Winning the rugby world cup and other fun things

The most exciting thing that’s happened recently is that New Zealand won the rugby world cup! We went to the fan zone to watch the game sporting some finely crafted face paint. The place was packed at it was really fun to see so many people come out and get excited. The game was against France and was too close for comfort – in all honesty France played much better than New Zealand – but somehow the All Blacks pulled out a victory and it was so fun to be there for it. They haven’t won since 1987 even though they’re consistently the best team in the world. Even better, the last time they won was in New Zealand and that time was also against France, so this was a repeat of history. It was especially special in light of the hard year a lot of Kiwis have had with all the earthquakes. Christchurch was supposed to be one of the host cities for the world cup but lost that chance when the stadium was destroyed in the earthquake.

The day after the victory the whole All Blacks team came to Christchurch (with the shiny gold cup in hand) for a parade and speech at the fan zone. I was glad to be there for that because in some small way winning the world cup has made up for the earthquakes for a lot of people (yeah, they’re that obsessed with rugby) and this is really the first happy thing that’s happened in Christchurch in a year. It was also just fun to see all the guys in real life because they’re superstars here and I think it meant a lot to people that they would come to Christchurch. Much of the team is from Christchurch so it was pretty special that they were ‘bringing the world cup home’.

Aside from rugby I’ve been doing boring stuff like relaxing and studying – took one final, two more exams and a video project I’m pretty excited about to go. Only other real stories to share are a few little trips around Christchurch I’ve done.

My flatmate brought a lamb home from her parents' farm!

GapFiller event, an organization that puts public art on sites of demolished buildings

View towards Banks Peninsula, walking around in the hills south of Chch

View of Canterbury plains from a day hike up Mt. Grey

That’s all for now – only  three weeks left in Christchurch (wow oh my god sad), including two exams and one last weekend hike, before I take off for further adventures!

Hangi - traditional Maori cooking

I'm done with classes, yay! My next few weeks will be pretty low-key because I'll be in Christchurch for another month waiting for my finals, spending some quality time with friends, doing some small trips, and hopefully enjoying the spring/summer weather and not being too bored. A lot of the other exchange students are leaving way sooner than me so they're spending this month jam packing trips in between finals, but I'm lucky that I don't need to do that and can just enjoy my last month in Chch instead. The only downside is that most of my friends are gone - oh well, the most important one is still here and I've got some fun plans for the rest of my weekends here before I take off for travels around the country. 

So last weekend was sort of a relax and recup weekend. On Saturday I headed into the countryside outside Christchurch to go to an event put on by tramping club called a hangi. This is kind of like a Maori barbecue - it's a traditional way of cooking food that basically involves digging a pit, building a really hot fire, and cooking the food underground all day. Pictures will make more sense:

Step 1: dig pit, build hot fire with rocks in it

Step 2: dig out embers, move hot rocks to top, put food wrapped in foil in pit

Step 3: cover food with wet cloth of some kind (ie old clothes)

Step 4: cover cloth with dirt

 Step 5: try to shelter the pit from rain, leave for 6-8 hours, try to find something else to do

Our plan was to kill the time while our food cooked by hiking to a nearby "mountain", aka large hill. Unfortunately the weather was awful and none of the trails we came upon were labeled, so we spent a few hours wandering before part of the group was freezing and hungry and ready to head back. We walked back down pretty quickly and drove to a nearby cafe to warm up - clearly the best of the two options. Afterwards we built a fire and enjoyed hanging out at camp, waiting for the others to get back so we could dig our dinner out of the ground.

Commencing our wanderings on a very sketchy bridge

Beautiful view from the ridge

On our way back down out of the cloud, yay!

Things got much better as the sun emerged a bit and it became time to dig out our food! It turned out to be totally delicious, worth the effort and the wait (but I certainly wouldn't want to do it every day).

Dirt and grease and foil - yum!

Very sanitary

The pit after - doesn't look like a grave or anything

Creativity in cooking dessert

I spent the rest of the weekend enjoying the newfound sun, good company, and a solid All Blacks rugby game - they won the semifinal against Australia and now next weekend will be the World Cup final, exciting! Looking forward to my remaining time in Christchurch, I love even the low-key days.

Last week of class and other Christchurch life

Somehow it’s the last week of class here! I can’t tell you how that happened, time is both flying by and making me feel like I’ve been here for way longer than three months. So here’s the breakdown of my remaining time in NZ: one month during which I have three finals spread out in (I know, what an annoying way of doing it) and then another five weeks in which I’ll travel around in parts with my mom, alone, and with friends. I leave for home December 20, so I’m a bit past halfway through my time here – that helps slightly with the bit of panic in the back of my mind about coming home when I really don’t want to yet.

So, recent events! I’ve been spending a lot of downtime in Christchurch, which has been nice to just relax a bit and have some quality time with the lovely friends I’ve made here. My life during the school week is not particularly eventful – class, yoga, sushi for lunch, library, hang out with friends in the evening. It’s been spring for the last few weeks so on nice days it’s very enjoyable to hang out outside and soak in the sun. Pictures are better than words for showing what I’ve been up to lately:

Cherry trees blooming on campus

Girls' night

Ducklings in my apartment complex

Dahlia's birthday

All is blooming in the botanical gardens

Rugby fanzone

All Blacks games are getting more and more exciting -

only the semifinal and final left in the world cup!

