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.