Dunedin Dubauchery and Wanaka

I didn't get to posting about the weekend until now mostly due to laziness. I bought a copy of Lord of the Rings, all 3 volumes in one book, on Monday and I've been spending a lot of time reading that this week instead of tidying up my room, unpacking my backpack from the weekend, or doing school work. But anyway, this post is mostly about the weekend. Thursday was my flatmate Rob's birthday so after he, Xander, and I played a round of golf (my first try time playing golf) we had a pretty nice dinner prepared by our flatmate Shayla. Rob's parents had a birthday cake delivered to the flat from a local bakery. That was pretty delicious. After awhile, Xander, Rob, and I went to the Dunedin Casino. We spent quite a long time there playing blackjack and being advised in the ways of the game by 3 older Kiwi brothers. A good time was had by all- Xander broke even, Rob won $40, and I went up $95. Glorious.
Friday was fairly uneventful since we couldn't start our weekend trip due to overbooking at our lodging (Heather's flatmate Scott has a vacation house in Wanaka that we were going to be staying at, but lots of people were already there). So Heather, Rob, and I headed up to Wanaka at 7am Saturday morning. About an hour out it started raining, which kind of cancelled our plans of going to watch the New Zealand Snowboarding Open. We did see an amazing rainbow- the largest I've ever seen. It made a complete arch from one size of the horizon to the other, which was pretty epic. In Wanaka we got some food at the grocery store since the power was fluctuating in and out in town and we didn't know how dependable the restaurants would be in such a condition. Also we wanted to eat on the cheap. We drove to the rock climbing gym and ate in the car in the parking lot. Heather and I did the rock climbing and Rob belayed for us since he couldn't climb due to a previous shoulder injury. That was a lot of fun. Then we walked around downtown Wanaka, which is real small but since it's a ski resort town, there are lots of shops and restaurants. We probably went to at least 5 almost identical ski/outdoor apparel stores and purchased nothing. We ate at the Speight’s Alehouse, which was really good. Then we hung out at an Irish pub for a little while. We eventually made our way to Scott's house and enjoyed the ensuing party. Lots of the other international kids I know (sadly mostly Americans) were at the house- if not there for the night, at least partying and staying elsewhere. So it got pretty big. Good times.
Sunday morning everyone got up early and had breakfast and cleaned up the house, which actually wasn't in too bad of shape. Then most of us went up to "Snow Park" for the Burton Open, the New Zealand snowboarding open. We watched a lot of the half pipe competition and wandered around awhile. I took a lot of pictures, however, I really needed a telephoto lens to get better images since I couldn't get up close to shoot any of the snowboarding. But, it was fun non the less. After that Heather, Rob and I added two people to our return journey- Mike and Greg, two other international students from Otago. One is from Hungary and the other another American. We ate lunch on lake Wanaka and then headed back to Dunedin. It was a good trip.
This week has been fairly low key- only 2 weeks until the semester break. My last day of class before break is August 23, which is the day after class starts back at the ole U of I. Haha suckers. Anyway, I'll be doing a lot of planning for that in the days to come- I'll be heading up the West Coast with the other owners of the car. It should be delightful.