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