Wine and Lambs!

Things are getting busy as the semester is ending and I'm getting ready to head home. Classes are over now and my first exam is a week away. My mom arrives on Sunday, the 26th, a few days before my exams, so I'm busy trying to pack in all the studying I can before she comes. I'm so excited for her visit. We have a couple tramps planned and are going to meander up towards Aukland where we'll fly home on the 20th. Lots to fit in during my last month here on the other side of the world. Here's what I've been up to the past few weeks:

After classes ended Janna and I celebrated by going on a wine tour of the Central Otago area, hosted by the university. The area is known for its pinot noir but we got to taste all types of wines and even drank wine in a cave! It was an amazing weekend with delicious food, good wine, sunny weather, a perfect end to the semester. After it all I decided that ed by Biddy and Russel, an older couple whose families havI definitely am not a big fan of pinot noir, but came to appreciate the variety of flavours it holds. I'd much rather sip on a glass of Mt Difficulty reisling or a pinot gris.

I spent the last week on a small sheep farm in Gore, a small town a few hours from Dunedin. The farm is owne lived in the area for generations. Russel's brother and sister live just down the road in the house they grew up in. They raise colored Perendale sheep for fiber (not rainbow, black, brown, grey and everything in between). Biddy loves anything having to do with fiber so I learned all sorts of things including how to spin on a wheel, how to tell if a fleece is good for spinning, how to wash, prepare, and card the fleece, felting, dying. Pretty much anything you want to know about wool, she's the woman to ask. Every square foot of the house had some sort of fiber in it. I was in heaven. It was such a wonderful experience. It is such an incredible feeling to be able to take wool straight off the sheep and turn it into a sweater if I want. Now I just need to get my hands on a spinning wheel... Part of my job every morning was to feed two baby lambs, Spud (in the picture) and Kumara (a type of Maori potato) who lost their mother (epilepsy they think). They were so cute! It was hardly a chore at all. At night Russel let me drive the motorbike around the farm and we captured baby lambs that escaped and moved the sheep to greener paddocks. It was a wonderful way to relax and meet new people before my week of studying and finals.

Catlins and Classes

One of my flatmates and I went for a little day trip to the Catlins, a really pretty area about 2 hours south of Dunedin. There's lovely forests with lots of tree ferns and waterfalls to hiked around. It was fun! We got roared at by a sea lion, saw some penguins hop up the hill to their nest (can you spot them in the photo, there are 2 at the bottom of this post, it's like where's waldo! Good luck, they're pretty hard to see), watched some seals swimming around, and even saw some cute baby lambs that had just been born! Now I have to get back to work and finish my assignments due next week. Only one week left of classes, I can't believe how quickly my time here has gone by. Finals last for a month here, so I won't be completely done with school until the first week of november, but I have a couple weeks off in between, so it isn't too bad. Next weekend my flatmate Janna and I are going on a wine tour: lots of wineries to visit, delicious food, I'm pretty excited!

Road Trip

I just returned from a bit of a weekend roadtrip with my flatmate, Ben, who just got a car on Friday. We knew going on a long trip right after getting a cheap used (and old) car could lead to trouble, but we decided to go for it. Saturday morning we woke up and left the flat by 530 to make it to the Moeraki boulders at sunrise. The boulders are really neat. They formed like pearls do; calcite built up layer by layer around a rock or fossil. The result is a bunch of large spheres. It was high tide, so most of the beach was underwater, but still a neat place. Then we drove up to Mt Cook (where Sir Edmond Hillary trained to climb Mt Everest!) and did some hiking. It was a beautiful day with gorgeous scenery. We convinced each other to continue west towards Lake Wanaka to do a bit of hiking there and possibly even skydive. We were both stoked that the weekend was going so smooth and everything just seemed to be fitting into place. Of course, no trip is perfect...

