Longest Blog Entry You Will Probably Ever Read

Since there's a lot of text in this entry, I thought I'd start off with a few Pictures From Last Weekend:


If you get sprayed by the water in this fall, it apparently makes you look ten years younger...I got sprayed, making me look about six now. Great.

The fog and the pond at the top of the Key Summit along the Routeburn Track last weekend.

The jade that was on our side the entire way hiking up and down...so pretty! Water was running down it, making it this gorgeous jade waterfall.

Mirror Lakes, a stop we took on the way from Te Anau to Milford last weekend.

Milford Sound...it's so gorgeous! I've never seen the mountains come out of the water like that before.

Classic Milford picture.

Our boat driver pulled up super-close to this waterfall so I almost thought he'd hit the rock on the side of the sound to show us the rainbow.

Crooked waterfalls along the edge of the sond.

Grab a cup of tea and a blanket or something because I have lots of pictures and lots of stories from my latest N Zed adventures.

This weekend was Arthur's Pass with my entire flat (kiwis and Americans) plus Dan and Patrick and Evan's friend Bart. We were supposed to leave for Arthur's Pass on Friday morning, but I woke up that morning to the urge to vomit, and after learning that I was unable to keep anything down, I decided that getting in a car for six hours wasn't the best idea. Instead, laid in front of the TV and watched terrible morning news shows and Rachel Ray's cooking show and some really awful Maori soap opera and decided that being in a car would be better than suffering through more really miserable television. Impressively, I think I managed to get rid of a 24-hour bug in about 16 hours (my next step is to learn to make 30-minute brownies in 28 minutes...name that reference, lone wolf), and we took off for Arthur's Pass only a little bit later than we meant to. We left around four armed with tasteless crackers that I felt like I was supposed to eat (aren't you supposed to eat Saltines when you're sick?) and lots of blankets and pillows for the backseat, and I woke up to the boys realizing that we had passed the last town on the way to Arthur's Pass and realizing that they were going without dinner for the night. Dan had a package of Tim Tams and Joe had a package of Yummy Gummy lizards and Patrick had about eight chocolate-chip cookies, so they decided they'd be okay. The road out to Arthur's Pass is really windy and curvy, and you're basically driving straight through the mountains. It would have been really sweet if we could see what we were looking at, but by that time, it was pitch-black outside and we were just winding around curves with an odd sense that there were large mountains on both sides. It was a weird sensation. Anyways, we got to Jane's cabin out there and hung around and went to bed pretty early. Somehow, I managed to sleep ten hours that night after only being awake for six hours of the day.

The next day we took off for the DOC (Department of Conservation, they have them near all the good hiking spots--you're supposed to register an intention form with them before you go hiking so that if something happens, they'll know to come rescue you) to see what the weather was like, and decided to do Avalanche Peak. The hike is basically straight up for the entire time, climbing up over rocks, through streams, and along the ridge of the mountain. It was the hardest hike we've done here so far (or at least it felt like it to me--my muscles were aching and my head was pounding and I felt pretty dizzy for most of the time...apparently my bug wasn't cured as quickly as I thought), but well worth it: once we climbed above the treeline, the views were absolutely incredible, and we were so high up! From there, the hike got pretty technical and extremely vertical--I've never actually been scared of heights on a hike, but I was legitimately nervous that I would fall off the ridge of the mountain and tumble down the sharp rocks and cut my Achilles tendon along the way and be a crumbly mess that is unable to walk for the rest of my life. Speaking of ailments, New Zealand is destroying my body: I've only acquired more sandfly bites (the old ones don't seem to go away), my knee is scabbing/scarring nicely, I scraped my knee again on a rock on this hike, and I banged my shin against a really sharp rock and cut the top layer of skin off. Also, I cut myself three times shaving, but that's more my own fault and less New Zealand's. Point is, I am being destroyed by New Zealand and my legs look disgusting because of it. Oh, and my big toenail fell off because I pulled it off when I tripped on another hike.

