Pocahontas was an adrenaline junky.

Wow. So this past weekend I travelled to Queenstown for four days and what an amazing, incredible place. It was simply like no other place I’ve been to. Queenstown is known as the adventure capital of New Zealand.  During the summer and fall months people head there for water adventures like river rafting, jet boating, river surfing, zip lining and etc. During the winter, the town is buried in heaps of snow and people flock there to ski and snowboard the mountains nearby called the Remarkables. And let me tell you, they were absolutely remarkable. I couldn’t stop staring at them or taking pictures of them. Such a beautiful mountain range. So we arrived Friday afternoon and after checking into our hostel decided to go for a short hike. We climbed up to the top of the mountains and looked out over the view of Queenstown. It was so refreshing and beautiful! We decided to go to bed early that night since we wanted a good nights rest to mentally prepare for our bungy jumping the next morning!

Saturday morning I woke up feeling excitement and nerves. I couldn’t believe it was finally here, time to free fall 134m! (approx 440ft for you Americans) The bus ride was about 40 minutes to the bungy jumping and it was such a nerve-racking ride. It was a beautiful sunny day, perfect for our activities of the day. As soon as the bus climbed up the hill and we saw what we were about to do, I was instantly excited and ready to go. We checked in and got harnessed up and I could no longer feel my stomach or feet. In order to get to the suspended building we were going to jump from, we had to ride a tiny, shaking gondola out. That was probably scarier than the actual jump!  I was 4^th to go and watched my 3 friends go first and I felt even more ready. Don’t ask me how I felt so calm because honestly, I do not know. I think I was having an out of body experience! The lady had me sit in a chair as she explained what I needed to do and hooked me up to the bungy cord. She helped me off the chair and I tiptoed to the edge of the cliff. Of course I looked down and instantly thought, “What am I doing? This isn’t me!” I took a deep breath, listened to the lady count me down and 3..2..1..I went for it! I thought of Pocahontas and swan dived off. Now for the fall. The bungy claims it is an 8.5 second freefall. Either I blacked out for the 5 seconds or it just went that fast but I can’t really explain what was going through my mind. I think it was pretty blank and just in complete shock of what I just did. I saw the mountains and river below rushing towards me and all of sudden the bungy slowly pulled me back up. What a relief! I bounced a few more times and pulled the chord that made me sit upright.  There I was, hanging in the middle of a canyon feeling such a rush and like I could do anything. I could not stop laughing! They pulled me back up and I was in disbelief of what just happened.  It took me a good ten minutes to stop laughing. I wanted to go again so bad! But it was over and time to switch to our next activity…the canyon swing! Pictures of the bungy:

 The drive was beautiful!

 There it is...the Nevis Bungy!

 The ledge...

 We're so pumped, we promise.

 I look completely calm..NOT

 Perfect swan dive, YES.

 Weeee!

 It's me I promise!

Now for the canyon swing. This is the highest swing in the world! It’s 300m up and involves a 70m freefall. Here I go again…on this one you were allowed to go with someone so I went with my flatmate, Sabine. We had to walk across a shaky bridge to get to the swing, it was pretty scary once again. When it was our turn we got strapped into the swing and felt our hearts racing again. I could feel the adrenaline pumping back up! With the swing you weren’t in control of going, a worker had to press a button to release you. So the worker asked if we wanted a countdown or a surprise and we definitely wanted a countdown. Once we were all strapped in the machine lifted us over the edge and we waited for the countdown. Sure enough the guy wanted to be funny and asked us once again what we wanted. The conversation went something like this: “So…did you say you wanted a countdown or a surprise? (he pressed the button)…AHHH!!” How scary! The freefall terrified me more than the bungy surprisingly. But once past that part, it felt just like a giant swing and it was so cool! The scenery was beautiful.  Pictures:

 The bridge we had to walk across

All strapped in!

 Smile for the picture before the drop...

 Ahh!

