms for light. Once past the colony and out of the cave we went down the river to the pick up point. We hit some "rapids" a few times and continued to float along. The rest of the day we went and explored along the west coast.

I saw black sand beaches that had pretty firm sand actually. It was cool, the waves would come in, circle this rock formation and cut away at the beach. the swells were huge and the spray would go so high up as it crashed against the cliffs. Its always so cool to see the ocean coming from Colorado. Its so vast! There were these crazy cliffs that people climb. I wish I had the gear in order to do so. It looked like a crazy fun climb, you climb above the ocean pretty much.

After we went to this little German pizza place at another campsite. It was expensive but they had cheap beer at least. We went back to the campsite, hung out a little, and went to bed. The next morning we left pretty early and got drenched by the rain once we were getting back.

Adventure 1- Castle Hill and Carroll Hut

This was an amazing first weekend out! It started out as a total sh*t show at first. We had to hike down the highway with all our bags and a giant crash pad to find the rental place since we over shot it on the bus only to find out that our car reservation got messed up. Luckily the guy at the rental place was really nice. He took us to another rental place that had a car for us and we even paid a few dollars less than we were going to originally. We got the 8 seater van, picked everyone up, stuffed all the luggage in the car and began our journey. After an hour or so of anticipation I finally got to Castle Hill- a mecca for climbers such as myself. It was completely amazing! The climbing was insane and the sights were beautiful. We played around there for about 3 hours until we decided to find somewhere to camp. We ended up finding a free place to camp, hiked about a half mile to get there and set up camp in the dark-that was interesting.

The night was freezing! I woke up so many times unfortunately. The morning led to a beautiful sunrise, we packed up camp and headed down. We stopped at a nice little cafe and I had my first New Zealand meat pie....MMMMMM it was yummy.  after that we continued on to our next destination. We finally found the trail head and began our 3500 ft climb straight up a mountain pretty much. Ive never hiked a trail that was so steep! It took 2.5 hours and we finally reached our destination (Carroll's Hut). We relaxed, ate, and then went further up the mountain and explered the valley some. It was really cool cause we were hiking in a cloud the whole time, it was so foggy. My hair even got wet and curly again- no need for a shower ha! After we came back to the hut for dinner and relaxation. All 8 of us slept on the top bunk (meant for 5) because another group joined us in the hut. We all just hung out and talked on the top bunk until bed and had a blast doing so. There were so many funny quotes form that night.

Sunday we hiked down, it was a lot easier than we expected and no injuries (THANK GOD!). we drove back to the rental place, returned the car and caught the bus back. Everyone ate so much when we got back and just laid around the rest of the day. Everyone is sore and exhausted but it was well worth it.  So many good memories and pictures taken.

First Week Complete

Well the first week of school is now complete. I like most of my classes but really dont want to buy these expensive text books! Im only taking 4 classes, i really like 2 of them, one is so so, and the last Im not too big a fan but theres no final so thats a bonus for that class. I have Fridays off so 3 day weekends all the time! I'm hoping to do trips most weekends if possible. Im going on my first one today! We're going to a place called Castle Hill, its one of the best rock climbing places in the WORLD, if not THE BEST! As a rock climber I'm so excited, this is about every climbers dream. Im going to make quite a few people back home very jealous. Were renting a car and I have to leave in about an hour to go get it form the airport. This is going to be a great weekend; camping, climbing, and New Zealand's BEAUTIFUL landscape. Ill be sure to take plenty of pictures.

Cheers