Mooncakes, Croissants, Muffins, and Sea Kayaking. Sweet as... :)

Mid-Autumn Moon Festival was this past Monday and I attended a small celebration held by the Chinese Department. This celebration reminded me so much of the Chinese New Year celebration back at Bryn Mawr and Haverford. The Otago celebration took place in the Burns building, which is where I take Chinese. We were in the English department staff room, but the Chinese professors hung Chinese flags and lanterns all over the room and played Chinese music. We watched the Chinese 1, 2 and 3 classes sing songs and perform skits while we ate moon cake and dumplings.

Food science lab consisted of making Bolivian food. This is the last lab I needed to cook at so i'm pretty excited that from now to the end of semester I don't have class until 4pm on Wednesdays. After lab I wandered over to Julia's flat where Sophie entertained me with the idea of going swimming. Of course, I agreed and after stopping by my flat to gather my things, we were off to Moana pool. At the pool, my mind was once again scrambled. Kiwi's circle swim the other direction, and even though throughout the entire first lap I kept on telling myself "flip turn to the right, flip turn to the right" when I got to the wall, I flip turned to the left and into Sophie. The swim was great though, and I smelled like chlorinated goodness for the next three days.

I returned home for the Keg Race that was taking place in my complex. The actual keg race was over, as I was at the pool most of the time it was happening. It was Americans versus the rest of the world, and sadly I think America's excessively high drinking age was our downfall...

On Friday I woke up at 5:30am to go to the Friday Shop, a bakery in Roslyn that is only open on Friday's. While the baked goods were delicious, the walk was not as pleasant. It was only about 1.5 miles away but the entire walk was uphill, and rather steep at many points. I did get to see my first Dunedin sunrise though! Maybe it was my second sunrise, but the first one was while I was on a plane on my way to Dunedin so that was a little different. After the 40 minute walk, an almond croissant never tasted so good.

Victory Beach!

After my morning class on Friday, I went to Grace's flat and watched a few episodes of Prison Break before Grace, Tucker, Fredric and I went to Victory Beach and the pyramids. It was another beautiful day and I was happy to go back again. We then walked to the beach and wandered around for a while. While the beach was also beautiful, and the water blue as ever, I thought that Sandfly Bay was more fun since there were sea lions and sand dunes. On our way back we saw a baby lamb that was standing really close to the fence bahhing at us. It was really cute and all of us were taking pictures and videos of it. Then it began to downpour all of a sudden (not surprising, it's Dunedin) and so we all ran back to the car.

I went sea kayaking on Saturday morning on the peninsula. I was in a double kayak with Grace, while Kevin, Fredric, and Tucker had individual kayaks. We paddled with a guide for over two hours and basically went to the tip of Taiaroa Head which is as far out in the peninsula you can go. Although I had kayaked quite a lot in high school I had never been in a double kayak and never in one with a rudder. The rudder was controlled by pedals that you would press to turn left and right. I am so short that the guide had to untie and retie the pedals to the boat because they were still too far away for me at the shortest setting... Everything worked out though, and Grace and I were always able follow our guide, in more or less a zig zag manner. During the kayak trip we saw seals, and these black and white birds called shags. We also stopped on a beach for a few minutes where we saw a little blue penguin hiding in its hole. Kevin was really surprised that the penguin was actually blue. We then started on our way back but not before we looked around for albatrosses. While looking Kevin made up a variation of Row Row Row Your Boat that went along the lines of "Row row row your kayak gently down the ocean, merrily merrily merrily merrily life is but an albatross." I thought it was quite entertaining. We did see albatrosses eventually though, resting on a top of a hill. They were all just sitting, so from on distance they did not look too different from the sheep on hills. One of them stretched its wing a little and we could kind of tell how large it was. Upon arriving back at where we started we had coffee/hot chocolate and apricot muffins.

Me and Grace! The water was soo green and pretty.  

As for rugby updates, Australia took on Ireland last night, and Ireland won 15 to 6, I believe. Today England is taking on Georgia, and the game is in Dunedin, so I'll update you guys on that madness soon.