You can see us on the upper left corner

So once we were through with that we got back on the bus to head back. I was all smiles and continued to smile the rest of the day. It was such an amazing day! Once we arrived back at the hostel we all crashed and took a nice long nap. For dinner we headed to the legendary Fergburger. Now this place is apparently known worldwide as having some of the best gourmet burgers. I thought okay, just another claim but oh my. It was the biggest and most amazing burger I have had so far. So I guess they were right?

YUM

That night we signed up for a Pub Crawl. It was such a blast! We met a lot of really nice and fun people and got to experience the crazy night life of Queenstown. I loved it. I was a little weirded out when I started talking to these people from California. I thought it was cool that we were all from there as well. The one guy mentioned they were from the central valley, Fresno, to be exact. And I freaked. NO WAY were there 3 other people from Fresno in New Zealand at the same bar as me. Maybe the world really isn’t that big after all? Strange.

 The crazy group we were with

All of us from Dunedin

On Sunday we woke up to a rainy day but decided to go adventure anyways. We went on a beautiful hike around the lake in Queenstown and loved it all. We did a little bit of tourist shopping and once the rain got really bad we headed home for another nap. (Hey, we stayed up REALLY late on Saturday, it was necessary). For dinner I went to a seafood place and got some extremely fresh fish in a wrap. It was delicious! Apparently it was caught that day and straight out of the lake. Gotta love New Zealand and their freshness. That night we decided to go out and celebrate our last night in Queenstown. It was another amazingly fun night meeting people from all over the world. Queenstown is amazing like that, so many people are travelling through that almost everyone is a tourist and open to meet people. 

 the ducks loved us.

Monday morning we hung around and did a little more shopping and exploring. Our bus headed home around 2:30 and it was really sad to say goodbye. I definitely fell in love with Queenstown and wanted to visit again if I could. Some pictures from Monday:

So all in all, it was another amazing weekend. As for now, I’m just trying to balance school and travelling. Don’t the professors understand I don’t have time to write papers and study when I have a country to explore? Jeez. Haha.

Bye bye!

Time to face reality and retire my sunglasses.

Yes, sadly I've come to some realizations in this past week. I have been hearing and reading about friends back home and their spring break plans in the warm sun and I have to say goodbye to the sun for the next few months. As the months quickly change from March to April, the southern hemisphere says goodbye to summer and hello to fall and the frigid winter. The winds from Antarctica blow over the hills near my house and it reminds why I live in California. The essentials in my purse are no longer sunglasses and chapstick; I traded those in for an umbrella and gloves. My everyday wear is no longer flip flops and shorts but boots, scarves and a raincoat. Now some of you, especially my family living in the east coast, are probably laughing thinking I'm being a little over dramatic. But come on, what do you expect from a California raised girl who lives in sunny, beautiful Santa Barbara? The fall here is colder than my winter! It makes me shiver to think it's only going to get colder! The best part is flats in Dunedin barely have insulation and no central heating.... I packed to live in warmer Christchurch, not freezing Dunedin! All I have is a tiny space heater the size of a toaster which costs way too much to run. Awesome. But I'll manage, it just makes going back home to sunny California that much better.

Now time to update you all since my last post. Last Monday I went on a tour of the Cadbury chocolate factory which was one of the coolest things ever. I literally felt like I was in the middle of the Wonka Factory and kept looking for the Oompa Loompas. Our tour guide Cocoa Joe shows up in purple overalls (Cadbury chocolate's colors are white and purple!) and goes over the rules of the tour. But first and most important he hands everyone a chocolate bar. YES. Next he passes out hairnets and instructs us all to put them on. He also gave us little purple bags and said we had to hold on to them for more chocolate samples. I can't even explain my excitement at this point.

Unfortunately, cameras were not allowed during the tour. I saw how chocolate was made, all the giant conveyor belts that made the different candies, Cadbury easter eggs in the process of being mixed and tons of other chocolate specialties including...A CHOCOLATE WATERFALL with liquid chocolate samples. It was so cool. Cocoa Joe asked trivia questions on the way and whoever answered correctly got even more chocolate. So by the end of the tour my goodie bag was filled with free samples and some trivia candy. I felt like a 5 year that just finished trick-or-treating. You could say I went home a happy kid. Here's a few pictures I could get:

 Cadbury World, yum.

