Queenstown Trip

This was an exciting weekend. I went to Queenstown with everyone from my Arcadia program- 17 of us now. We got on a bus at 10am on Friday and drove the 3 or so hours inland to Queenstown, the adventure capital of New Zealand. The first thing we did was to go on a jet boat ride on the Shotover River. That was sweet- they darted us up and down the passable stretch of the river, taking us real close to the cliff faces, rocks, etc. Every so often we'd go into a 360-degree spin. It was a lot of fun. Then we pretty much chilled out the rest of the evening. After we checked into our cabin- 15/17 of us were all in one cabin. It was fairly nice- 4 bedrooms with 4 beds each and then a kitchen and common room. We walked around Queenstown, which is maybe only 15,000 people max, but since it's a resort town there is a lot of cool stuff packed into the small area. I ate dinner at Fergburger- a hamburger shop similar to the velvet burger in Dunedin. Just massive burgers jam packed with glorious ingredients. We went to the grocery store in town and got breakfast and lunch for the next day as well as some general trail food for the hike. Friday night everyone just hung out at the cabin.

Then on Saturday we took the bus to the head of the Routeburn track, one of the Great Tracks of New Zealand. We did the first leg- about a 3 and a half hour hike (around 13 kilometers) up to a hut for backpackers doing the whole track. We ate lunch there and reveled in the amazing view of the valley below us. Then we turned around and headed back. Jane, our program director, does all of these activities with us- for the hike her husband and a family friend came with as well. In talking to this guy, I found out that he did a year on an exchange program in high school in the United States- in Kewanee, Illinois. He said he'd been to Rock Island a few times. Crazy stuff- small world. Anyway, after we'd all had a chance to shower back at the cabin, we went to a nice pizza place. Most of us stuck around for happy hour (this happens to be much later than US happy hours, which I find to be a happy circumstance). I went to another bar with mostly everyone and we hung out there for a while listening to a guy play an acoustic guitar set.

On Sunday we got up and rode the gondola up the mountain right behind our cabin, one of the largest directly overlooking Queenstown. Once on the mountain, we went on the luge- riding little carts down windy paths at high speeds. After that, we headed to Arrowtown, just a few kilometers outside Queenstown. I had lunch at a nice little bakery; I had a good venison pie. Then, for our final event- we went to the Kawarau Bridge Bungee Jump. Not everyone did the jump, but most of us did. It was pretty incredible. The jump was 134 feet- the worlds first bungee jump site. It was pretty terrifying standing on the ledge and then maybe the first second right as I jumped, but directly after that it felt pretty cool- definitely a big rush. They're so accurate on the length of bungee they give you that you can tell them if you want to dunk in the water, touch it, or not touch it. I touched my hands in, which was pretty cool I guess. Afterwards they lower you into a raft and you just climb some stairs back up to where you first walked in. Intense stuff- it was epic.
Then we drove back to Dunedin and I stayed up until 2:30am doing a history paper. Toodles.

