An Extended Spring Break...

          On September 4th, a 7.1 magnitude earthquake struck Christchurch.  I was a few hours away in Wanaka and did not wake up from the quake.  Although no one died from the earthquake, it ended up causing severe damage in the Canterbury region.

          I later found out that school had been closed down for another two weeks, so I ended up having a month long Spring Break.  Students were encouraged to not return to school, so I stayed with Tyler in Dunedin for two weeks.  

          On the way to Wanaka Tyler and I stopped to stay at Mount Cook for the night and did a quick hike the next day to see the Tasman Glacier.

         The scenery on the drive to Wanaka from Mount Cook was gorgeous.  We stopped at a salmon farm to pick up lunch halfway through the trip and were able to feed the salmon.  Talk about fresh.

         When we reached Wanaka, Tyler and I spent the first day at the Puzzling World.  Puzzling world has a bunch of illusions and mazes in it, and made for a very entertaining day.  

Roman style bathrooms

          We ended the day doing a really difficult maze outside.  I think I easily ran over a mile by the end of the maze.

         The next day we woke up early to go skiing at the Cadrona Ski Area.  I convinced Tyler to go skiing with me that day and it was quite a sight watching him struggle to get the hang of it.  This was also my first time skiing in about ten years, so it was a pretty interesting experience relearning how to ski myself.  

          We eventually headed back to Dunedin where I stayed for the remaining two weeks of my break to avoid the earthquake aftershocks.  Dunedin has a really great botanic garden that we went to a few of the days.  As you can probably tell, my favorite part was the duck pond.

          The gardens also have a bird aviary with lots of exotic birds I wasn't supposed to feed.

          Later in the week we went on a beer tour at the Speight's factory.  Speight's is one of the most popular beers in New Zealand, and my favorite!  We learned all about how the beer is made, and were able to sample the finished products at the end of the tour.  Later that week we went to the casino... but you don't want to hear about that.

          

  -Megan Waterhouse