About an hour down the road from Mt Cook the car dies, just sputters a bit and dies. Luckily, we weren't too far from a small town and a nice German couple offered to give us a lift in so we could figure out what to do next. The problem turned out to be a simple fix, just needed to reattach some wires to the alternator, a bit of fiddling with the belt, adding oil (nearly empty, ouch!), and we were good to go. Did cost us (well, Ben actually) a bit of cash since we had to call the mechanic after hours, but we were all set and ready to get back on the road. Determined not to let a bit of car trouble foil our plans we continued on towards Wanaka where we stayed the night in the car and woke up early for a beautiful sunrise. The sky soon darkened and rain poured down, canceling our plans to go skydiving, and making for a mediocre hike. Still, we were determined to end the trip well. So, we headed back to the east coast to Oamaru, a small coastal town known for it's penguin colonies. The town has a cute historic district, and we got to see penguins which was really neat. They are so cute when the waddle up the shore! Unfortunately, there seems to be something wrong with the clutch now, so it looks like the car troubles aren't quite over. But, we made it home on time and overall it was a good weekend, though a bit frustrating at times. I'll try to post a few photos later, once I get them uploaded to my computer.

Adventures in the bush

Last weekend I went on my second official tramping trip with the Tramping Club. There were 10 of us total crammed into 2 small cars, both of which broke down or at least had complications at some point during the trip. Friday night we camped quite literally on the side of the highway. Didn't get much sleep. Up early for a day on the trail along the Huxley River, then we headed up into the bush and passed by a few little waterfalls, over a swing bridge, and along the bush again to a cute little hut where we decided to stay the night. Dinner was a delectable curry with some sort of lentil tortilla, yum! For desert we had timtam slams! Timtams are chocolate covered biscuits, bite off the ends, use them as a straw for hot cocoa, or milo here in New Zealand (their version of ovaltine), and wow, what an experience! A few games of mafia later and we called it a night. Back at the cars we were greeted with a flat. Of course nothing is open in small rural towns on a sunday afternoon, so we drove 80k back to Dunedin for a pretty late night arrival. The trip was fantastic, I met some pretty cool people, ate good food, and the forest was definitely right out of Lord of the Rings, it was amazing! Unfortunately, I got sick on the trip, just a head cold mainly, but I'm beginning to feel a bit better. I just have the annoying lingering cough left.

I joined a local knitting group a few weeks ago. I'm definitely the youngest one there by quite a few years, but it's fun to knit with people and listen to kiwi gossip. They invited me on a trip to a local wool mill that sells discount yarn. So much yarn at such cheap prices. I was in heaven. Nothing super exciting like we have in the States, but still, they were practically giving it away. I definitely want to get back there at some point...but then there might be a problem getting all that wool home...

I'm also learning Maori flax weaving. We started by making flowers, and are learning all the tikanga (rules and regulations) surrounding the art form, from how to harvest the flax to the prayers or chants you need to say before weaving.

A few photos...

Here's the railway carriage I stayed in while WWOOFing


Me at the top of the time ball station, with Lyttleton Harbor in the background.
The view from the boat trip I went on, beautiful coastline!This is the best shot I could get of the penguins. They were super cute!

Here are all my finished bone carving pieces. My favorite is second from the right.

WWOOFing (continued)

Some highlights from my week of living with an amazing German family in my very own railway carriage:

• The family. They were so warm and welcoming and totally let me into their lives. If anyone wants to try WWOOFing in New Zealand, I highly recommend them. It was so nice to eat family dinners, hang out in their cozy house, meet their friends, etc. I babysat a couple nights and got to read Quinny a bedtime story which made me realize how much I miss spending time with kids. So cute! Quinny and I talked about our adventures we'd had in "other lands", to him the world is all so magical.

• The food was amazing, I think I'm spoiled. We had venison steaks (deer farms are really big here), amazing fresh fish (the thing was like a sole but HUGE) dishes, delicious stir fry, and I finally got to try New Zealand Yams (shiny bumpy red veggies about as thick as my big tow but twice as long) which are actually pretty good. And after a hard day's work we sat around with a beer or glass of wine and ate yummy bread and cheese.

• I got to stay in my own cozy little railway carriage. It was all so relaxing. Some nights I did nothing but sit and read a book, or (most often I'm a bit ashamed to admit) watch a bit of the first season of Desperate Housewives. What can I say, guilty pleasure. I made it through the entire first season by the end of the week...

