The weekends here are the best, there’s always a ton going on and people going to all these cool places. It’s great to have options, I feel like I’ll never run out of things to see while I’m here.
As I’ve probably already mentioned, most of the nightlife in Christchurch is shut down, but I was pleased to find there are still some music venues open and so I went to two different concerts this weekend. The first was a rock-type band that’s big here in New Zealand and they’re really good, you can check them out here if you’re interested: http://www.facebook.com/Six60
The usual venue is closed the earthquake so the concert was in a big circus style tent in the parking lot, which was kind of fun, and we had a great time dancing all night and making some new friends. The buses don’t run very late here so most people take taxis home from these things and it was chaos – we had to wait an hour and a half for ours to come but luckily we found a Denny’s (salvation!) for a midnight snack while we waited. We pretended it was my birthday and got a free ice cream sundae.
The usual venue is closed the earthquake so the concert was in a big circus style tent in the parking lot, which was kind of fun, and we had a great time dancing all night and making some new friends. The buses don’t run very late here so most people take taxis home from these things and it was chaos – we had to wait an hour and a half for ours to come but luckily we found a Denny’s (salvation!) for a midnight snack while we waited. We pretended it was my birthday and got a free ice cream sundae.
The next day the apartments we all live in was putting on a free trip out to Hanmer Springs, which is 2 hours away and closer to the mountains. That was the first time I’ve really gotten far out of Christchurch so the bus ride was great to just soak in the scenery. It’s so beautiful here, we were all quite excited as we went through farmlands (tons of sheep) and then up into rocky hills to the foot of the Southern Alps. It was very Lord of the Rings looking. We walked around the town a bit, enjoyed soaking in the hot springs, and then headed back to get ready for the evening. We couldn’t really get good pictures from the bus but here are a few:
The second concert was called the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party so it was Alice in Wonderland themed and had a lot of bands and weird entertainment on stage. I don’t think it was quite as crazy or cool as we were expecting but it was still really fun, lots of great costumes and weird dancers and stuff. I’m really glad all the friends I’ve made here like dancing just as much as my best friends do at home because going somewhere with lights and loud music is so fun! Here are some pictures from that concert:
People on the bus ride there with various crazy costumes - we all tried to wear the brightest clothes we have but we're unprepared living out of suitcases!
Luckily Phil and I found some sparkly hats on the floor.
This girl had a crazy light up hula hoop
A taste of the kinds of performers they had
Hard to see but this was an acrobat doing that thing on ropes!
And some happy/sweaty concert goers.
Now I’m in the library trying to not spend a fortune on internet; needless to say it’s a little hard to buckle down and do schoolwork but so far it hasn’t taken too much time. There are a lot more Winterlude events this week (it’s their two week start to the semester where the student association puts on a bunch of cool stuff) and I think one of the girls I really like and I are going to go backpacking next weekend. One more week and this will be the longest I’ve ever been out of the country, pretty exciting to keep feeling more and more like I live here!
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