Taylor's Mistake beach out on the coast

Somehow we got involved in some sort of black sheep flash mob at the rugby fanzone.

Video here: http://tvnz.co.nz/close-up/sheepish-rwc-tale-video-4458281

Only other noteworthy occasion that has no photos to go with it is that we had a 5.5 earthquake! That's by far the biggest one since I've been here but still not even close to the really bad ones they had a year ago. It was the first one to be big enough to be a little scary but still wasn't too bad - some serious shaking and lights swinging from the ceiling but no power outage or damage so we carried on watching the rugby semifinal. Just another day in the usual New Zealand life :)

Videos!

Hello all (or just the three people who are reading this)! I heard from a few parents that they enjoyed when I posted that video of the hot pools and I totally agree that videos are more fun to look at then pictures, especially when it's so hard to capture all the beautiful things I've been seeing in just one frame. So I thought I'd throw up some videos I took on past trips you've already read about, just as a fun change of pace :)

Abel Tasman National Park: sunrise from the Awaroa Hut

Abel Tasman National Park: water taxi ride back from Totaranui Campground

Marlborough sounds: view from the top of Mt. Stokes

North of Kaikoura: pretty country on a random excursion to Sawcut Gorge

Kaikoura: view from the summit of Mt. Fyffe (so cool!)

Hanmer Springs: view from the summit of Mt. Isobel

Mt. Cook National Park: view of Tasman Glacier and Lake

That's all for now but I'm definitely planning on taking more videos in the future! And just for fun I'll also share one of the few other travel videos I have, this one from Switzerland:

Mt. Cook National Park

Surprise, I’ve been going more beautiful places. Barely after recovering from last weekend’s hike we realized it was time to plan another. The weather for the weekend was looking bad, so Dahlia, Lena, Zak, Jenn and I decided skipping class for sunshine instead of rain was worthwhile. On Thursday we headed for Mt. Cook National Park, which has the highest mountain in New Zealand and is only a 4 hour drive away. Thankfully this drive had no incidents, and we stopped at the beautiful Lake Tekapo in perfect spring sunshine. So pretty!

Clearly we've gotten to know each other a little too well

Driving on towards Mt. Cook we passed Lake Pukaki as well, which was even more light blue and silty than the last. We eventually found out that this was because the lakes are fed by glacier runoff, which makes all the water in the area a really stunning color. Soon we made it to Mt. Cook village, checked out their really nice visitor center, and figured out what we were going to do in our two days there.

First view of Mt. Cook

Super cool visitor center. If my camera was better you could see that Mt. Cook was directly outside the window - what cool design to frame it!

We only had a few hours of light left so we headed out on a short hike to Kea Point. This was gorgeous, with a great view of Mt. Cook and a glacier and glacier lake in the foreground. From there we climbed up one of the valley sides on the Sealy Tarns track, which gave us an even cooler vantage point for the scenery. Unfortunately we hit snow before we could get over the ridge and see Mueller Lake, but it was still really pretty and a nice easy day for those of us who are still recovering and possibly a little burnt out on hiking (ie me).

Mt. Cook and glacial lakes in the foreground

Highest point of our hike - if we'd spent another hour hiking in snow we would have got to the lakes but decided it wasn't worth wet feet because the view was already so amazing.

We camped at a nice campground nearby, complete with toilets that flushed and a building (with lights!) to cook and hang out in. We enjoyed the clear night sky as always – you can see the Milky Way from almost everywhere in NZ, it’s incredible – and hoped for a sighting of the Southern Lights but had no such luck. It was a really cold night complete with frost on our tents, and apparently I stayed the warmest out of everyone, which is a first! Thanks mom for the sleeping bag I stole from our basement, it’s getting plenty of use. Jenn forgot her sleeping bag so Zak volunteered to sleep in the car so she could use his stuff, and I did not envy his noble but unfortunate gesture after hearing how cold he was all night. Still, we woke up to another gorgeous sunny day! (Have I sufficiently rubbed it in that it’s spring here yet?)

The hike that we’d wanted to do our second day was closed because of bridge repairs, and not wanting to cross the icy river on foot, we headed for the Blue Lakes instead. We weren’t very impressed at first but when we came over the rise to the glacier view we were met with the most breathtaking scenery we’d had yet. You could see the Tasman Glacier winding down a valley surrounded by mountains, and at the end of the glacier a huge light blue lake began that was full of icebergs that must have broken off the glacier. It was really incredible and totally worth the trip, even though we just did a quick little excursion.

Evil spiky plants - so sharp and so annoying when you're hiking through them!

Tasman Glacier and lake, incredible

Kayakers for scale, such big cool icebergs!

 Click for bigger size - props to Lena and Dahlia for this panorama!