ANYWAYS, back to the hike: I didn't fall off the top of the ridge, and after climbing Gollum-style (note the LOTR references, I have a lot more now that I've recently seen the movies) up a bunch of rocks, we enjoyed the gorgeous view of the Southern Alps and ate delicious quiche up at the top. Of course, Evan being the marathon-runner/intense-rock-climber-Mr.-I-Am-Amazingly-Fit had beat the rest of us up there by about half an hour and had been chilling up there for a bit, but it was a good time. Thankfully, there's a second route to the bottom in good weather, so we didn't have to climb down the same path we climbed up. It was a fun hike, but my knees were definitely sore by the end to say nothing of my quads. We stopped for ice cream in town and I had the best boysenberry ice cream I've ever had in my life (probably the only boysenberry ice cream of my life, but still delicious). Evan and Bart climbed up to another waterfall, and when they got back, Evan went for another run--that boy is out of control. The rest of us hung out in the cabin: I caught up on my Far Side cartoons and did some reading. We had pumpkin risotto for dinner and then played Cranium, where Patrick and I would have totally dominated had we not been stuck on the word worm for about thirty turns, stuck doing those stupid unscramble the word things that don't make any sense. Still, we managed to create some conniving techniques and came out okay.

The next day (goodness, this is a long post...oops) we went caving in this super-cool cave with a river running through it! The water was absolutely FREEZING and it went up to everybody else's waist, my chest, so I got extra-cold. Still, I've never been in a cave with gushing water like that, and the rocks in there were so cool! Joe the Geologist (seriously, he's a geo major apparently) thought it was a limestone cave. We got to climb up some waterfalls in the cave and climb through tunnels and everything, and of course we did plenty of hiding (it's pitch black) to scare the people that were still coming. It was so sweet. We got out soaking wet and dried off with PBJs (I've probably eaten about thirty so far here...it's so easy to bring on hikes and weekend trips) and then hit up the rocks at Castle Hill. There's all sorts of theories about how these random rocks ended up in the middle of a farm (abandoned ancient ruins, dried alien poop, etc.) but either way, they're ridiculous. They're just cool shaped rocks in the middle of a field. We climbed up them and through them and explored and then took off back for Dunedin.

Settling back in was easy, minus scurrying about taking care of my taxes (I have officially filed for a tax extension! Yessss!! After about twenty emails to the parents and many attempts to call them, I have figured it out!) and doing all the reading for my classes. Yesterday Caitlin and I watched Sorority Boys and ate lots of ice cream to help her get over her recent breakup. Sorority Boys is like a stupider version of Animal House, but still hilarious. Today was spent having the power turned off in our flat during my shower and trying to fix it, and now attempting to figure out my plans for mid-semester break (it's in two days...I'm having a minor freakout session). Suddenly my New Zealand life feels so busy! It's all relative, though--this little activity at Oxy would be a godsend.

Anyways, for those that are still reading and haven't keeled over from boredom, I have even more pictures! Lots of them! These are my pathetic version of pictures from this weekend, because I got tired of taking pictures (and a few from last weekend that I just randomly found and somehow got posted in this section). I'm relying on Dan and Patrick and Jane and Evan's pictures instead, I figure those'll work. I'll post them when I finally get around to taking them off the memory cards.


At the top of Avalanche Peak in Arthur's Pass this past weekend.

Baldwin Street, the world's steepest street: Dunedin's claim to fame! Evan and I took his beat up old station wagon Sheila up it twice, the second time in second gear...hardcore.

The street itself, the top third is the steepest slope.

View from the top of Mount Cargill, a hike Dan and I did a few weekends ago (the hike that bloodied up my knee...ugh). Still, you can see lots of the countryside of Dunedin and the penninsula in the background.

Fog along a pond in Oamaru, driving back from Milford last weekend. These pictures are really out of order, sorry.

A view from our boat going across Lake Te Anau to the glow worms...how picturesque is that? I think that's actually the hill used in LOTR for the Hobbit village, I'm blanking on its name.

The Red Coat Brigade, aka the amigos in Milford. Dan's obviously the loser because he's wearing black. Dan and Alice (the redhead girl that's not me...duh) both go to Tufts and Dave (the guy in the red coat) goes to Oxy. I actually didn't know him before I got here, AND I thought his name was Zach for the first week or so. Oops. We know almost nobody in common at Oxy which is really really weird since Oxy is so small. We're a little weirded out by it, sometimes I think he just pretends to go to Oxy.

The parents in Milford! Awwww...

Milford. Again. It's iconic.

View from right above the treeline on Avalance Peak from this past weekend.