Mt. Cargill and the Otago Peninsula

Last week went by pretty quickly. Thursday night was pretty sweet-as. I went with a bunch of people to the Robert Burns Pub for jazz night. After the jazz ended and we'd had a good many Monteith's Blacks, a great dark beer made here in New Zealand, we headed across the street and discovered the glory that is Velvet Burger.
On Friday afternoon Rob, Xander, and I climbed Mt. Cargill (about 680 meters high) and got a pretty sweet view of Dunedin and the highlands surrounding the city. It took us a little less than 3 hours round trip. Just as we were heading back down from the summit, a cloud passed through and we walked in it for a while. Friday night was pretty low-key; we hung around the flat. Then on Saturday I went with a huge group of international students for our re-scheduled trip out to the Otago peninsula. They had us in 3 charter busses and we rotated between 3 different sites out on the peninsula. My group first went down to a nice stretch of beach on the Pacific Ocean side of the peninsula. We were hoping to see some penguins or sea lions, but apparently none were out because it was very windy. Then we walked through a nice botanic garden with a bunch of different paths. After that they took us to a point near the very end of the peninsula that had a great view of the Otago harbor and Dunedin. There was also a museum up there with stuff about the wildlife that we didn't see. Our last stop was at a town hall type place where all of the busses converged and they had a big BBQ for us all. Once we were back on campus Rob, Xander, and I headed to the Cook (The Captain Cook Tavern) to watch the All Blacks game against Australia. New Zealand was triumphant 26-12. For the game they cooked up a sheep on a spit and gave out the meat for free to us patrons watching the game. Also I had two of the largest mugs of beer I've ever seen- these Super Stein glasses had to be at least 30oz, not that they use such measurements here. Good times.
Sunday was pretty chill except for that Rob and I had to take Xander to the emergency room because his uvala (the dangly thing in the back of the throat) had swollen up to extreme proportions. So he was at the hospital in observation for most of the afternoon. He's fine and is on some antibiotics now to deal with the problem. So that was interesting. I made balsamic marinated pork tenderloin and some roast potatoes for our Sunday dinner at the flat. That went well- my flatmates enjoyed it.
This week we start tutorials, which are basically small group sessions of our classes. Also, I actually bought a book for my history class. Its pretty interesting material and I have a good amount of free time during the weekdays here so I should get through it. That's pretty much it for now.

Our Car and the Trip to Christchurch

Lots happened since I posted last. First off, we bought a car- it’s a 1985 gray Honda Accord. My flatmate Xander found it online and it was dropped off at our place on last Wednesday evening. By appearance, it’s kind of falling apart but the engine is solid and it runs well. We named it Pam after the cheap generic food brand that we constantly purchase at the grocery store. Some such items are shown in the picture above. Driving on the other side of the road is interesting and I’ve been trying to get used to it. It cost 850 $NZ- Xander, Rob, Heather, and I are sharing it so that splits up the cost pretty well. With registration and insurance the price went up for each person, but not too bad. We had it for not even a week before tragedy struck.
On Saturday morning as we were about to set out to Christchurch we got out to the car, which was parked around the corner from our flat, only to find that during the night the rear window had been smashed out in two places. Most likely this was the doing of drunken college students. No other cars around us were damaged- just ours. As we found footprints on the hood and roof, the current operating theory is that some bastards tried walking over it and the roof buckled a little towards the back end, shattering the glass in two places on the sides of the rear window. So instead of heading right off to Christchurch we filed a police report just for kicks and had the broken glass taken out and vacuumed up. They put a temporary plastic window in- pretty much just thick plastic wrap like substance. The quote to replace the window was $330 NZ so that adds quite a bit to the per person cost of the car. I guess that’s the risk you run when parking in a crazy college area. Our street is known as one to have couches burned on it quite frequently, a common Otago party tradition.
Despite the adversity, Pam brought us (Xander, Rob, Heather, Julie, and myself) safely to Christchurch well in time to make the rugby game. The drive took between 4 and 5 hours, about 225 miles. After eating at a hole-in-the-wall fish and chips place outside town, we got into the city center. We checked into our hostel, which is right by Cathedral Square in the center of town. The place is called Base Backpackers; it was pretty nice and a bunch of other American students we know were also staying at. We walked around the city for a bit and then had a few beers in the room of some of our friends. Then for the main event we headed to the All Blacks game. The All Blacks are the New Zealand national rugby team and Saturday they played the South Africa Springboks. By way of a city bus packed with South African fans drunkenly singing songs, we arrived at the stadium and got to our seats. The game was pretty sweet. Seeing the Haka performed live was awesome- the All Blacks do a traditional Maori dance/intimidation ritual at the start of every game. If you just search “the haka” on YouTube a bunch of videos of it come up. Good stuff. Anyway, New Zealand trounced South Africa 33 to 6. I had what they claim is a hot dog at the game, but it’s really a battered, deep fried sausage on a stick. Although not what I’d call a hot dog, it was definitely delicious.
This morning we walked around the city more and stopped a couple places on the way back to take pictures. Maybe 60km north of Dunedin we stopped at the Moeraki Boulders, which are these giant spherical rocks along the beach at this one spot. Once, back at our flat Xander, Rob, Shayla, and I had a delicious Sunday dinner consisting of roast chicken and vegetables (Potatoes, what they call pumpkin but we call squash, and carrots). It was a good weekend and the first of many trips I’ll be taking with the car. We hope to do one trip every weekend and explore all around Dunedin and the south island. The drive we took this weekend was filled with incredible scenery and really excited us all about all the glorious trips and hikes we can do in the future. The landscape changes from rolling hills and vast gorges to flat planes, and then into giant mountains so fast it’s a little hard to believe it’s all on one relatively small island. We could have stopped almost every five minutes to take pictures of some new amazing scene.
Back to another week of class starting tomorrow. Now that we have the car the flatmates and I are going to drive to an even cheaper supermarket to get groceries. Exciting times. That’s it for now… more to come soon. There are updated pictures on my flickr site from the trip. I hope all is well back on the home front. Peace.

