its mid-semester break already?

Greetings all. My apologies on not updating about ice, but i promise that will come eventually. In short, Megan and I did some schweet ice climbing on the Fox Glacier last weekend! Ice axes, crampons and all. It was a pretty crazy experience. This afternoon, I am hoping on a bus up to Christchurch where tomorrow, I will be flying to Tonga. A bunch of my friends and I are going for our mid-semester break so it should be a pretty cool time. It'll be nice to get to experience an island in the Pacific for the first time. Well, it'll be the first island I have ever been to for that matter. Not counting New Zealand, cause thats a big ass island. Anywho, gotta finish getting some schtuff together and then it is off to the train station to catch the bus. Should be a fantastic break! I'll be sure to update you all when I get back, which is September 4th by the way. Sianara!

knights, steads and dragons

My apologies for the slight delay in posting this, but let me tell you a tale, a tale of men. It all began on a slightly rainy and foggy saturday afternoon as Trevor, Chris and I awaited the return of J-bo and Greg from their geology field trip. They found themselves kickin it with some volcanoes. No big deal. Whence they returned from their own little journey, the five of us embarked for our slightly larger quest. Destination: Queenstown. A land where knights ride from far and wide to taste the fruitful, well, fruits, of the mountains and the skiing they provide. It was sure to be an epic and dangerous adventure. Not an issue for 4 purple knights of SMC and one lone ranger hailing from Japan/Germany/England/Canada. Seriously, he's lived in all of those places. Oh, complete side note, but a very important one: our trusty stead for this trip was car number two. Yes, that is correct, we managed to acquire ourselves another car thanks to Big Phil Crawford, aka. Trevor's dad. This new trusty stead should be much more trust worthy than poor old Penelope. Its a blue '95 Subaru Legacy wagon with an automatic transmission and she's ready to rumble. We were smart enough to get it checked out by a mechanic before buying it this time. Yay common sense. But back to the tale of men in search of supple fruit. Trevor started off behind the reins as the rest of us settled in to our respective seats. Played some tunes, did some chatting and drove through some serious fog on this whindey road through a valley. When I say it was foggy, believe me, it was incredibly foggy. Visibility was low, but Trevor handled it smashingly. Upon emergence from the mist, we pulled over to try some star gazing and looking back at what we had just driven through. Eerie scene to see the fog sweeping through the mountains and then the flat, dark plane where we pulled over. After a pee break and admiration of the milky way, we got back into our trusty stead and I took over the navigation role. The car got a little bit rowdy when Trevor put on one of Blink 182's live cds. I gridded my teeth as I listened to the garbage cause everyone else enjoyed it. Just can't handle the middle school music sometimes. Anyway, got the new ride up to a buck thirty at one point cause she drives nicely. Translation: 130 kmph, but don't worry, its not too fast in mphs. A few more star gazing/pee/look out stops, we crossed the mighty threshold of Queenstown and found a place to get situated for the night. Situation location: parking lot by a rugby field where we intended to set up a tent. Left the tent setting up for later and walked into the center of town to get some much desired supper. We tried to check out this place called Fergburger because the burgers there are supposed to be real good, but that was too busy, so we went to the next best burger establishment. If you guessed Velvet Burger, you would be incorrect. McDonald's it was. For some reason I had a craving for it anyway so I didn't really mind going there. We got some food and discovered that they have this massive family meal thinger at McDonald's over here. The meal includes 2 Big Macs, 2 cheeseburgers, and 4 small fries. Thats a whole bunch of food. Greg and J-bo shared one.

