Surfs up!

So this is my second week, and things have been shaping up!

Here's a quick recap:

1. I officially have a bike now. I had to take a bus ride to the north side of Christchurch to pick it up, and I was planning on taking it on the bus ride home.

Problem #1: no buses allow bikes on the bus unless there is a bike rack.

Problem #2: no buses have bike racks.

So I had no choice but to bike the 1.75 hour ride home. Plus, it was my first experience riding in a city, AND a country road. The country road was not so fun. Very windy. All the horses in the pastures ran up to the side to greet me....all the sheep ran away. And I found six hedgehog road-kills.

2. We took a weekend trip up to Akaroa, which is a huge peninsula that is about 50 minutes out side Christchurch. The weather is pretty bad, but we managed to get a kayak ride in before the rain started.

We stopped at the shoreline further down the harbor, and found lots and lots of starfish, crabs, and this fossil looking creature. They're huge bird all along the side too. They seemed to be equivalent to our king fisher, but looked more penguin like!

We also took about a 3 hour hike, which was by far the oddest hike I've ever been on. It started up a mountain that was definitely a sheep and cow pasture, judging by the massive amounts of poop. Plus, we had to jump five barbed wire fences to continue on the path.

Best part: Sheeepp!!!!!!

Sunday morning, we took a bus ride back to the beach, and went swimming all day in the ocean.

Needless to say, it was a successful weekend.

This week, we bought a car! It's a 1984 Toyota Corona. We nick-named it El Corona Abuela. She's beautiful. And the despite the car being older than me, it has really good gas mileage, or rather kilometerage....and runs smoooooooth. We bought it from this place called the Backpackers market, which serves as the middle man between backpackers buyers and sellers. Which means we can sell our car back for the same price when we leave.

3. I had a field trip into the city for my Landscape Architecture class, which basically was a free tour of the city.

4. My favorite class so far as been organic farming productions. I have a debate team of about 4 people for my next project, all of which are kiwis. We got to find some cultural differences today. Such as, They asked me if Americans walk around barefoot and in board shorts. I obviously said no, and they were really surprised. Everyone walks barefoot here. In class, in the city streets, in the grocery store. It is a cleaner country, but I don't know if it's THAT clean.

Here's some quirky things that you might find interesting.

1. The majority of the country's firefighters are volunteers. Every time there is a emergency call, they ring a siren (sounds like a tornado warning in the states) and the volunteers from all over town respond.

2. The majority of toilets have two buttons: half flush and full flush. It took me a week to figure this out.

3. Fall out boy is huge.

4. New Zealand has no native mammals. It once had a bat species, but died off when peoplez came.

5. mullets dominate.

6. Kelp (the seaweed) is the most disgusting thing I've ever seen.

Besides that, I am very much enjoying it here. The weather has FINALLY turned around and it has been sunny and in the 70's daily. Today, I went to organic farming, and then drove to the beach in our little Corona blasting the Beach boys. I don't think I've ever appreciated Surfin' USA as much as I do now.

Life is good.