It's been a while since I was able to post last. I would have liked to make a seperate post for when I did the Otago Central Rail Trail, but sadly I couldn't get to the library in time to write one before it closed for the holidays. I did the rail trail on the 18th, 19th, and 20th of December. I drove to the little town of Middlemarch and rented a bike there and then got taken with the bike to the railhead at Clyde by a van. Then I spent the next 3 days biking the 150km back to Middlemarch. I stayed at an amazing bead and breakfast type place the first night and had a glorious home cooked organic lamb dinner with the guy that owns the place and a couple other guests. The second night I spent in a pretty standard backpackers in the little town of Ranfurly. The trail is totally flat because it follows the old rail lines. It was a real cool time and actually turned out to be one of the top trips of the semester. It was also interesting doing that trip totally by myself- lots of good time to clear my mind and prepare to leave my New Zealand world and come back to reality.
So then I just had a few days until my family came to NZ on December 22. So for the next two weeks or so we traveled around the country and tried to fit in as much NZ stuff as possible for the short time that they could be there. It was really cool. We spent the first day in Dunedin- did the Cadburry factory tour and the Speights Brewery tour as well as some other sites. Then the next day we spent a little more time in Dunedin before we left for Christchurch. We spent Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in Akaroa, a little town on the Banks Peninsula, which is about an hour outside Christchurch. That was really nice- there we did a harbour cruise and got to swim with dolphins (Hector's Dolphins, the smallest and rarest dolphins). After another night in Dunedin we headed to Queenstown for a couple days. From there we did a Milford Sound tour, which was really sweet. After Queenstown we flew to Wellington from Christchurch and spent New Years there. The next few days we traveled from Wellington to Napier, then to Hamilton, then to Auckland. We did lots of different things and stopped at tons of different scenic and cultural attractions: Mt. Cook area day hike, Otago Peninsula wildlife tour (saw seals, sea lions, yellow eyed penguins, etc.), Mt. Bruce wildlife center (saw Kiwis), Waitomo caves, saw the oldest winery in NZ, One Tree Hill in Auckland... plenty of other stuff. Anyway, the specifics don't really matter I guess. It was really nice to be able to spend all that time with my family and to be able to show them at least some of the country. So we flew out on January 4th... and because of the time difference got into LA earlier in the day on January 4th.
We stayed the night of the 4th in Chicago and on the 5th I got back to Rock Island. I've seen lots of my friends and family and still have plenty more people to see. It's only about a week now until I go back to Chambana for my last semester. This last 6 months flew by. It was an amazing experience- trying to describe it's full effect would probably take much more time and space than this blog post will cover, and I guess I don't really even know to what extent my time abroad has affected me yet. Maybe I'll notice something- some way it changed me, maybe not. I don't know... it's kind of self reflection overload right now. All I know is that it was an excellent decision to study abroad, whether is was New Zealand or just the being away from home experience in general, I definitely recommend it to anyone/everyone. I'm definitely glad to be home now though and I'm truely looking forward to my last semester at Illinois. And after that, who knows... (Insert touching, uplifting, and inspirational life reflection ending here).
-Wandering vagabond Pat out.
