Christchurch, Cadbury, and a wet dog

Here I am, sitting in the lounge, with Kinga's Golden Retriever, Leo. He is adorable and sitting next to me on the couch. He had gone swimming in the ocean earlier, so he smells like wet dog and has made my shirt partially wet but he's too cute, so i'm letting him continue to lean on me while I tell you about my last few days.

Sunday was a pretty relaxed day and I went to Gaia's Taiko performance. Taiko is Japanese drumming and is quite interesting. Gaia's Taiko group had a little girl, i'm guessing 9 or 10 years old that was super cute. She played on the front drum and she had this twirly thing she would do with her drum stick. (Gaia, i'm sorry i'm calling it a drum stick, but I don't remember the actual name of it :p)

I spy Gaia. Can you?

Taiko was very fun to watch and although Gaia's group had only prepared one piece to perform they actually ended up having quite a grand performance of multiple songs. There was one piece about salmon that I was particularly fond of.

SALMON!

After the Taiko performance I went into town to meet up with Ebony. We went to Angus Desserts where I had amazing mango lime cheesecake. It was really nice to catch up and we chatted for hours. :)

Yesterday Sophie, Gaia, and I brought Lady (the car) to Christchurch. We left Dunedin around 3:45pm and headed first for the Moeraki Boulders. It was still partially cloudy, but generally much better weather than last time. However, the ride to the boulders was again very much like a sauna and by the time we arrived we were all very ready for some fresh air. When we got to the beach we realized it was high tide again so we couldn't climb on a lot of the rocks but this time we were able to walk to the other end of the beach.

The Moeraki Boulders are sometimes called Dinosaur Eggs and I found one particular rock that was perfectly egg shaped. There was another rock with a crater full of ocean berries. Ocean berries is a made up word; I don't actually know what the things inside the rock are called. Pictures below.

DINO EGG

We then drove another three or so hours to Christchurch stopping only for a bathroom/ McDonalds break. The views that we drove by after our McDonalds stop were some of the prettiest I have ever seen. It was an amazing sunset behind us where the sun was often right above the road. There were also mountains that looked black against the purple sky. Basically we had panoramic postcard views. Since Lady's windows don't roll down, all my pictures are taken from inside the car but are all still beautiful.

Upon arriving in Christchurch we got a little lost but found Cedric's apartment soon enough. We also met a few of Cedric's friends, Andrew, a Kiwi that studies at Otago, and a German guy, whose name I did not catch. We ended up talking for hours and it was past 1am when we finally went to bed. Of course, Gaia, Sophie, and I then talked in bed for another unknown amount of time before actually falling asleep. We were then up at the crack of dawn (5:45am) to catch our bus back to Dunedin. The three of us traveled close to 1000 kilometers in the span of 24 hours. You are probably wondering if I saw any of the destruction from the earthquake. I did not see much, but I did see some of the buildings but i'm not sure if those were damaged during the earthquake or taken down afterwards to be rebuilt.

Early morning, waiting for the bus, eating Nutella and bread

Gaia and I then went to the Cadbury Chocolate Factory right after we got back. I learned so much interesting things about chocolate on this tour. Here are some interesting facts:

Mount Crunchie

Cadbury uses purple as their color because purple is the color of royalty. Apparently some time ago Cadbury chocolate was presented to Queen Elizabeth and she loved it so much that she allowed them to continue using purple.

There is a room with tanks that hold liquid chocolate. The tanks together can hold chocolate equivalent to the weight of 20 African elephants.

Cadbury Hollow Eggs are produced only for New Zealand and not imported anywhere else in the world. Each year 44 million eggs are produced and all of them are eaten within a week, during the time of Easter. If you are wondering, 44 million eggs is about 10 eggs per person in New Zealand. This is a small chocolate loving country.

One of the silo's (the purple one) holds a machine that dumps a one ton of liquid chocolate within seconds. You may ask what this machine is used for. Answer: nothing, its just for fun. After the chocolate is dumped its just pumped back up for the next crowd that comes in. The chocolate is only changed once a year so you wouldn't want to eat it anyways.

At the end of the tour, both Gaia and I looked in the shop and bought some chocolate. I bought the kinds that aren't imported to the U.S. Also, Cadbury uses Cocao from Ghana, sugar cane from Queensland, Australia, and fresh full cream milk right here from Otago, so chocolate here probably tastes different from the Cadbury made in other countries.

Afterwards, we stopped at a New Zealand wood shop before heading to Velvet Burger for dinner. I had never been to Velvet before but it reminded me much of Ferg Burger in Queenstown. The burger was the size of my face. Dinner was good but I think Ferg Burger was better.

Wooden Vikings

Tomorrow is my last full day in New Zealand and it is rather bittersweet. I am not ready to leave  yet, but at the same time i'm ready to see my family and friends at home. It is also SO incredibly quiet here in North Dunedin now that it is quite different from when the students are around. I'm hoping to meet up with Ebony again and maybe go to the beach (though rain is predicted) and run some errands before leaving early Thursday morning.