No Costumes, but Good Weekend

Eventful Queenstown Weekend

My work week was typical 9 - 5 without much excitement beyond a dance party or two in Strike Bowl. But once Friday hit time went flying and now its all the sudden 4:30 pm on Sunday afternoon.

Friday morning I came into town early to get some work done on my paper (that was a joke I didn't get around to actually writing it until Saturday evening). But none the less I hung around town until noon then met Janelle to go up to the top of the gondola for zip treking. http://www.ziptrek.com/queenstown-new-zealand if you are interested. We did it as a famil (lovely little perks of the hospitality industry) so we were able to go for free. It wasn't high adrenaline but it was a lot of fun and not at all freaky. You felt very safe the whole time.

At about 4, Danielle arrived to Queenstown from Dunedin (she is originally from Southern California) for the weekend and we went mini golfing to pass the time until Ingrid arrived at 6:30 from Christchurch (originally from Wisconsin). We headed up to the top of the gondola so they could get the aerial views of the city, had some Indian for dinner (which I have had more Indian food here than I ever had in the states) and went up to my place to get to sleep early since the morning was going to come very soon for them.

Saturday morning I shipped both Danielle and Ingrid off in a taxi at 7am. After wards, I promptly went back to bed. Danielle and Ingrid were gone from 7 am til 8 pm so I had time to write my paper. After about 200 words I thought my progress had been good and went to do some souvenir and birthday shopping. Got Danielle and Ingrid a little after 8, just missing the shuttle back to the hotel. So we had ice cream as an appetizer for dinner and bought the required ingredients for banana pancakes. We made a delicious pancake dinner and since I cooked, I didn't have to do the dishes! :-)

This morning Danielle and I woke up with knots in our stomachs not sure if we were ready for the day ahead. We all went to breakfast at Halo: The Forbidden Bite before dropping Ingrid at the bus stop to get back to Christchurch. Danielle and I then made our way to check in for the Canyon Swing. For those of you who aren't sure as to what that is: http://www.canyonswing.co.nz/ You are attached to a cord (kinda like a bungy) at your waist and you either jump or are released from a platform. You free fall for 60 meters before swinging over the Shotover River in a 200 meter arc. There are many choices of ways to jump and I encourage you to watch the videos on the website of all the different jump styles. The guys that work that are hilarious and are very encouraging for people to do the scary jumps and not the wimpy ones. I of course chose the wimpy one! But these guys love their job so much that they actually tricked me into doing a scarier one. If you check out the website, I chose the cut away. For the cut away you're sitting up right and are released looking forward. Obviously the guys knew I was pretty gullible and told me that I had to lean back and cross my legs over the rope so I don't get hurt. Thus putting me into the Elvis Cutaway position. They took me from a "one underpants rating" to a "four underpants rating". I'm glad they did it though because I now have higher bragging rights :-). Danielle on the other hand is a gymnast and decided to go off the edge in flips. I swear she's crazy! But she loved it so much that she went again, but doing backwards flips instead.

We were both so proud of ourselves for 1) not chickening out and 2) not making too much of a scene as we fell that at lunch we deserved a drink. We had a more relaxed afternoon and took a cruise out on the lake before getting Danielle back on the bus for Dunedin.

Tonight, I will hopefully be making more progress on my paper (who knows maybe I'll even finish it!), eating some dinner and getting to bed early. All the adrenaline from the morning has drained me.

Photo Re-Cap

Internet Cafes have photo uploading capabilities. Who knew!

Second Part of Dunedin Weekend

Well Friday night we attempted watching Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring before going to bed. I was the last person to fall asleep and I only made it to the point where Bilbo leaves the ring on the mantel for Frodo. I think this proves how exhausted we were from the day.

Saturday morning we were up early. Josh had interviews for summer jobs (something I should start thinking about) while the three girls went out to the farmers market. We walked around the city for a bit and at noon we went to the Speights Factory. Speights in a New Zealand beer and one of the oldest functioning breweries in New Zealand (speights.co.nz). It was an hour and a half tour with (unlimited!) tastings of 6 beers. Included in the price of our ticket was also a 2 course lunch with a 12oz Speights beer of choice. Speights makes some of the best mud cake I have ever tasted :-)

We then ventured to the harbour where we got on a bus to take us out to the Otago Peninsula. There were some great views of both the harbour and the coast line from the bus ride, but the drive was a little windy with a bus driver who was a little too comfortable at going at high speeds around the corners. Out at the end of the peninsula we fought the wind (which was gusting up to about 50 knots) to get onto the boat. The boat took us out to the end of the peninsula to see Albatross, seals and penguins. We did see all those things, but we only got to see 1 penguin who was swimming along side the boat. The albatross have HUGE wing spans and glide so effortlessly on the gusts of wind. SOOO pretty to watch. Well on the boat we made friends with these 3 older women who were having a great time being young again. Since the animal viewing was only for 45 min of our 2 1/2 hour boat ride, these ladies kept us entertained the rest of the way!

Back on dry land we went back to the apartment, had leftovers for dinner and decided to attempt the other two Lord of the Rings movies. Before attempting this we had to (obviously) get some liquid fuel. My poison of choice being red bull. Well it proved to be an entertaining night. All 4 of us made it through the Two Towers then we had an hour intermission where I got to call home before starting the Return of the King. We lost Ingrid before the third one started and Josh got about half way through. Danielle and I however, powered through and finished the movie at 5am. How did we manage to stay awake? We made Lord of the Rings a sing along by choosing songs that we felt fit the scenes we were watching.