After McDoogs, we trolled the streets of Queenstown for a few hours in search of fellow knights and adventurers. Eventually, 2:30 in the morning rolled around and it was time to go set up our tent back on the rugby pitch. This should be fun. Trevor, Chris and I were left to set up the tent alone due to the fact that Greg and Jbo were asleep in the car. Neither one of us has a whole lot of experience in the tent setting up department. It took a little longer than necessary I'm sure, but we successfully set up our sleeping quarters for the night after multiple jokes about steaks, which for some reason we thought were absolutely hilarious at that point. Well, immediately after erecting our tent, a couple of dudes walked by and asked us what the hell we were doing setting up a tent on the rugby field. We explained that we just needed a place to sleep so we could ski the next day. "f-that" they said, "come sleep on our floor." Alright! No need to ask us twice. So we woke up the two fools in the car and followed our new found friends back to their house thing and crashed on the living room floor. Much, much better than sleeping outside. It was a little chilly that evening.

In the morning, the five of us woke up at the crack of dawn and rolled out. Time to head for the juicy fruits of Cardrona, the place we would be skiing that fateful day. We headed down the road, got some gas, and proceeded up and through the curvaceous mountain pass. Once we got to the access road to Cardrona, we started to hit some fog. This fog would prove to be unbelievably cool. Driving up the access road, we cut through the fog like a knife and emerged on the other side. At the top of the mountain, where all the skiing is, we were entirely above all the clouds, enjoying a bright and sunny day. It was so cool to be above the clouds and seeing them move through the valleys below and all the peaks greeting the bright sunshine. We mozied up to the lodge to get our armor and battle gear. This included our passes for the day and I needed to get some skis. Yipee rentals. But wait! You can get upgraded equipment for 10 bucks. Yes please. I went over to the special counter and got myself some nice twin tips made by Surface. This should be fun. It was then time to slay the mountain, and slay it we did. Right off the bat I decided Cardrona was 10.356 times better than SnowPark was. It had a lot more trails and there was a lot of different terrain to choose from. At one point, J-Bo and I decided to hike up to the very peak in an attempt to get some tracks in the new snow up there. We hiked up, and were greeted with absolutely breathtaking views in every direction. I'm talking 360 degrees of awesome mountains and a couple of lakes. The two of us soaked in the beauty of nature, snapped some pics, and headed down the mountain. The run we did was pretty short, but totally sweet. The snow was soft with a couple inches of new snow and we ripped around. Easily the best run of the day because of the view and the making of new tracks. We eventually brought the rest of the group up to the peak to show them what was up. They were definitely impressed. We did a few more laps through the park, smiting the dragons along the way. Well, I smited some jumps and a few rails but that was about it. Right, after these laps the day started to wined down. Time to call it quits and do a little miny shred through the beginner park. When I say miny, I mean miny. There were like 3 tiny features, but we had a good time none the less. I then returned my sticks and we headed back to the trusty stead that awaited us in the car park. Time to head home. After a few hours of driving, almost driving off the road at one point, searching for an iphone on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere, we made it back to Dunedin to complete yet another successful weekend. Sweet as mates, sweet as. This completes the tale of men, and I hope you enjoyed the story. Apologies for the lack of pictures, but I did not have my camera on the hill with us so I am waiting on J-bo to put his on facebook. Then I'll add some to this for your viewing pleasure.

Ta ta for now. This weekend: ICE

support all blacks

Salutations dudes and dudettes. The time has come for yet another riveting blog post courtesy of life in New Zealand. Lets begin shall we.

So, the weekend started on Thursday afternoon when Yaniv, Daniel, Amy, Michelle and I piled into the rented Subaru Legacy(fully equipped with roof racks! hot damn). Anyway, we ventured off into the twilight in search of some skiing and rugby spectating. Destination: Christchurch. After approximately 4.5327 hours of Daniel's first experience of driving on the left side of the road, we made it to where we would be spending the night. Amy's friend Morgan was gracious enough to let us stay at her place. Her flat was part of the international housing for the University of Canterbury. Pretty nice place in the sense that it had central heating; otherwise, it was very similar to suites you would find at many other college campuses. The one super duper un-cool aspect of these suites: they were a 15 minute drive/hour walk from downtown Christchurch. Not as handy and convenient as good old Dunedin. Matter of fact, visiting Christchurch reaffirmed my love of Dunedin and the University of Otago. Dunedin is definitely the best place for me to be this semester. Anywho, that night just consisted of chatting with some of the Canterbury international peeps and getting to know my fellow travelers a little more. Met one kid who had been to Travis Pastrana's house and broke his wrist on the in-run to the foam pit in an attempt to back flip a bike. Jealous. Not of the broken wrist, but the opportunity to kick it at Pastrana's house. Another fun fact, broken wrist brotha actually went to St. Joe's Prep. Small world.

