Weekend 2!

Another exciting weekend has concluded! (Although we don’t have school today (Monday, March 20, 2017) in observance of Otago Anniversary. After school on Friday, the student teachers and I met up with our teachers at one of their houses for drinks and appetizers. We got to see a whole new part of New Zealand, and it was absolutely amazing! The views from the houses were incredible, and the houses were all SO nice. One difference that I have noticed here is that most of the houses are one story. I am assuming this is because of earthquakes, but I guess I am not exactly sure. The students in my class looked up my house on Google Earth, and they were amazed at how different our houses look. (Fun fact: My friend’s cooperating teacher was in the Olympics on the New Zealand field hockey team, and this is the lady’s house we visited.) We enjoyed some sausages, cheese platters, pimm, etc. and then headed home for our travels the next day.

We headed for Dunedin the next morning, about a two and a half hour drive away. Before leaving, we stopped for Subway and gas. Gas (petro) is so expensive here! It costs $8 per gallon, so it’s around $100 to fill the van!) Luckily, American dollars are still a bit less, so it’s about $60 U.S. We then headed towards Dunedin! Thankfully, most of the roadways have great signage, because we cannot access Siri or Google maps while driving. (We do have an old school map, but we have gotten lucky with finding the route ourselves.) We first stopped along the Otago Peninsula and then headed into town for some information on where our campsite was located. We got to see the City Centre a bit, checked out a few stores, and then headed to our campsite. It turns out that we should have booked something in advance, because there were no cabins available. Therefore, our options were to sleep in our tent and van or find a new place. (The boys were more down to camp than the girls, and we got our way with finding a new spot!) We were all a bit bummed, though, as this campsite was on the beach and recommended by many people. We noticed that the campsite was located close to a castle we had wanted to see, so we stopped there on our way out. The castle was not as large as I was expecting, but the grounds were beautiful. The view from one of the areas was absolutely breathtaking! There was also a Chinese wedding going on in the center, and that was cool to watch too. It was getting a bit cold, so we decided to head out and find a new place to stay. We ended up stopping at this hotel and two people ran in to check out pricing. They said they could give us a twin room for $85, which ended up only costing us $17 a piece. We had a bunk bed and then a twin bed, so two people had to sleep on the floor. Once we got freshened up, we walked to town for dinner. We had a lot of trouble finding somewhere to eat, because many of the places were restaurants and bars. They would not accept our U.S. license, and only one of us had our passport. (Note to self: Bring passport everywhere!) Once we finally found someone who would bend the rules for us, we got dinner! We knew we wouldn’t be able to get into anywhere else, so we walked around a bit and then headed back to the hotel. We settled in to sleep as best we could in preparation for our final day in Dunedin.

The next morning we all awoke sore and tired, so we found a Starbucks for breakfast! As we were leaving the hotel to check out, we got yelled at for sleeping 5 in the room, because technically we only paid for 2! (OOPS!) After Starbucks, we headed to the Cadbury factory for a tour. This was so cool! I got to learn how chocolate (shoo-ko-lah) is made and they provided SOOO many samples. I literally left with a full bag of chocolate! My favorite part was the “tasting room” where they had like soft serve chocolate to mix with different toppings. It was so rich, creamy, and yummy! After the tour, we walked back downtown to check out some stores. Glassons was a store recommended to check out, and we found a nice mall too. After shopping, we hit the road again for the Tunnel Beach. This ended up being more of a hike that originally intended, but the views were well worth it! We had to walk down this long road (it was really steep) to reach rocks in the ocean. I was not as brave as the rest of them, so I just got my picture looking over the cliff instead of sitting on it!) The waves were huge and I loved the sound of them crashing against the shore. The hike back up wiped us out! Then, we headed home to Alex. (We were laughing at how excited we were to be “home” because we’re still in New Zealand on the adventure of a lifetime!)

Today, we are going to try the bike ride to Clyde again for Nom-Nom Gelato! I am adding a bunch of pictures from this weekend to Facebook, so check those out too!