Us freaking out in front of the giant pile of Crunchie bars. Which happen to be my new favorite candy bar!

 Hair nets!

 We played on the trucks...haha

Look at all that chocolate! Also, it was incredibly cheap. How mean...

Thursday was St. Patty's Day which was basically one giant, green party similar to the states. Dunedin has some Irish/Scottish heritage so the town went all out. I don't think I've seen that many green people! My flatmate and I decided to purchase green wigs to wear that night and everybody loved them. We were a big hit, it was too much fun.

Saturday was quite an eventful day. During the day the college kids had their annual Hyde Street Keg Party. What is that you ask? Well, it's basically what it seems. A small, tiny street called Hyde has a day party where every single house gets a keg and a theme and let's the chaos begin. Some themes included: Disneyland, superheros, Christmas, animals, Olympics, and many more. So of course I couldn't miss out on such an event. I did my best to create a superhero theme last minute and went out with some friends to jump in on the craziness.

 Friends in silly costumes

 So many people!

More ridiculous costumes

Then later that night was the rugby game. This was a particular big game for me because it was the Otago Highlanders versus the Christchurch Crusaders. So, I had to cheer for my original home of Christchurch even though I was surrounded by Otago fans. But the game was tons of fun. Of course half the time I was focusing on trying to figure out the rules (it was my first official rugby game!) but towards the end I sort of figured it out. I should be better prepared for my next one. The Crusaders won so I was happy!

 The Crusaders entering the field

 A friend and I trying our best to understand the game

Rugby scrum! So cool.

So that was my crazy weekend. Lots of fun, as usual. Haha. However, I'm counting the days to this next weekend. My friends and I are traveling to Queenstown, the adventure capital of New Zealand. There I plan to go bungy jumping off the 3^rd highest jump in the world and swing over a canyon, the world's highest swing might I mention. I am already nervous, excited, scared, anxious just thinking about it! I'll try my best to get as many pictures and videos as I can. But for now I'll leave you with the website of the jumps so you can see pictures and understand my fear!

www.bungy.co.nz

I'll be doing the Nevis Bungy and ARC swing. Yikes!

Until next time. :)

I'm finally "studying" abroad.

 Yes indeed. After a nice 3 month vacation from school, classes are in full swing at the University of Otago and I am finally back to being a student. I kind of missed it? Although I still feel like I am on vacation simply because everything about this place is beautiful and fun times a million. I don't really have much to update you all on. I have been busy with class and trying to learn where everything is on campus and how it all works. I cannot believe it has been almost 3 weeks since the earthquake. My time here is going so fast already it’s hard to keep track. Speaking of earthquakes…I cannot believe what happened in Japan. I definitely feel for their country having just experienced a similar situation although theirs was much worse than the one in Christchurch. The earth’s tectonic plates need to just chill out for a little bit.

Last Friday night my flatmates and I decided to have a Mexican food night for dinner. The California kids cooked for the others who don't know real Mexican food. Haha. We had enchiladas, salsa, guacamole, nachos…it was delicious! The Mexican food here is scarce and when you do find it...it is awful. So instead of hand washing all our dishes we decided to use our dishwasher. Now before I tell you what happened next, let me just say I have not used a dishwasher in about 3 years because none of the apartments I lived in back in Santa Barbara had one. So give me some slack. But I accidentally used dishwashing liquid instead of detergent. So…twenty minutes later we had a foam party in the kitchen. Oops! And that caused half of the electricity in our kitchen to go out so you could say I made a mess of things. Sorry flatmates! But we all had a good laugh and they told me I was not allowed to use the dishwasher again. My bad…

 Yay food!

Oooppss!

Yesterday (Saturday) my friends and I got up and went to the Otago Farmer’s Market. It was so big! I loved buying all my produce from local growers and being able to know that what I was getting was fresh. We decided to pack our new purchases and head to the beach for a picnic. And as usual…the beach was beautiful! A little cold but we didn’t mind; it is fall here now. It was a good day and we had a lot of fun. I love exploring new places here and since the country is so small, the places we go are never crowded.