Onward.

Friday morning the five of us woke up nice and early and headed towards the mountains. We wanted to get a day of skiing in at Cragieburn Ski Field. I got to drive the 1.5 hours to the hill and it was such a pretty drive. So we get to the access road and make our way up the windy road through the woods, complete with avalanche areas on a couple sides. Pretty cool road and not as sketchy as the access road to Snow Park. After arriving at the top, we got our schtuff on and walked up to the ticket booth. Una chica from the states hooked us up with our passes and the tow belts. Cragieburn is a club field so they don't have lifts, just a few tow ropes to get you to the cool stuff. So we got our stuff and one of the workers takes us to the tow rope. Amy heads up and a few seconds later the tow stops. What up? Employee dude gets a call on his radio saying the middle tow has to be shut down for the day. Well that blows. Amy comes back down and we scoot down to the ticket booth to get a re-fund. Bummer. We were so pumped to get some turns in and all our hopes and dreams were shattered! Cruel tow rope. Oh well though, stuff happens.

The new question: what do we do now? A few minutes of discussing our options brings us to the conclusion to drive towards Arthur's Pass. Back in the automobile we go and back down the mountain towards a mountain pass. More beautiful scenery to look at while driving and we arrive at a river bed type thing that could have potentially once been a glacier, but I'm not entirely sure. We'll call it a rock-bed-former-glacier-thing for all intensive purposes. Said rock-bed-former-glacier-thing was pretty cool to check out and it provided Amy to get some running in before some more driving. Onward and upwards to the middle of Arthur's Pass. Once in the pass, we find a 115 meter waterfall that is just a short walk from the road. That's approximately 377 feet for you non metric using folk.

Pretty dope sight to see so much water falling freely. Yaniv and Michelle ventured up the rocks and got soaked by the mist. After scoping out the falling water, we started back in the direction towards Christchurch to check out some boulders we saw on the drive in that morning.

Upon arriving at the limestone boulders, we commenced climbing all over them. Some of these rocks were rather ginormous and easy to maneuver. Daniel needed to take a nap but the rest of us had a grand old time exploring. Amy, Michelle and I kinda lost Yaniv for a while until her appeared atop a rock a few meters away. It was crazy getting to the top of the boulders and looking around. First of all, the surrounding area was incredibly beautiful. I'm pretty sure we were surrounded by mountains in every direction. Also, there were so many cool angles throughout the rocks with a ton of different look out points and hiding places. We spent somewhere between one and two hours checkin out the boulders before heading back to the car. Three of us

kinda ran and jumped down this on hill and Michelle ate it, providing us with a good laugh before heading back to Christchurch to meet up with everyone else that arrived in Christchurch that day. One hilarious aspect of Friday night involved driving to KFC around 1 in the morning and listen to Jareth, the kiwi host in Greg's flat, talk about how Christchurch is shit. I can't even begin to explain all the different reasons he was throwing out there but it was so funny.