Pictures of Dunedin and Campus

I just put up more pictures on the flickr account. I took some shots of Dunedin and around campus in the last few days. I uploaded a couple right on here but the rest are on the flickr page.

More Photos

I just made a Flickr account so that I can batch upload pictures.
The address is:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/18754545@N00

I put the link under links on the right of the page so it should aways be there to get at right from the blog. I'll probably still throw a few pictures in the main part to go with certain posts, and I'll probably make an entry when I've uploaded a new batch. But, the Flickr account is where most of them will be found.

Anyway, I registered for classes today. I'm taking Maori Society, Australia and New Zealand in the Second World War, and Music Technology. 3 classes here equals 15 hours of credit back in the States. That's sweet. Also, I bought some more wool socks today. Word.

Pictures

Here are a few pictures from orientation. There are a lot more, but this is good for now. I'll probably set up a flickr account or something to share all the pictures.

Orientation

I'm finally in Dunedin after the Arcadia program orientation and a lot of travel. I've done so much in the last few days it's crazy. Today I was able to go buy some essentials and finally get the room all set up. The walls are still pretty barren but I'm pretty much moved in. So now for the recap of orientation- lots to tell...


I met most of the Arcadia students at the LA airport since we all had this group flight booked. There are 33 of us, 18 of which are attending the University of Otago in Dunedin. The others are at Victoria University in Wellington. The plane I took to New Zealand was great. It was huge and had LCD screens on the back of each seat with on-demand movies and TV shows as well as an animated graphic of where the plane was over the pacific and how long to our flight had left. I was able to get a good amount of sleep on the plane- probably like 7 hours. They served us breakfast and I talked to the people in my row for about the last hour of the flight. It was about a 12 and a half hour flight, which was shorter than I had been told.


We landed in Auckland at 6:30am, went through customs, and were greeted by our program director, Jane. We boarded busses and went to the Kiwi International Hotel- not the best of accommodation, but good enough. After we checked in I was able to take a shower before we got back on the bus. So the jet lag doesn't completely screw you up, you're supposed to go to bed at a normal time so we had a day of activities to keep us up. We went to an extinct volcano on a beach overlooking the ocean and the city. After that, we went downtown and a few other people and I had kebabs. I thought a kebab was meat on a stick, but it's actually a Turkish food that's like a cross between a gyro and a burger. They're good. We met up with the big group again and went to another extinct volcano for a look at the city and ocean again. It was raining by this time- a big trend so far in New Zealand. After that, we visited Underwater World, which is a cool aquarium that had glass walkways through and under the big tanks. There we saw a guy feeding the sting rays. We went back to the hotel for a bit and then went to dinner at a gourmet pizza place. We got back to the hotel and Jane advised us to go straight to bed. Most of us went to an Irish pub a few blocks away and had a few pints (which are 20 oz here- not that they use ounces). The pub was called Father Ted's and they had the British sitcom "Father Ted" playing, which was pretty hilarious. It was fun, but by the late hour of 10pm we were in bed.