Us in front of the train station

Well, that is about it for exciting things to share with you all. Since school has started things are slowing down a bit and my adventures are restricted to just the weekends. How boring? Haha. But next weekend should be interesting! Thursday is St. Patty’s Day and apparently it is HUGE here since the town has an Irish/Scottish heritage. I can’t wait for that. And then on Saturday is a local rugby game that I am hoping to get tickets for. It is the Otago Highlanders verus the Christchurch Crusaders. I am going to cheer for the Crusaders since Christchurch was my original home!

Since I don’t know what else to say and I don’t want to leave you with a short post I am going to share with you a few things I’ve noticed about New Zealand.

1. The produce here is SO GOOD. Everything tastes really, really fresh. The tomatoes are the sweetest I have ever had. Sorry California, New Zealand has you beat.
2. But on that note, the fruit is much smaller. Apples, limes, plums, peaches…they are so tiny! Darn genetically enhanced California produce…
3. Shoes are definitely an option here. People can go into stores, grocery markets, really anywhere without shoes. Gross? Also, mullets and rat tails are a huge fashion. I think they are stuck in 1980? Apparently the rat tail phase is to support New Zealand’s rugby team, the All Blacks, since a lot of the team members have them. Strange…
4. Kiwis LOVE to make fun of American football especially when they compare it to rugby. “Oh you Americans are sissy’s with your pads and helmets”. It’s actually really entertaining.
5. The country is obsessed with rugby and their national team. Everything has gone black to support the All Blacks. If you didn’t already know, the Rugby World Cup is in New Zealand this year in November (so bummed I’m gonna miss it!) They even went so far to postpone the elections and no candidate will advertise during the games for fear of people getting angry at them for missing the game.
6. They do not have Ketchup. It’s called Tomato Sauce and tastes really strange. Also, when you want to order any kind of condiment to go with your meal you have to pay extra. Even McDonald’s is skimpy on their Tomato Sauce packets and only give you one or two when back home they throw 19 packets at you.
7. I love how they use the metric system and their currency. The metric system makes so much more sense. Come on America, switch over! And with their currency, pennies do not exist. I actually had a conversation with a Kiwi and he was asking me the point of pennies and I had no answer for him. Haha. When you buy things here, they are 10 dollars, 5 dollars, etc. None of this silly $9.95, $21.56, etc.
8. But everything is much more expensive than in the US. Thank goodness for the exchange rate. Hopefully it stays in my favor!
9. The weather is so unpredictable here...one minute it is rainy and cold and the next it is sunny and warm. It likes to change about every hour I'd say?

That’s about all I can think for now. Happy reading!

The rollercoaster that is my life.

It really is amazing how much can change in only a few days. Since the earthquake, things have been pretty stressful and all over the place. My friends and I had planned out a nice two week road trip to pass the time while we waited for school to resume at Canterbury. After a delayed flight, I finally made it out of Christchurch last Friday and was looking forward to a fun next few weeks. However, things changed quickly when I found out some bad news. A lot of the new friends I had made at school were being forced to transfer to a different university because their home school programs did not want them to lose credits. We had all travelled to Dunedin and most of my friends were going to transfer to the university there called the University of Otago. I was really sad that our close group of friends were being forced to split up. Some other friends were transferring all over New Zealand and some were told they might have to go back home to the US. So you could say we were all a little emotional. I ended up staying in Dunedin a little longer to figure out what was going on. We did have a little fun in between all the stress. A few of us went out to explore Dunedin and did some stress relieving shopping. We went on a tour of a brewery which was a blast. One of the main beers here is called Speigh’ts. So we saw the Speight’s factory and learned how beer is brewed and even learned the Egyptians were the first to brew beer. Interesting? At the end of the tour, the bar opened up for 30 minutes of beer tasting. So what did we college kids do, under tons of stress and high emotions? We drank up! The best part was the bar was serve yourself. You could say we were feeling pretty good after that. Then later that night my friends and I went to the “Penguin Place” to see Dunedin’s penguin colony. We got up close and personal with penguins and saw them swimming and playing on the beach. They were so cute! 

