Chocolate and Trampin’

Well, I’m settling into New Zealand life! 

The other day, everyone was out and about doing things so I decided to go for a walk. I happened upon some trails going up the hills into the woods and decided why not? I ended on top of a hill behind the botanic gardens with a pretty good view of the city just before sunset. It was exhilarating to finally do a little hiking (though unintentional) and breathe some fresh air. The track I happened to pick was incredibly steep and parts were quite muddy, so coming back down was a little more difficult. I slipped down a small fairly steep part and my hand landed in a bush. As I continued walking, my hand started getting itchy and got red and bumpy. I was a little concerned, but it slowly returned to normal after I rinsed it off back home, so no harm done.

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The next day I had plans to hike up Signal Hill with a group of international students. Signal Hill is THE hike to do in Dunedin, and it is right by my flat!  I found that the hill I had hiked up the day before was a smaller hill right next to Signal Hill, so I knew the terrain well. It took us about an hour to get to the top. We chose a beautifully warm and sunny day. From the top, we could look down on all of the city and the bay. My solo adventure was good fun, but I enjoyed sharing the view at the top of Signal Hill with all my friends.

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The view of Dunedin from the top of Signal Hill

This weekend is the end of the Cadbury Chocolate Carnival. Friday is the Jaffa Race where giant chocolates are raced down the steepest residential street in the world. I’m pretty excited for that.

Classes are in full swing. Plant lab was not nearly as exciting this week as it was last week. Learning about the botanic gardens last week was really interesting, but this week we spent the full 3 hour lab drawing parts of ferns. My friend Kristin and I realized just before lab that we had not yet purchased the required incredibly expensive lab coats, so we ran all over campus trying to find them and arrived in lab a couple minutes late. The professor promptly informed us we were late and demanded that we sit down immediately. Yikes. He’s a little bit scary. I passed him on the street the other day and he stared me down, but didn’t show any recognition. Not really looking forward to lab next week!

 

 

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