• The town. It's Christchurch's main Port and is what remains of an old volcano. One side was eroded by the ocean creating what is now the harbor. The town is small, the main street is about like that of Multnomah Village. It's surrounded on three sides by tall hills and on the other side by water.

• The time ball. One of only 5 working time ball stations in the world. I was their one and only visitor of the day and got my own personal tour of the castle like building. The ball drops every day at exactly 1pm and was used by ships. They would note the difference in time between the ball and the ship clock and use that for navigation, before radios could broadcast the time directly to the ship.

• The famous Wonderbar. Saturday night I figured I should go out and visit the place, especially since it's famous throughout New Zealand and was only a ten minute walk from my house. To get there you have to walk down a staircase, through a parking lot, and then up a maze of ramps to even get to the place. Once you're there you see a bunch of manakins with various colored lights, mirrors surrounded by barbie doll heads, strange things protruding from the ceiling, hilarious vintage ads lining the bathroom walls. The live music was horrible, and I'm not sure why, but I took home the free cd they gave me. The only line I could even understand was "the earth has it's faults"...something something...The band consisted of tight jean wearing guys who I'd guess were about 18. The guitarist didn't move anything but his hands the entire time, completely straight faced. The lead singer mumbled into the microphone, off key. The drummer was decent at least. The place was mostly empty, must have hit it on a slow night, or perhaps it's always like that. The room with the band was filled with the band's friends, and the other room was filled with old people playing pool...hmm...

• I saw penguins! And a dolphin too! I felt super touristy for going on a "cruise" of the harbor, but it was fun getting out on the ocean, and much like the time ball station, the boat was filled with an amazin 6 people including myself. Winter is definitely the time to travel folks if you want to avoid the crowds. My WWOOFing hosts teased me throughout dinner for being such a tourist, but it was fun. Both the penguins and dolphins are the world's smallest.

• I went on a hike up to the rim of the volcanic crater and around it a bit. The view was incredible! I fell into a nettle bush though and stung my finger. Apparently the nettle here is quite vicious. It still hurts (3 days later) after I run my fingers under cold water...strange. I'll try to post a few photos later, still haven't uploaded them onto my computer yet though...

So, that's some of the trip, don't want to bore you all with even more tiny details. Oh, but one surprising fun thing that I found at the Lyttleton museum in the geology section (the whole museum was in a house, the geology section a single bedroom sized room)--authentic ash collected from Portland Oregon from the St. Helens eruption, crazy!
Anyways, now I'm trying to get my life back in order for classes, yuck! Sorry for such a long winded post, congratulations for getting through it!
love you all,
Sarah

WWOOFing

I just got back from an amazing week WWOOFing. For those of you who might not know what WWOOF (willing workers on organic farms) is, it basically provides an awesome opportunity to experience working on an organic farm for a bit each day in exchange for room and board. There are farms all over the world. It's pretty neat. So, for the past week I have been staying with one of the nicest families I've ever met in Lyttelton, a small port town near Christchurch. It wasn't really a farm, more of a city garden. I had a super cozy railway carriage all to myself which was amazing, it even had a clawfoot bathtub in it, which I enjoyed thoroughly after several months of low water pressure showers! And the food was delicious! I ate fresh bread, organic produce, fresh fish, venison from the farmer's market, amazing cheeses, it was all so delicious! The couple (a journalist and doctor) are both origionally from Germany and have traveled all over the world; both have been WWOOFers before too. They have two kids, Quinn (6) and Jasper(11) and a wonderful dog named Ruby. I spent my mornings weeding and scraping paint off of windows, and had the afternoons off to explore. In the afternoons I explored the little town, went on a cruise around the harbor, hiked along the rim of the crater that surrounds the town, went into christchurch, listened to live music at the famous Wonderbar, etc. There is so much to write about I don't even know where to begin. I'm pretty tired now from a six hour bus ride and a mad scramble to find something edible for dinner which culminated in my decision to walk over a mile to Velvet Burger (delicious face sized hamburgers, yum!). I'll try to write more later, perhaps with some photos.