Steph's adventures on the South Island have almost come to a close. I have two more nights before I catch the ferry to Wellington. It is bitter/sweet I suppose. I love it here, but I am so ready to go home. But, I will be home in 8 days and I know that as soon as I arrive I will be sad to have left New Zealand. However, there are SO MANY things that I am excited for at home: SNOW, Parents, Meine Schwester, Mes Amis, My BIG BED with MEMORY FOAM (no more thermarest on the ground in a tent, which I roll off of every night and wake up with something hard jabbing into my back), REAL FOOD, Clyde, My Clothes, Snowturd, TV, UNLIMITED WiFi, So many other things mostly related to normalcy...
A few days ago (who really knows how many???) the little crap-mobile Nissan Sunny barely made it up the steepest street in the world. But he did it. And we didn't die, and the car remained relatively scratch free - however, the roller-coaster-ride spent 1/8 of a tank of gas. I guess it was worth it though.
On Sunday, we went to Church! Surprise! We went to C3 Church in Dunedin. It was such a cute little church in an old brick building, and most of the people in the church were students. I guess that Dunedin is mainly a University town. And it is so super awesome, filled with old buildings and lots of hills and lots of students! Some of the church people were having a barbecue at their house to kick off the new school year and invited us over. It was mostly awkward, but also awesome. I ate a sausage, my first sausage in many years. It was not good. Yuck. I don't like Kiwi sausages, no offense.
After quite some time sitting in a driveway eating sausage sizzles, we embarked on another long leg of our journey. All the way to Lake Tekapo. It was about a 4 hour drive. But on the way we stopped at Moeraki to see the round rocks. It's pretty weird. Just a collection of perfectly circular boulders on a beach. They are almost as tall as me, and perfectly spherical. It really looks like they were put there by extraterrestrial activity, but scientists claim that they are just rock bubbles. I'm not really sure how they made it out onto the beach, but I picture it like this: Back in the day when the volcanoes were still active (maybe they still are? I don't know), the volcano erupted and shot these massive boulders of molten lava up into the sky, and then they rolled down the hill, and hardened and landed on the beach.
And we camped at Lake Tekapo for 2 nights. It was the first time that we have been somewhere warm enough to wear shorts and a tank top since we were in Queenstown. I have come to the conclusion that if a place is far enough south for penguins to be wandering around, it is too cold for me. Lake Tekapo was lovely. We tanned all day one day. Lovely. It made up for the fact that all I had eaten in ages was gluten free pasta with tomato sause, or rice. Plain rice. Mmmmmm. And that's all that I ate in Tekapo too, but it's ok because I got to tan.
I tanned so much that I now have a very distinct line on the side of my face from my sunglasses. Sweet As, Bro.
And now we are staying at the YWAM Oxford base outside of Christchurch. It's really nice here. Way more homey than the Matamata base. And we get free WiFi and free laundry. BONUS! And the food is amazing! Last night we had chicken and potatoes. And for lunch today there was hummus and veggies (and pitas for those of us who can eat gluten). And then we went out for din din in Christchurch in a restaurant on the beach. It was good. I had steak. Weird. I haven't had steak in years. It tasted like steak.
We also went to this sweet mall in Christchurch that is made out of containers - like those train container box things. It's pretty neat. They put it up after the earthquakes. Way to go Kiwi's - making a tourist attraction out of a natural disaster. I was surprised though, there is still a lot of mess left over from the earthquakes. A LOT of the roads downtown were closed off, and there was a lot of collapsed buildings. It made it a little difficult to navigate!
Yesterday, I had an embarrassing moment. I really hope that no one noticed... When we arrived at the Oxford YWAM base, I changed out of my shorts into some India pants, just incase the shorts were not YWAM appropriate. I put on a pair of India pants that were not freshly clean. I proceeded to wear them all day, and then before bed I noticed that a pair of underwear was peaking out through the leg hole, and it had been for the WHOLE TIME. Oh man.
And tomorrow morning we drive to Kaikoura to see some whales and then on to Picton where we will spend the night before we drop our car off in the morning and catch the ferry! Woohooo!
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