Heading to Aussie!

Two weeks ago I went on this awesome two-night backpacking trip in Fiordland that I talked about in my last blog post. I went with 8 of my closest friends here and we had a blast! The weather was beautiful...beautiful blue skies the whole weekend. We basically hiked through the bush and jungle the whole way to the valley that was at the top of the mountain which was our destination. Some parts of the tramp (hike) we were hiking literally straight up the side of the mountain, crossing over streams, and plowing through bushes, basically blazing our own trail at times. There were organe markers on trees that directed us on the so-called "trail"...come to find out after we completed the tramp for the weekend that we were only the second group to hike that certain trail this whole year! No wonder it wasn't very broken in! We got to the valley after several hours of hiking and had a delicious lunch of salami and apples, a tramper's delicacy! After lunch we proceeded on in search of a lake that was supposed to be in this valley. We followed a river up the valley towards the mountains ahead...we kept walking and walking and never came upon the lake. My friend Bryan who was our trip leader had a 17 year old map and we thought maybe the lake had dried up since then (not sure why he didn't have an up-to- date map!) So we never ended up finding the lake but had a great time the rest of the weekend. We set up camp for teh night, explored around the area and just enjoyed gorgeous scenery that surrounded us. I've never seen so many stars as we saw that night--it was so amazing! This was probably one of the most fun weekends I've had so far here in NZ. It was my first overnight backpaking trip and I enjoyed it so much. I look forward to doing a nother one really soon!

Last weekend I stayed here in Dunedin. A bunch of my friends were going to Queenstown and I had already been there so I decided to just stick around town and relax. I went to the farmer's market that they have here every Saturday morning and just explored around Dunedin.

Today, however, everyone is in town and there is this all-day party on this street here in Dunedin. It's like the biggest day party of the year here at Otago and everyone I know here is going...you go in a group and dress up as a theme. My group is dressing up as different holidays and I'm Halloween....I rented this awesome pumpkin costume and Caroline is wearing this Santa costume. Our other friend Tristan is the Easter bunny, Laura is Mardis Gras and Emily is Cindo de Mayo so she's wearing like a pancho and sombrero. Some of our other friends are going as pirates. I'm sure there will be lots of outrageous costumes at this party. It should be a fun day.

What I'm even more excited about is my mid-semester break trip to Australia!! There's a group of 7 of us going and we leave in 4 days!! On Tuesday we are taking a night bus up to Christchurch which is about 5 hours north of Dunedin. Our flight flies out of Christchurch Wednesday afternoon and we are off to Aussie! We fly into Brisbane where we will hop in our 8-passenger van that we already have reserved and will begin our 10-day roadtrip north to Cairns, stopping at different places along the way. We've mapped out a great itinerary including stops at Noosa Beach, Brisbane Zoo, Whitsunday Islands, Fraiser Island, snorkeling/diving the Great Barrier reef and lots more! We fly out of Cairns on April 18th and have a 12 hour layover in Sydney on the way back. We will leave the airport and go out in Sydney for the night and hopefully stay at the flat of one of my friends who is studying abroad there. This trip's going to be a blast and I'm so excited!!

Well, I better go get ready for the day...I hope everyone back home is doing well!