Wildfoods and More

The weekend before last Brit, Brian, Sasha, Tait, Lani, and I piled into Lani and Tait's Subaru and drove to the West Coast town of Hokitika for the Wildfoods festival. We met about 20 other kids that we knew there at our campsite. The festival is a collection of interesting foods and drinks from all over the world along with a number of concerts and performances. People come from all over the country and the elsewhere and many of them wear costumes. This was a group of people in aerobics outfits that wanted to take a picture with us.



There was also a fun band of drummers.



There were some strange foods at the festival: grasshoppers, maggots, ostrich, crocodile, lion, stag heart, "mountain oysters", etc. The strangest thing I ate was honeycomb. It was pretty good, but a bit waxy.

It rained for most of the actual festival, but the sun came out at the end and made a huge rainbow.



I slept in a hammock for both of the nights I was there and luckily someone had an extra rain fly, so I was drier than some of the people in tents.

This past week I went and walked around the city center with Brit and Brian. Brian and I took this picture in Cathedral Square sporting the new gear we bought from the street vendors. I have some sweet shades and Brian has a reversible wool headband with kiwis on it.



On Tuesday, Brit, Brian, and I went to the car auction and bought a car. It's a 1989 Mitsubishi Galant. We bid $750 on it and so after the auction fee it only cost $950. Hopefully it will last until July.



On Wednesday morning Brit, Brian, Jeremy, and I went to the beach and went surfing. We rented boards and wetsuits from a stand on the beach and surfed for about three hours. The waves weren't really that big but they were fun to learn on. I think I had the hang of it by the end, but it was exhausting.





After coming back to uni for classes on Wednesday afternoon we went up to the Port Hills to climb. Its only about a 20 min drive from my flat , and the climbing is pretty good. You can see how close the city is in the second picture.





On Thursday I don't have class so I went up to Castle Hill with Lindsey and her boyfriend who was visiting.

Then on Saturday morning I went with the UC Climbing Club back up to Castle Hill. We climbed all day Saturday and Sunday and stayed at a research station owned by the University on Saturday night. Heres a couple pictures, but I'll put more up later when I get them from my friends who were taking them. The second picture is of a problem called Ode to Joy that is about 10m high.





More later.
Nick

School Is Real

I have just finished my first week of school, and I've found the classes quite interesting. I'm taking four classes: Intro to Maori Culture, New Zealand History, Religion Society and Power, and Philosophy and Human Nature. Maori and History have a large number of international students in them, and the other two have mainly Kiwis.

The campus is beautiful but I haven't had a chance to take any photos of it yet, but I do have some pictures of my apartment:

Living Room/ Kitchen


View From My Balcony






And heres some pictures of my friends:


On the left is Monica from Ft. Lewis College. Underneath me is Brian. He's from just outside of Boston and goes to UMass Boston. To the right of him is Brit from Portsmouth, and she goes to UNH. Above her is Kellen from Ashville, NC.



Heres Lindsey, Sara, Brit and I at the cricket game. Lindsey and Sara are the girls that have a car and have taken me to Castle Hill. Lindsey, on the left, is from Texas and goes to Texas Tech. Sara, on the right goes to CSU and is from Pennsylvania.

I was supposed to be going to Kaikura this weekend to camp but its going to rain pretty much everywhere on the South Island for the next couple days so we stayed home.

Hopefully I can take some pictures of campus and put them up soon.

Nick

Casle Hill

Yesterday I went with a group of kids to the Castle Hill Basin to boulder. My friends Lindsey and Sara have a car and they took me and my other friends Mark and Dan to this area an hour and a half from Christchurch. The boulders are some of the coolest things I've ever seen.





Dan took this photo of me working a problem called Fatwa. I didn't send it, but I will next time.



Last night I went with another group of people to a beach about an hour north of the city and camped out under the stars and the full moon. It was too cloudy in the morning to see the sunrise though.

I'm just hanging out today, but I'm going to see a cricket match tomorrow. I start class Monday, and all this week there are concerts every night for orientation week.

Also, the next time I write in this, I'll have the bike that I'm bidding on.

Nick

Arrival

Hey everyone, just a little about my trip so far.

I traveled to Auckland on a group flight with other study abroad students in my program.We arrived in Auckland at 8am on Tuesday February, 12 and took a 4 hour bus ride to the town of Rotorua. Rotorua has been voted the most beautiful city in New Zealand for the last couple of years and is located on Lake Rotorua. It is a thermal town and smells terribly, but our hostle, or backpacker as the kiwis call it, had a thermal heated hot tub the size of a small pool. The first day we spent recovering from the previous day's travel and exploring the town. The second day began with a trip to the Agrodome to watch a sheep show that displayed the nineteen different types of sheep currently in New Zealand. Then in the afternoon we had the opportunity to go Zorbing. A Zorb is an 11 foot inflatable ball that a person goes inside and rides down a hill.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rd20tgUd9oU

That evening we went to a Maori cultural center for a cultural experience and a traditional dinner. We were part of a large group that was greeted as the Maori would traditionally greet a visiting tribe: through displays of strength and aggression. We then ate a meal cooked in the Maori's traditional earth ovens.



On Thursday our group went caving in the Waitomi Caves. We all got wetsuits and took a 3 hour tour of the cave system. There were a number of rappels, or abseils as they call them, and some of them were down waterfalls. At our deepest we were 80m underground. We saw some crazy rock formations and the ceiling of most of the caverns were covered in glow worms.

Friday we spent traveling again. After a short plane ride to Christchurch we were shuttled to our flats. My flat is 6 bedrooms with a common living room and kitchen area. So far there are only 3 other people living here besides me, and I think that it may stay that way. Two of my flatmates are from Carbondale, Il. Justin goes to SIU and Rich goes to Drake in Iowa. Abdul, my third flatmate, is from Saudi Arabia and is here studying English.

I've spent the last couple days getting settled in and exploring Christchurch. On Sunday we went to the beach for a while and then went to Castle Rock to hike and climb around. It was only about a 25 min drive from the center of town and offered some amazing views.




The busses here are great for getting around the city, but i'm hoping to get a bike in the next couple days. I made it down to the climbing gym yesterday with a group of about 15 other kids in my group. Its a nice gym and its nice climbing with so many people.

I finished all my registration today so I'm off the hook until Monday so I may go camping and bouldering with some people up at Spittle Hill for the next couple days.

Hope all's well back home.

Nick

P.S. I have a phone now and its free for me if you want to call. 064-210-234-7872