This morning was rough. We woke up at 9 had a little breakfast and went out to the Otago Museum. There we got to see taxidermy animals from the Otago region and an exhibit about collections in history (it had coins, matchboxes. . . etc). Still a little slap happy from the night before, it was an adventure :-)

I hoped on the bus to come back to Queenstown at a quarter til 2 and my bad luck with buses is still unfailing. We were doing great until 20 minutes outside of Queenstown the bus broke down. Making me miss the 6 o'clock shuttle back to the hotel by 15 minutes. Thank goodness that was my last bus ride!

Overall the weekend was a blast and we managed to pack a lot into a little amount of time! I'm spending the rest of my time in Queenstown until I leave for Wellington with Mom, Dad, Alex, Abby and John.

Beginnings of Dunedin

Woke up before dawn broke this morning to board my 7:45am bus to Dunedin. I decided to skip my morning coffee for increased chances of sleeping on the bus. Once on the bus I realized how awful an idea it was since I was going to be spending the next 4 1/2 hours listening to a baby wail everytime we hit a bump.

Once in Dunedin I met up with Danielle (who's living here), Josh and Ingrid. Immediately I learned how much the weather here has mood swings. I arrived and it was sunny by the time I dropped my stuff off at the apartment and we headed off it was pouring rain.

Our first stop of the day was the Cadbury Factory, YUM! The photo is of me, Josh, Ingrid, Danielle and Ryan (our tour guide). I'd also like to point out that after we took this photo, 4 other members of our tour group decided they wanted photos with Ryan and copied our thumbs up, we started a trend. The factory tour was great (and yes I'll put up more pictures when I have a computer to upload them from). The machines weren't all going but we did get lots of free samples of chocolate to take home and got to try liquid chocolate. BEST PART: Chocolate Waterfall. Yes. It does exist. Not quite to Willy Wonka standards, but 1 ton of chocolate does fall from the top of a silo in a waterfall manner. That plus the liquid chocolate made the tour. It was fabulous!

We then went outside and the sun was out again. We dropped our chocolate off at the apartment and headed in the direction of Otago University. We walked through the campus and also cut through the botanical gardens (not quite as impressive as Christchurch, but still pretty and free) to get to our final destination, the steepest street in the world, Baldwin St. (not named after Alec, I asked). I did not climb to the top since by that point I had lost feeling in my feet since the weather shifted yet again to rain and wind.

The weather remained windy with spits of rain as we walked back to the apartment where we made spaghetti for dinner and attacked all the cadbury chocolate we had. Tonight we will be watching Lord of the Rings in the theatre which has been reserved for us to sleep in. HOORAH for free accomodation!

Tomorrow we are seeing the Speights Ale House and going on the Wildlife Cruise to see penguins!

Dear (best) Mom (ever),
Thank you for the peanut butter and Somoas. The other interns are quite jealous that their moms didn't send them girl scout cookies. I brought one of the boxes to share this weekend and I have a feeling they wont make it back to Queenstown. THANK YOU!!!
Love, Erin

Christchurch and Dolphins

Christchurch weekend was a success!

On Friday we spent the day around the city checking out the cathedral, botanical gardens and just wandering around. Bre, Maria and I signed up for paragliding for Friday afternoon but at 2 o'clock the skies opened with rain and our trip was cancelled. That night we all ate dinner together then went 2 directions. Josh and Ingrid went to the symphony while the rest of us went to see Shutter Island. If you have not seen this movie yet I highly suggest it.

Saturday was the dolphin swim. We all boarded the bus in the morning for the hour ride to Akaroa. Akaroa was a small little town on the water that had lots of small shops and cafes. Only 5 of us went out to swim with the dolphins in our always flattering wetsuits. It took a while to find the dolphins, but once in the water they swam around you and came pretty close (we werent allowed to touch them). We took the bus back to Christchurch and then headed to the gondala. The sun was setting while we were at the top of the mountain which gave us some great views with the sunset. We ate together last night at Poppy Thai - yummy phad thai! A few of us went out for drinks before turning in for the night and the weekend was over.

IT WENT TOO FAST!!!

I'm so happy to be off the bus and back in Queenstown though.

Christchurch for the Weekend

I'm already halfway through my 10 week internship - it is going way too fast! David was out of town this week so I just continued with marketing and researching the website and venues.

I've been spending heaps of time with Janelle and we've been planning all the free activities we can do in Queenstown with our famil trips. She's willing to do the LOTR tour with me, but she hasnt even seen the movies. I dont think she'll want to do a 12 marathon of them either. We get along pretty well considering she loves popcorn and movies. We baked a cake together Tuesday night - DELICIOUS.

David let me have today (Thursday) off so I can have an extra day to get too and from Christchurch. Arrived in Christchurch at 5:45pm today. It is so flat here compared to Queenstown! The rest of my group (there will be a total of 7 of us) will get here in the next two hours. After 9 hours on a bus all I wanted was a shower. All of us will be sharing a room in the hostel with a guy named Mark from the UK. Since I was here first I've had a chance to meet our roommate and prepare him for the noise level to come. Tomorrow isn't planned but we are swimming with dolphins on Saturday. I'm excited to see what the weekend will bring! :-)

My plan is to post again Sunday.

CHEERS!