The next morning, Monday, I woke up to an email I did not want to see. My study abroad program was giving me two options. One, stay at Canterbury in a city that is broken and destroyed, hope for school to eventually start and that the aftershocks settled down. I would have to take a chance and hope school did start because if not, I would have to go home and not receive any credits. My second option was to transfer schools but they did not guarantee I would be able to go to the same school as my friends. I was heartbroken. I was falling in love with Christchurch and was starting to call it home. I did not want to leave and have to get to know another city and school. Worst of all, it was Monday and school had already started that day for the other universities. I had no idea what to do! Lucky for me, I had my close friends in the same boat as me and we decided to talk to the international office at the University of Otago. They did not even hesitate to help us. As soon as we mentioned we were from Christchurch they did all they could to help. So before I knew it, I was filling out enrolment forms and signing up for classes. I was shocked at how accommodating everyone at the university was. Of course I was still an emotional wreck and didn’t want to go through registration all over again and was very angry at the earthquake for making me start all over again with a new life in Dunedin.

Up until Tuesday, I felt like everything was falling apart and only getting worse. But things finally started to turn around. I was still homeless and living as a nomad on friend’s floors but Dunedin was growing on me as well as the University of Otago. My friends and I were starting to feel like we made the right choice. I had found classes that worked for me and after the long process of enrolling, I had a student card and was an official student at the University of Otago in Dunedin. So I guess I should change the name of my blog now? Haha. Tuesday my friends and I drove back to Christchurch to get the rest of our things. It was so eerie being back there…the city really is destroyed and has become a ghost town in certain parts. So we said our final goodbyes and drove away from our old life for the last time.

I went to my first class on Wednesday and was feeling pretty good. I was happy to be back in school and learning again. Three months is too long of a vacation for me, I think I was starting to lose brain cells. My professors talked about paper assignments and readings…how do I do this again? Thursday was my first full day of class and it was great. I love my classes already and find them very interesting. I decided to only take three because the past couple weeks had stressed me out to the max and I wanted the rest of my time here to be fun fun! The best part of all is my schedule. I have no class on Monday and Friday. Four day weekend every week? YES.

And now for the best news. Yesterday my friends and I got the best phone call. The university had found a flat for us and we could move in that afternoon. No more being homeless!! My flat is SO CUTE. It has an old Victorian look to it and it was newly remodelled and painted. The university bought brand new furniture and appliances for us. There’s even a dishwasher! There are 5 bedrooms (although there are only four of us living there now), a fully stocked kitchen and a big sitting room with huge windows. Also, there’s a little backyard and porch. My friends and I felt like the luckiest people ever. Rent is super cheap here so we feel like we are definitely getting our money’s worth. So last night was the first night in almost a week I slept in my own bed and room. Since I had no class today I slept in, made some tea and sad in my living room feeling completely stress free. My personal favourite part of the house is we have our very own washer and dryer in the house and it’s free! Now I have not had this since I left home three years ago. I love doing free laundry in my own house. Woo!

So as you can see, life really is a rollercoaster. But I’ve learned that bad news can lead to more bad news, but eventually the good will come. I still call Christchurch my home when people ask. I am getting a little sick of people asking “What did the earthquake feel like!” Well…the ground was shaking. A lot. Sometimes I still think the ground is shaking and I panic shortly thinking it’s an aftershock. When large trucks drive by our house the ground shakes a little and I always think of the earthquake. Every store I go into has a donation box for Christchurch and it makes me a little sad. My friends and I are planning to visit and volunteer for the day to help clean up the city.

Well, that’s all for now so thanks for reading! Check back in the next week or so as I’ll try to upload pictures on here.

(PS. If you noticed some spelling errors, they aren’t. I’ve changed my laptop to British English since that is how New Zealanders spell as well and I don’t want my professors marking down my paper grades for spelling errors. I think the best, weird spelling is the word yoghurt!)

Cheers!

UPDATE: Pictures of my flat!

 The long hallway of rooms

 FREE LAUNDRY

 My favorite room!

 My room. I had to add a little kid touch with a dinosaur blanket :)