The following day, Saturday, was the day the All Blacks were playing the Wallabies. This game was the original reason we all decided to head up to Christchurch. How often do you get the opportunity to see NZ's national rugby team play against one of the other best rugby programs in the world? Not very often. We showed up to the game that night and the stadium was packed.It held somewhere around 40,000 peeps, so it was a little smaller than some football stadiums in the states. A highlight of the game was watching the All Blacks do the haka before the game. The haka is a tradition of the Maori people, and the All Blacks do it before every game. Its a pretty sweet/intimidating thing so I suggest looking it up on youtube or something to see what I am referring to. My seats were positioned directly behind the uprights so we had a great view of the field and watched a good game. It was not very high scoring, but the All Blacks got the victory with a final score of 20-10. Schweet deal because they are basically dominating international rugby right now thanks to four consecutive victories over South Africa and Australia.

After the game, we headed into town for the night to check out the scene. On the way from the stadium, Jareth, Megan and I participated in this little activity called ghosting. Let me explain. It involves picking random strangers and walking as closely behind them without them noticing. Ideally, you will get right in stride with them and you can get pretty darn close before having to peel out cause they notice you or you begin to laugh. Take a look at how close Jareth was getting to this woman.

We wanted to start doing stranger rodeo but we figured it was probably best not to do so. Stranger rodeo involves actually jumping on the backs of people you don't know and seeing how long you can stay on for. Imagine the reactions you would get. Some other time though. That night ended up being a whole bunch of fun and proved that Christchurch is somewhat of a cool place. No, Christchurch is nice, but it just doesn't compare to the feeling down her in Dunedin. My personal opinion.

Sunday morning, Michelle, Amy, Daniel, Yaniv and I smersmooshed back into the car and embarked southward. I drove the entire way non stop while everyone else rested their tired heads. I did not mind whatsoever. You all probably know how much I enjoy driving, so I was happy to assume the role of driver. Even though it rained almost the entire way home, I got to see some beautiful scenery that included mountains, farmland and the ocean. This country is seriously beautiful no matter where you go. If the opportunity ever presents itself for any of you to visit Aotearoa, I highly recommend you seize that opportunity.

Well, I suppose that is all for now. Hope you have enjoyed yet another story of my travels and continue tuning in. I'll write again soon.

Peace.

status report

Just thought I would give you a little bit of a briefing on muh life this week. Last night, I had success number 2 with one of Momma Weister's recipes. Last week it was chicken over rice, this time it was calico beans. Lots o beef, bacon and beans, and it was oh so good. Another plus to making said bean concoction: lots of left overs. The old song is always in effect as well. You know what I mean. Beans beans, they're good for the heart....

Moving on to non-flatulence related stuff. Went to the beach with Megan again today. Splendid weather drew us there and it was so nice to sit atop a sweet rock in this big cove and watch the waves come in. The waves are always real nice at St. Claire. Refreshing afternoon activity before business lecture at 4 o'clock. Said business lecture has been much more riveting this week on account of the fact we have a new lecturer. British dude who likes to interact with the crowd and make students feel uncomfortable.

Tomorrow, I will be embarking on yet another adventure. Destination: Christchurch. I will be doing some skiing and watching the All Blacks (NZs rugby team) play the Wallabies (Australia's team). Gonna be a pretty dope weekend. Thats my prediction at least. Scwheet.

Over and out.

chocolate and camping

Alright, now the time has come for me to update you once again. Commencing now. Last Wednesday, Megan, Brittany, Olga and myself went on a tour of the Cadbury Chocolate factory. Let me tell you, it was quite a good time. Definitely worth the $16 cover charge. Throughout the tour, our guide would ask questions based on what she had said so far, or random questions about the process of making chocolate to see if we knew anything about it. If you answered a question correctly, she would give you a piece of chocolate. Good stuff. I'm not talking like a little m&m or something, but a full candy bar. I ended up wracking up some serious chocolate at the end of the tour cause I managed to remember a lot of specific things in hopes she would ask about them. So, that was a good time. And it claims that the factory is like a real life Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and it really is. The amount of stuff that goes on in the factory is insane. Pipes and conveyor belts run all throughout the entire place, which is about 4 city blocks in length by the way. Two highlights of the tour: eating liquid chocolate and watching a ton, literally a ton, of chocolate fall in waterfall like fashion. Crazyness. Oh, also, the night before visiting the chocolate wonderland, I saw Inception. Quality film and I'd recommend seeing it.

