More of Orientation Week

 Sun. 12/13: 

Another day down in NZ. The days here are pretty long, seeing as I’m used to being in bed by 9:30 or 10:00 to get up early for work. Staying up late has always been a problem for me (always in bed by 2am on New Years without fail!), so the big partying and drinking atmosphere is difficult to adjust to…I mean, I do go to UMBC after all, and “I act like a 45 year old woman” according to David. But who knows, I could come back a party animal! You never know.

Today I walked into town with two of my roommates and another girl who we hang out with pretty regularly. We were looking for somewhere with reasonable lunch prices and ended up at a Portuguese place called Nando’s. Apparently it’s a chain and there is also one in Wellington, down where are the bars are located. Their big thing was peri-peri sauce, which from what I could tell was just chili or hot sauce. Anyway, I had the lemon and herb (which isn’t even classified as mild), and still felt the burn. My roommate Nicole, who had mild, and I had our noses running and everything. Embarrassing, by the food was still pretty good…just gotta bring some milk along next time. Then we walked down towards the lake and hit up the ice cream store again…I see a trend here. I almost never eat ice cream at home (unless there are Oreo milkshakes involved, or Soft Stuff is open), and yet here we went there twice in two days. I did not partake although we stopped at a convenience store later on and I acquired a very nice lemon and grapefruit popsicle. Yum. Anyway, so we walked down to the waterfront where there was a big fair of sorts. We perused, and although I was the only one to make a purchase, everyone seemed to enjoy it. Then, seeing as it was boiling, we headed back to Kiwipaka to get our swimsuits and head to the local aquatic center which has an outdoor pool. After a few hours more of sun, we were all ready to head back and examine our sunburns. I am happy to report that I was NOT the worst of them, and I was one of few who actually had sunscreen, so I was pretty pleased with myself.

After bumming around a little, we headed to dinner (corned beef…kind of…it was free) and then back into town where we were told there was a “quiz night” at the Irish pub. Unfortunately, we were told it started at nine when it actually started at seven thirty…whoops. Continuing on, we stopped into the Pheasant Plucker and everyone but me had an adult beverage…I considered it and then wimped out. Oh well. After chatting and listening to the live band that consisted of an electric bass and a ukelele (interesting combo?? They still did Beyonce), we headed back to Kiwipaka to find everyone out at the bar. After standing around aimlessly for a bit, we moved on to bed, where I will soon be taking a shower to get all this sunscreen off. Hooray!

Mon. 2/14:

Today was adventure caving day! It was fun, but exhausting and a little scary at times. We had to get up a little before seven to get over to breakfast and sign up for our trips. There was St. Benedict’s, which involved a zipline in the cave and rappelling down a waterfall (only ten spots though, and obviously the boys ran for it), Toobing which had a little tubing as well as a lot of water, and Haggis Honking Holes which involved rappelling and crawling through a bunch of really small spaces. My friends and I all ended up doing the Toobing, although three of us were in each time group. To start out we drove two hours up to Waitomo (Wai=water and tomo=cave in Maori) where the caving was located. After getting on a different bus and taking a windy path up a big hill (sometimes there were fences along the edge of the cliff, sometimes not…a one lane road…good times), we were put into full length wetsuits, jackets, booties, rainboots and helmets. After trekking down to the entrance to the caves (which was a ladder that you couldn’t even climb down normally because the opening was too small….auspicious start!), we started just climbing away on the rocks inside. Now, usually I wouldn’t find that to be too much of a challenge, but let’s remember that we’re weighed down with all this stuff we’re wearing. Plus we’re underground, using our helmet light to see, and climbing on wet and slippery rock. Luckily, no accidents occurred, although my knee is killing me now. I honestly don’t think they would ever have anything similar in the States just because they would be afraid of lawsuits. Some parts were a scary, but we also floated down on stretch of underground river with our lights turned out so we could see all the glow-worms, so that was pretty awesome. There was also some legitimate swimming in parts, but the wetsuits were pretty buoyant. Unfortunately, the rainboots would fill up with water really easily and then you’re lugging along the extra weight. The hardest part was walking back up the hill to the start point after we got out of the cave in all of our gear. Best workout I’ve had in years! I’m anticipating further soreness tomorrow.

On the way back to Rotorua, we stopped at a dam in Waikato where the bus driver went swimming occasionally. We were all pretty excited to jump in (it was about eighty degrees), but when we walked down the path to the water there was a cliff and a rope swing. So your options were to run and hurl yourself off of this cliff (about 25-30 feet, we decided), or attempt to rope swing out. It was terrifying to even watch. I was sure that someone was going to slip and split their head in two, but no one had any accidents there either, although there were a few very close calls. Needless to say, I did not have the guts to attempt it, although most everyone did. My status as a wimp grows every day…oh well. I have a feeling it would have been right up David’s alley.

After returning back to Kiwipaka and relaxing and eating some dinner, four of us walked into town to get, yes you guessed it, more ice cream! I tried chocolate mud…delicious. Tomorrow we plan to go big and get double scoops to commemorate our last day in Rotorua.

Tomorrow is our last day in Rotorua before moving to Wellington. Although it has been really fun here and it was a great opportunity to meet fellow American students, I am definitely looking forward to seeing Wellington for the first time. I’m confident that at least four and maybe six of us will meet up after we get to school. Three of us are living in Te Kotahinga, so it’s even a possibility that we could be roommates.

On a last and final note, Happy Valentine’s Day! It was pretty low key here, at least decoration-wise and everything. Pretty much nothing different. Although when we walked into town, the restaurants were having specials and there were a lot more people down there than we have seen any other night including Saturday night. Too bad my valentine is back in MD working hard, but I’ll be back soon enough!