Last week I was in a little town called Lincoln outside of Christchurch with a friend I met at orientation, Melissa. We went on a tramping trip in Arthur's Pass National Park, which turned out to be much harder than we anticipated. It was a 2 day trip and the first day we hiked for about 8 hours. We made it to the top of Goat Pass and there were some beautiful views. Other than that, the trail followed a river bed pretty much the entire way, so we had to do some boulder hopping, which is really hard with a pack on. And to top it off I didn't have good shoes. But we trekked on. It rained that night and didn't let up all of the second day, so we had to hike about 5 hours in the cold and rain. This was kind of miserable, but we made it. We were going to stay in a tent that night, but all of our stuff was wet so we just decided to give in and stay at the only motel in Arthur's Pass Village. The owner was really nice (I think he felt sorry for us because we were so wet and cold) and gave us 2 rooms for $150. The next day it ended up being a little nicer so we hiked to some waterfalls, and then went back to Christchurch. I spent the next 2 days there just hanging out.
On Sunday I flew to Dunedin from Christchurch. I got here at night and none of my roommates were here so I just unpacked and hung out in the flat by myself. My flatmate Katie came in later. She's Canadian and seems really nice. Since we got here about the same time we've been doing a lot of school errands and stuff together. Scotty, our "kiwi host" got here around midnight that night and he seems really cool too. He is from Dunedin and has a car so he is an invaluable resource. Our flat is one of nine in a complex with a courtyard in the middle. All the flats are the university flats and everyone here seems pretty awesome. I met a lot of people last night, mostly Americans and Canadians, but I think they'll be fun people to live around. People like to hang out in the courtyard here and lots of people from other flats come by too so I think I'll be pretty busy.
Overall Dunedin seems like a great city. I haven't seen that much so far, but there are cool old Scottish buildings and stuff. There's also Cadbury World and the steepest street in the world that I need to check out. I'll take some pictures soon and post them for you. If you want to see all my pictures from here on out, you can go to this website: picasaweb.google.com/svclark6. I'll update that as much as I can.
I have a couple free days, then we have course approval on Friday where I'll sign up for all my classes. After that, it's the infamous "O Week" where everyone gets ridiculously drunk here (especially the freshmen). It should be fun, since I've never had anything like that before. When I see more of the city, I'll let you know about that. Hopefully I'll get to go up to Mt. Cargill sometime soon so I can get a view of the whole city. Today is a really nice day, so I'm going to the beach! Catch ya later!
your photos on picassa are great. you're a really talented photographer and adventurous too. who knew. I thought all you ever did was go to school and study. glad you're having fun and liking everyone and everything. if I had a do over it would be to go to college they way you are.
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