Cool. Moving on.

A few days later, 25 peeps packed into 3 vehicles in order to go camping. The vehicles included 2 station wagons and a 10 person van. The van turned into a 15 person van so it was kind of a tight squeeze. We drove about two hours to the Catlins and began setting up camp. The location, which I didn't realize the full beauty of until I woke up the next day, was situated right on the edge of some forests and by the ocean. Really cool. The sky was very clear that night which provided us the opportunity to do some sweet stargazing. The view of the milkyway was incredibly clear. A few hours in, a red ball starts rising on the horizon. The moon. Said red ball was possibly the brightest red moon I have ever seen. Seriously, it was crazy to see.

Next morning, we woke up to rain, so the happy tent members (Megan, Greg, Trevor and myself) kicked it in the tent til the rain subsided, then we emerged. Everyone kinda split up into some groups and went wandering. A bunch of us had some fun on this crazy rope swing. It was one of the best rope swings I had ever been on, and it didn't even launch you into water. If you are friends with Trevor on facebook, check out the pictures he added. After swinging, some of us spotted two sea lions and headed in that direction. One male and one female were chillin on the beach, so we snapped some pics and tried to provoke them to look like we were being chased. We succeeded slightly with half chase attempts. Then, we saw an opportunity to split the defense. They were a perfect distance apart for someone to run between them. I started to stroll behind the two beasts, keeping my distance so they did not really notice me or get startled. I positioned myself about 15 yards behind them and waited for the opportunity. The big dude was scratching himself like a dog and the female was just laying there not paying attention. I took off. I headed straight for the middle of the 2 and they still had no idea I was coming until I was just a few feet away. They both reared their heads and roared at me just as I was about to throw a little heisman pose towards the big fella. Scary stuff. They both whipped their heads around so quickly it was astonishing. I continued my run through and they decided not to follow which was probably a good thing cause apparently they can haul. So that got my heart rate going. Totally worth it.

Righto. After wandering around the beach and swinging and such, Jethro led us on some various adventures. We drove around to a bunch of different forests and waterfalls and such. It was pretty cool cause all the forests were like straight up jungles. Some of the trees were really crazy. We found one area that reminded us of Pandora. A couple of peeps took a dip in the pool at the bottom of a waterfall but I didn't really have clothing on that was conducive to swimming, so I had to skip out on that. And yes, it is winter here in case you have forgotten. One of the places we went to was a coastline where penguins like to kick it. Thats right, we saw some guins. I didn't get too close to them, but I did watch one waddle over some rocks for a while.

After adventuring for a while, it came time for a bunch of us to have to head back to Dunedin. 14 of us to be exact. We crammed the 14 peeps into the two cars and hit the road. My car got kinda lost while heading back to the campsite but it worked out in the end and we all made it back.

Next day, IFSA-Butler had another trip organised for us. (spelled that with an s cause thats how it is spelled here. z is rarely used, even though Zealand starts with a z. funny business down under.) Anywho, the trip we had was visiting an ecosanctuary outside of Dunedin. We were set up to check the place out a little bit and then plant some trees and bushes. We plowed though the bush planting and then ate some lunch on a very scenic deck. It overlooked the sanctuary and some mountains in the background. To get an idea of what this place looked like, just imagine jurassic park. What I mean is, imagine a fence going a very long way around with forestation inside. Thats the general set up, but it was very pretty. After lunch we got down to some serious tree saving. Thats what we referred to it as anyway. Tree saving involved putting mesh fences and some plastic bags around some little trees so pests can't get to them. It was very nice to help out and such. So, yet again, we had another great weekend. I'll write on here again in a couple days or something. Adios muchachos