On Saturday we drove to Rotorua after having lunch in Hobbiton, the site of the shire in Lord of the Rings. They had a tourist center about it, but the actual site was outside town so we didn't have time to check it out. In Rotorua we saw a farm show at the Agrodome (it was more like Agrobarn), which included a sheep shearing. We took a tour of Rainbow Springs, a nature conservatory park and then checked into our hotel, which is right on lake Rotorua. We ate dinner at different places. I went to a place called Fat Dog with a large group and then we met everyone at the Polynesian Spa next to our hotel. It's a bunch of natural hot water spring pools, which are really nice. The springs are caused by all the crazy geothermal activity in the area, but that also means that the whole town reeks of sulfur. After that a bunch of us went to bars (with our bus driver Mark) to watch the All Blacks game (New Zealand's national rugby team). New Zealand lost to Australia, which was a travesty. Also New Zealand lost that day in the Americas Cup- the big sailing race, which is a big deal here. It was a sad day for New Zealand sports.


On Sunday we had breakfast at the hotel and then went to the Waiotapu geothermal park where we saw the Lady Knox geyser erupt among many other cool phenomena. It's now one of only four geyser areas in the world. I went with our bus driver Mark and some people to a burger place he recommended. We then went Zorbing even though it was cold and raining. Three of us got in a giant plastic ball, they put some hot water inside, and then we rolled down a big hill. It was pretty glorious. After we all went, all the Arcadia students, with the encouragement of our advisor Jane, ran up the hill and laid down while another Zorb ran over us. We did that twice. We cleaned up at the hotel and then we were bussed over to the Tamaki Brothers Maori Village experience to see a traditional Maori welcome, song and dance, and a dinner (hangi). It was pretty cool and the food was good. The welcome was more of Maori warrior looking guys crazily yelling, sticking their tongues out, and thrusting spears at us, but it was sweet nonetheless. Back at the hotel most of us sat around the lobby and hung out playing cards, etc.


Monday was basically a travel day. We flew out of Rotorua to Wellington but our flight was delayed so we missed our connecting flight to Dunedin. In Wellington we said goodbye to the Arcadia kids going to Victoria University there. The rest of us and Jane took a flight to Christchurch and then they bussed us to Dunedin (a 5 hour drive). We stopped at McDonnalds- hopefully for the first and only time while I'm here. We got into Dunedin around 2am. I got the key to my flat and went in and went to bed- in my sleeping bag on the mattress.


The last few days I've had some more orientation stuff on campus and I've been buying stuff like bedding and other necessities. I got a prepaid phone. Aparently thats what most people do and students only text eachother because it's insanely cheaper than calling. It's not a bad temperature here- mostly hight 40's and 50's so far. The flat is cold, however, since there is no central heating, as is the case with all student flats and most older places throughout the city. We have a heat pump in the living room, which we use when we're in there and I have a little heater for my room that was left there. It's expensive to use so basically I only use it right before bed and in the morning. If I keep my door shut it keeps the heat in pretty well for a while after I've turned it off. I met two of my flatmates- Rob and Xander, both from the USA. My two other Kiwi (New Zealander) flatmates, Shayla and Maryke don't get back until this weekend since they're still on winter break.


I register for classes tomorrow and have an appointment to set up a bank account. It should be a busy day. I'm pretty much moved in now- all the orientation stuff was fun but it's good to finally get settled and not have to worry about dragging around all my luggage.


Other than that, the people are nice, the beer is good, and campus is close. That was a long first post, but we did a lot of stuff in a short amount of time and this was really the first time that I could just sit and get it all on here, especially now that I have power adapters.